UCF Bible Study

Faith

2012-02-07T14:53:00.000-05:00

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

These verses fit together really well, despite the fact that they're only the beginning of a whole long list of examples of people who held strong to their faith. Faith, our belief in God's statements of reality, starts before we see what he describes. It's only fitting that his universe started off formless and empty.

Taking a moment to ponder the beginning of Genesis, it's hard to picture a world that can't be pictured, existing before the light to see it was spoken into being. Faith is the same way. It's there, but there is no way to access it, no way to even see it, until God has spoken it into being. If you think you're the only one to struggle with that, read about some of the stories Paul lists in Hebrews 11, about people like you and I, who are told to plan for things they can't see or even imagine.

God has spoken to us and brought us into an amazing world. When he tells us things, we have to trust him as if we saw them ourselves. In doing this, we are temporarily on the same page as God, of the same mindset, agreeing with him by sharing his perspective. It's more than just expecting things. It's putting your money where God's mouth is.

Noah is a good example of this mindset. He didn't just expect a catastrophe to destroy the earth. Any of us could have done that. Noah actively worked to do what God told him to do, even though it went against any common sense anyone could have had at the time. Nobody builds a giant boat in their yard based on a vague hunch, especially after being persecuted by their neighbors over it. He invested in God's view of reality, not in the view presented by the world around him.

Be side by side with God in your faith. Jesus said that people had no idea what they were getting themselves into by asking to stand at his right hand. I think you could say something similar about acting in faith. It's scary and unknown. All you have to go on is something which, in trying to explain it to others, is empty and formless. What are you getting yourself into? (Smart Alec answer: God's blessing.) Faith is where we're supposed to be, though.

Our salvation is based on faith. Have you ever tried explaining the gospel to an atheist? That look you get is a good indicator that what your atheist friend is hearing is formless and empty. If we're going to accept that that's true, how can we back down from accepting the other things God has told us? They can't be more preposterous than the gospel story!

So, if you're on the fence about something you believe God has said, because you can't see any evidence that it could be true, then quit being on the fence. It's supposed to be like that. Faith starts off formless and empty, gets hit with light, and then comes alive. If you're trying to come at it with science first, planning to then end up in belief, you're heading in the wrong direction.

Brothers and sisters

2012-01-31T18:01:00.000-05:00

This week's good news is on Hebrews 2:10-11:

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

I call it good news because it's a basic truth that people often forget about when thinking about Jesus. Jesus calls us brothers and sisters. God the Father made God the Son come to our level in order to get us. The Son (Jesus) did it willingly. He conquered sin on our behalf. He has no reason to be ashamed of us.

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. Through Jesus' sacrifice, we are cleansed, reset to original showroom condition, so that we can connect seamlessly with God and be part of his family. On the one hand, we're totally not worthy. On the other hand, we're made worthy, courtesy of Jesus. The bills are paid.

When we connect to God, and we acknowledge him, and we seek him, we are part of his family. He is not ashamed of us. Jesus has made us his brothers and sisters. Think about that this week. We're still people, like mortal and imperfect, but we're also made perfect and immortal. We still suffer like people who don't know God, but at the same time, we have access to the divine, to the resources of God's royal, eternal dynasty. We're not slaves, but brothers and sisters, members of the royal family, living amongst the commoners, just like Jesus did.

Angels

2012-01-24T15:05:00.000-05:00

This week's serving of homemade theology is on Hebrews 1:13-14:

To which of the angels did God ever say,

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet”?

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

People sometimes get too caught up in the supernatural aspects of God's creation. They immerse themselves in arguments over angels, and demons, and various things that probably were kept from our daily physical world for a good reason. Sometimes they take the science that God gave us for dominion over our natural world, and they try to use it on the supernatural. Other times, they mistake the angelic messengers of God for God himself, and worship the angels. (We do this with our pastors, prophets, teachers, etc sometimes too, but that's a tale for another day.) From the sounds of it, people in Paul's time were all focused on the angels, and he wrote to set them straight on a few things.

The truth is that we're more awesome than the angels. God gives orders to the angels, and they carry them out. Their only purpose is to "hear and do." With us, he has a relationship. We have conversations. He talks with us, not just to us. No angel has ever enjoyed that privilege.

I was at a conference recently where the helpers were called 'angels.' It seemed oddly appropriate, given that I'd just read these verses the day before. The job of the angels wasn't to run the conference, or to enjoy the convention. It was to stay out of the way and do whatever was needed for the conference to happen smoothly. Nobody worshiped them or marveled over the stuff they did. Nobody was making a statue of the guy checking bracelets, or declaring a day of remembrance for the guy bringing the microphone to the people in the audience. The angels just did their jobs.

Real angels are the same way. They're God's creation, created to minister to our needs in the world. They're like robots. It does us no more good to worship them and marvel over their work than it does for us to worship the coffee machine or the tickets printed by a transit kiosk. Angels are what we'd be, if we focused only on doing what God had for us to do, and never accepted the relationship he wanted with us: Automatons, machines, trained ponies, etc.

We are the ones who will inherit salvation. Angels are sent to serve us, not to be served. Did God create us to take care of the needs of our guardian angels? Are we slaves to God's creation, or is it really the other way around?

We have the ability to sit at God's side, both as individuals and as the church. He is our Lord, just as he is Lord over everything, but he is also our friend and our heavenly father. There is no other creature I know of that has that to be thankful for. Don't fill your mind with useless conjecture, and your waking hours with spiritual busywork, only to miss out on the most important thing God has to offer his favorite creation.

Selling out in the moment

2012-01-17T21:56:00.000-05:00

This week's much-awaited online Bibley-goodness is on Genesis 25:29-34:

Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.)

Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”

“Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”

But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.

So Esau despised his birthright.

These verses are a classic illustration of the cost of thinking only of the current moment. Esau is hungry. That's all he can think about. Jacob names an exorbitant price for his stew, and Esau accepts without hesitation. He can never earn back what he's given up in the moment, but he never stops to consider this. He just goes for what he wants, blindly, and he makes a bad decision.

In the movies, it's always easy. When the villain is trying to make you make a bad decision, there is always dramatic music and facial close-ups. When you're not supposed to open the cellar door, you know, because you have a whole theatre of people crying out "Don't open the door! Don't go in there!" In real life, there is only silence.

We often look at stories like this one, and imagine Esau making an informed but impulsive decision, after reading all of the fine print. In reality, failing before temptation can seem like a non-event. Esau was hungry, and he said what he needed to say in order to get fed. People who have dieted or fasted know how easily the appetite can take over reason and lead us to do things we swore we'd never do. Esau's decision was less of a decision to part with his birthright, and more of a decision to get food by any means possible.

Compare Esau's decision with Jesus' decision. Jesus had fasted for much longer than Esau, and would have been more justified in giving in. Check out Matthew 4:1-4:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus recognized what was going on and resisted temptation. He made the perfect decision where Esau made the imperfect one. We are to be like Jesus. We have the power.

Esau thought only of his needs. He was ruled by his stomach. He lost out on a blessing by following his stomach's guidance to where it took him. Compare that to Jesus, our role model, who had eternity in mind. He knew his purpose, and he knew what Satan's advice would result in if he'd followed it. Jesus wasn't ruled by his stomach. Even when Satan joined forces with it, Jesus still stayed strong. His life was more than "I want what I want and I want it now."

Ask God to help you to see and understand the big picture. Ask to know your purpose. Ask for that eternal perspective. Don't follow something lesser than you, like a bowl of soup. Follow God almighty, who is greater than us all. He knows eternity, and can help keep us on track when we're caught up in the moment.

Now and forever

2011-12-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

This week is on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

A lot of the Christian life consists of navigating blindly. We serve a God who creates, who is all powerful, and who renews and perfects us, yet we are surrounded by evil, decay, and decline. Our wealth grows and shrinks, our bodies age, friends and relatives die and move away, and our sports teams lose important games. From a scientific standpoint, it's hard to prove that our faith is worthwhile. But, faith is a funny thing.

Paul writes about all of this stuff. His body was wasting away, and he was condemned to death in a prison. He should have been discouraged with his life, but he knew how to see things from a big picture perspective. Our present life is only a blink in eternity. While it's nice to enjoy the moment, and it's great to be thankful for what we have, when bad things happen it's good to remind ourselves that it'll all pass soon enough. We are eternal beings, created in God's image, but we struggle to see things from an eternal perspective.

God is, was, and shall be a God of healing, even if he isn't healing you in this moment. God is, was, and shall be a God of victory, even if you're currently overwhelmed and failing. The momentary evidence is not what matters, but eternity is. If we'd stopped looking the moment Jesus breathed his last breath on the cross, we'd have missed the entire Gospel. The moment would have told you that nobody had ever survived being nailed to a cross, and even if it was possible, the Roman soldiers would have just nailed Jesus to another one. Science does a great job of describing the past, but only God determines the future.

The Bible is full of stories of people in sorry circumstances, in situations which nobody had ever come out of. No infertile couples had kids until Abraham and Sarah had Isaac. Nobody'd ever crossed a sea on foot until God parted one for Moses and the Israelites. The sun had never stood still in the sky until Joshua fought at Gibeon. What about the first guy who was healed of the blindness he was born with? What about forgiveness of sin?

But even if we go to our deaths without seeing miracles like that, we still win. We have eternity with God. The core of our faith lies in the fact that there's more to life than meets the eye. But we live in a world that only believes what it sees, and that relies on the past to predict the future. If we think like the world thinks, it's easy to get discouraged. But God is the author of life. His perspective is eternal. So don't get caught in the moment. Live in the freedom of eternity.

Being visible

2011-12-13T17:40:00.000-05:00

This week is on James 5:13-16:

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make them well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

James' letter is one of my favorite books of the New Testament. He gets right to the point. In these verses, he talks about some spiritual disciplines that will draw you closer to God, and draw you and your fellow Christians closer together. As a side-effect, doing what he describes may also solve your problems.

James lists a bunch of problems that we have, that we tend to keep to ourselves: Being in trouble (like credit card debt, stalkers, getting "downsized", etc) Being happy. Being sick. Being in sin. OK, so maybe we don't keep being happy to ourselves very much, but in some cultures, you do in order not to make others envious.

All of these things should lead to prayer and/or praise. By doing so, we involve God in our daily struggles and victories. If you're in trouble, don't just be in trouble. Ask for help! If you're happy, be thankful. If you're sick, ask for some "holy doctoring." If you're doing what you shouldn't do, but you can't seem to stop, ask for some help in being strong. Don't just sit on these things. If God is truly part of your life, you won't leave him out when the drama comes.

By involving others in your relationship with God, and in your struggles and celebrations, you're participating as part of the body. The body doesn't consist only of you. It's all of us. We get to be Christ's representative to each other. Don't hide under your burden. Share it.

Involving others also helps people not to feel like they're the only ones with problems. A lot of times, someone will ask for prayer for something I thought I was the only one struggling with. Or they'll ask for help with something that is way worse than anything I'm feeling sorry for myself about. It's good to know that you're not singled out for torment and hardship in this world, and that others get struck by lightning just as often.

Even if God had no power on Earth, these things would still be good ideas. He'd get to know us better, and we'd get to know each other better. They would make us stronger. But the fact of the matter is, God does have power. People get delivered from their trouble. People get restored to health. People's hearts are changed, and they quit their sin. Their past mistakes are forgiven. These are all miracles that come from God. We don't access them by clamming up and hoping we somehow develop super powers ourselves. We call out to God for them, and he hears us, and he responds.

James is funny in how he presents all of this. "Are any of you folks in trouble?" "Are there any happy people there?" "Does anyone ever get sick?" "Do people still sin?" Of course every person and group of people has these issues, but you would never know it unless people did what he tells us to do, and confess them to each other. So, enough hiding in the garden...let's get in the light and be seen!

The season

2011-12-06T18:53:00.000-05:00

This week is on Acts 4:18-21:

Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

After further threats they let them go. They could not decide how to punish them, because all the people were praising God for what had happened.

'Tis the season for political correctness, or something like that. It's "holiday season" or "annual shopping season" or "winter break..." Anything but the unambiguous day of praise for Jesus Christ: the whole reason we have a holiday this time of year in the first place! People would rather deny God than risk tipping their comfy boat by rocking it with the truth.

So that brings us to a time many hundreds of years ago: Peter and John had prayed for a middle-aged man who was crippled and God healed him. They told the reason why he got healed to the crowd that had gathered. How could you not? Is Jesus a secret? The political powers didn't like that at all. Every bit of praise for Jesus was a threat to their position. So, in order not to rock the boat, they made a small request of the Apostles: You can preach, but just don't mention any of that Jesus stuff, OK?

Peter and John weren't having it. If the topic of Jesus Christ comes up, and the only answer to the questions people have, like "how did that guy get healed?" is Jesus Christ, how do you not talk about Jesus? The crippled guy didn't get healed by "a higher power" or "thinking thoughts" or "sending vibes." It wasn't just a miracle. It was Jesus Christ, God Almighty, who personally intervened into his situation. (Besides, Peter had already denied Christ once. He wasn't going to do it again!)

In a lot of ways, as Christians in a modern secular state, we find ourselves in the same situation, with powerful people telling us to practice our faith without mentioning this inconvenient Jesus character: "Worship the evergreen tree, not the God who created it." "Give gifts to one another, but don't mention what it represents." "Just spell it x-mas, so nobody asks any questions...X: like you're signing a check..." And it doesn't end after Christmas is over.

Pagan roots or not, Christmas is a time for us to take a moment and be thankful for Jesus's birth at a very inconvenient time of year. There are plenty of ways to be sensitive to others' faiths and traditions, or to their insensitivity to ours, but hiding the truth isn't one of them. John and Peter risked their lives and their position in their community to tell the truth about Jesus. All we risk is some scolding and maybe being looked at as insensitive.

God has made himself as plain as day to us. Much as we can't deny the sun, we can't pretend he doesn't exist, or that he isn't part of our lives. During the month where Christ's name is written on every calendar, and ignored, try to acknowledge him and what he's done for us.

2011-11-29T21:36:00.000-05:00

This week is on Ephesians 2:1-10:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

This week, the sandwich board preachers were back, near my workplace. Only this time, instead of preaching an angry version of the gospel, like they normally do, they had a giant plywood sheet with a picture of an aborted fetus on it and were preaching against abortion. So, clutching my bag of tasty Chinese food, I did my best not to look at the spectacle, as the howls about abortion, fornication, and sexual immorality came out on one side, and the college kids yelled "Christianity is stupid!" over and over on the other.

Preaching to the unsaved about sin is like yelling at a death-row inmate about how he should pull his pants up instead of wearing them ghetto-style. He's going to die either way. If you're not going to tell him how to escape, at least let him be comfortable. "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! ALL OF YOU ORANGE-SUITED INMATES ARE GOING TO DIE FOR YOUR CRIMES! SO PULL YOUR PANTS UP, PRISONER!!!"

Normally the sandwich board guys mention something about grace in with their gospel tirade. So I'd call it more good than harm in that case. Like Jesus said, if you're not against him, you're for him. But if you leave the grace out, the very thing Jesus embodied, you're kind of missing the point. That Christianity is stupid. So I decided I'd look to see if I could find a simple gospel summary that didn't deny the existence of sin, but didn't reduce grace to a mumble either. And wouldn't you know it, I opened right up to one.

Paul summarizes nicely in these verses. And I'll summarize him here: We all started off in the negative. Every single one of us has screwed things up. Some people still do. But God has started something new with us. Because of his love for us, not because of some cosmic obligation or some holy entitlement, God sacrificed Jesus to reset things for us, to restore us to perfection. It's not about the sin, it's about the love. No matter what you're in, Jesus' righteousness can buy you out of it. That is some good news! Whether you see your sin or not, God's grace can set you free.

So, if I had the power to dub and doctor the video of my lunch today, instead of the sacrificed infant they plastered on their plywood, I'd put God's sacrificed son, and instead of the sin tirade, I'd put an open offer for forgiveness and reconciliation. A fresh beginning. You can't argue with that.

We're not worthy

2011-11-22T13:07:00.000-05:00

This week is on Luke 3:15-16:

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

I read these verses in another language, and it opened my eyes to their meaning. I hear the word 'powerful' so many times that its meaning isn't very specific. But the language I read it in used the word 'stronger' which brought things into focus. I could only find one English translation that used the word this way:

The people were in a great state of expectation and were inwardly discussing whether John could possibly be Christ. But John answered them all in these words, “It is true that I baptise you with water, but the one who follows me is stronger than I am—indeed I am not fit to undo his shoe-laces—he will baptise you with the fire of the Holy Spirit.

So, the people were impressed with what John was saying and the miraculous connection he had with God. It makes sense, because he was the greatest of the prophets up until that point. The thing is, even as an amazing prophet, more spiritual than any of us, he was nothing compared to God. John was this little twiggy guy, and Jesus was this massive hulking prince. John in his awesomeness, by value comparison, wasn't even worthy to be the lowest of Jesus' servants, the guy appointed to take his smelly shoes off when he settles into a chair.

John baptised people with water. That's what people use to clean each other. It's cold and gentle, and it takes the dirt and carries it away. Jesus baptises people with fire and the Holy Spirit. That changes people. It destroys filth permanently. If you were going to be operated on, would you rather the surgeon cleaned his tools with water out of the creek, or sterilized them with flames hot enough to kill bacteria?

People saw in John something as awesome as they could imagine. John's response was "You have no idea..." Jesus brings us real power and real change. He defines awesome. Like if Jesus was more awesome than anything we could imagine, the definition of awesome would actually grow to include how awesome Jesus is.

Whatever we see people do now, it is nothing compared to what God can do. It's important to keep that in mind. If people had settled for John, would they have known Jesus? Would we know about him today? Without knowing to look for God's glory, we stop and settle for glorifying mankind. Part of what made John such a great prophet was that he was aware of that.

Don't settle for having other people mediate your relationship with God. Don't put them in his place. None of us can fill those shoes. Go to God directly and experience his glory. He is available to us, both as individuals, and as a united church. Don't settle for less.

Choice Christian greetings

2011-11-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

This week's study is on 1 Peter 1:1-2:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

How much can we learn about what basically amounts to "Hello?" Actually, a lot. Peter's letter is to a bunch of Christians in different places who have been exiled from their homelands. He calls them chosen, God's elect, and speaks his blessing on these seemingly cursed people.

This sort of thing would have been more or less common sense among early Christians, I think. There wasn't a sort of cultural baseline of Christianity, so if you were Christian, you probably didn't fit in. You weren't allowed in Jewish circles, but you couldn't really participate in civic life as a Roman either, because of the idolatry and emperor-worship that was part of life. No matter how you looked at it, you were left out.

At the same time, though, as a Christian, you're part of God's exclusive people. Christians all over the world are God's chosen. While we chose a relationship with God, God chose to offer it before we were even born. He knew we were coming, and he prepared a place in his life for us. We acknowledged Jesus for who he is, and we were marked with his DNA for eternity, sprinkled with his blood. So we're chosen, we're blessed, and we're marked.

This was all part of Peter's greeting to the worldwide eternal Church. We may be freaks, outcasts, exiles, and so on, but we're also chosen, blessed, and marked as God's own. That's the important thing, and it's worth saying up front. Peter speaks his blessing to these people, and the blessing is ours as well.

Thanks to Jesus Christ's sacrifice, grace and peace are ours in measures that were completely unknown before he died and rose again. Thank God!

Freaky creatures as ambassadors

2011-11-08T08:11:00.000-05:00

This week's wonderful message is on Ezekiel 1:4-10:

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.

These verses are part of one of Ezekiel's amazing visions from God. Apart from the natural coolness of freaky creatures, there's another lesson in them. The four-faces are symbolic of some character traits of God.

The human face is kind of like how God can relate to us. He came as Jesus to relate to us directly. Most normal people can't have a meaningful relationship with an eagle, a lion, or a cow, but they can relate to another human being.

The lion face represents God's nature as conqueror, king of kings, and top of the food chain. Nothing messes with the lion. There's nothing in the jungle that causes the lion to run away in fear. He's big.

The eagle face is God's all-seeing nature. The eagle can fly way above what people on the ground can see, and he has very sharp vision for spotting the tasty morsels that scurry along the ground. It has a unique perspective. And most people never look up to discover it's there.

But what's up with the cow-face? Were they just short on face-ideas when they designed this creature? I believe the cow-face is God's provider nature. The ox, or cow, was what served as tractor and dairy to the Israelites. The cow would help plow the fields, thresh the grain, turn the millstone, carry huge burdens, etc. The cow would also give milk, and when it dies, you get to feast on tasty yummy steaks.

The exciting thing here is how God's nature gets infused into his creation. He could have just made some kind of helicopter with a loudspeaker, or a talking velociraptor to do what he wanted to do. Instead, he made these glowy creatures with four symbolic faces. And those aren't even the creatures he said he made in his image!

Most of us have seen other people. Then again, you're reading this on the Internet, so maybe it's been awhile. But pretend you haven't ever seen a person before. No men, no women. What would you think when you saw one for the first time, knowing we're created in God's image? It would be pretty amazing, I'd think. I don't know if we look much like Him, but some of our spiritual nature is similar. We have emotions. We are creative. We love each other. We change our surroundings to suit our desires, even making things that would seem impractical or stupid to others.

Take some time this week and ask God to use his creation to show you some of who he is. (See his nature in nature.) There are a ton of ways God can speak to us, but sometimes looking at an artist's work will tell you some things about them that words are too clumsy to do.

Finger-pointing as a self-help technique

2011-11-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

This week's goodness is on Luke 13:1-5:

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Jesus was talking with a group of people who had the world all figured out. Bad things don't happen to good people, in their world. Some horrible things had happened to a group of Galileans, who were the somewhat rural cousins of the citified Jerusalem folks. Think Red State versus Blue State. "Naturally, the Galileans must have invited some kind of curse from God to have their holy Jewish blood mixed with the profane blood of a pagan sacrifice. Stupid, ignorant, intolerant Galileans..."

Jesus replies with an example from the Blue States: decent suburbanites from just outside of Jerusalem who had a tower collapse on them. What about those guys? Did they do something wrong too? No! Neither of them did! While God sometimes uses calamity to correct things that are wrong, the converse isn't necessarily true. While evil may sometimes result in a grisly death, a grisly death isn't necessarily evidence of evil. But if you live in a small world, and you want to justify your place in it, you'll invent little imaginary boundaries like city versus country, or red state versus blue state, in order to make it all fit.

People still say stupid stuff like that in modern times. In the 80s and 90s, it was AIDS as God's hatred of homosexuals and drug users. Then it was Katrina as God's judgment on New Orleans' immorality. There are tons more examples of people taking others' misfortune, and using it as evidence that those people are wrong, and they are right. The one I hear a lot now is that poor people are poor because they're lazy (some are) and that rich people are rich because they work hard (some do.) Mostly what it boils down to is an excuse not to be compassionate, and a justification to continue living the way we do.

Jesus is telling us that bad things happen. Faith isn't a "get out of jail free" card. Christians get sick, just like atheists do. Christians die in car accidents, same as pagans. Christians get killed in battle, starve to death, drown, lose limbs, go broke, etc, just like Muslims and Hindus. The important thing isn't whether bad things happen to us now, it's whether bad things happen to us for eternity. Jesus' point is this: Instead of worrying about who is naughtier than who, and who deserves what more than who else, why don't we worry about getting saved from eternal damnation? Why not focus on becoming better people, rather than inventing villains and pointing the finger at them in order to feel better about staying as-is?

When something bad happens to someone we don't like, or something good happens to someone we do, it's tempting to try to make sense of it. Be careful of your motives. Is God's grace and offer of salvation glorified in your reasoning? Or is it your judgment that you've forged his signature on? Worry about yourself, and about doing God's work, and you won't have time to speak condemnation on others.

Resetting the clock

2011-10-25T17:33:00.000-04:00

This week's goodness is on Acts 7:23-30:

“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’

“But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.

“After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.

I probably could have quoted these verses from Exodus or something, but Stephen's account in Acts is nice and concise. It's the prequel to the stories we usually hear about Moses once he encountered God in the desert. Taken on its own, it's a good allegory of the path we sometimes take as Christians.

When Moses realized who he was, he abandoned the life of decadence and sin he had as a member of the royal household, and went to join his people. He warred on their behalf and tried to be a peacemaker among them, but they judged and condemned him for not acting like a man in bondage. At that point he packed up and left.

For a lot of Christians, that's where the story ends: They pack up and leave the church. They no longer war on its behalf and try to defend it. They no longer spread peace and God's love. They go off, start a family, settle down, and forget life ever happened. What good is knowing who you are if you can't be who you are?

Is it the church's fault for being in bondage? Is it the Christian's fault for kicking the dust off of his feet? I think it depends on who you ask. Regardless, Moses packed up and left, running away like Jonah. For forty long years, surrounded by people who could never fully understand him, he did nothing worth writing down. He chose that over risking his life for a people who wouldn't accept someone who wasn't a slave like them. He disappeared.

Moses' purpose didn't disappear though. Things got worse and worse for the ungrateful Hebrew slaves. They cried out to God for the savior they'd rejected. Finally, forty years later, God knocks on Moses' door.

I can't imagine waiting forty years for anything. If you'd interviewed Moses or the Israelites at any time during those four decades, and asked them if they thought Israel would get out of bondage, I can't imagine either of them would have said yes. If you asked Moses: "I tried it, but it didn't work. I explored the call, but got no confirmation." If you asked the slaves: "We've been asking for help for decades, but nothing ever happens. It's useless to even pray." "If it was going to happen, it would have happened already."

God has a plan, though. It's no more difficult for him to come and meet us where we are today, than it was for him to ride out across the desert, like a cowboy, and call Moses out of retirement. I wonder if Moses was still pointing his finger at God's people forty years later, when God showed up.

At the point where God appeared in the burning bush, Moses had wasted half his life. I guess you could call it a baptism in mediocrity between excellent phases of his life. I'd suggest to you that you pray for those excellent phases. We only have so much time on earth to affect eternity. Join with God's people and live out your purpose. Don't give up. God can reset the clock and make things happen.

The target is drawn on your belly

2011-10-18T18:21:00.000-04:00

This week is on Luke 3:7-14:

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

These words are not red, but I think they're still worth paying attention to. They address our complacency, and are almost beyond understanding for people of our generation.

John the baptist led a movement of God that laid the groundwork for what Jesus came to do. It was like an arrow aimed at selfishness and greed. In these verses, his movement had gotten popular, and in addition to the faithful people seeking God, it was beginning to attract religious "tourists" and non-religious folks who had no idea what they were in for.

Traditionally people were complacent in their religious or cultural identity as the chosen people of God. Today we might be complacent because we call ourselves Christians or Americans. "I can't possibly be the tool of Satan, because I'm an American. Mom and Apple Pie, baby!" "I can't possibly be steeped in sin and immorality. I go to church three times a week, tithe, and sing on the worship team. Plus my Bible has my name embroidered on the cover right next to Jesus." I'm sure we've all seen our own counterexamples who aren't us.

So these unwittingly broken people showed up to John's God clinic. He met them on arrival and was like "You need to do more than just show up. You need to change." So then the crowd was like "Crap. Now what do we do?" So John told them: "Expand your universe beyond yourself. You have neighbours." Each of his instructions to people addressed some issue of selfishness and complacency.

People didn't have a whole lot of clothes then. Someone who had two shirts was better off than many, and someone with extra food was better off than the starving. John's socialist-sounding instruction was to share your surplus with those who need it. Even if they didn't work for it. That's grace and compassion, but it goes against everything we're taught to survive. It goes against right and wrong. John stopped short of the cross and it was still shocking. He didn't say, if you have a shirt, give it to your neighbour. He just said "Quit hoarding" and it was beyond people's expectation.

John also spoke to the tax collectors. It wasn't just the religious authorities he was addressing. Tax collectors were quislings, collaborators with the Roman occupying forces, who extorted extra tax money off of the people they collected it from. Where Jesus's parable had administrators saying "If your debt to my master is 100, make it 80" these guys would say "If your debt to my master is 80, make it 100." John told them not to collect any more than they had to. Don't get rich off of the poor via extortion. And that's still shocking.

Then he addressed the soldiers. These probably weren't even Jews. They were the enemy. Many were uneducated thugs who joined the army to get rich off of plunder or to gain citizenship, if I remember correctly. John told them not to abuse their authority and power. He stopped short of telling them not to occupy God's Holy Land at the time, which is what everyone probably wanted him to say. He just told them not to use their uniforms to lie and cheat. In some places, that would still be shocking.

John is not Jesus, but he's the guy God chose to teach the prep school for the education Jesus had in store for us. His words still carry the weight of God's authority. Most people never consider their place in the world, but focus on their own advancement and their own needs. When you see others for the first time, and value them as highly as God values them, your perspective and your actions must change. Jesus addresses the heart with the assumption that you'll want to change the behaviour too. John addresses the behaviour in order to make it obvious to the heart why Jesus is about to talk to it. That little twinge of "But that's crazy! That's impossible! It makes no economic or social sense!?" That's your selfish heart.

When we decide to stop living as individuals, and decide to join Jesus and his community of believers, and the world he has sent us to, it should change our perspective. There's nobody who John addressed at the river who couldn't be us. It's scary stuff! What are you hoarding that somebody else needs? What have you buried in the ground, piled in the storehouse, or hung in the closet that could be shared? Is your heart protesting? Maybe John is still telling you about Jesus.

The curse of division

2011-10-11T17:00:00.000-04:00

This week is on Matthew 12:22-32:

Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

“Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house.

“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

I came upon these verses today while researching something else, and was struck by how revolutionary they are. Jesus takes the sort of envious church bickering we've all probably heard too much of, picks it up over his head, and slams it on the ground! It's not the Pharisees he's calling out; it's anyone who claims an inside track with God, and who uses that to wield power.

It all starts out with something awesome: A poor, crippled, tormented man is healed and restored to perfect mental and physical health. People are finally waking up and realizing that God is real, and that God's promises to save us are true. Everyone with any connection to God whatsoever should have been pointing to that and saying how awesome God was. Except they didn't.

The Pharisees at the time were the major denomination, but really they could be any church. They were the only good church they'd ever known. They looked down on the Sadducees, another church that thought they were the most awesome. When Jesus healed the blind, mute, demonized man, their reaction wasn't joy; it was shock. "Wait?! That can't be of God! It didn't come from us!" They were the one true church. They owned God. Anyone else who used their trademark was in violation.

They tried to explain it away. I don't know whether it was slander, or whether they were in such denial that they truly believed that Satan was doing a better job of glorifying God than they were. All we know is that they said that Jesus wasn't of God, and that it was witchcraft.

That seems nuts to us, because it's all explained neatly to us two thousand years later. But how many times have we heard things like that in modern times and not thought twice about them? How many times have we heard our fellow believers write off other churches and denominations as witchcraft, cults, the whore of Babylon, "not operating in the kingdom," not of God, etc, despite those groups caring for the poor, preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and so on? Anyone who is not united with the global Church divides. Anyone who doesn't gather people to God's whole church scatters them.

It takes incredible arrogance to shove God aside and speak for him. The Pharisees did that when they claimed Jesus' miracle was not from God. They claimed to have Godly insight into the matter, which blasphemed God by putting words in his mouth that he did not speak. How confused would you have been to have sat there listening to two opposite sides both claim to be the exclusive spokesmen for God's kingdom? There's a saying in Buddhism, I think, which applies to some extent: "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." The idea is that anyone you ran into who claimed to be Buddha wasn't going to be Buddha, but a liar out to get you.

In any case, when you slander the "competition," you could be shutting down the very move of God you claim to lead. God is so infinite that you have no idea what he's using, or what new or old trick he's doing. Is God evidenced by how interesting or boring the sermon and worship are? How well the people dress? How many tattooed or pierced people you can take credit for? How much charity you provide to the community? How many people you talk to about God and then never talk to again? How many miracles you can report? I don't think anyone can answer that question.

God has used groups with all of those attributes. It's sheer pride to claim he only uses the one you happen to be selling. And what about the stuff nobody has seen, or everyone has written off, that we will only find out about in the end? Look at the amount of time Jesus dedicates to listing off good deeds people have done for him, and the people are like "Wait, what? That was you?!" God is infinite. God is so infinitely infinite that we don't even know what we don't know about him.

Play it safe. If someone says they're doing God's work, and there's any way at all to glorify God through what they've done, give it the benefit of the doubt. Don't be the eternal killjoy that shoves God aside to hijack his movement for their own purposes. Your world view, your tithe revenue, your sense of decency, and your inner prejudices and hurts are not worth the damage it causes.

On location for the divine encounter

2011-10-04T22:03:00.000-04:00

This week is on Daniel 10:1-11:

In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, a revelation was given to Daniel (who was called Belteshazzar). Its message was true and it concerned a great war. The understanding of the message came to him in a vision.

At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over.

On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris, I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.

I, Daniel, was the only one who saw the vision; those who were with me did not see it, but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision; I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless. Then I heard him speaking, and as I listened to him, I fell into a deep sleep, my face to the ground.

A hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said, “Daniel, you who are highly esteemed, consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up, for I have now been sent to you.” And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling.

This week's goodness is less of a life or history lesson and more of a piece of bait to entice you into a deeper relationship with God. It's a short glimpse at the life of Daniel, a man of God who lived in velvet captivity under a series of brutal middle-eastern kings. He lived a life of luxury, but more than once, the kings had tried to kill him. If not for his relationship with God, they would have succeeded.

Daniel has already had a few science fiction experiences before this. You can read the book of Daniel to see some of the crazy stuff he lived through. This week's verses are part of his preparation and introduction to another supernatural experience

Daniel had been fasting for three weeks. He didn't skip meals entirely, just luxuries. Old Christians did something like this for Lent. He also skipped lotions, which seems kind of silly from a modern male perspective, but kings' courts have always tended to be a bit on the metro side of things. The point is that it was a something that needed to be squelched for clarity. Fasting isn't to earn a place in God's audience, but to cut down the number of interrupts and distractions. Think of it like turning off the TV when you want to have a conversation with someone important. The less background noise, the more you're going to hear.

So, after a few weeks without his moisturiser and wrinkle-creams, while not having any name brand foods or steak or wine, Daniel is visited by a sudden appearance of a supernatural man. The guy glows, and he has that horror movie voice where he speaks with the voice of thousands. Daniel is terrified, and rightly so! Can you imagine someone like that just suddenly appearing in front of you and talking to you in his reverby voice?

There's more to it than that, from an angelic divine messenger standpoint. There was a holy fear. I don't think we have anything to match that in our world. As if to prove the supernatural aspect of it, even the people around Daniel who didn't see or hear anything were terrified. They were so scared that they ran and hid. Have you ever been that scared as an adult?

Daniel passes out. (You don't just "fall asleep" when someone like that is talking to you.) When the visitor wakes him up, he's still shaking like a leaf. This is a consistent theme amongst people who have had a close relationship with God. When receiving a message from God, they are often terrified, and physically overwhelmed. Whether it's an angelic visitation, or the spirit of God coming on them, the fear is holy and real.

Read these verses again, and imagine yourself as Daniel. You're fasting as much as you can while still being able to do your job, because you know God has something to tell you. You're praying during your lunch hour, like you have been every day for weeks. Then suddenly this glowing supernatural being is standing right in front of you, speaking to you with his horrifying voice! Boo! Your coworkers are running down the hall terrified like someone is shooting. You pass out, wake up, and just start to feel relief that it might have just been a bad dream when you realize that the dude is still there thundering over you!

Still here? The interesting thing is that this sort of experience is still available to us. There are recorded cases of people encountering God in experiences like this in modern times. Do you want it? Daniel stripped his routine down to bare essentials and waited for three weeks with the sort of seclusion that only people who are mourning have. That's a serious expression of intent, if that was his goal!

If you'd like to encounter the supernatural aspect of God's revelation, ask him. And take some time every now and then to put aside distractions and be ready, just in case. Because even if you are like Daniel and know what to expect, it still may be more than you were prepared for.

Telling a tale

2011-09-27T20:07:00.000-04:00

This week is on 1 Samuel 16:1-5:

The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”

But Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me.”

The LORD said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’ Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate.”

Samuel did what the LORD said. When he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked, “Do you come in peace?”

Samuel replied, “Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me.” Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

This week is on lying and some of the extreme positions people have on it. Some people don't believe it's wrong if the end justifies the means, and others don't believe it's right even if your life depends on it. I tend to be more like the second kind. I've seen lying do more harm than good in relationships and in my community. Once someone gets in the habit of lying, it's difficult for people to fully trust them.

Still, God basically instructed Samuel to lie. He went into Bethlehem under the pretences of offering a sacrifice, not anointing David as king. How is that different?

When God sent Samuel, he sent him to overthrow the government. Saul was a popular king who had won many battles, but he wasn't a man of God anymore. God had new plans for Israel, and that needed someone who would listen. If Samuel had said to the people of Bethlehem, "I am here to topple the current government and install a new one," Saul would have found out and killed him, if his supporters didn't stone poor Samuel to death first.

That's not the same thing as telling the police officer you haven't been drinking, or telling your business partner's husband that you're going to a convention so that you can commit adultery with her. This is God-directed, with God's purpose in mind, and it's unique to the situation. Are you lying to hide your sin, or are you lying by telling a story God told you to tell? It's a distinction only you know the answer to.

The lesson here is that nothing is outside of God's playbook. Sometimes the way he accomplishes things is shocking to our sensibilities. He's sent people to lie, to steal, and to commit genocide, and yet still is fully loving of us as his people. What's important is that these things come from him and his plan when they're done and not from us trying to be helpful or innovative in our tactics. And you'll probably find that they're mentioned less often than supernatural miracles.

The world is a rough place with rough people in it. God is more than capable of handling those people and those circumstances. Don't try to do his job for him. Seek his company and find his plan.

Seeing the kingdom

2011-09-20T19:27:00.000-04:00

This week's short Bible snack is on Luke 10:8-9:

“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

This is a tiny snapshot of evangelism, Jesus style. It's not too self-righteous to accept food, and it doesn't force itself on others. It just points people to paradise and encourages them make the journey.

I love Jesus' words: "The kingdom of God has come near to you." The kingdom of God is God's rule over our lives and over the world. Sicknesses get healed. People find the answers to their problems. It's a dose of heaven. It's in stark contrast to the kingdoms of the world, where people embezzle money, kill their competitors, rape the weak, and struggle to consolidate power.

Imagine being the person who just got healed. Medical science and folk wisdom in the world's kingdoms would tell you that what just happened is impossible. You're shocked and surprised, because you never had hope for something like that before. And the person, God's representative, tells you that you're close to being able to have this for yourself directly. The kingdom of God has come near to you. You can go straight to the source.

Or think of it like a physical kingdom. You live in a land ruled by dictators. Most of your labors go to supporting their extravagant lifestyle, while they torture and harass your family and friends for pleasure. It's a miserable existence, but it's all you've ever known. One day, a representative from another kingdom comes and offers you his protection for the day, and tells you about the land he comes from. As it turns out, the border is right at the edge of your village. If you go now, run down the faint path through the reeds, and slip past the vehicle gate, you can be there in twenty minutes! It's so close!

Imagine God's kingdom looming like a space ship, so close to you. In an instant, you can be saved if you cry out, free from evil you've always considered to be part of life. Why would you not take that opportunity?

I'm thankful the kingdom of God has come near to us. I'm thankful that it moves like a cloud to where we are. I'm thankful that God has such power and authority that we're instantly safe when we reach out to join it. It's one of the great mysteries of all time. When you see it, run to it (don't just walk) and be saved!

The shaggy postman

2011-09-13T11:36:00.000-04:00

This week's tasty Bible morsel is from Zechariah 4:1-7:

Then the angel who talked with me returned and woke me up, like someone awakened from sleep. He asked me, “What do you see?”

I answered, “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.”

I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?”

He answered, “Do you not know what these are?”

“No, my lord,” I replied.

So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.

“What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’”

Zerubbabel was the Israelite prince named as governor of Judah near the end of the Babylonian occupation of Israel. He spearheaded the rebuilding of the temple and other infrastructure. It was not a popular task, and he would have probably been in a lot of danger, both political and physical.

Zechariah was a prophet sent by God to encourage Zerubbabel. God sends an angel to deliver a message via Zechariah, describing how things will go with the reconstruction.

So, why send a guy to deliver a message instead of coming in person? I think sometimes it's easier to accept a prophetic statement from another person than it is to receive it directly. There's kind of a roleplaying thing going on when another person comes as a messenger, and there's less self-doubt involved when we're hearing the words spoken out loud.

Anyway, the word is "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit. What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!" Three things happen here:

No amount of pushing and striving is going to get Zerubbabel there faster. God's spirit is doing the heavy lifting, not his actions.
No insurmountable obstacle, like a mountain, is going to slow the work down. He'll go over it like it's level ground.
Zerubbabel will complete the temple work, and God will be glorified.

Despite all my talk of being lazy, I have nothing against hard work. But sometimes we're the fly buzzing against the window, and no amount of pushing is going to get us through the glass. We need God to show us the open door. I think God will tell us, so we don't wear ourselves out going nowhere. I also think it glorifies him to tell us in advance that it will be smooth sailing.

God's spirit is the pick for any lock the world might put on the gates of progress. At the point Zerubbabel was at, it probably seemed like there wasn't any way for him to go further and move ahead. He wasn't big enough to bust the gates down, but God was going to get him through anyway, without even having to slow down.

So, if you're stuck, maybe you're not as stuck as you think. And maybe God is preparing a messenger to tell you how to get to the next stage. If he sent you to do something, you're going to do it, and he is going to be glorified. It's God's world.

No favorites, no politics

2011-09-06T17:03:00.000-04:00

This week is on Isaiah 56:1-3:

This is what the LORD says:

“Maintain justice
and do what is right,
for my salvation is close at hand
and my righteousness will soon be revealed.
Blessed is the one who does this—
the person who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it,
and keeps their hands from doing any evil.”

Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.”
And let no eunuch complain,
“I am only a dry tree.”

These verses are another aspect of God's will for our lives. They're an exhortation to people who are out for themselves and their "family" only, and an encouragement to those who wouldn't otherwise have someone to love them and watch out for them. They're magnificent.

God tells us to maintain justice and do what is right. That isn't justice as in revenge, like he warns us about in the New Testament. It's justice as in making sure nobody gets overlooked, that nobody starves or freezes or just feels lonely, when someone else is around and can share. It means not playing favourites. It means being consistent. It means being attentive. Justice is hard. People go to school for years to learn it and still don't get it right.

The person God points out as the one he blesses is the person who doesn't take part in evil, and who doesn't desecrate the Sabbath. Desecrating the Sabbath isn't the sort of legalistic nonsense Jesus challenged the Pharisees on. It's taking a day of rest, a day meant to recharge and to glorify God, and perverting it to serve yourself, to get ahead of the game and take advantage of others downtime. If everyone has six days' labour at their disposal, and you have seven, how do you think that's going to turn out? Or conversely, if you're burnt out from working seven days a week to get the big house and nine cars, who do you think is going to have to bail you out? Right, the poor guy who has all he can handle working six days.

Not taking part in evil is pretty important. People are influenced by what they see people around them doing. If you do evil, others will do evil too. If you don't do evil, maybe someone else will have the courage to not do it as well. As they say, if you're not part of the solution, you're the problem.

What God is saying is "Can you think about someone other than yourself and your peeps for a change?" Everybody is valuable to God. Chances are, your social circle doesn't include all of God's social circle. So, when you make decisions based on that circle, you withhold justice from God's chosen.

God then goes on to demonstrate that he puts his money where his mouth is. In a tribal-based, family-based society, everything is about your connections. If you're not connected, you're prey. A man whose roots don't go back, like the foreigner, or whose branches don't flourish, like the eunuch, can pretty much count on a life of being left out of the party. The foreigner's experience will tell him "When resources get scarce, I'm the guy who gets cannibalized or voted off the island." The eunuch's bitter experience will tell him, "When I get too old to take care of myself, nobody will be around to take up my burden." God's response to them, and to us, is "Not with me. I won't abandon you, and I won't cheat you in order to bless the people I spent more time with."

This is why the question of "who is my neighbour" is so hard to answer. God's tribe is bigger than we can imagine. True justice is recognizing that fact. His tribe is defined by his connections, not by ours.

one big happy family

2011-08-30T17:00:00.000-04:00

This week is on Ephesians 2:11-19:

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household

In the early days of the church, there was some division between Jewish-style believers and Gentile-style believers. It was like Catholics versus Protestants. These verses are Paul's assurance that we're all one family.

We're supposed to be at peace with one-another. We're not separate. There isn't one true church and a bunch of false ones. If you follow Christ, you are part of "The Church." It isn't a competition.

As part of one body, we can be comfortable around the others. A healthy body doesn't reject its own organs. We're one substance: redeemed flesh.

Sorting it out

2011-08-23T21:00:00.000-04:00

This week is on Matthew 13:24-30:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

I had a chance recently to harvest some barley. In with the barley were some other grasses, so I had to separate them as I was gathering it into sheaves. It was a good hands-on illustration of how impossible it is to separate the weeds from the grass until harvest time.

Traditionally, the weeds referred to in the parable were said to be tares. They are known as false wheat, because right up until harvest, they look just like wheat, except that they're poisonous. When it's time to harvest the wheat, the tares turn a different color and stand tall, while the wheat droops a bit.

The thing that struck me is how long I had to tolerate the weeds. I had to spend the whole growing season watching them flourish and eat up the nourishment meant for my barley. I couldn't just wade in and pull the weeds, because then I'd trample the barley and uproot it. It's not like lawn grass; when it gets knocked down, it stays down. When the time came for harvest, I could toss the weeds on the ground and gather up the barley, but until then I had to be patient or I'd mess up my crop.

In our lives, people live among us who are just poisonous. Just like the frustration with having my field full of noxious weeds without being able to do anything about it, it's frustrating to see people do evil and not have any consequences. We ask ourselves "when are they going to get sorted out, so we can live in peace?" Other than the obvious hope that they repent and change their ways for good like some of us have, all we can do is be patient.

The world is designed such that we live all tangled together with other people, good and bad. We can't rip out the "bad people" any more than you could weed a wheat field. When we try, that's when good people get falsely accused and uprooted from society. It's only at harvest time, when everything is done, that we can tell one from the other, and then it's God's job to sort things out.

Preparing for disaster

2011-08-16T16:36:00.000-04:00

This week is on Jeremiah 16:1-9:

Then the word of the LORD came to me: “You must not marry and have sons or daughters in this place.” For this is what the LORD says about the sons and daughters born in this land and about the women who are their mothers and the men who are their fathers: “They will die of deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried but will be like dung lying on the ground. They will perish by sword and famine, and their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals.”

For this is what the LORD says: “Do not enter a house where there is a funeral meal; do not go to mourn or show sympathy, because I have withdrawn my blessing, my love and my pity from this people,” declares the LORD. “Both high and low will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned, and no one will cut themselves or shave their head for the dead. No one will offer food to comfort those who mourn for the dead—not even for a father or a mother—nor will anyone give them a drink to console them.

“And do not enter a house where there is feasting and sit down to eat and drink. For this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Before your eyes and in your days I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in this place.

These are some rough commands that God has given Jeremiah. He pretty much tells him that he is not to share life with anyone. No starting a family. No hanging out with friends. No compassion for the hurt. He is to be an observer only, like Star Trek's prime directive.

There are some people who would consider that a blessing: "Finally, more time for World of Warcraft!" "No splitting my wealth with some gold-digger or some guy who won't pull his weight!" "No more listening to people whine about how miserable they are!" Other people, to them, are a distraction, an inconvenience, and a threat.

The average modern American isn't part of anything that Jeremiah would have recognized as a community: About half of all babies are born out of wedlock. About half of all marriages end in divorce. Americans pass the buck to the government to administer first aid, defend property, feed the poor, educate the young, care for the old, etc. People change careers every couple years, often moving to other regions in the process. Vague acquaintances on Facebook can be called friends, because we no longer know the difference.

This state of existence we consider normal now would have been painful and strange to Jeremiah. Life was about family and relationships. God had to tell him to separate himself, because it would have been unnatural for him to do so otherwise. If he had entered into life, started a family, made friends, and so on, he would have had to mourn them. It would have been unbearable. It also demonstrated God's curse on Israel at the time. There would be such a disaster that people would die quickly and in such numbers that nobody would be there to comfort the dying and bury the dead. They would die out of community and relationship because community and relationship would die with them. That would have been shocking.

God hasn't withdrawn his blessing, his love, and his pity from us. Why do we live as though he did? We know more about imaginary TV characters, or movie stars who live thousands of miles away, than we do about our neighbors and sometimes even our own families. We live as observers, as those cursed would live.

Choose to share life with people, and to share the lives of others. Enter into partnerships. Take up the yoke your neighbor struggles to carry, and ask for help when yours is too heavy or tedious for you to bear. Eat and drink with people. Care. If someone asks who your people are, don't point to a flag or a street sign. Those are things. Your life is supposed to be mixed in with the lives of those around you. Ask God who your neighbors are, who your community is, and then live in their shared blessing, not as someone waiting for death to arrive.

Demonstrative compassion

2011-08-09T15:23:00.001-04:00

Greetings.

This week's study is on John 4:46-53:

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.

This story about the royal official struck me as really odd when I read it. Here is a royal official, someone who probably would have had the expectation that he could boss a commoner like Jesus around, but instead of bossing and demanding, he's begging. And here's Jesus, who talks frequently about how we need to have faith without needing signs, still giving this guy a miraculous sign, even though he doesn't deserve one. This whole incident must have taken place on National Self-Contradiction Day or something!

What's also interesting is that, after being scolded by Jesus, the royal doesn't argue with him, or get into a philosophical/theological debate about the nature of faith. He just wants his son to get well again. Jesus has compassion on him and heals his son. But that's not even enough to give him faith. He has to ask when the healing took place. Was it connected to the whole conversation he had with Jesus, or did it happen on its own? Did wealth heal his son? Unicorns with magic lollipops? A team of doctors from Rome? Science demands answers! He couldn't brand it a miracle until he was forced to put two and two together.

To me, that demonstrates Jesus's compassion. Yes, it's better if we believe without having to see the miracle first, but God isn't going to get all academic on us and make us go without. He's not some kind of cosmic DMV clerk, hell-bent on making sure every box is filled in correctly before he gives us what we came for. He wants the connection. He wants to see us thrive and to be glorified in what changes as a result of our contact with him.

There are things I ask for, and which you guys probably ask for, which I honestly don't have much active heart-felt faith for, if any at all. Does that mean I can't progress and grow unless I can reprogram my mind on my own? I don't believe it has to. Look at the lengths God goes to in order to court us, and to lure us into a solid faith in him. Look at Abraham, and all of his high-maintenance drama. Look at Moses. These guys didn't just jump up the first moment God said something. They even argued with him, but God won them over.

This privileged royal guy gets to be the example we all get to look at for how tolerant God can be towards our spiritual stubbornness. Nobody's perfect on their own, even royalty. In a black and white worldview, where either you have perfect faith or you're outside the kingdom and favor of God, this miraculous meeting could never have happened. What else could happen that we've been taught not to hope for?

Overruling paranoia

2011-08-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

This week's wonderful goodness is on Acts 9:10-19:

In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

These verses take place within days of Saul of Tarsus being sucker-punched by the Holy Spirit. For those of you who don't know, Saul of Tarsus was famous throughout Israel for his ethnic cleansing of the early Christians. Imagine if you were a Jew in Berlin in 1942, hiding out, and God came to you and said "Hey, Adolf Hitler is a couple blocks away and in danger of slipping into a coma if you don't go and pray for him to get healed. Here's his address. He's expecting you." Your response would probably be a lot like Ananias's: "What?! Are you kidding me?"

Ananias had a very natural, very justifiable, very logical reason to be paranoid. This guy Saul had killed a lot of his colleagues. This wasn't a rumor. This was a documented fact. If it was 21st century Palestine, and not 1st century Palestine, this Saul guy would have been documented by human rights groups and probably would have been tried and convicted in absentia by some war crimes tribunal. You would have only had to google his name to find out all kinds of horrifying stuff; cell phone videos of him stoning people, photos of people hacked to bits, eyewitness testimonies in newspaper articles, etc. And God was telling poor Ananias to go to this guy's place, pay him a visit, and help him? Ouch!

The reason Ananias was required to act wasn't because his paranoia was silly. It was because God told him to. Despite Ananias's helpful words to let Him know who Saul really was, God knew the situation already. God knew who Saul was and who he would become. He knew Ananias's situation and the situation that would develop after Ananias did what he was told. God knew all of that before he asked Ananias to help. That's because God knows everything.

Sometimes God will ask you do to something dangerous. It'll be OK. If you know it is God talking to you, there's no reason not to be obedient. But what if Ananias had decided to win the argument with God, and never went to pray for Saul? Would all of the letters in the New Testament still have been written? Would Saul have been an invalid for the rest of his days? Would the early church never have spread beyond the Middle East, and Christianity have died out and been completely replaced by the heresy of Islam? Thankfully, because of Ananias' risky obedience, we don't have to find out the answers to those questions.

Willingness to suffer

2011-07-26T20:55:00.000-04:00

This week is on Acts 14:21-25:

They preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. After going through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia, and when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia.

These verses take place after Paul just got done getting beaten and left for dead. Instead of getting scared off, he goes to the next town and tells people that they will go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. That's some serious dedication.

The hardships are something we don't often consider in our Christian lives. There's nothing in the typical gospel tract that promises floggings, electrocutions, beatings, and executions as part of the blessing God has for us. Paul finds this out the hard way, and instead of giving up, he warns other people to be strong. He tells them what they're getting themselves into, and demonstrates that it's worth it.

Our salvation, and our participation in God's kingdom, is hard to explain sometimes. On the one hand, it isn't something we can earn, or that we must purchase, but on the other hand, it isn't something that comes to us without any effort on our part either. Much as Jesus suffered and died on the cross in order to deliver his goods, Paul found himself being abused, and ultimately killed, in order to deliver his. It's useful to ask yourself, especially if you're considering a missionary call, "Is this something I'm willing to endure?"

If Paul wasn't willing to endure the abuse of the people in Lystra, the story would have ended there. The people in Derbe, and all the cities and regions that followed, may not have heard the gospel or found healing and deliverance. Paul's message to the people was only possible because he endured hardship and mistreatment and decided to absorb the cost.

At this point, we have to ask ourselves, how does our story potentially continue? If persecution came on us tomorrow, which fork in the road would we choose? Paul's message to the people in the various cities wasn't to puff himself up. It was to give them the opportunity to steel themselves before the day of persecution came. It's useful to make the decision before the trouble comes, like a fire drill, so that we know what to do and don't waste time doing it.

Be willing to suffer, if need be, so that others can be saved and have their lives affected.

Standing in obedience

2011-07-19T07:18:00.001-04:00

This week's vaguely awesome Bible goodness is on 2 Chronicles 20:15-17:

He said: “Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the LORD says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them. They will be climbing up by the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the Desert of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you, Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you.’”

It all starts with Israel's neighbors gathering on all sides to do battle against them. Freaky. Israel was outnumbered and surrounded. They cried out to God, asking for some help, because it was more than they could handle on their own. God's response is our lesson this week.

The king cries out on behalf of Israel. That's how things were before Jesus died and gave us a direct connection. People cried out to kings, and kings cried out to God. Now we don't need them, but at the time, that's what people wanted. Anyway, a prophet named Jahaziel heard God's answer and shared it in Israel's version of Congress.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, God heard their cry. He knows they're outnumbered. He knows they're scared. He's got it covered, but they still need to get off the couch and do something. They need to show up to the battle, but God will do the fighting. As a flourish to show his amazingness, God gives them the enemy's battle plans, and how they will show up, so that Israel will know where to stand to see his Holy smackdown.

If you read past what the verses this week say, you'll find that the three armies that had risen up against Israel ended up fighting each other and wiping themselves out. All Israel had to do is watch the carnage! What if they'd just stayed home and "trusted God" to take care of their battle for them? Would they have known what happened? Or would they have explained it away as an unfounded threat that an imaginary God never needed to respond to? What if they'd ignored the prophetic intervention in their lives, and decided that it was too critical of a battle to trust the words of some unknown prophet who didn't have his own book in the Bible? Do you think the three armies would have fought each other to the death if Israel had attacked them that morning?

A lot of people see both of those extremes (couch-sitting and miracle-meddling) as their only options, without realizing that sometimes God does the heavy lifting in conjunction with us. It's not ours alone to handle all the time, but it's not always God the Pizza Delivery Guy who does all the work and drops a miracle off on our doorstep for a crappy 10% tip either. Sometimes there's a beautiful collaboration, or in cases like this, he just wants his beloved to see what he's done for them.

Next time you're in a bind, and you can't handle things on your own, be open to God's third option. It's the one where he takes your hand and you fix it together, even if your job is to do nothing but hold his hand while he fixes things. Next time he says "Stand over there," don't think "Oh crap, what's next after that?" Maybe that's all he's asking of you.

Beautiful autonomy

2011-07-12T13:27:00.000-04:00

This week is on Genesis 8:6-12:

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

I love these verses, because they illustrate a really important truth about God's creation. When Noah reaches this point, the world has been wiped bare by a catastrophic flood. The only people to survive were Noah and his family, because he followed God's instructions and built a boat to escape it. At this point, Noah's sort of vaguely aware that the flood is receding and that it will be time to return to the earth. You'd think that because God told him when the flood would be, God would also tell him when the flood would end. Instead, Noah ends up using science, and it's awesome!

A lot of people, particularly fussy religious control-freak people, have a warped view of God's kingdom. In their worldview, we're kind of like remote control cars. In their ideal world, we'd do nothing unless God told us to move. Maybe we'd sit idle, saying "Yes Lord" over and over until he presses the "evangelize" button on his remote, but nothing else self-initiated could be righteous. To a control freak, other people aren't beautiful individuals with souls of their own, but impersonal objects to be manipulated. To the control freak, God must view us as a control freak views the world: he picks us up when he wants us, and casts us down when he doesn't. Do what you're told, shut up, and don't come up with any ideas of your own. You're a doll, not a wife.

God doesn't see us like that. There is a time for specific obedience, like how God describes when the flood will come, how long the rains will be, and what the precise dimensions Noah will need in order to construct a boat big enough and durable enough to keep his family and stock high and dry during the flood. That's your "Hear and do" or "Faith comes after obedience" thing. But there's another side of God's personality, which expresses his will through our individuality and creativity. That's where the personal relationship comes in, and I believe that's what makes us entertaining to God. He can get perfect specific obedience from a tree. Personality and inventiveness are what make people unique in his creation, I think.

Noah knows about livestock. He knows that birds land on the ground or in trees, and like to pick stuff up for making nests. He knows this, because God created him to know this. God gave us dominion over the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air. (You don't dominate something by ignoring it.) Noah also knows his limitations. He can't climb up very high to see if there's land. He has no natural instincts about where shore might be. And he can't improve his chances by swimming. Of the creatures God had him gather, birds can solve all of the problems we've mentioned. Just by its created nature, a bird will naturally do the things that will give Noah the answer he needs. He doesn't have to control it with a string, or spend years repeating instructions to it. It just solves the problem by being a bird.

Much like the birds did Noah's will by virtue of their unique gifts, we can often do God's will by virtue of who we are. There are many cases in scripture where people are described as having been given certain abilities by God. Artists, craftsmen, warriors, leaders, and so on, all have certain traits created into them so that they will do what they are supposed to do. The stone-cutter doesn't have to be told each time he swings the hammer. The leader doesn't just repeat God's instructions to his people, word for word, without understanding. The artist doesn't just copy off God's paper. God has made us and empowered us as individuals.

The relationship with God is key. Do you just tell him what you want and wait for him to tell you to act? Or do you tell him your perspective on life, your struggles, and hopes, and try to discover more about who he created you to be? He's created us to be active, thinking, participating creatures. Don't just sit around waiting to be told what to do next. What has he given you the ability to do right now? Do you only have half of the instructions you need, like knowing when the flood will come, but not what to do after it happens? Maybe the reason he hasn't given you the rest is because he created you to be able to find the answer with what he's already given you. We're not hollow shells, or lifeless tools. God has created us in his image, and given us minds, and souls, so that we can join him in creation and ruling the universe. Sometimes we'll need his specific instructions or his intervention, but for the rest of life, we can do well by being what we were created to be.

Bought for the wrong price

2011-07-05T17:08:00.000-04:00

This week is on Luke 16:13-15:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.

This week is on one of the pitfalls of leadership: Being bought by the generosity and obedience of those under your care. In this case, the people in bondage were the Pharisee leaders, who had grown accustomed to the tithes and deference of the Jewish people in Roman Palestine. Equally vulnerable in our modern day are politicians, professional clergy, non-profit board members, etc.

The issue comes from the conflict between being a public servant and being a leader. The Pharisees were supposed to serve the people by helping them to understand God's law and to interpret his will. They were given money so that they could devote themselves to full time ministry and not be distracted by secular work. People honored them for doing that. The problem is, after a few generations, they forgot that it was compensation, and began to view it as just another career paycheck. In a career, you ultimately do what you do in order to get paid. Whatever gets you paid more is evidence you're doing a good job. And so, where in the beginning it was all about serving the people, in the end it's all about the tithes, the taxes, and the administrative stipends. You can't serve both money and God.

We read almost daily about police arresting people for filming them, about the Obama administration's record-breaking prosecution of whistle-blowers, and about all of the companies suing reporters who expose their backroom deals. Truth is clearly not just a problem for religious people. Did these people start off evil, or did it happen to them over time? What about the Baby Boomers, the generation who were desperate to end warfare and poverty when they were young, but as adults have put us in the longest period of sustained warfare in all of American history, and who run billion dollar companies that actually own slaves in third world countries? Self-image is more important than truth when it affects the bottom line, and time erodes all values if they are not maintained.

I don't mean to get all political, but these circumstances are a really good modern illustration of what happened to the Pharisees and teachers of the law. You could also look at non-profit charities whose part-time board members make six figure salaries, while their advertised recipients only get about 20% of what is donated. Do you think they started like that? "Hey, if you give me ten bucks, I'll keep five, then I'll put an ad in the paper for three dollars asking for more donations, and then I'll spend two dollars on food for the hungry!" Nobody starts off thinking that's going to happen. They just get used to the lifestyle, the income, or the praise.

It's fantastically dangerous to be in the position of servant leadership. The thing that makes you money may not always be the thing that gets the job done. A compromise here, and an indulgence there, and pretty soon you're a parasite. No area is immune. Missionaries who live in giant air-conditioned compounds who refuse to shake hands with the dirty people living in the tin shacks down the street? Street pastors in fancy suits who preach the tithing message every couple weeks, while their congregation can barely afford rent? Who is serving whom?

God calls us to pour ourselves out for those we serve. It gives me such hope to read about people who go without stuff they could rightfully obtain on their own, in order to help those who need it more than they do; Rich men's sons and daughters who live in tin shacks in order to be the brothers of people who never knew anything better. Some people still get it. It is still possible to be a leader and a servant. Jesus managed to not sell out, despite the gifts the Father had given him. We can too.

The sheep God puts under our watch are also our brothers and sisters. It's not their job to exalt us over them, or to fund our dreams. God can provide those things if we need it. But when he starts to provide some of our needs through the people in our care, it's a real danger that we'll become confused and dependent. The Pharisees and teachers of the law were some of the best and brightest of their time, but they fell into the trap of justifying themselves in the eyes of the people they served, and of craving their money. If ever there was a living example to make us leaders fear God, that would be it.

So, what do we do? Figure out what you really need. Not what you want. Not what others get. What do you really need in order to get the job done? That's your baseline. Trust God for that. Push for that. If you get anything else beyond that, consider it a blessing. Be thankful. Nobody's saying you can't have nice things, but don't pry them out of the hands of the needy with manipulation or force. Enjoy your blessing. Share it. Don't get used to it. Don't get indignant when it threatens to go away. Trust God for your needs. He is the ultimate source.

I don't say this to condemn anyone, just to point out how dangerous this stuff is. People step into leadership without considering what corrupting effect it could have on them. It's important to establish boundaries and be clear who pays your bills. Serve others on God's behalf and get your rewards from him. Don't pretend the sheep can outbid their owner.

Lies of simplicity

2011-06-28T11:01:00.000-04:00

This week is on John 4:1-3:

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

Jesus was constantly on the run, like Osama bin Laden. He wasn't a threat to the state or to the established religious body, but they felt as if he was. They feared that the tithes and taxes that they were accustomed to receiving would dry up if people saw another authority as offering a legitimate connection to God and to freedom, healing, power, etc. I'll probably talk more about that in the coming weeks. This week is about what that meant from Jesus' perspective, as an unintentional spiritual insurgent in a hostile land. (I say unintentional, not to suggest that Jesus somehow didn't know what he was doing, but that no controversy would have been necessary had people been receptive to the truth. The kingdom he offered was in perfect harmony with secular rule and established religion, if those bodies would recognize God's authority and truth.)

People often don't consider Jesus' position. The concerns of the Pharisees about his growing popularity were a problem to him. You wouldn't think it would be. Wouldn't God just grease the path and oil the hinges on all doors? Shouldn't things just magically happen for a guy doing the will of God? If we were to do Jesus' ministry today, in a land hostile to the gospel, people would probably point to stuff like the church's persecution or the government's suspicion as evidence that God wasn't in his work. Or they would point to Jesus' life on the run, and accuse him of being a coward, or of being ashamed of the gospel.

There are a ton of books and videos out, written by successful Christians with successful ministries, describing picture-perfect experiences with God. They are constantly delivered from danger, and ushered into prime missions opportunities. Those are true experiences, but we can get the wrong impression from reading them. Books by Christians who got beaten, raped, and imprisoned the first time they preached the gospel aren't going to be as popular. The Christian path isn't always easy. I mean, if God didn't make Jesus' ministry plan foolproof, what's to suggest that he would automatically do it for you or me? It's something to consider. Not everybody gets the fairy tale.

When things go well, we're very lucky. When they go poorly, we still have work to do. Jesus counted the cost of what he was doing, and still chose to stick with it. He wasn't there to deny the world its free will and force it into a spiritual decision like some cosmic nanny. He was there to present the truth to the people who needed it for as long as it was God's will for him to do it. If that meant living like a fugitive for part of that time, that was part of the cost.

Sometimes the problem of a hostile government or a jealous church won't go away on its own. We need God's wisdom to work around it. How do we do what we need to do in that environment, without getting ejected before our game is over? Jesus knew how to do that. He spent a lot of time consulting with the father, asking for direction, protection, wisdom, etc. He had access to all of the power of heaven. He could have called down fireballs from heaven, or magically teleported himself out of prison, or cursed the pharisees and roman occupiers with leprosy. The fact that he didn't is significant.

The suggestion that life is always going to be easy is a lie. There is no guarantee in our calling that bad things won't happen and that misguided people and governments won't get in our way. We need a connection to God in order to know how to handle that. Yes, we have the power of God, the same as Jesus did, but the will of God is not always to go in with guns blazing and cameras rolling. Sometimes it involves some compassion and patience, and the willingness to pay the price of others' ignorance. Jesus was simultaneously in the perfect will of God and living the life of a hunted man who was ultimately put to death.

Wisdom and her evil twin Folly

2011-06-21T11:45:00.002-04:00

This week is on Proverbs 9:13-18:

Folly is an unruly woman; she is simple and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house, on a seat at the highest point of the city, calling out to those who pass by, who go straight on their way, “Let all who are simple come to my house!” To those who have no sense she says, “Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!” But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are deep in the realm of the dead.

This part of Proverbs comes after some warnings about adulteresses, and some contrasting of their charm with the charm of wisdom. These verses talk about the charm of stuff that isn't wisdom. Folly often looks like wisdom. That's the point they're making here. Wisdom and Folly both set up shop in the same place, but one will be good for you and the other will ruin you.

Wisdom is like a good wife. She will love you every bit as much as the adulteress claims to, but she will benefit you. She doesn't blow all of your wealth on shoes and skirts and useless trinkets like Folly. The amount you invest in Wisdom produces a greater yield than the amount you put in. That's why it's worth more than gold.

Folly (something that is stupid, costly, and useless) gives advice, just like wisdom does. "Borrow money to pay for these toys." "Steal that candy bar." It seems like a good idea at the time, but the result is more costly than the reward. Tiny lies add up and lead to doom.

Folly proclaims its "wisdom" from the highest places. Think TV and movies, radio, web sites, etc. Folly pretends to be wisdom, the same as an adulteress pretends to be a wife. In the short term, immediate moment of making your decision, maybe functionally they are the same, but in the long term, and in the big picture, they are not at all. The adulteress destroys, distracts, betrays, and misleads.

Choose wisdom. Look at the big picture. What are the results of what you are doing? Does God want you to do it? Does it benefit someone other than the person offering their "advice?" Or is it adulterous folly, trying to trick you into giving up what's yours?

Sneering at the gospel

2011-06-14T14:44:00.000-04:00

This week is on Acts 17:32-34:

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Every now and then, when I get time to leave my office during lunch, I notice men on the street corner preaching the gospel. They are almost universally jeered by the local college kids they are trying to reach. These are college kids who will politely listen to international criminals deliver talks, and who wear pictures of terrorists admiringly on their t-shirts. These things don't offend them. The gospel, on the other hand, is something to sneer at.

To be honest, the whole resurrection thing seems kind of nuts when you first hear about it. Our post-Christian culture depicts death as the final exit. We do everything we can to hold onto life. We worship youth and push the aged to the edges of our society so we don't have to deal with it. When people are dying, we spend millions of dollars to stick tubes into them and keep their bodies running, like some kind of living taxidermy project. When they finally do die, we stuff and mount them like trophies, and then stand around gawking at the body, talking to it like it's alive. Death is the irreversible exit. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.

Resurrection is a slap in the face of our death-worshiping, death-fearing society. The idea that death isn't the end of everything challenges our whole value system. It makes our choices seem silly. It is easier to mock it, and to go back to our old secular way of thinking than it is to dwell on what it really means. I haven't even seen crooked politicians get jeered as consistently as these old gospel-yelling guys do.

The story about Paul preaching to the Greeks shows that nothing is new in that department. People don't like to hear the gospel. The good news is that people do sometimes respond to the truth. Paul reached some people via the yelling evangelism thing. People find God via tracts, or being spoken to by annoying pushy strangers on the street. People find God from movies and concerts and words spoken to them by friends. The fact that it is annoying, or offensive, doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

If you are someone who God has given this gift to share the gospel, or if you are called to preach, don't let people's negative reactions stop you. People are going to be offended by the gospel, no matter what form it takes. They'd rather cling to the death they know than be open to the life being offered to them. Don't make it about you. It's been like that since the beginning.

Burning the lawn

2011-06-07T14:17:00.000-04:00

This week's goodness comes from Psalm 92:4-7:

For you make me glad by your deeds, LORD;
I sing for joy at what your hands have done.
How great are your works, LORD,
how profound your thoughts!
Senseless people do not know,
fools do not understand,
that though the wicked spring up like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they will be destroyed forever.

You may think I'm on an "evildoers" theme this month. Wrong! Verses that mention evildoers are pretty common. Evildoers themselves are even pretty common. The psalmist mentions that they spring up like grass. If you're like me, your lawn doesn't have much grass on it, but if you try planting something useful instead, grass does its best to choke it out. Grass springs up like evildoers, in that case, trying to steal your tasty vegetables.

So what the psalmist is saying is that there are a ton of evildoers. They are everywhere, and they become successful so easily. In a "just" world, the amount of evil in someone's life would correspond directly to how miserable it is. More evil == more misery. All of the chronic illness, bad circumstances, machines running Microsoft Windows, poverty, rejection, and theft would happen to evil people only. Their spouses would be ugly, or they would be forever alone. Their kids would be idiots, if they managed to breed at all. Everything in their lives would conspire to illustrate how God's universe neatly rejects those who do evil. Life would be a self-cleaning oven.

Good people would have good luck. They'd have happy families, fancy cars, fat bank accounts, servants, and adoring fans. People would value their opinions. They'd be in perfect health. God's universe would be in perfect tune with their desires, as an illustration of how pleased God was with how very good they were. Bad things would never happen to good people, and good things would never happen to bad people.

People get frustrated when the world doesn't work like that. Why does the backstabber get the promotion at work? Why does the lazy guy get to keep his job during layoffs? Why does the loser get the chicks? Why do crooks get rich, while honest men struggle to feed their families? Why do the good die young? Why do people listen to celebrities? People get angry and bitter about this stuff, as if the universe was supposed to work perfectly. They forget that we live in a fallen world of our own design, and that our view is only a tiny sliver of what's really there.

Senseless people and fools don't realize that the evildoers who are doing well now may not be like that forever. It is not a sign of God's approval. It is not evidence that what they do is not sin, or that God's ideal world depends on you getting taxed half to death. The sort of "No fair" attitude most of us have is actually something that's given as an example of something only idiots and boneheads think. Nice.

The world is a weird and broken place. If you've ever seen a ghetto housing complex when it is first built, and then see it again, ten years later, when it smells of urine and has holes in the walls, you know how far things can fall from their original designs when left to human nature. The difference between the world God originally created for us and what we've done to it, is pretty huge. It is foolish to pretend they're the same thing, or that we'll be in this place forever.

Look for what God has done, if you want to be cheery. His work today is still perfect. When he intervenes, outside of what man comes up with for himself, it is beautiful and uncorrupted. Look at his revelation in your life, and the miracles you've seen and heard about. Those are new and perfect. The world is not.

Kin or kindling?

2011-05-31T15:06:00.000-04:00

This week is on Malachi 4:1-3:

“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty.

I like the imagery in these verses, and they hold a fairly simple truth in them. People talk about Judgment Day and the end times like it's some great coming attraction, but they forget about today. How we are today determines whether it will be a good time or a bad time. That's not saying that our behavior determines whether we spend eternity with Jesus or as ashes, but that our relationship with him is what gives us access to him.

When we first expressed interest in God, and began to pray to Him, we didn't get some spiritual medallion that wards off calamity and damnation. We got a friend. The friend is who protects us and prepares a place for us. We can't ignore the friend and expect the reward. And we can't adore the friend without eventually becoming like him in our values and behavior.

God says, in these verses, that there are two situations we can find ourselves in, in the future. One gets torched, and the other gets fixed up. One is miserable, and the other is full of joy. It is within our power to decide which group we'll join when the time comes.

So, how do you get burnt up in eternal fire, and spread out as ashes to be trampled by the people you didn't care about in life? It's easy. Be arrogant. Be selfish and self-promoting, trampling on others to get what you want. Arrogance places others below you. It says that you don't need anyone, especially not some fairy tale daddy on a cloud someplace. It says greed is good, that the ends justify the means, and that if you don't do it, someone else will. The arrogant evildoers trample on God's beloved in order to try to steal the reward he had set out for them. God is not in their lives in any sense that can affect their soul, not while they have a choice in the matter.

How about the "happy like squirrel," fat frolicking calf, with all new knees and perfect skin scenario? How do we get that? Revere God's name. Find it valuable. Respect it. Use it. If we invite God into our lives, intimately, we allow him to guide and direct us. We can't be arrogant when we admit our need for him and recognize our place in his family. We can't be evil when he advises us and we listen. The people who get the eternal goodness are the people who feel in their heart that God is valuable. He isn't a genie to be rubbed for wishes. He is a friend and a constant companion. These lucky people revere God's name because they use it all of the time. They cannot exist in any good sense without it, and without Him.

I love the phrase "the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays." As a geek, I hate the sun, with its burny glarey rays and its evil cancer. It's pretty much impossible to hide from it. You don't have to do anything to be touched by it. You just have to be around it. For that reason, I'd love the sun if it had healing in its rays. That would be the coolest thing ever, to just stand there and have all of that warm sunshine fix all of our issues. I want to see that, and I believe I eventually will.

So, are you God's kin, basking in his warm glow when you can, or are you kindling for the bonfire of the damned, producing from yourself a different kind of glow entirely? I know which one I want to be.

Avoid myopia

2011-05-24T15:04:00.000-04:00

^{This week is on Psalm 49:16-20:}

Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
   when the splendor of their houses increases;
for they will take nothing with them when they die,
   their splendor will not descend with them.
Though while they live they count themselves blessed—
   and people praise you when you prosper—
they will join those who have gone before them,
   who will never again see the light of life.
  People who have wealth but lack understanding
   are like the beasts that perish.

It's easy to get caught up in other people's financial awesomeness, especially if they've gained their wealth unfairly. We look at these other people, who have either never worked a day in their lives, or who exploited some loophole or shady connection, and we despise them. Life isn't fair! In the Psalmist's times, the wealth difference could be the difference between life and death, or the difference between being able to marry, or being someone's slave. People blamed God. The universe was obviously not working correctly if things ended up the way they were heading. Wealth == God's shortsightedness.

Or sometimes people would worship the rich and famous. If someone had more than they could possibly need, or they managed to get by in life without exerting any effort at all, they must have some cosmic secret to the universe, or some special in-road with God, right? Look at our celebrities today for a good example of where this ends up. People put some stranger's likeness on their wall, or their desktop wallpaper, and they gaze at them in worship. Wealth == God's unambiguous favor.

The thing is, wealth is just wealth. Evil people will end up with the reward they deserve, if they don't find God and repent. Whether they are rich or poor has nothing to do with it. A billionaire who dies without knowing God, after having used his billions to kill orphans and give cancer to puppies, is no better off than a dead dog in a ditch. His wealth means nothing when he dies. Same deal goes for the career "public assistance" fraudster. When he dies, how he got his money means nothing. What matters is who he is, and how he knows God.

Our lives are fairly short compared to how long we'll get to be around. A life of brutish misery on earth is not very much trouble in the grand scheme of things. We're better off living an uncomfortable life, but knowing we'll last forever, than living like a rock star and knowing it could all eternally end in an instant. If we focus on the moment, it's hard not to envy the rock star idol. If we focus on eternity, we see that it's less of a big deal than we thought. Wealth == dirt.

Ambidextrous warriors

2011-05-17T16:45:00.000-04:00

This week is on 1 Chronicles 12:1-2:

These were the men who came to David at Ziklag, while he was banished from the presence of Saul son of Kish (they were among the warriors who helped him in battle; they were armed with bows and were able to shoot arrows or to sling stones right-handed or left-handed; they were relatives of Saul from the tribe of Benjamin):

These verses are from a section where the chronicler is describing the sort of superhero-like warriors King David surrounded himself with. A lot of the previous guys listed were honored for how many people they'd killed, or what sort of WWE moves they'd busted out on various man-eating predators and circus freaks. These guys were just described as ambidextrous and somewhat unfaithful to their tribe.

These warriors were members of Saul's tribe. That means they should have been loyal to Saul, even if he wasn't God's anointed king at the time. The fact that he was the king only should have made them more loyal, yet they went into enemy territory to serve under David in exile rather than stick with their kinsman and leader. Something was up with these guys.

What's more is that they were ambidextrous. They'd trained themselves to shoot with either hand. This was during a time when left-handedness sort of had the stigma of demon possession, and people were often "corrected" to use their right hand for everything. These people made a conscious open effort to be proficient with either hand. Why? I know the recruiters don't really tell this part, but people are often wounded and disfigured in wars. If the enemy cuts off the forefingers of your right hand, or if your sling arm gets hit with an arrow, Mr Ambidextrous can keep on fighting. Mr Right-at-all-costs becomes a human pincushion, or a slave.

So these guys probably came across as betrayers, unfaithful, somewhat crazy, unclean, etc, but they were actually the ultimate warriors. They were flexible enough to fight unconventionally, and they put righteousness above family and national loyalty. Those two traits are almost unheard of in the general population.

To whom are you bound by loyalty? And where is your strength lopsided and weak? These men weren't hindered by either of these things, and they were recorded in the history books of Israel as great warriors. Are you willing to endure the stigma of being unusual in order to be on the right side of the fight? Are you willing to practice comprehensively in order to not be caught off guard? If so, maybe you'll be listed as a great warrior too.

The search for contentment

2011-05-10T12:41:00.003-04:00

This week's study is a guest post from Frank, on Luke 10:38-42

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Here, we find our Lord as a guest in the home of Martha and Mary. Martha is evidently disturbed, and complaining. Jesus observes that she is emotionally upset, and mildly rebukes her, "Martha, you are worried and upset about many things."

I would venture to say that many of us are troubled about something that is robbing us of our contentment, peace, and happiness. We are all pursuing life, liberty and happiness, but like a desert mirage, they seem to evade us. The reason is that we are confronted with two unrelenting enemies, worry and fear. These are the mightiest saboteurs of human life, health, and peace, that I know of.

The late president Roosevelt spoke a great truth when he said, "The greatest thing we have to fear, is fear itself." Fear and worry never created a single hope, never cheered a single soul, never crowned a single success.

Fear has torments. It disturbs our mental balance. Fear deranges and paralizes the mind. It disorganizes the will and makes wholesome actions impossible. It distorts our outlook. Many of us become ill because of our fears as they cripple our efficiency.

Place a 12 inch wide board on the ground and you can easily walk across it. Some can even dance upon it. Put the same plank between two buildings, 100 feet in the air and then try to walk on it. Chances are that you wouldn't. It's the same plank that was on the ground, but now you're afraid, and your efficency is crippled. In Toastmasters, I would go over my speech in private and perform it perfectly. But in front of an audience I would become fearful and nervous, and make mistakes.

The stress and tension in which our generation lives may spring from different causes, but the conditions are not new. Centuries ago, David, the Psalmist, wrote in Psalm 55:4-6

My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest.

In the spirit of Jesus, fear will turn into courage, despair into hope, and sorrow into joy. There are those who worry over events in the past; others are so fearful of the future that they cannot enjoy the present. Yesterday ended last night; tomorrow has not arrived; live for today.

In order to cut down the crow's damage to the crops, the farmer, knowing the crow's fear, erects a scarecrow, just a crude figure. As the presentment of a man, it seems to us ridiculously inadequate, but it fools the crow. It is the clumsiest kind of a bluff. Scarecrows are absolutely harmless; wouldn't hurt anything, but the crow thinks they would. If the crow and other birds knew how harmless scarecrows really are, they wouldn't be frightened away from corn and other food, lying so easily in reach.

Our worries and fears are our “scarecrows” that frighten us away from the better things of life. There is no power in a scare crow to harm the crows. It is fear on the part of the birds that keep them from the corn. It is our fears and worries that keep us from the corn of peace, contentment, and a richer-fuller life.

We have worried about the temporary and neglected the eternal. We have sought God's gifts but failed to seek Him. We have feared the future, while failing to put our hands in the hand of the One who holds tomorrow.

What can we do to remove ourselves from such a fretful state of mind and find true peace and contentment?

Get rid of the scarecrows.
Realize how useless and futile worry is.
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. (Luke 12:22-29)

We do not have many problems; only one, that is, to maintain a right relationship with God. We must give Christ priority in our lives or else we will be continually in a state of unrest. We cannot hope to live life in all its fullness and face eternity with confidence, unless we give God and His word their proper place in our lives. Christ came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.

Put the principles of Christian living as revealed in the Bible, to work in your daily life. Christ is our only hope, but He is a sure hope.

The mean and surly Calebite

2011-05-03T15:53:00.000-04:00

This week is on 1 Samuel 25:2-11:

A certain man in Maon, who had property there at Carmel, was very wealthy. He had a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel. His name was Nabal and his wife’s name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband was surly and mean in his dealings—he was a Calebite. While David was in the wilderness, he heard that Nabal was shearing sheep. So he sent ten young men and said to them, “Go up to Nabal at Carmel and greet him in my name. Say to him: ‘Long life to you! Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours! “‘Now I hear that it is sheep-shearing time. When your shepherds were with us, we did not mistreat them, and the whole time they were at Carmel nothing of theirs was missing. Ask your own servants and they will tell you. Therefore be favorable toward my men, since we come at a festive time. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can find for them.’” When David’s men arrived, they gave Nabal this message in David’s name. Then they waited. Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days. Why should I take my bread and water, and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men coming from who knows where?”

Nabal was a very wealthy man. Imagine how much land you would have to own in order to graze four thousand animals. Imagine how much those animals would be worth. Even if you slaughtered and ate a whole goat or sheep every single day of the year, and even if none of them had a single kid or lamb, that's ten years of more meat than a family needs. And that's assuming that's all the food he's got. The man was crazy wealthy.

David was on the run with his men. During these times, it was expected that if you showed up at some stranger's house, he was sort of obligated to house and feed you for a night out of courtesy. They didn't have motels back then. Everyone was expected to look out for each other. David figured he was saving the poor people some trouble by going to the rich guy to get some provisions. The rich guy could totally afford to help him out without starving his family. Not only that, but David and his men had actually been guarding Nabal's property when they were camping out nearby. If anything, Nabal owed him a favor, even if he wasn't obligated by good manners.

Nabal had a different perspective. He was mean and surly. He didn't want to give anything from his abundance. He found it insulting that someone would expect him to share. Why should the rich be obligated to provide for the poor? Why help someone who isn't your neighbor or who isn't related to you? Nabal was interested only in the bottom line, and the bottom line said "No handouts." And just to drive his point home, he insulted David and his men, accusing them of being runaway slaves. It's pretty much an instruction manual on how not to be hospitable!

Nabal brings a curse on himself through his attitude. If it wasn't for his wife intervening, he and all of his men would have been killed that night. The scary thing is that Nabal's attitude is similar to our own sometimes. Here is a man who has unimaginable abundance. He could live comfortably for the next ten years without having to earn another cent. We can easily condemn him when we put it that way. But lets look at it this way: Imagine you had ten years' salary in the bank, and some random guy knocked on your door and wanted you to give him a thousand dollars to fix his car. Can you feel that reluctance welling up? You have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, and you, like most people in that position, would deny this guy the one thousand that would totally transform his situation. You'd probably even say some of the same things Nabal would say. "Am I going to take money out of my childrens' inheritance and give it to some stranger that didn't work for it?" "I don't even know who you are, mister. You could be an escaped convict, for all I know."

Treating abundance like it is scarcity is sinful. You're denying your blessing. You're the person, sitting in a five star restaurant, whining about how nobody can survive on only ten million dollars a year anymore. That's insulting to everyone who lives on less. Nabal's actions say "God cannot bless me. I must guard and hoard all of this for myself, or I will have nothing." They say "I deserve this blessing. I alone deserve it, and I can decide who is less of a man, and deny them access to it." Nabal ignores God's charitable kindness to him, and assumes that God has delegated his godhood to him. He alone decides who is blessed.

That's not to say we should just hand things out to people until we're broke. That's a different question than the one asked of Nabal. What this is saying is that if you are so blessed that you will never know hardship, and someone asks for something they need which you won't even notice missing, you would have to be extremely evil to deny their request. For someone who has so much to give so little is exactly what God is not. Our natural sinful inclination is to be like Nabal. We must fight to be charitable.

Ask God to show you your abundance. You might not even have all of it where you can see it. Try to be aware of your blessing. Ask for sensitivity so you won't be surly and mean to people who God wants to bless through your excess. He doesn't give us excess for us to hoard it. He wants us to share.

Knock-off gods

2011-04-26T11:30:00.000-04:00

This week is on 1 Samuel 12:19-22:

The people all said to Samuel, “Pray to the LORD your God for your servants so that we will not die, for we have added to all our other sins the evil of asking for a king.”
“Do not be afraid,” Samuel replied. “You have done all this evil; yet do not turn away from the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless. For the sake of his great name the LORD will not reject his people, because the LORD was pleased to make you his own.

God is a really tolerant God. Before these verses take place, the Israelites had told Samuel that they didn't want to rely on God anymore, but wanted to have a king lead them instead. God granted their wishes and they got into trouble with one of the countries that shared a border with them. God delivered the Israelites from this enemy, and instead of thanking God for making it happen, the people all praised the king. They then tell Samuel that they want to kill the people who originally told them it was a bad idea to get a king. In other words, they've disobeyed God, and now they want to kill the only people who kept their wits and tried to warn them. Bad Israel. Bad!

Samuel rebukes the people. That's a fancy way of saying "He yelled at them." The people realize they've made a huge mistake, and we get to the verses I quoted up top. The people tell Samuel to pray to "your God." They've rejected God and don't feel connected to him, but they still acknowledge that they need his help. First they delegated their obedience to God, in the form of choosing a king, and now they've delegated their relationship, in the form of their priest.

Samuel says "Hey, don't trust in idols, serve God yourselves." Compared to God, all human authorities are useless. Even the great things people do are often started by God. King Saul didn't decide to fight the enemies by himself. The spirit of God came upon him in anger. The rescue was from God. Saul was just the guy he picked to be his delivery boy. But the people trusted in Saul, not in God. They made an idol.

Even after all of this, there was forgiveness available to them. God will not reject his people. The response was "Yes, you've done some pretty evil things, but just don't do them again and we'll be cool." No human being would offer a deal like that. Repent, and you'll be forgiven. Serve the Lord with all of your heart. You get a fresh start.

Do we have idols? Are there people or things we trust in the place of God? "The president will fix the economy." "My pastor will tell me how to live a good life." "My anti-lock brakes will protect me from harm." "The police will keep me safe." "My spouse is all I need." "FEMA will keep me fed and clothed if there is a disaster." God is behind, above, and in front of all of these things. We can trust them to a point, but they can never deserve the complete trust we can put in God. They can never substitute themselves for that aspect of our relationship with him. And they will never love and forgive us in the same way as God will when we fail him.

God is irreplaceable. Don't try to substitute a lesser thing for him, even if it seems cheaper to maintain.

He's got us covered

2011-04-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

This week's study is from Matt. I'll be mixing some other people into the online Bible study to add some richness and variety.  It will be awesome. Just you wait. (Or don't wait, because it starts now!)

This week's study starts in Exodus:

“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.  The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance. [Exodus 12:12-14]
  God's purposes are eternal, and we can see this as we examine the significance of the Passover. You are probably familiar with this story. The nation of Israel was in slavery for hundreds of years in Egypt. God raised up Moses to lead his people out of this bondage and it was quite an amazing process as the Lord displayed His mighty power. Moses was trying to convince Pharaoh to release his people and showed many convincing signs from God. The king's heart remained hard until finally, the last straw for Pharaoh was the sign that we read about in these verses.  God required that each of the Israelite families kill a blemish-free lamb and smear the blood on the door posts and lintels of their homes. As God's judgment went out over the land the destroying angel struck down the first born child of every household and would 'pass over' those homes that were marked and covered with the sacrificial lamb's blood.  "Why all this bloody business?" you ask. Well, it has to do with how God designed the universe. The world is governed by all sorts of laws, for example laws of physics (think of the law of gravity, or laws of motion) There are Spiritual laws and principles that describe how his kingdom works. Now think of the law of sowing and reaping:  Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. [Galatians 6:7-8]
It's impersonal law that demands that we reap from what we have done, either good or bad. Our sin demands that we reap death, it's simply how the law works. This law must and will be fulfilled. In the Old Testament days they would offer up the life of an animal as an atonement for their sins, to take the punishment they deserved, to reap what they have sown. A life was required and blood demanded as the price for sin. The picture of 'Passover' here is the same idea. God's judgment went out and it was reaping time! If any Israelite failed to put the blood up, they too would fall under the same judgment as the Egyptians.  You see they were spared the judgment for one reason, the blood covered their household. They did not have to have enough faith it would work, or worry about how much blood they spread around. They simply had to be covered by it, and they did not get what they deserved. I think sometimes we think God's forgiveness or relationship with him also depends on what we do, or a combination of our faith and works. This story is such a clear and precise picture for us. It is the blood alone that covers us and noting else. His blood either covers all our sin completely or it does nothing at all, there is no middle ground. That is a completely liberating truth! Think about all its implications.  It is no coincidence that Jesus shared his 'Last Supper' when he did. He was celebrating the Passover feast with his friends. This, however would be the last time this feast would be celebrated like this. Jesus was trying to teach his friends that he was the fulfillment of the Passover. Take a look:  And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.  For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”  [Luke 22:15-16]
Jesus is the perfect spotless sacrifice, and his blood was poured out for us. The judgment we deserve will 'pass over' us as we are covered with the perfect undefiled blood of the 'Lamb of God'. It is his blood alone that saves us! John the baptist said "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29) God delivered the Jews from being slaves to the Egyptians, God delivers us from being slaves to the devil and to sin! Joseph Prince, a famous bible teacher, said "When God sees that you see that it is the blood alone that saves, He calls that faith in the blood, and every plague will pass over you!"

Stopping short

2011-04-12T14:46:00.002-04:00

This week is a quick one, on Joshua 16:10:

They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor.

God gave land to the Israelites when he took them out of Egypt. All of the land in Canaan was theirs, but they had to fight for it. A few tribes of the Israelites didn't fight very hard, and let some of the foreigners live in parts of the land that were allocated to them. That didn't turn out well for them over time, because they had other people competing for their land, water, and food, and influencing them away from God. They couldn't just kill or drive out the people a generation or two later, because by then they had complicated social ties. Their decision to take the easy path had bad consequences in the future.

There are a lot of examples in the Old Testament of God telling the Israelites to clear people out of the land, or to kill them, and the Israelites instead deciding to let them live, or even to include them in their society through marriage or slavery. I chose this verse, because it's short and to the point. We like short, right?

God didn't give the Israelites the task of genocide because he's a big meanie. He did it because he wanted his people to flourish free of distractions and political/social obstacles. Compare the two scenarios where there is a famine in the land:

Scenario 1: Israelites cleared land a hundred years ago. Food is divided up amongst the Israelites. Anyone attempting to show up and infiltrate their society to get their food is obvious as a foreigner because their language and clothing are different. Everyone can turn to God together for prayer and support. Israelites keep their food, reproduce successfully, and remain faithful to their God.

Scenario 2: Israelites let a couple Canaanite villages live among them. There is enough food for the Israelites, but the Canaanites are hungry too. They don't consider themselves to be Israelites, so they take care of their own first. Many of them are agricultural slaves, so they can siphon off food before their masters even see it. They invite their relatives from surrounding Canaanite nations to come in and join them, which reduces the food available to the Israelites, but there's no way of telling who legitimately lives there and who is coming in from distant Canaan, because the foreigners don't dress or talk any differently than the natives. Besides, the surrounding community can't drive them out at this point anyway, because the economy depends on their labor, and because many of them are relatives through marriage with the Israelites. When times get difficult, the Canaanites blame the situation on the Israelite God, and offer their own gods as competition. People fall away and begin to worship the Canaanite gods out of desperation. Many Israelites starve, families fall apart and they lose their culture and faith. Fail!

See the difference? God's plan is a great idea for his people, but it seems like a lot of work at first. Only when time passes, even beyond a generation or two, does his wisdom begin to make sense. Things are way harder after that time passes than they would have been if they'd just taken care of things at first. Which is harder, driving out a few "squatters" after you've conquered most of the territory anyway, or ripping your society apart to try to stay alive when you're already weak?

I'm not saying that God is going to ask us to do ethnic cleansing or kill drifters. That time is long past. But sometimes God asks us to do a complete work, and we stop when we think we've gone far enough. To us, the goal seems to be met, but if we look at what God actually requires of us, we have a ways to go. We must pay attention to the details. Sometimes it just isn't possible for us to see the big picture and understand why we have to do things a certain way. God knows more than we do. Don't stop short on things God has asked you to do. Don't stop at "good enough." Do what needs to be done.

Split brain obedience?

2011-04-05T07:49:00.002-04:00

This week's goodness is on Matthew 6:3-4:

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

I did some reading this week about psychology and brain function. I won't bore you with the details, but it had an interesting bit about how the left brain works versus the right brain. You need both halves working properly in order to be normal. Sometimes doctors, doing their doctor thing, would cut the connection between the halves trying to solve one problem, but they'd cause another. People's perceptions would get weird, because the verbal part and the visual part wouldn't communicate anymore. It started getting me thinking about these verses, because creative obedience and literal obedience are both necessary in God's kingdom, but each side can lead you into a pit, if you let it.

In these verses, God is commanding us to be charitable, not for our own self-glorification, but for actually helping others. It is a specific command, not something to be creatively reinterpreted. If you see someone who has a genuine need, you are to help them. You are not to overthink it and decide that the verse was only for the specific disciples Jesus was talking to, or that it only applies to food and linen and wool garments like would have been found in Roman Palestine. God is saying "Dude, don't just stand there. That guy needs help. Help him."

The problem is that people read into things and then they swirl them around in their brains. "Hmm. If God wants me to help people, and he's let us know that, then other people probably know that too. When they see me helping that poor guy, they will know how incredibly spiritual I am. But what if they don't see? My efforts will be less than optimal. Maybe if I make a scene right as I'm giving the food to the poor folks, someone will notice and start rumors of my greatness. And the greatest part is that I'm being totally obedient and winning." No! Don't let left brain and right brain form a committee. If you have all of the info you need in order to do it, just do it. "Left brain" may say "Just do exactly what he says, literally, and without any respect to the situation and what God's plan may be right now." "Right brain" may say "How can we rewrite this to just do what we wanted to do in the first place?" You need to know what God wants, for real, and once you know it, to do it.

Saul fell into this trap in the Old Testament, where God told him to kill everything and everybody in enemy territory, but he got all creative and decided to save a few things to kill in some big ceremony afterwards. Technically, literally, he is obeying God's command, but creatively speaking, God's desire is not getting fulfilled. Fail!

The Pharisees fell into the trap too, on the other side, when they decided to get all literal in their obedience of God's Old Testament law without seeing the context. Yes, it was important not to mix wool and linen in garments, from a functional perspective, but it's also important to take care of your sick relatives and aging parents. By only doing what was literally told to them, they missed the point.

This is why it's important to know God's will for your life. You can think about things until smoke rolls out your ears, but only God's plan will work cleanly. Once you do know God's plan, it's important to act quickly, before you have time to overthink it. (And my experience is that dumb people do the most overthinking of us all, ironically enough.) If God says to help the poor, then do it. If he says to go be a missionary in Saudi Arabia, then do it. If he says to write worship music, then go get your pencil and your guitar. At the moment you know what you need to do, go and do it.

Public acts

2011-03-29T14:49:00.002-04:00

This week is on Acts 4:1-4:

The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand.

I suppose I could have titled this "The Sadducees get in on the Jesus-bashing action too," but it isn't the main theme of this week's teaching. This study is on truth, and the stupid things people do when they don't want to hear it.

Peter and John knew Jesus. They knew he had been resurrected. This wasn't a point of doctrine. This is something they had personally witnessed. They were telling people about this. The Sadducees, who didn't believe in a resurrection, and the temple guard, who didn't believe in anything that would result in them not getting paid anymore, both made sure they put an end to the distracting truth that Peter and John were sharing.

The truth is awesome, but sometimes people don't want to hear it. They get comfortable in whatever lie they have built their life around. When you share a truth that conflicts with one of those lies, it shakes their foundations. They can either choose to build on something stronger, which takes work, or they can attack the messenger. Usually they just attack the messenger.

Those guards and Sadducees didn't help their situation by interfering with the truth. If anything, they made things worse, as God was probably frustrated with them. The crowds that John and Peter were teaching, on the other hand, changed their lives. The truth does make a difference to those who want it.

When someone tells you something, and it makes you angry, stop and think. Are you angry because you don't want to hear the truth, or is there something else that's making you angry? Or if you tell someone something, and instead of receiving it and thanking you, they attack you, remember John and Peter. Sometimes people do dumb things like that when their world is shaking.

Don't stop at fear

2011-03-22T21:09:00.001-04:00

This week's new media web 2.0 bible study is on Mark 16:6-8:

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Some versions of this part of the Bible end pretty much at these verses. The women, given a direct instruction, are instead paralyzed by fear. It's great news they've been given, but it's too much for them to process. They don't know how to handle what they've just seen and heard. Other accounts of the events in the other gospels are more flattering, but what if this was it?

If things really did end at this point, nobody would know what happened. Their paralysis would have cost us our knowledge of what Jesus had done. Luckily Jesus appeared to more people, and even followed up on these women, but think of what would have happened if he hadn't. We could have gone through life completely unaware of the sacrifice that had been made on our behalf!

God can be overwhelming sometimes. We encounter things that are beyond our capacity for reason. It happens even to those people who God chooses to greatly honor. I mean, what's cooler than being the first people to get the news that Christ had risen from the grave? You'd have to be pretty scared to hide that!

Anyway, we know that the women eventually told the rest of the disciples. Despite having an experience so intense that they couldn't imagine continuing, they were still able with God's help. That's encouraging. If we find ourselves in that kind of situation with God, where our whole world is turned upside down and then shaken, we know that he can put us right back on track.

Keeping it fresh

2011-03-15T15:58:00.002-04:00

This week is on Numbers 9:17-23:

Whenever the cloud lifted from above the tent, the Israelites set out; wherever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped. At the LORD’s command the Israelites set out, and at his command they encamped. As long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle, they remained in camp. When the cloud remained over the tabernacle a long time, the Israelites obeyed the LORD’s order and did not set out. Sometimes the cloud was over the tabernacle only a few days; at the LORD’s command they would encamp, and then at his command they would set out. Sometimes the cloud stayed only from evening till morning, and when it lifted in the morning, they set out. Whether by day or by night, whenever the cloud lifted, they set out. Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. At the LORD’s command they encamped, and at the LORD’s command they set out. They obeyed the LORD’s order, in accordance with his command through Moses.

The Israelites didn't start their relationship with God in a stone church. They were without a home, traveling across the wilderness between Egypt and Israel. They met with God in a portable structure: a giant meeting tent, called a tabernacle. We often picture them as being in constant motion, picking up every morning, moving a few miles, and then setting up camp again. According to these verses, though, they sometimes set up camp for as long as a year at a time. It was pretty random, by our standards.

The interesting thing to me is that they based their decision of whether to stay put or head out on whether God's presence was over the tent. It was simple. It wasn't like they didn't have a long term plan. They were on their way to the promised land. It's important to make that clear. This isn't a bunch of hippies sitting around on a couch with a guitar, never existing outside of the moment. They had goals, direction, plans, and momentum. They were just willing to remain when God wanted them to remain, and to move on when God wanted them to move on.

I think our modern civilization has sort of dulled our sense of this when it comes to following God. Some of us seem to be of a mindset that if we just throw enough granite into our endeavors that God will be trapped in them like a prison, and we can remain right as we are, where we are, forever. We buy the house, sign up for car payments, school loans, and so on, and retire the decision to move. Often that's the right decision, but not always. It gives us stability and allows us to focus on investing time and money in others, but it can also lead to stagnation.

What if the Israelites had decided to build the temple right at the site of their first campsite? Or maybe at the rock that gushed water? God obviously was there, and moved powerfully on that spot, right? God moves, though, and is alive. If they'd decided to hoist big blocks of granite and put their anchors down on one of those spots, they'd never have reached the promised land. And that was the purpose of them being in the wilderness in the first place! They would have just grown old going through the motions, following the order of worship on worship day, taking care of themselves the other days, and never finding God again, because he'd moved on.

In our relationship with God, we need to be willing not only to stay but to move. Maybe God wants you to pick up a new routine today. Maybe he wants you to continue in what you've been doing for some more months. Maybe he wants you to stop doing something which had produced fruit for years. There's always that dynamic aspect to our relationship with him. We can't just arrive, put our bags down, and fall asleep forever. We're alive, and being alive means moving and occasionally being conscious.

If you feel God is calling you to change, and what you're changing seems good enough as it is, don't be afraid. He's done that before. Abram had to leave the land of his ancestry to do what God wanted. Moses and the Israelites left a land where they had steady jobs, food on the table, and a roof over their heads. And in these verses, once section of the wilderness was probably as good as another. Why get up and move? Why stay for weeks or years? Sometimes you need God to make that distinction for you. If you start with where he is, you'll always be in the right place.

Backstage passes aren't cheap

2011-03-08T15:01:00.003-05:00

This week is on Leviticus 16:1-2:

The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the LORD. The LORD said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die. For I will appear in the cloud over the atonement cover.

Aaron's two sons died in a freak clergy accident when they were offering "strange fire" on the altar. Nobody really mentions what they did wrong. Some people think they were drunk, or were trying to make a show of their role in worshiping God. Other people think they approached God in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with fire they made themselves instead of taking from the altar. The common thing is that they died doing something we would probably have looked at and thought was completely reasonable.

God contacts Moses and tells him to talk to Aaron, after all of this has died down. The basic message God has for Aaron, is "Don't treat this position you have like it isn't a big deal." Aaron is not to just waltz into the holiest of holies wearing his muck boots and and eating a microwave burrito, in a rush to punch his God card and get it over with. God gives him a complicated ritual to perform, in order to remind him of how valuable and unique it is to have access to the God of the universe. Approaching God is a huge thing, even if we're not required now to treat it that way.

It doesn't matter how we dress or how we act in approaching God nowadays, or even where and how often we do it, but we should still realize the blessing we have in being able to do it in the first place. It's not something we do as a show, or to punch the card so that we can be right with God. It's a huge privilege to be able to communicate directly with God, the same as the priests used to do in Moses' days.

Be thankful for the opportunity to pray and to encounter God. Don't ignore that privilege, or go into it uninterested and uncommitted. It is a really big deal that we have that access.

Spanning the gap

2011-03-01T11:18:00.002-05:00

This week's mysterious Bible goodness is from Matthew 14:15-21:

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

This is an oldie but a goody. I think everyone teaches on it at some point or another. Jesus, here, has traveled to some remote location, where he's spent a bunch of time ministering to the needs of a crowd of people. It gets to be around dinner time, and nobody delivers pizza out that far, so they need to do something about food. All they have is enough for a couple people, and there are five thousand men, plus women and children. It's a caterer's nightmare.

What can you do with a situation like that? What could you possibly expect would happen? All you can do is tell people you can't help them, that there's no hope of you being able to provide what they need, and then send them on their way. That's not what Jesus did though.

Jesus provided for the people's needs, not just spiritually, but physically. Not that healings and things aren't totally awesome, but people need to have their stomachs filled too. Jesus did that.

What's more cool is that he didn't just snap his fingers and have manna fall from the heavens. This wasn't made up food. This was Jesus taking what little the disciples had to offer, and stretching it to be sufficient to cover everyone. He does that with a lot of things, but here he does it with food, actual food the disciples had with them.

In areas where we're insufficient to do what he requires of us, he can stretch us to be sufficient. In areas where our resources just won't measure up, he can stretch that as well. He can span the gap between what we can do and what he needs.

Say hello with fire

2011-02-22T09:40:00.002-05:00

This week's sustained Bible attack comes from Exodus 3:1-15:

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
“This is my name forever,
the name you shall call me
from generation to generation."

This story is fun too. Job interview FAIL! If you read the next chapter, you'll see that God continues to call Moses, and Moses continues to analyze the calling to death, trying to come up with excuses for why he's a bad candidate for the job God is calling him to. This chapter is a good illustration of what happened when God called Moses, though. God keeps saying "I want you, and I've chosen you," and Moses keeps saying "But what if? And what about?"

Moses is a lot like most of the people I know. He's not bright, he works hard not to have to work, and the best way to get his attention is to put something shiny in front of him. Moses was out wandering around in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of sheep when God put fire in front of him to get his attention. Moses was like "Heheh. Fire! Fire!" and wandered over to check it out, when God spoke to him. The thing I like about this introduction is that it shows that God knows exactly who Moses is, likes him anyway, and uses what he knows about Moses (which is everything) to construct the perfect introduction. How many times has God used a circumstance that attracts our complete attention in a non-religious sense, to speak some important lesson or calling to us? He knows exactly how to bait the trap, and it's awesome.

Moses then continues to argue with God and express his worries. To me, they sort of fall into the "dumb relationship questions" category of stuff people ask when they're insecure. "What if you find someone better, like my brother Aaron?" "What if I got in a car accident and was paralyzed from the neck down? Would you still want me then?" "But I'm not smart and computery. Once you find that out, wouldn't you hate me and think I'm too stupid to be around?" "My family is not rich, but yours is. Won't that be a problem?" Moses completely ignores the fact that God knew him well enough to pretty much select him from infancy and even orchestrate the perfect introduction in the middle of nowhere, and instead focuses on his insecurities and worries. Never mind that God can do anything and is pretty much made of pure love. Moses has issues. So do we sometimes.

Moses was afraid and insecure, and thought way too hard about life for the amount of brainpower God gave him to work with. He was so focused on these things that he dragged his feet on his calling. God had to pretty much pull him along, and even had to get his brother involved to help. Would you want to do that to God? Later, once the Israelites are bouncing around the wilderness, we see Moses melt down at every sign of difficulty in his path, blowing up at God and being all high-maintenance. Despite all of these things, though, God still sticks with him and uses him as his mouthpiece. We know a lot about Moses, but that says even more about God.

If God chooses you, go with it. Don't try to talk him out of it. Don't let yourself mistrust him and his choice. Even if you screw things up, he will stick with you. He probably knew that before choosing you, you know? God designed the universe. He knows what tools are best for what problems. Don't be reluctant to be a tool. Moses put God through a lot of hassle in order to be used. We don't need to do that. Maybe we can learn from Moses' experience and be used more efficiently when God has plans for us.

Unexpected visitation

2011-02-15T08:47:00.002-05:00

This week's return to Bible greatness is from Genesis 18:1-10:

The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.”
“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.”
So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.”
Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him.
“There, in the tent,” he said.
Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
(Full disclosure: I chopped the second half of verse ten off, because it sort of starts another paragraph, and I wanted the excerpt to encapsulate the story I'm teaching on. I am not a heretic using some freaky incomplete version of the Bible.)

These are some of my favorite verses. They give some good insight into the character of God and how he interacts with us, and they address hopelessness and the sort of bondage to scientific logic I think our culture suffers from.

To get the full effect of the verses, picture yourself in Abraham's place. You've given up on a promise God has made to you. You lack the resources, you're too old, science has deemed you incurable, and you're just tired and skeptical. It's a scorching summer day, and it's too hot to do anything. You're sitting in the shade as best you can, while the heat coming off the ground makes everything wavy. Everything has that hot dirt and sand smell that summer can bring sometimes. You're weak, and probably dehydrated. You blink and suddenly you realize there's three men with you, out in the middle of nowhere. Are they there to rob you? Is there something supernatural about them? Should you be polite and invite them to share your food and drink? You reach out to them, and come to find out that all three of them are God simultaneously, and they restate the promise that you keep ignoring. How is that even possible? And what a day for that to happen!

There is so much in this story that's unexpected and wonderful. How is God simultaneously three individual people? It's like the holy trinity. I don't know if I'm even capable of understanding that. But this isn't Bible-school-theoretical. This was three actual men standing, in flesh and blood, before Abraham. Did they look alike? Did they take turns finishing each other's sentences? I don't know how that could work out not to be amazing, just by itself.

Along with that is the fact that God came to Abraham's tent on a pretty much useless day, and paid him a personal visit. To my knowledge, God has never paid me a personal, in the flesh, visit to my house or campsite. Something like that is wonderful, almost beyond my imagining, and this is something God did for someone who pretty much told him he was full of crap, and who he knew would still doubt him after the encounter. That rates right up there with angelic encounters for things I'd like to experience before I die.

Even more amazing is that God sort of made Abraham seek him out in order to be reminded of the promise. God didn't invite himself in. It's not like God's GPS was off and he couldn't just materialize his three man self inside Abraham's tent. He wanted to be invited in. That's such a powerful statement on God's respect for our sovereignty as individuals. He wants us to have the luxury of choosing him. Freedom is the ability to say yes or no to something without your choice being overridden by someone else. That's a huge risky gift for God to give to his limited-smarts creation. It also reminds us that just because God is present doesn't mean he's in relationship with you. You still have to engage him.

That brings me to a heavy theological question that people probably debated for centuries in the Middle Ages: Did God's three-part self really need the swanky feast put out by Abraham? Was God hungry? Or was it just a case of Abraham trying to relate to human-looking God in human terms? Was it a symbol of the temple sacrifice? Or was it the establishment of a covenant, kind of the 'business lunch' people would use to seal deals, sort of God's way of saying "No, Abraham, I really mean it. I really do want to do the impossible for you. You have my word on it." Or maybe it was some combination of those things? Either way, it's fascinating that they ate together.

And that brings me back to the child-promise I've taught on a bunch of times before, because it enthralls me. It's such a good illustration of the impossible dream. In Abraham's day, so much rode on whether or not you had a son to carry on the legacy and care for you when you got old. To not have a son was an illustration of your lack of value as a man or a woman. Ancient cultures like these had all sorts of folk remedies for infertility, and someone of Abraham's advanced age would probably have tried all of them countless times. On top of all of that, they were too old to have kids. The clock had run out. You might as well be raising someone from the dead. It wasn't irrational for Abraham to mistrust that this would happen. Who can intuitively grasp that God is so great? And that was before science and the scorn we're raised to have for ungrounded hope and blind faith.

These verses tell us that God can do anything. The basic scientific foundations of how the universe works do not apply when God has made a promise. He exists outside of those constraints. There is no place for hopelessness when God is engaged. And we must engage him, because he wants to be pursued. We must actively seek him when he's around, even if we're too ignorant at first to believe everything he says.

And he likes us enough to seek us out too. He loves us enough to respect our choice to not speak to him, but still wants to be seen. He wants us to be mature creations who choose him because he's great, not because something bad will happen to us if we don't. The same goes for our belief. He doesn't require that we believe on the first try in order to be blessed. If that was true, Abraham and Sarah would have died childless and miserable. God is patient and will coax us into a greater understanding of him and his universe, if we let him. These verses show that his methods of doing so can be very creative and memorable.

No lessons

2011-01-22T02:06:00.001-05:00

Sorry,

Due to my gross underestimation of how much time I would have to prepare for my trip, I was unable to prepare the next three weeks' lessons in advance.  If I get a chance to visit a computer long enough to do a study, I'll post it to the blog.  Otherwise, please accept my apologies for not planning better for my departure this time.

Educating Nicodemus

2011-01-18T14:43:00.002-05:00

This week is on John 3:1-21:

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

I came across this story recently, and I thought it fit well with our study last week. Nicodemus met Jesus when he came to visit him at night. He had seen the power of God, and wanted to know more. His mind was still fairly constricted, religiously, but he couldn't deny his hunger for answers. What's funny is how many of Jesus' quotes start off with "Woe unto you, Pharisees" and yet the first sentence of this cool story starts with "Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus" You'd think Jesus would be all like "Die Pharisee!" but that's not what happened at all. It's a great picture into Jesus' actual attitude towards the Pharisees as individuals.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He'd been to seminary, had training in theology, liturgy, and all of that stuff. He was a religious professional. He served on a board of religious professionals. Jesus still encounters him as an individual, and not as a "Woe unto ye Pharisees" stereotype. Jesus gives him answers to his questions and explains the kingdom of God and his upcoming sacrifice in ways that are still used today. (Ever see "John 3:16" written someplace? You can thank our Pharisee pal Nicodemus for having the conversation with Jesus that led to it being written down for our benefit.)

A lot of people see someone who looks or acts religious, immediately label them as a Pharisee, and then either go about marginalizing them or trying to get them to change their outward appearance (ironically enough) so that they can be less "religious" and more like them. That attitude is not Jesus' attitude. Nicodemus didn't renounce his membership in the Pharisees' board when he left. He didn't start dressing differently and acting differently. His connection with Jesus was formed personally, and inside of him.

Jesus was willing to encounter Nicodemus as a Pharisee, and to love him as a Pharisee. He took time out of a very busy schedule to go into some very deep theological stuff, patiently answering all of the questions he was asked. He even teases him. ("Oh, look, Israel's Greatest Teachers don't know the answer to that one, eh?") Nicodemus comes across as slightly argumentative, but Jesus' responses are never more than firm.

This story is another case of Jesus starting an individual relationship with someone. Many of the other stories are cases where the person isn't someone people of the time would have expected God to be interested in, but this one is almost an illustration of someone people of our time would think God would be uninterested in. The fact of the matter is that, after this encounter, Nicodemus was involved with Jesus for the rest of his life. All it took was for Jesus to love him, recognize him as a human being, and to answer his somewhat brainy, argumentative, and churchy questions. Are you willing to be that patient?

We can't rule people out as being unsuitable for God's kingdom, or incapable of grasping his truths. It's that behavior, not the act of being identified as a Pharisee, that Jesus was speaking against in many of his "Woe unto the scribes and pharisees" tirades. The beautiful thing about Jesus in this story is that he demonstrates that you have no idea who he is going to connect with. This guy Nicodemus represents the very group people love to quote Jesus speaking out against, and yet Jesus forms a lifelong (eternal) friendship with him. You just can't predict what's going to happen. Jesus is available to us all.

Personal relationship

2011-01-11T17:14:00.001-05:00

This week is on Matthew 17:1-9:

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

These verses always make me laugh. Peter just freaks out when he encounters God in a new way, and Jesus is so patient with him. The couple disciples who Jesus brought with him up the mountain had just seen something probably nobody in their generation had ever seen, yet Jesus tells them on the way down not to tell anyone!

There are plenty of ways God interacts with us corporately, as a whole church. Miracles and signs and wonders tend to come to whole churches, even regionally and worldwide. Wisdom and knowledge tend to propagate through the body as well, but every now and then God wants to do something to invest in us individually. It doesn't make sense theologically, probably, but it's a documented fact.

So, why would Jesus make Peter, James, and John sign some kind of verbal non-disclosure agreement? Why not have them tell everybody? This isn't the only time Jesus has done that. Sometimes he'd heal someone, and then tell them not to tell anybody. I think God just wants to give us a gift for ourselves sometimes. In the three disciples' case here, I think God just wanted to show them who he was, as a kind of preview of what the world would find out later. Some people need to be explicitly told that a gift is for them, or they'll just give it away.

The verses suggest to us that we're valuable, not just as part of the widespread church, or as generic workers, but as individuals before God. He invests in the church corporately, but he also invests individually. He wants us to be close to him. As we are willing to climb the mountain to be close to him, he's willing to draw closer to us. In the case of the three guys on the mountain, the fact that the Jewish Celebrities Road Show disappeared when they fell down almost seems to suggest that God actually allowed his world to permeate their beings for a moment, allowing them to see the spiritual world clearly. That's pretty amazing.

As we follow God, we may find ourselves seeing some pretty freaky stuff. It's OK if nobody else sees it. It's OK if you feel like you're not supposed to share it just now. It's even normal and forgivable to be uncomfortable with it at first and to turn away. God will still touch us and ask us to be with him. He recognizes "the church" and he recognizes individual bodies, but he also recognizes and seeks individual individuals. That's you and me.

The descent

2011-01-04T13:05:00.004-05:00

This week is on Genesis 4:17-24:

Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain’s sister was Naamah.
Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

This is an interesting echo to the story of Cain and Abel. You all probably know the story about Cain and his murderous jealousy of his little brother Abel. It resulted in Cain and his descendants becoming cursed. God was lenient on him when he complained, and made it so anyone who tried to avenge Abel's death would suffer an even worse fate. I think that's the first case of "Judge not, lest ye be judged" in scripture. :)

Anyway, Cain will be forever famous for capitulating to sin. And that set of values was probably passed down from generation to generation, until we get to Lamech. Lamech is worse off than Cain was. He's already discarded God's model for men and women and taken two wives for himself, who he then lords himself over. And he's killed at least two people for wounding him. And on top of that, he brags about it. He's taken God's task of being a steward of the world, of having authority over it in order to share it with God, and warped it into dominating it for his own purposes. But that's not the worst of it.

Lamech completely mistakes God's leniency on Cain for God's approval of him. God didn't protect Cain from vengeance because he thought what Cain did was cool, or because he wanted more people to be like Cain. God did it because he didn't want people taking matters into their own hands and punishing him more than he deserved. God already handled the situation. He didn't need a bunch of toadies adding insult to injury. That would be out of order. But Lamech's perspective suggests that Cain's protection was something he earned, as if sinning to a certain degree begins to command respect. You can see that attitude lived out in Lamech's life. He kills two people for hurting him. In his mind, he's earned even more glory than Cain. ("If you thought my great-great-great grandpa was bad, wait until you get a load of me!")

There are a couple things we can learn from this. First, if sin is not dealt with, it can multiply itself over generations. You learn your parents' bad habits, and their parents' bad habits, and then add your own to the mix. It needs to be put to death, or your descendants will suffer. It also affects our sense of normalcy. I doubt Lamech came up with his worldview all on his own. He was probably raised to see the world the way his parents did, who probably picked up ideas from their parents, and so on. Who knows what we don't know, or what we do "know" that isn't true? That doesn't excuse it. It just explains part of how it happens.

Second, revenge is not God's model for interacting with one another. Only God can see enough of the situation to punish justly. People who attacked Cain were avenged sevenfold. Do you want to be one of those people? I don't. Do what you need to do to establish boundaries, but draw the line before the point of revenge. We're raised in a culture of vengeance that probably seems just as valid and wise to us as whatever ideas Lamech was brought up in probably seemed to him. It doesn't make it right.

Third, you can read the Bible all you want, and study all of the history there is to read, but unless you know what God is saying, you will miss the point. How did Lamech get this bad after only five generations of recorded history? We could be epic failures now in things that people a hundred years ago would never even have considered doing wrong. How many times have you read Genesis and never even considered "What's up with Lamech?"

Things can descend into depravity and suffering if we let them. We can be ignorant of our ignorance. The important thing is that we don't have to be like that. Jesus died for our sins, allowing us to set things right with God. We can reset the clock and start over. We can unlearn the bad habits we were taught, and the bad behaviors we developed on our own. We don't have to be Lamech. We can be like Jesus.

Doing your part

2010-12-28T16:47:00.003-05:00

This week is on 1 John 4:7-12:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

This is a season of ritualistic gift-giving and obligatory gathering, for a lot of people. It's an important season, but it's also a kind of counterfeit of the real love and gift-giving demonstrated by Jesus, whose birthday we nominally celebrate. Jesus shared his life out of love. God sacrificed Jesus out of love. Not just because we were on his list. Not just because that's just what God does. It's easy to brush off his huge gift to us by taking it for granted. It's not like government money. This act is personal, and the donor is consciously willing.

I'm lucky to love my extended family, so gift-giving is not difficult for me. And I enjoy spending time with them, so it's a difficult journey I make eagerly, not a dreaded annual obligation like the Bethlehem Census. Even though Jesus' sacrifice was for us corporately, I like to think there was a personal aspect to it as well, sort of an acknowledgement that he'd like to have Lou (or you) to hang out with in eternity, without having to talk over the screaming in the lake of fire. There's an element of ritual in being the sacrifice, but there's a mindful element as well, like a conscious decision that whatever Jesus went through would be worth it.

As Jesus' family, we're to follow in his footsteps by loving one another. What do other people need? What would they like? What can we do for them? These aren't laws. These are what come from loving your neighbors enough not to "mind your own business." It's a side-effect of pursuing a relationship, and of being vulnerable with one another. How do you know what someone might need if you don't know them well enough to know their needs in the first place? And how do you eagerly want to help them if you don't love them first? We need to move past obligation and into love.

It's easy for us to love God, because of how much he's done for us. It's hard for us to love others, who might even have done more bad than good for us. How do you love someone who costs you something? That's the question Jesus knows the answer to. As God loved us, he enables us to love others. Ask for more of that. If you can say that God is love, you can understand how important the ability to love selflessly is to our faith. Everything stems from that. Given the choice between love and obedience, love wins out. It's that important. True obedience is merely a byproduct of love. Obedience by itself is nothing but dead legalism, fulfilling obligations because they are obligations. Without love, it means nothing. Obedience on its own comes from our own effort. It burns out. It's inflexible. It punches out at 5pm. Love is eternal and tireless.

If you're finding your Christian life is a bit on the dead side, or that you don't like doing stuff that you know is right, ask for more love. If you find your life a bit on the self-centered side, ask for more love. If you want to really get closer to God, and to really understand where he's coming from, ask for more love. The gospel starts with "God so loved the world" not "Jesus so obeyed the father" or "Jesus so whipped Satan" or any of the other things we concentrate on first. If you're looking for how to follow Jesus' path, love is the fuel that will get you there.

Cretan smackdown

2010-12-21T20:12:00.002-05:00

This week is on Titus 1:10-16:

For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.

The letter to Titus is kind of a crash manual in church ministry, written by Paul, who started a lot of the early New Testament churches. At that time, there were a bunch of people going around telling people that they still had to obey the letter of the Jewish law, basically turning Christianity into nothing more than a bastardized version of Judaism, but with more laws. Obviously, for a religion based on grace, more laws and more law-enforcement isn't a good thing. So what do you do, if you see something like that? Just wring your hands and watch family after family getting led astray?

It's a difficult question, because on the one hand you want to be graceful and tolerant of others' faults, but on the other, you don't want to allow a disease to spread through the body unchecked. And that's where Paul's distinction comes in.

The people Paul is talking about aren't your typical brother and sister Christians. These are people who have set themselves up as authorities and who have influence over others, while refusing to accept the message of grace that Jesus died to bring us. They want to be lords and masters, worshiped and respected by all whose lives they touch. They're wolves in sheep's clothing, because they produce the appearance of sharing Jesus' message, but what they're really looking for is to feed on the body for their own edification and glory. They're in it for themselves. These aren't just Christians making honest Christian mistakes. These are people who fundamentally misunderstand the gospel, and who are actively working to destroy the understanding of others and place them into bondage.

Paul says to rebuke these people sharply. That seems fairly unchristian. We always hear about the doctrine that prophesies and rebukes should always be gentle and constructive. Anything sounding negative is supposedly never from God. But here is a guy saying to shut down someone who is going around preaching the law and to do it sharply. That doesn't sound gentle and edifying at all!

In this case, Paul's statement makes sense. He's a shepherd over his flock, and he wants to keep predators away. A shepherd does that with a stone, when making noise fails to keep them away. A sharp rebuke cuts through the pride that comes with legalism. It says "No, you are not sacred. You are not set apart and placed on high to judge those you see as beneath you." Better to offend them, even to make them look foolish in front of those they would prey on, than to stand idle and allow them to devour the innocent. Maybe you'll even be lucky and they'll repent of their malignant religiosity. Bonus!

For most cases, though, it's always better to be patient and gentle. If the person you'd love to rebuke is not hurting anyone, give them time and patience. If you're angry, give them time and patience. Pretty much the gospel is glued to the practice of grace and tolerance, except when it comes to those who would try to replace Jesus' pure gospel with one of their own selfish creation. At that point, you've got to stop it before it spreads and hurts others.

Better yet, don't be that kind of person yourself. Don't seek to control others and make them in your image. Don't seek to condemn others to raise yourself up. Don't try to acquire followers. Make it your business to introduce others to Jesus directly, serving them as they go through that process. Don't insert yourself between others and Jesus, making them go through you and your laws and traditions. That's not our job. It's toxic. If it's not the gospel Jesus brought us, it works against him.

Rebirth

2010-12-14T10:54:00.002-05:00

This week is on Ephesians 4:20-24:

That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

In philosophy classes across the world, the teacher always likes to do the 'born a second ago' exercise with people, where you try to prove that you can't tell whether time existed before right now. Movies explore the idea: What if you were a robot, or a clone, created with a lifetime of memories, but only months old? They're counterfeits of the idea of being born again, of being a new creation while still being an adult with a lifetime of memories and experiences.

Paul likes to use the term 'old man' to describe the pre-born-again self. In a lot of ways, there are many 'old men' in our lives. When you got saved as a Christian, you can mark the pre-Christian and Christian phases of your life. When you gave up smoking, maybe there's the old 'smoker' you and the current 'non-smoker' you. Repentance is the act of drawing that line. It says, "I am a new, free, creation." When Jesus forgives us, we're brand new.

The term 'old man' is also used in the Bible when Zechariah hears about his wife being pregnant. He says, "But I am an old man." Paul's terminology about sin can also apply here. Zechariah's "old man" body, before God touches him, can't get his wife pregnant. He gets his wife pregnant anyway, though, not because of some surgery or incredible good luck, but because God can make things new again, and fix that which doesn't work, or which never worked in the first place. It's pretty cool that the messenger sent to proclaim Jesus' arrival is the offspring of a man renewed by the touch of God. If John the Baptist was full of crap about God's ability to renew us, he wouldn't have existed in the first place!

So, what happens when God forgives and renews us? We're new creations as well. So how come we still have our lives and our memories and all of that? Shouldn't we be small, and wearing diapers? If God's reset everything, shouldn't everything be reset? How come, when we are forgiven, and when we ask to start fresh, we still have that creaky knee, and the expensive phone bill, and the nice house, and the vacation scheduled to some warm resort? God allows us to keep who we are, and what we have. He allows us to keep our personality, and our memories, and our friends and family. Those are part of who we are and what we've been blessed with. We're sort of like Jason Bourne, finding the safe full of money, and the nice apartment, and the skills and experiences, but without having to suffer the memory loss. (And usually without the CIA trying to kill us.) We get a new start without having to grow up all over again.

God has the ability to create us anew. We can put away the old man who has gotten us this far, because we can become new people in Christ. All cosmic accounts are settled. The old you may have had quite a distinguished history in sin, but when you repent, and are forgiven, the new you doesn't have to continue in it. You're freed from that. You awaken in a fully-stocked life, ready to begin living, just like a baby takes his first breath in a body that's already formed. It's great!

Don't allow the "old man" to limit what God can do in your newness. Everything Zechariah knew about his old man body said that he was beyond childbearing age. Everything he knew about his wife's old woman body said the same thing. Is that the last word on the topic? Or is God allowed to start something new? With God, all things are possible.

Don't allow your resemblance to the "old man" limit your relationships with others. Maybe the old man was a liar. Maybe the old man stole from people, or wasn't very nice, or was a dirty dirty whore. Is that how the new man was created as well? Was your repentance a squib because nobody else heard it happen? Or is the old man dead, and the new one born? Are you going to let life turn new back into old, or are you going to let God turn old into new?

God has given us a really good gift: to be able to start over. We can become a new and improved creation. We can have our broken things fixed. God is awesome.

Heavenly wisdom

2010-12-07T17:39:00.002-05:00

This week is on James 3:13-18

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

This is part of James' "forwarded email" to the Christians of his day. James shared some of his wisdom in the hopes of helping other people to be wise. The unwise things that James addresses, bitter envy and selfish ambition, are hard to spot from the outside. They require us to examine ourselves.

Bitter envy comes from thinking you deserve better than you do, and that someone else's fortune is necessarily at your expense. If you're not the smartest or wealthiest guy, but think you should be, any time someone else displays wealth or intelligence, you will find yourself getting angry. You will resent them for having what they have, or you will resent God for not giving you the same thing, and it will hinder your relationships. It will keep you grumpy and disconnected, and it may result in you treating others badly.

Selfish ambition is different from normal ambition. It also comes from thinking you deserve better than you do, but it leads you to try to take it, rather than just being bitter about it. It's not bad to be ambitious. There are lots of things we could do better at, have more of, or otherwise improve upon. People should be ambitious.

Selfish ambition is a different thing. If you have selfish ambition, you will throw anyone under the bus to get what you want. You will cheat your own family just to get that promotion or that bigger paycheck. You will spend your kids' college money to get to be the best golfer in town. If you volunteer, it's so people will see you helping people out, and think what a good person you are. If you study the Bible, it's so that you can find that one obscure passage nobody else teaches on, or so that you can memorize bits and pieces to use in dominating other Christians in arguments. If you pray, you pray just a bit longer and louder so that everyone can see how very spiritual you are. If you fast, you make sure everyone knows you are fasting and how very long it's been since you've eaten. Every bit of spare energy and resources God gives you gets spent on enlarging your influence and reputation. That's selfish ambition.

So, what's the harm in bitter envy and selfish ambition? They idolize the self. When everyone's random actions are about you, because you're bitterly envious, you can't share in others' blessings. You can't praise God and rejoice with them, because you're thinking about what you lack. You may even try to sabotage what God has given them, and steal His blessing from them. That causes disorder in relationships. Evil comes from this. When you're busy focusing on how to get ahead, you may be doing everything you can to put others behind. Jesus put himself at the bottom. If you're clamouring for the top, taking the double portion for yourself, and stepping on the hands and necks of your brothers to get to the prize, you're moving in the opposite direction of the Jesus you're claiming to follow.

So what does wisdom look like? It's gentle and generous. It's merciful, honest, and agreeable. It produces others like it. It's bigger than "me" and "now." It's at peace.

Death lottery

2010-11-30T15:01:00.004-05:00

This week is on Luke 13:1-5:

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

People die. It's part of life. Nobody wants to die, because they can't see the next phase of our eternal existence. So, in order to not have to face death, people attach all sorts of significance to when people die, how they die, what must have happened if they died, what sort of person they must have been, and so on. People make up fairy tales, like "It's not God's will that anyone dies," or "Only the good die young." If someone dies, sometimes people imagine that God wanted to get rid of them in order to punish them. Jesus attacks that bizarre perspective here.

Death is just the next stage of our existence. People in the early church referred to it as a kind of sleep. It's temporary. God knows when it's going to happen, and it's OK. It's not punishment. Dying in a car wreck, or of lingering pancreatic cancer, doesn't mean you're less beloved than someone who lives into their second century or dies a martyr's death. Not being raised from the dead miraculously doesn't mean that God doesn't love you, or doesn't love your grieving relatives and friends. That's religious hogwash designed to guilt people into religion. Everyone dies. How it happens is less important that what happens next.

The people Jesus mentions all died horrible deaths. They weren't punishments. They weren't testimonies to how horrible the people were, or how much God hated their relatives, or their lifestyles, or the communities they lived in. Just like God knows when the bus drops you off to get born, he knows when the bus shows up to take you away. Obsessing about it will do you no good. If you want to worry, worry about being right with God.

Jesus says not to worry about the manner of your death, but to worry about your salvation. What good does it do you to spend a comparatively tiny span of ninety years on earth, dying peacefully of natural causes, only to spend the next zillion years of eternity in torment because you don't know God? It's much better to live twenty-two years in poverty, burn to death in a horrible house fire, after years of a degenerative neural disorder, leaving a huge grieving family unable to provide for themselves, and end up together with God's people for eternity. But all we see is this world we live in now, and so we make up all kinds of ideas and theories to try to make sense of the timing and method of departure. We concentrate on that, and miss the whole point of being here in the first place.

If someone dies of congestive heart failure, or gets run over by a truck, or dies in a plane crash, or gets AIDS and wastes away, does that disqualify them from sainthood? Can you seriously argue that that person wasn't loved by God? If that was the criteria, there wouldn't be any death. Everyone would get raised from the dead when people prayed for them. It doesn't happen like that though. Does that mean we fail in some other area?

When God raises someone from the dead, he's making a point about something else. It isn't about the person being raised from the dead, or the person praying for the raising. It's a demo that takes place at a time or place of God's choosing. It isn't because the person who died was any more beloved by their friends and family, or any more useful as a Christian here on earth. It isn't because the person praying has fasted longer, prayed harder, studied more theology, or preached a more solid sermon than the next guy. It's all about God and the point he's trying to make at that moment.

If someone you love dies, and they don't come back when you call for them, don't take it personally. Be happy for them for where they are right now. Would you force someone who retired to come back to work, just because you missed them? Would you force someone to give up their diploma and go back to school because they graduated before you did? If someone is born prematurely, does that mean their mother hates them and doesn't want to do their breathing and eating for them any more? We're so inconsistent in how we view this stuff.

Meanwhile, worry about the time you have left. Make use of your time and of the gifts God gave you. Get to know God and help those you love to find him too. That's the important stuff. That's the stuff that lasts longer than our time here. And if after all of that, you die a stupid senseless death like billions have, at least your time here meant something.

Pulling a crumpled-up Satan out of the trash

2010-11-23T15:10:00.003-05:00

This week's revolutionary Bible goodness is extracted from Galatians 4:8-11

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.

The Galatian church was a Gentile church set up by Paul, pretty much by accident, because he was sick and needed to recover. These verses are in the middle of a rather long letter to that church. These Christians were all new Christians. The church hadn't been around for generations. They had all left pagan Roman worship for Christianity, at least mostly. These were new believers who had seemed to get it, but ultimately made some mistakes.

This isn't a "blah blah Pharisees blah blah organized church etc" rant on Paul's part. These aren't people clinging to an old way of doing church that isn't relevant to the times. These are "unchurched" new believers, who ironically enough, should know better. They made a decision to leave the old religion. This isn't a case of the new wine in the old wineskin. There was never an old wineskin in the first place with these people.

Like in most of his letters, Paul is angry and frustrated. These people should know better! As Gentiles, they don't have all of the complicated stuff floating around their heads about circumcision, the laws of Moses, hundreds of years of Jewish tradition, etc. It's not like there's a big gray area between their old faith and their new faith, like there could be for the Jews. There's the complicated Roman system of festivals and Jupiter and Mars and all of the other Roman deities to worry about, in one hand, and in the other there's the freedom of Jesus Christ. There's nothing in common between them at all. What would possess them to go running after Jupiter's things while still holding onto Jesus Christ? What does he have that they need?

The festivals were a big part of Roman culture, though. The year was structured around them. All of your friends would have gone to them. You were expected to be seen there. Imagine being told that you had to give up New Years Eve, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas when you became a Christian. Imagine having to give up watching sports with your friends and all of the cheering and bonding that goes along with it. Suddenly it doesn't seem so easy to make the switch. Maybe God won't notice if you sort of include that stuff back into your life, because you know. Is God really going to send you to hell for dressing as a witch and eating a bag of candy?

Paul's point is that the Galatians had already decided to give that stuff up. They'd made a clean break from the old life. Why go back when you've already been set free? Is the candy sweet enough to justify muddying and confusing your faith? Are the fireworks so impressive that it's worth blurring your friends' understanding of which God you serve? Is that circle of friends that insists you spend every Sunday yelling at an idolatrous image worth diluting your connection with God? (Note, I'm using modern imagery to describe the situations the Romans were in. I'm not saying modern holidays and pastimes are satanic in any way.) Paul is like "Dudes, you were almost there! What happened? Why are you making a mess of this?"

We're not Galatian Christians in the first century with a history of pagan idol worship (hopefully), but Paul's point is still useful for us to hear. If God has delivered us from something, if we've given that something up, what good reason could we possibly have for picking it back up again? Do we want to be enslaved again?

We can act like the Roman pagans were pretty stupid for going back to idol worship and celebrating false gods, but when you take into account the social aspects and the years of believing it was OK, are they really that different from us? Is someone who gives up porn, or cigarettes, or alcoholism, or witchcraft, only to go back to it, really any different than those formerly-ex-pagan believers? It was dumb then, and it's dumb now. Two thousand years of stupidity and we're still proudly carrying the torch.

Don't dig around in the trash for something you no longer need. Let it go. It was thrown out for a reason. Ask God for something new. Ask God for new friends, if the old ones are killing you. Ask for reasons to celebrate him, and not some pitchfork-holding fish-man, or whatever the modern equivalent is. Did God waste his time setting you free? No! Put it down. Step away. Be free.

Using God

2010-11-16T17:15:00.002-05:00

This week's goodness is on Hosea 13:5-6:

I cared for you in the wilderness,
in the land of burning heat.
When I fed them, they were satisfied;
when they were satisfied, they became proud;
then they forgot me.

These verses sum up the natural progression of an emotion-based Christian life. When times are bad, we want God. When times are good, we want good times. Does a healthy relationship work like that? Do people get married to start a family, and then once they do well financially, run off after the secretary/gardener and expect their relationship to last and be strengthened? Does that turn out well, and is it a true expression of mutual love?

God cared for the Israelites when he took them out of bondage in Egypt. He provided everything for them when he led them through the desert, but once they arrived in Israel, they had everything they needed and discarded God. They're like the guy who tells the girl she's beautiful and promises to marry her, only to abandon her once he's had sex with her. The Israelites' love for God is shallow and based only in their momentary need.

We do the same thing. We find ourselves in need, and beg God for help. We promise to follow him, if only he will help us. God helps us completely, and we are satisfied. We are so satisfied that we forget that we even needed to ask God for help in the first place. We justify his aid as coincidence, or our own latent ability, or whatever. We begin to act as though we never needed God, and we forget our earlier dedication. God seeks us, but we've forgotten him.

We're kind of not supposed to do that. God is eternal. His love for us is eternal, not momentary. We always love God back when he has something we desire. But what about when we don't have any pressing needs that he can fulfill for us, or worse, when he wants something of us that may cost us something? Does our love go that deep? Or are we trying to play the omniscient God for a fool? Do we think he can't see our heart?

Ask God for a deeper love. Ask him for consistency. Be aware of your life choices. Are you faithful? Are you dedicated? Are you available to him? Or have you moved on to chase other things? Come back and stay.

The beginning

2010-11-09T16:26:00.003-05:00

This week is on Genesis 1:1-5:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

This is how it all began. It was a blank slate. Nothing but God. We often forget that God was before everything; that everything came from God. We address God as if he's occupying some planet-sized territory in the heavens, but he's not like that. He's amazing.

God has even conquered death on our behalf. Of course he has. He invented it in the first place. God invented day and night. God invented oceans and land. He designed each creature, even anticipating how they would change over time. (Dogs must have been a fun gift, knowing all along how many kinds there would be, but waiting for us to unwrap each new breed one-by-one over centuries.) He created us, and then offered us the opportunity to spend forever with him.

God's whims and desires manifested themselves in the days of creation. Even the idea of light and darkness are his design. The contrasts of air, land, and sea are his idea. He dwells in it all, hovering over it, cherishing it, and being in it. He's not far away. He's not out of earshot. He's among us, even in us.

Genesis is a fun book, because it describes creation as something God created in the same way we might undertake a weekend project or tinker with something in our garage. Everything we've ever known, or are capable of perceiving, came about over six days of work, for no other stated reason than that he wanted it and thought it was good.

No matter what you face, God is bigger than it. God is capable of taking it apart, fixing it, or replacing it. There is no problem you can have that God cannot understand and solve, fully and perfectly. The most wonderful and beautiful things, and the most horrible and frightening, are all God's invention. Everything bends to his will or is broken. There is no reason to fear or respect anything in the same way that we can fear and respect God. That's the beginning of wisdom.

The Bible begins with these verses telling us about how the universe was born. I'm sure some of us science geeks are curious about the details, but the real story being told is how great God is. Not only is the universe his, but even the dreams and ideas behind it were his. How can you not worship him, knowing that?

Restoration

2010-11-02T10:57:00.003-04:00

This week's goodness is on Genesis 26:18-22:

Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.
Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. But the herders of Gerar quarreled with those of Isaac and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him. Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, “Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”

These verses are next to some ones we had for our church board planning retreat this past weekend. The first bit is what strikes me. The Philistines didn't like Abraham's people. In those days, when you wanted to get rid of someone, you cut off their water supply so they'd move elsewhere. The wells Abraham had dug were plugged up by the Philistines so that his people would move on. When Isaac unplugged them, he was making a statement that he intended to stay in the land. And the fact that he gave them the same names makes it almost as if the Philistines had never interfered.

As you can see from the rest of the verses, well-digging is not a simple process. You may find water, only to find you have a fight on your hands shortly afterwards. Isaac took Abraham's wells back, but making new ones was a trial. It took him three wells before he got one his neighbors didn't want to fight him over. It would have just been easier to move elsewhere.

Remember that these are God's people, just like us. Did God leave Abraham's family when he died, so that the Philistines could plug up Abraham's wells? Or was it just a temporary season, after which everything was restored? My feeling is that it was just a season, a blip in Isaac's timeline, after which life continued as before. Sometimes we end up without things, and God knows we'll get them back. Sometimes we go to live in strange territory, and God knows we'll be back. Setbacks can be temporary.

I like the fact that Isaac gave the same names to the wells he unplugged. It's an important statement of continuity. Once, they were lost, but now they're found. It's as if they were never gone in the first place. He wasn't going to let some rowdy neighbors ruin his family legacy. He wasn't even going to acknowledge the interruption. That's a good attitude to have.

Holy revolution

2010-10-26T15:06:00.002-04:00

This week's on 2 Chronicles 23:12-17:

When Athaliah heard the noise of the people running and cheering the king, she went to them at the temple of the LORD. She looked, and there was the king, standing by his pillar at the entrance. The officers and the trumpeters were beside the king, and all the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets, and singers with musical instruments were leading the praises. Then Athaliah tore her robes and shouted, "Treason! Treason!"
Jehoiada the priest sent out the commanders of units of a hundred, who were in charge of the troops, and said to them: "Bring her out between the ranks and put to the sword anyone who follows her." For the priest had said, "Do not put her to death at the temple of the LORD." So they seized her as she reached the entrance of the Horse Gate on the palace grounds, and there they put her to death.
Jehoiada then made a covenant that he and the people and the king would be the LORD's people. All the people went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. They smashed the altars and idols and killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altars.

First, a little back story so your fingers don't get tired from reading all of the chapter before this: Once upon a time, there was an evil power-hungry woman named Athaliah, whose failure of a son was once king, until his advisors got sick of him and killed him. She became murderously angry, and began killing all of the other people who could have inherited the throne, while ruling the country in her dead son's place. The head priest's wife managed to save one of the little princes, and hid him away until he got old enough to be king. At that point, the priest, Jehoiada, in a turn of events that's all too familiar to people who live in third world countries, met with the generals in the military and took power in order to reinstall the rightful king. That's where these verses begin.

Evil Athaliah was furious. Not only did her plan fail, but she was no longer in charge of Judah. And people were glad! In moments, she would be dead, hacked to pieces by a death squad sent by the priest to make sure she wouldn't be trouble for the new regime. Once she was gone, the new king made a public statement of faith, and a mob went down to the temple of Baal and tore it down, smashed it to bits, and executed its head priest where he stood.

This is not the sort of stuff that happens nowadays, outside of the third world. We're far too comfortable to even protest outrageous stuff, let alone rise up like our ancestors did. The enlightened modern response to rampant immorality, widespread government corruption, and the suppression of our faith would be to celebrate its diversity, proclaim that there are multiple paths to the truth, and keep our heads down, as long as there's stuff on TV to keep us occupied and our rent keeps getting paid. In the social/political sense, we could always vote out the corrupt and immoral, so bloodshed isn't necessary, but that same lotus-eater complacency is there, even in our personal lives.

That personal complacency is what this week's lesson is on. In ancient Judah, they suddenly changed their whole society and system of government in a matter of hours, but our simple self-destructive habits take us years to even admit to, let alone change. How is that possible? Shouldn't it be the other way around? In ancient Judah, people faced down monsters who held them in bondage for years, who could have killed them, and yet they prevailed. We face only our own inconvenience and discomfort, and even then we fail to act. If you ever wanted an illustration of the power of complacency to hold men and women in bondage, that's it. If you can't even spend five minutes in prayer, or you can't even sit down to read or listen to the Bible on a regular basis, but you can spend hours in front of the tv each night, you know it too well already.

We weren't put on this earth to sleep. There's plenty of time for that between death and resurrection. We're here to grow and improve and do God's work, while enjoying and taking part in His creation. We can't do that when we're sleepwalking. One priest in ancient Judah changed their whole society for the better in a matter of hours. We're all priests. Let's see what change we can make in our own lives.

Bobbing for scorpions

2010-10-19T16:16:00.002-04:00

This week's pilfered goodness is from Luke 11:9-13:

"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

I was listening to a podcast the other day and heard a cool teaching on these verses, so I'm going to steal bits of it and give them to you, because that's how I roll. It's a great indirect interpretation that answers the question of what happens if you pray for something stupid and self-destructive, like a copy of Windows XP instead of Linux or Mac. (As long as I'm being naughty by stealing, I might as well also get the anti-Microsoft dig in there.)

So if you're like me, you probably have an angel on one shoulder who says "Pray boldly for what you want. God loves you." and a devil on the other shoulder who says "Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it. God will reward your ignorance with an exact literal interpretation of your stupid request, because stupidity should hurt." So you start off in prayer for some stupid selfish thing you want, but then you're like "Gaah! What if..." So then you spend all of this time agonizing over whether what you want is Jesus-approved, and whether you're going to ruin your life by talking to Jesus, and whether or not it might just be better to ask for a nice football instead of the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle that you really want. So your prayer life gets lame and full of all sorts of self-doubt and angst.

The thing is, these two paragraphs kind of go together and complete each other. The first bit, about the knocking on sleepy guys' doors for bread, is all about the bold, persistent, embarrassing pursuit of your request. Unimaginative idiots stop at that half and start asking for what they want without reading the rest of the instruction manual. If only we were all so lucky. The second half is all about God's love for us, despite what we might want. It's about the father who knows that if he feeds his kids only ice cream, like they ask for, that those kids will get scurvy. When he gives them oatmeal, it's not because he can't hear them, or because he doesn't love them anymore. He just doesn't want his kids to have scurvy, because that's for pirates, not his beloved kids. Self-conflicted contingency planners like some of us, who are too smart to not look for the fine print, are rewarded by continuing on to this half.

We all do our best to pray God's will for our lives. We also know some things that are not God's will for us. Most stuff we genuinely want doesn't fall into either of those categories. What Jesus is saying here is to go ahead and ask for it. The worst he's going to do is say "no" and give you something better. You're not going to get scurvy. God has you covered.

It also does a good job of explaining why you don't always get what you ask for. Maybe you really wanted that ice cream. Too much ice cream will make you sick, but you don't care. You think that's just the other kids, and that you're specifically designed to run on ice cream, like the human version of some kind of super high tech concept car. So you ask, sure that it's God's will to give you the tummy fuel your body was designed for, only to get some stupid oatmeal, and not even the kind with puzzles on the packets and six tablespoons of sugar mixed in. By reading these verses, and understanding what God is getting at, you realize he doesn't hate you. You don't have to be afraid to ask, nor do you have to read subterfuge into God's responses. Even though the verses aren't specifically about the ice-cream versus oatmeal debate, they reveal enough about the character of God to explain the answer.

God is eager to give us gifts that will nourish and build us. He will even risk having us not like him for a while by doing so. We don't know what he has for us until we ask him for it. Not all of his gifts are unsolicited. Sometimes we need to ask, even if we have to be embarrassing and stubborn in the process.

What do we do now?

2010-10-12T14:09:00.003-04:00

This week is on Luke 3:7-10:

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
"What should we do then?" the crowd asked.

If Jesus was a long-awaited meal, John the Baptist was the tasty appetizer. His teachings opened people up and begin to create a hunger for what was to come. People came to him vaguely aware that they needed something, but unsure of what it was. John helped people identify what the spiritual rumblies were that they were feeling, and how to satisfy them.

People at that time thought they had everything figured out, spiritually. They knew they were descended from Abraham, and that there was a contractual agreement between Abraham and God, so they figured everything was taken care of. They thought they'd inherited salvation, but what they had really inherited was sin. When John explained the truth, the crowd was like "Oh crap. Now what?"

In John's time, the motto of the sleepwalkers was "I am a descendant of Abraham." Nowadays, it might be "I was raised Christian, and try to do good things," or "I don't buy shirts made in sweatshops, and I try to stay green and eat organic vegetarian." It's an attitude based on the past, which allows them to remain asleep in the present. It's the callous attitude of a wealthy man, who says "I owe nobody anything, so I shall do as I like." The problem, as John points out, is that if it was just a matter of who we are as people, God could create that sort of person in a flash. He doesn't need us to just exist. We were created with a purpose.

God created us to live in partnership with him. From the beginning, when he put Adam in the garden and added Eve, and trusted them with watching over his creation, he had a plan for us. There's no mention of God's covenants with the monkeys or the fish. God speaks to us, walks with us, eats with us, and allows us to wrestle with him, because that's the sort of beings he intends us to be. His relationship with us is like that. He gives us things to do, which he could easily do himself, because his connection with us is interactive. We aren't at all like the rocks or the trees. We have creativity and personality, and intelligence.

We're not supposed to sleepwalk through life, relying on our past and our inheritance. We're supposed to engage life, consult with God, and share creation with him. John's message to the crowd was that the time to wake up is now. Our lives matter. The moment matters. The eternal future also matters. We'll want to be sure to include God in all of them. No more sitting around playing video games because the salvation box is already checked and there's nothing more to do. Greet God and get going. Wake up.

Cutting down the barbed wire fence

2010-10-05T13:09:00.002-04:00

This week's Bibletastic message comes from Ephesians 2:11-18:

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

The history of mankind up until Christ's resurrection can be summed up as follows:
Mankind was created in a loving play environment with one warning label on one toy: "Do not ingest." Mankind disobeyed and was thrown out. Thousands of years passed of them screwing things up. Eventually a few people listened better than the others. God picked them, and they interbred, producing a dynasty of people who were more tuned into God than their neighbors. These were the Hebrews. God then selectively bred a few of them into their own subtribe, the Levites, to be priests. Then, they spent another couple thousand years developing their pedigree, while denying God to their neighbors. By the time Jesus came, they'd developed all sorts of problems. Meanwhile, the rest of mankind, who God also wanted to know, were totally shut out by a system of walls and racist laws.

If you weren't Jewish, and you were born in Jesus' time, you were basically born into an inverse version of Nazi theology. You had the master race, the Jews, and you had the rest of mankind, the dirty goyim, who were marginalized. They weren't allowed into the main temple. People weren't allowed to intermarry. If you were a good Jew, you wouldn't even allow the dirty Gentiles into your house. If you touched them in the market, you'd wash your hands. If you were a Gentile, you could still sort of worship the Jewish God, but you couldn't worship him past the outer wall. Past that point was "Jews only. Gentiles verboten."

Naturally this wasn't a great setup for a God who wants to include everyone. The whole, "keep it to yourselves" thing worked great when mankind was still pretty young, but it was time for people to worship together. There is no master race. There are no factions in God's kingdom. We're all one people, united, under God.

Before Christ died and was resurrected, we were all divided against each other. Gentiles were divided from Jews. Jews were divided from Levites. It was a caste system. If you were a Gentile, you couldn't enter the temple building. If you were a Jew, you couldn't enter the inner room unless you descended from Levi. Inheritance went along family lines. If you were Greek, you couldn't earn your way into being a Jew, no matter how much gold you had. The same went for ordinary Jews who wanted to become Levites. There were physical walls and there were social walls, and nobody could cross them. (As an aside, these ancient attitudes explain a lot of the modern Israeli political decisions that seem crazy to us.)

The problem is, even as people were divided from each other, we were also divided from relationship with God. Just as you couldn't change your genes to become Jewish if you were born Greek or Ethiopian, you couldn't just change your spiritual nature to become worthy of hanging out with God. You couldn't earn a place with him any more than you could earn your way into being a Levite. It was impossible. Anybody who has suffered racism knows what a frustrating situation that can be. You can always change what you do, but you can't change how you were born.

When the Temple was smashed after Jesus' crucifixion, it was a sign that everything had changed. No longer were we divided from God's companionship because of what we were born into. No longer could we be kept from worshiping him, and declaring him to be our God. We aren't foreigners anymore. Jews and Gentiles no longer have to rob and mistrust each other. Everyone is one family. There's a reason why Peter was strongly rebuked for shrinking back from Gentile companionship. You can't be made acceptable to God, equal in his eyes with his own Son, and then go around saying that some people are more equal than others. You're just like the guy who was forgiven the big debt and then tried to enforce the small one. You're missing the point.

Be thankful that you don't have to delegate your relationship with God to a special class of pampered wealthy priests. You don't have to delegate God's missionary work to some career bureaucracy. You can take part in God's work directly. You can be touched by God without being declared unclean. He's not going to go make a show of washing his hands afterwards. Be thankful for the level playing field. Don't let it go to waste.

How to (not) repaint a totaled car

2010-09-28T12:41:00.002-04:00

This week is on Luke 21:32-36:

"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
"Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man."

Yes, I like the gospel of Luke. It has slightly more geeky detail than the other gospels, plus it sounds a little like my name. People sometimes think my name is Luke, when we're first introduced, and I often secretly let them keep on thinking that, partly because it's the name of the author of this gospel, partly because it reminds me of Luke Skywalker, the great Jedi knight, but mostly because it's unimportant. Some things matter, and some things don't.

In these verses, Jesus has just got done telling people about the sorts of doom and gloom events they can expect to happen at the end of the world. Bloggers do that now, but Jesus was ahead of his time. They're all pretty horrible things, if your focus is your physical life on earth. If you're focused on the spirit, and the eternal big picture, they're actually more of an adventure. In the eternal sense, the ten years you might spend in a Mad Max world, fighting over food and fuel and dodging asteroids would probably seem like the two minutes you spent screaming and digging your talons into the hapless passenger next to you on the roller coaster. People are going to freak out, but they can't see the end like they can on the roller coaster. So Jesus says, "Don't worry. This ride will come to a stop and everything will be OK. I'll still be here, and so will you."

I hate roller coasters. I'm afraid of almost everything anyway, so I don't know why someone would pay to be even more scared. But imagine you were that sort of person, and that you somehow began to believe that the roller coaster ride was everything. The end of the ride would be more terrifying than the ride itself. You would be investing an inordinate amount of effort in trying to make your seat comfortable, trying to find ways to prolong the ride, trying to look good in front of the other passengers, and so on. You might start hoarding money and begging off of the other passengers to help you accumulate more, so that when the carnie's little cabbage-scented hands try to pull you off of the ride at the end, you can simply buy another ticket. In short, you'd act like a jerk to people around you and behave like a complete jackass, just to preserve an illusion. That's what we do when we worry about the things our life needs right now, without keeping the big eternal picture in mind.

Much like our bodies will decay after we die, and then get reborn in the future, the world will do the same thing, as mankind comes to an end. Even in the sense of our lifespan, it effectively does that. How many dead people make investment decisions and enjoy the things of the world? A car is only useful to you until the day you die. Character is eternal. A connection to God is eternal. God himself is eternal. Those are much better investments. When we die, we respawn, like in a video game. When the world dies, our stuff stays dead.

Suppose your car needed a new paint job, thanks to the flock of malevolent birds in your neighbor's tree who sit around eating caustic berries and using the hood for target practice, while you sleep. Suppose a meteor came out of the sky, obliterating the birds in a streak of fire (yesss!) and then totaling your car (noooo!). As the car is being towed to the junk yard, is that a good time to get it repainted? Being attached to this present world, which is getting towed to the junkyard, is exactly like repainting that condemned car. If it comes to a choice between spending your efforts on something meaningful, or sinking them into something which is going to get crushed and turned into scrap, spend them on something meaningful.

You're probably totally enjoying the ride, or being scared witless, but there is something beyond that. You probably always wanted to get that car painted, but is it really that important, given where it's going? Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open, and be ready for the ride to end. He tells us not to squander the best days of our life on crap that doesn't matter. That's really important advice. We want to be ready for eternity, not caught off guard. We want to be improved and enhanced, not drained and drugged by meaningless garbage. If you're only looking at the world around you, you might not know the difference.

The tower

2010-09-21T12:59:00.003-04:00

This week is on Luke 14:25-30:

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

These verses remind me of the ill-fated mall expansion project in my city. A famous mall developer made a bunch of promises to double the size of the mall and turn it into some multi-billion dollar worldwide tourist attraction. I know, it sounds completely nuts, but the local politicians fell for his pitch and gave him a thirty year tax break in anticipation of the wheelbarrows of money the guy would be bringing in. Needless to say, things didn't play out like that, and so every time people go to the mall, they see a giant empty shell and realize what idiots this guy and the local leaders were. His legacy is foolishness. Nobody looks at an abandoned, half-built tower and thinks words of praise for its builder.

Saying something isn't the same as doing it. Popeye's friend Wimpy would always say "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." It sounds like a fair deal, until you take into account that Wimpy is never able to pay his bills. We can end up doing the same thing when we don't count the costs of what we agree to. "I'll gladly do the work Tuesday, for the thing I'm being praised for agreeing to today."

Jesus had churchy people following him around and being all like "Yes Lord! Yes Lord!" but without actually finding out what they were agreeing to. They wanted to look holy, and to be seen as following Christ, but they hadn't counted the costs of what they were signing up for. They just wanted the attention and the feelings of grandeur that come with agreeing to a big task. The word 'politician' comes to mind. "Sure, I'll end all wars, bring prosperity and unite the people! Absolutely! Just vote for me (and once I'm in office, then I'll try to figure out if it's possible.)"

The problem is that being a Christian is hard. Jesus mentions the tower story right after talking about having to bear a cross in order to follow him. A cross is the manifestation of being prosecuted as a hated criminal. If you're looking to be popular, or prosperous, or free, you may be disappointed in the Christian life. Jesus was none of those things. Before you say "Yes Lord!" take a moment and think about what it is you're signing up for.

In order to study, follow, and imitate Christ, you've got to be willing to go where he went and endure the sorts of things he endured. Don't sign up to be a blacksmith if you don't like heat. Don't agree to become a doctor if you hate blood. Don't quit your job to become a landscaper if you've got bad hay fever. These are all common sense decisions, but people throw it away when it comes to religion. People who would never go around telling people they're going to be an astronaut will go around telling people they're going to be a missionary to African warlords, before they've even considered the fact that it could cost them their life. Then when it comes down to actually going, they freak out, backpedal, and end up like the guy who made all of the big promises to build the three hundred acre megaplex and instead delivered an ugly fenced-in warehouse.

Before you agree to something in God's kingdom, ask yourself if you are really willing to go all the way. It's better to say no, and then reconsider than it is to promise you'll do it and never deliver. Jesus himself says to count the cost. He doesn't want blind obedience. He wants willing, informed, mature obedience. He wants people who know what it could cost them and who are willing to do it anyway. Are you that person?

Residual power

2010-09-14T15:28:00.004-04:00

This week is on Luke 6:17-19:

He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

These verses are on a phenomenon I've seen a couple times in the Bible and don't fully understand. I guess that's the definition of 'wonderful.' Sometimes the essence of God's power seems to dwell on a person or an object, and that power becomes some kind of passive reservoir. There are stories of saints' bodies healing people of sickness, of rooms being filled with power, of handkerchiefs or garments being used to perform miracles. It's beyond explanation.

I'm sure people have written lengthy theological explanations on why it works like that, and how God has to work in order for it to happen as described, but it's not the same. You're replacing biology with taxidermy when you do that. I lost my love of astronomy and physics for years because of the drive to turn everything into heavy math. Part of the joy of God's universe is the wisdom to know when to just stop and wonder at what's there. You don't have to explain everything. You shouldn't. Why not just stop at being amazed?

It's such a curse of our modern mind to want to vivisect every miracle we come across. We want to put a pin through the middle of the butterfly and give it a fancy Latin name so we will never look at it again. There's something separate beyond the science of things that gives them value. We read so many books on God, and listen to so many dry sermons on what we should or shouldn't do, or how God must do this, or cannot do that. It's easy to lose your sense of wonder in the process.

So anyway, there's this miracle of God's indwelling power. It's not permanent. If it was, we wouldn't need to encounter God on our own. We could just make a trip to the closest holy artifact or spirit-filled room and get our needs taken care of there. We can't just enter a building and be filled with the Holy Spirit by sitting there. We can't just keep a scarf in a box and dig it out every time we need something. That's idolatry. But still, there's this fascinating thing where God's power does inhabit things. Imagine, being healed by the shadow of a fellow Christian passing over you while you're sitting down to eat a sandwich! Imagine your friend's baseball cap healing your son's brain tumor! Imagine being delivered of demons by putting your arm around the guy preaching on the street corner! It's almost vulgar to try to explain stuff like that.

It's also easy to say "Well, that's not God. It's not one of the miracles detailed in Paul's Epistles." or "Well, I don't think God could do that, because it's not scriptural." Wrong! The first rule of making rules about God is that you can't make rules about God! The Bible isn't some kind of definitive taxonomy of miracles to be found in the world, or a kind of Sears catalog of things we can choose for God to do. They're a tiny slice of what God has to offer. It's a bunch of almost prehistoric stories that say "This is what we've seen so far, and it blows our minds." So much more can happen. You have no idea.

There's so much emphasis on laying on hands for imparting healing and performing miracles. There's a ton of it in the Bible, but this story shows that there's something more. God loves to have us participate in the administration of his kingdom by doing things like preaching and laying on hands, but he also likes to show up and administer things directly. Is that what he's doing by imbuing various objects with his power? I have no idea. But I do know that it's pretty amazing, and that you'd totally miss the boat if you were only ever waiting for some suited evangelical powerhouse to walk up and shove the miracle into you, like some kind of holy nail gun. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes you just pick it up elsewhere.

Keep your sense of what the ancients used to call "holy mystery." Understand that there are things you may never understand, but that doesn't make them any less cool. Be open to what God wants to do and how he wants to do it. He's amazing and can come up with ideas quicker than any of us can catalog them.

Don't be that guy

2010-09-07T16:47:00.003-04:00

This week is on Luke 17:1-4:

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves.
"If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him."

In this short conversation, Jesus touches on three sides of sin: The person enticing people into sin, the person committing the sin, and the person aware of the sin or victim to the sin. That pretty much covers any position except maybe the person reading about the sin and shaking their head, but that could fall under the third example.

The worst guy to be is the guy trying to lure others into sin. He knows what God wants, but he also knows what he wants and they're not the same thing. He's the guy who talks women into adultery or premarital sex, because marriage is different now than it was in Biblical times. He's the guy who says it's OK to steal, because insurance covers the losses anyway. He's the guy who says it's OK to suspend forgiveness of certain offenses like rape or pedophilia, because some things are just beyond society's forgiveness. He takes the opinions of man, or his own thoughts, and crosses out God's commands to supersede them with his own. He may get what he wants, but things don't end well for him if he continues on that path.

God's commands for mankind aren't just a practice test for us to judge our character by. They really do have solid justifications that help us. Sometimes those justifications are society-wide. One person committing a sin won't necessarily destroy society, but a society of people committing that sin will. One person may even be a bad example for the rest of society. God's words have depth.

If someone is an alcoholic and you try to use the scriptures with Jesus in the wedding at Cana as justification of why they should drink, and they fall for it, they'll sin, and you'll be held accountable. Why lead someone into a trap just to make them fit the model of how you think things should be? It's the ultimate in selfishness, and if there's one thing Christlikeness isn't, it's selfish.

What if you're the guy who sins? Sin is sin, but if you realize your mistake, God wants you to be able to start over. There are no lifetime registries or debtors prisons in God's kingdom. If you genuinely want to start over, and to change your life, God is there to help it happen. It might take you a thousand tries, but God is there each of those times to help you up. Never carry a lifetime burden around when you don't have to. Your life is eternal. That's a long time to be carrying something you don't need to carry.

What if you're the guy who gets hurt by someone sinning, or sees someone sinning? Say something! Seriously, this is the one modern church people seem to get caught up on. Don't talk about the sinner behind their back. Don't close your heart to them until they're changed. Talk to them. If you're angry, tell them you're angry. If you're hurt, tell them that. If you're worried about them, tell them you're worried. Don't just sit on it.

If they try to change, support them in it. Seriously, don't go around telling people they're not going to change, or that they're just saying that to trick people. If they're making an effort, you can make one too. Do you want Jesus telling God the Father that you're not sincere, that you're just saying the words so that you can get into heaven? Even if it takes them a thousand tries, each time help them up, and help them get going. What would Jesus do, right?

Sin is something to be put behind us. Don't make other people do it so you don't have to examine your own. Don't hold onto other people's sin so you don't have to let your own go. Don't hold onto your own sin when you can let it go. In these verses, God tells us how to be free.

Directed closure

2010-08-31T09:11:00.002-04:00

This week's goodness is on Luke 9:1-6:

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: "Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them." So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.

Sometimes there are reasons to quit things before they're done to your satisfaction. It goes against our ideas of perseverance, but there are sometimes good reasons behind cutting your losses and moving on. The modern mindset is to yield to any emotional whim that comes up, and in trying to counter that we can often fly in the opposite and equally wrong direction of being inflexible and determined to go in a direction that doesn't lead anywhere.

Back in my nerd "glory days" in college, we did some robotics work with lego bricks, microcontrollers and motors. The idea was to build a robot to hit a certain set of goals on an obstacle course. The first step of that was to get the robot to move. When someone would finally figure out how to get the microcontroller to turn the motors on and got the right gearing to drive a set of wheels, they'd immediately quit working on the steering and sensors and drive the robot right into the wall. The robot, like a remote control car, would just sit there with its wheels spinning, going nowhere, waiting for the wall to disappear so it could continue driving that way until its batteries ran out. At that point, the robot is no longer a robot. It's just a set of unguided motors wasting energy. When we move in a direction that isn't fruitful, when there are plenty of other options that are fruitful, we are like that half-finished robot. We wear ourselves down without getting anywhere.

What had to happen with the robot was we had to write some software to help it interpret its surroundings and find its objectives. It needed to be able to see more than what was right in front of it. Over the course of many dateless nights, while others were drinking themselves into mediocrity like most college students, we enabled our creations to be able to sense light, measure distance with sonar, realize when they'd struck a wall, and to be able to decide when it was time to turn around or change direction. God's done that with us, but we need to be willing to use those senses.

There were millions of people who hadn't heard the gospel when Jesus sent his disciples out. He gave them all sorts of cool powers, but warned them not to get tied up in any one place. That flies in the face of our new modern instincts to persevere despite all odds. That's because God understands people better than people understand people. He designed us, remember?

Lets look at the scenario of three villages. If you want to stay in the comfy robot analogy, think of them as objectives on the robot course. The first village is easy to share the gospel with. They're spiritually hungry and know that there's something better than what they've got. They welcome you in and feed you and call a meeting so that you can tell them what's what. When you leave, they've started having Bible studies and will be keeping in touch. If you're writing your missionary newsletter back to Jesus and your family who think you've joined a cult, this is the story you'd put in there.

Full of idealism and energy, you head on to the second village, only to find that it's not quite like the first one at all. The police show up, wanting to know who you are and why you're talking to people. They don't like you. Nobody wants to give you a place to stay because outsiders are a decadent influence on their youth, and they don't want their kids listening to whatever it is you're probably going to say. The town worships a fish on a board nailed up in the middle of the square and that's all they need. Every day, they make blood sacrifices to the fish so that it won't detach itself from the board and eat their children. It obviously works, because no fish has eaten their kids for generations. So, they don't want some outsider coming in and shaking up what has worked for them and their ancestors. In fact, you're looking like a great candidate for the next day's blood sacrifice, because all of your blather about Jesus is probably making the fish pretty angry by now.

So, you could do the modern thing and stay in the village despite all odds, yammering at a bunch of people who don't care, about a Jesus they don't want, eventually getting yourself martyred. Then you'd get a nice memorial service from the folks back home, and your picture in the church newsletter that month, maybe even a nice plaque someplace. Meanwhile, everyone in the third village misses out on the gospel because you wanted to play chicken with a wall, robot-style.

Is that the best use of your energy? Your final score is one win, one loss, game over. Can you do better? Absolutely. If you gave up on the second village, and went to the third village, you wouldn't be any worse off than if you'd stayed and died in the second village. Potentially you'd be even better, because if they weren't idiots like in village two, they'd accept Christ and your final score would be two wins, one loss, and the option to proceed to the next level. That's the kind of big picture thinking Jesus is telling his disciples to have.

Our modern stubborn thought would tell us that Jesus would not want us to let the second village go to hell. It is our responsibility to share the gospel. It's our responsibility to make them believe, even if it means our own life. They will go to hell if our own personal efforts fall short. Dig your heels in, steel your gaze, and wait for them to blink first. The problem is, people don't work like that. God knows that.

Think of the megaphone guy at his worst. You can only shout the gospel at the same people for so many days before the ones who want to be saved have done so. Anything after that point is actually having the opposite effect. It will cause the unbelievers to believe their falsehoods all the more intently in justification for having ignored you. People bitterly hate the megaphone guy and will go out of their way to counter him, because he's overstayed his welcome, not because they want to go to hell, or aren't hearing what he has to say. They've made their decision. The only rational decision for the megaphone guy is to go elsewhere and talk to people who haven't heard the good news. Leaving the mockers and blockers behind isn't deciding that you're cool with them going to hell. It's deciding that there are other people to be reached, and that you're not getting anywhere with these people.

People get caught up with this in church evangelism. They have a finite amount of time to reach as many people as they can, but every now and again someone takes a stranger's unwillingness to accept Christ personally, and will expend their entire time talking to that one uninterested person instead of shaking the dust off of their feet and moving on. If we're going to bring the whole idea of being willing to let people go to hell into it, they could just as easily be deciding to send every single person that walks past their stalemate to hell. See how that works? It's OK to move on and come back later if you have time.

God has given you power and authority. If you encounter a problem, after a certain point you have to believe the problem is with the person who is not accepting Christ, not with your not trying hard enough. The same can go with personal relationships. After a certain point, all you can really do is pray for them and try again later. Are you going to chase away your family, friends, and coworkers because all you want to talk about is the Jesus they're not ready for yet?

When you make a decision to change direction, or move on, it's hard. It feels like you've wasted your effort. Maybe you think the person will go to hell and it'll be all your fault. Maybe you take it personally and think it reflects on your lack of charisma and that people have no respect for you. Maybe you feel like a quitter. The truth is that you're making a strategic decision to reinvest your limited time and energy into something that'll turn God a greater profit. Jesus is no fool. If he directed people to keep their eyes open for this sort of thing, there's a good reason why.

Whole dedication

2010-08-24T14:09:00.002-04:00

This week is a quick one on Mark 14:51-52:

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

When Jesus was captured, everyone kind of got weird. Peter tried hacking a guy's ear off. And this unnamed guy ran off naked. I guess you could file this story with the less popular stories from the new testament, the ones which were inexplicably rejected for the Jesus coloring book. They're both illustrations of what happens when men are afraid to stand for what they believe in, and also a good picture of how strong the preservation instinct can be. If only our instinct to follow Jesus was as strong as our desire to escape danger!

If you had taken the dude in the linen shirt, and interviewed him before all of this happened, I doubt he would have foreseen what he was going to do. If you said "Hey, I'll guarantee you immunity from persecution, if you'll just abandon Jesus and take off your clothes for me," I seriously doubt he would have signed any contracts. People don't make the same decisions in heat of the moment as they do when they're talking about them in the comfort of a place far removed from the actual decision. Everyone says they'll stand with Jesus, until they find themselves streaking away into the darkness.

Linen man feared for his life. When given the choice of giving up your earthly possessions or giving up your life, people will usually quickly choose their life. You can use your life to get another shirt. You can't use your shirt to get another life. If you asked those people in advance, whether they'd give up their stuff to someone holding them up, they'd probably say that they'd fight the robber instead, or that they'd proudly die before they gave up their guns, wallet, house, car, etc. Reality and theory just don't match up.

The running former linen-wearing guy is a great snapshot of our honest state of being. We don't know what we're going to do, oftentimes, until it happens. You don't think "Hey, someone is going to write about this, and people will read it for thousands of years. Should I stay and be remembered as a hero with my doomed savior, or should I get naked and head for the hills? On the one hand, I'll live a bit longer if I cut and run, but on the other I'll die eventually anyway, so why lose my shirt over this?" No, what usually passes through our mind is something more like "OMG! I'M GOING TO DIE! RUN! DO WHATEVER IT TAKES! JUST GET OUT OF HERE NOW!" Our true priorities come out under stress.

What things, other than preserving your life and safety, could provoke you to instantly abandon everything in their pursuit? You may give up everything to flee a burning house, but would you do it just to switch jobs, or quit drugs, or make new friends? Not everyone would. Would you lose everything in order to help your neighbors? Would you give up what you've got, just to try to spread the gospel? Even fewer people are takers once it comes down to that.

The naked guy running from his linen garment isn't just a picture of cowardice. He's also a picture of what total dedication looks like. He was wholeheartedly, one hundred percent dedicated to protecting himself. He was willing to do anything it took, sacrificing his possessions, his luxuries, his relationships, and even his very last shred of dignity, just to get away from danger. Jesus did that for us. The naked guy did it for himself.

Before all of this happened, Jesus' followers were supposed to be praying to stay strong when he got persecuted. None of them did it. They slept instead. They already decided they were strong enough, without having been tested. Here's a tip for the new folks: If God tells you to pray for something, you're probably going to need it. You'd best pray. This lesson isn't a call to nakedness, but to really consider if you've got what it takes. Pray to be strong when difficult decisions come up. Usually you don't know about them until they're already upon you, and at that point, if you haven't prepared yourself, it's the adrenaline that's going to be calling the shots. Or the addiction. Or the fear.

When Jesus faced persecution, he was strong. He looked it in the eye. He didn't lash out, or run away, or say a bunch of stupid inflammatory crap. He knew what he was supposed to do, and he did it. He made the difficult decision. That's what a man of God looks like. That can be us. We just have to be dedicated and to want it enough to prepare ourselves for it. Maybe you've got to take each day as it comes, and to know what you can handle and what you can't.

Be thankful for Linen Man and his example. In his epic fail, he has taught us a powerful lesson we can use to build upon his experience. Pray more. Know ourselves. Listen to God's warnings about stuff that we need to be careful about. God wouldn't lead us into a situation we couldn't handle with his help. Dedicate yourself to him and be ready.

Teachers of the law

2010-08-17T12:33:00.003-04:00

This week is on Mark 12:38-40:

As he taught, Jesus said, "Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."

Such men will be punished most severely. If you looked at the men, or if the men looked at themselves from the outside, none would probably guess it from what they saw. You would probably think it unnecessarily harsh. I mean, here are good generous men, pillars of their community, wise teachers, wealthy, successful, popular, charismatic men. Yet these great men are to receive severe punishment. Why?

We don't really have 'teachers of the law' like they did in Jesus' time. Our church is not the centerpiece of our culture. The best analogy we could offer is a combination of a bunch of people. The teacher of the law Jesus is talking about is kind of like the politician who taxes his constituents into poverty so that he can fund a stadium with his name on it. He's the celebrity who is famous for being famous. He's the guy who monopolizes the prayer meetings with mini-sermons to God about how righteous he is, begging people to acknowledge his superior spirituality. He's the official who promises publicly in every press conference to solve the problem he's privately the cause of. He's the board member who, on his way out, gives himself the four billion dollar bonus while the company files for bankruptcy, because he really is that good.

The 'teacher of the law' is easily distinguished from the 'obeyer of the law.' He's selfish and self-centered. He's a whore for honor, wealth, and power. He doesn't even know how selfish he is, because nobody else matters enough for him to notice. Everything is about his comfort, his needs, his goals, his reputation, his fears, and his unshrinkable standard of living. He joins the military for the uniform and the education benefits, not to defend his countrymen. He runs for office in order to get clients for his business, and stays in office, not to serve, but to be reelected. He volunteers for ministry in order to be called 'pastor' and have people listen to him talk, not to care for the flock or impart any real godly wisdom. He wears a suit to the groundbreaking because he has no intention of digging. He kisses the babies and ensures they'll have no future, shakes the hands and breaks his promises, all to secure his legacy.

The world exists for the selfish teacher of the law. God is his enforcer and his cupbearer. Women exist to be deflowered, retirement funds exist to be embezzled, the company jet is his hot rod, your taxes are his trust fund, and the environment is his trash can. Nobody else matters but him. You exist to praise him. You were born to serve him. The only reason you don't act like him is that you aren't clever enough, or strong enough, or brave enough. He is the star of the show. You are the audience and it's time for you to applaud.

In real life, these people gut the organizations they're part of. They take the benefits for themselves and leave the work and the sacrifice to others. They're expert actors, decoys of righteousness, pretending to serve, while stuffing their pockets with the rewards of the saints. It would be better for them to do nothing and remain in mediocrity than live as they do. They steal glory from God, discourage honest men from striving to better themselves, and replace hope with cynicism. Does anyone remember the televangelists from the 1980s? The adulterer's famous air conditioned dog house paid for by the tithes and labours of the poor was as good of a symbol of this effect as any. Whenever anyone sees a famous Christian, people already begin to assume the worst. And does anyone trust politicians and C-level executives anymore, even though many of them are honest hard-working servants? Thank you very much, teachers of the law! Great job!

These people, despite their cleverly spun illusions, are the exact opposite of what Christ modeled. Jesus didn't focus on seeking his own glory or wealth or power. He focused on serving, on being vulnerable, and on staying out of the spotlight. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy. Some of Jesus' companions were wealthy. Jesus didn't freak out because the perfume the lady put on his feet was expensive. It just wasn't his focus. There's nothing wrong with being served or praised sometimes either. People do things for Jesus. It just wasn't his focus on earth to gather a large crowd of adorers and servants. Sometimes he did draw a crowd, but it was despite his preparations, not because of them. It's a question of where his heart was.

Once you get on the path of the selfish man, it's very hard to get off of it. The more self-involved the man gets, the less he looks outside of himself for direction and meaning. Soon, he's living only for himself, asking "How would this look" or "What's in it for me?" You may find yourself agreeing to commitments you know you'll never keep, because doing them is less important to you than the praise you get for agreeing to them. You are no longer serving others, but yourself. It may take a long time for you to realize it, because part of the show is fooling yourself.

So, you just woke up in the middle of trying to photoshop your face onto Jesus' picture and steal his glory. What do you do now? Be honest. Ask for humility. What really motivates you? How are you treating others? It isn't about what Jesus would look like, but what his heart would say. (Not his physical heart, because they just pump blood.) Be willing to be invisible and unjustly compensated for your labor. Be willing for your standard of living to suffer a bit, if it means getting closer to fulfilling your purpose. Don't just say it in order to get Jesus to praise you for being obsequious. Actually be willing.

Be a obeyer of the law that gives life. Don't just be a preacher of the law.

No hope

2010-08-10T14:21:00.002-04:00

This week is on Mark 5:2-8:

When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"

The man with the evil spirit wasn't just having a bad week. He was severely afflicted, mentally and physically, by an evil spirit. This had gone on for quite some time. It had gone on enough that the people of his region, in the enlightened attitudes they had towards mental illness, created a "home for the criminally insane" for the guy, by chaining him up. He always got out, but he never got "free."

For all we know, this guy may have spent a significant portion of his life completely out of his mind. Think of it from his perspective: The guy is so angry, and so hurt, and so confused and tormented, that he spends all of his time hurting himself and crying out in agony. Not only can nobody help the guy, but they can't even seem to manage to keep his afflictions from affecting their own lives. I don't think any of the townspeople were glad to have a dangerous raving lunatic with superhuman strength prowling around their graveyard at all hours of the day and night. It's not the sort of thing where an urban planning commission sits down and thinks "We totally need one of *those* for our community!"

So, the guy spends his days being utterly miserable, and all of the people around him are miserable too, and blame him for it, and attack him for crying out and making their lives as inconvenient and tormented as they are. This goes on and on, and nobody can fix it. If you were a psychologist or a sociologist, and you were tasked with predicting the happiness of this community or the prognosis for this individual over the next year, without knowing Jesus would show up, how optimistic would you be?

One weak spot in human reasoning is that it cannot see the future. The best we can do is look at the present and at what we sort of remember from the past, and guess what might happen. With that giant blind spot, it's easy to get depressed, and hopeless, and give bad prognoses and predict doom, if that's all we're seeing at the moment, or all we've seen in the recent past. For the miserable guy who was afflicted by demonic spirits, there was no reason to believe his life would ever get better. Even when he saw Jesus, his only frame of reference was people punishing him and trying to tie him up. He figured "Maybe God will hate me for how I am, and will want to whip me and bind me up too, or worse." And part of our rational minds would probably agree with him. He's been bullying people for years. There must be some price to pay for that, right? And if he was going to get better, it would have happened by now, right? If God would just strike him down with lightning, wouldn't everyone be happier?

So this guy went from miserable day to miserable day, each blending into the next, with no sign that anything would ever be different. The people went each day, dreading the possibility of encountering this miserable man and having to endure his misery and his lashing out. How could anyone have predicted that things could ever be different than they were? Everyone had just given up and accepted that things would always be miserable and awkward, and that they were alone to suffer with it.

We're humans too. We suffer from the same natural blindness to hope that the afflicted man and his fellow villagers had. There are things in our lives, and in our friends' lives, and in our regional life which have always been wrong and bad, for as long as we can remember. We have relationships with hurting and hurtful people. We suffer illness and torment and see injustices everywhere. We're no more equipped to expect Jesus to show up and fix it all than the terrified afflicted man was. "I can't ask Jesus for help. He'll burn me with his cigarette and tell me to shut up." "Why would God intervene now? We've brought this on ourselves." "If there was a solution for that problem, we would have found it by now." Wrong.

As if the man's example wasn't clear enough, that chapter in the book of Mark also has a story about a woman with a decade-long "women's health" issue who finally found healing in reaching out to God. There's also an account of a dead little girl being brought back to life. If those aren't long-term hopeless situations, I don't know what is. Generally if you've suffered with something for ten years, you're keeping it. And people don't tend to get any less dead than they are. Still, Jesus fixed all three of these situations.

We spend our lives looking at the present and the past, and agonizing over this thing or that. We look to medical journals and news reports and gossip shows and form our view of the world based on their cynical godless cries. We miss out on the whole truth. Why not consider what Jesus did for the afflicted graveyard guy, or the leaky lady, or the the dead girl? There's no way to predict that stuff without hoping in God. Be willing to be surprised and delighted. Be ready to be healed and forgiven and set free, and for that to happen to people you wouldn't associate that with. God is a God not just of the past and present, but also of the future. And there's a lot more future waiting for us than our pasts and presents...

No hoarding

2010-08-03T15:01:00.002-04:00

This week is on Romans 12:16:

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

It's fairly well known that people create a lot more divisions between people than God does. Everyone has classes of people they don't want to associate with, or types of personality they would prefer to not have around them. Maybe a particular woman will talk your ear off, or maybe a particular guy is "creepy," so you make it a point to not be around them. You're creating walls and distinctions that hinder God's work and undo the grace he's trying to extend.

Jesus hung out with prostitutes and the insane. Everyone knows that. What they don't also think about is that he also hung out equally with hypocritical church people and two-faced back-stabbing politicians. He hung out with selfish rich people and selfish poor people alike. People shove each other out of the way to meet the pieced, tattooed red-eyed punk so that they can add him to their portfolio of people they've saved, but they totally ignore the lonely fifty-something businessman in the nice sports car, who wears a suit to church because a suit is all he's ever known. Why not welcome them both? Why give one the cold shoulder and walk quickly past them, while extending the hand to the other? Jesus didn't do that.

Most people naturally want to avoid the dirty, loud, not right in the head folks. But in our modern times, people like to feel like they're their own subculture, and will also shut out mainstream "sellouts." They close the doors of their church to people who seem like they've made it, or who look like they would fit better in another subculture other than their own. And so, the church becomes a clubhouse, and not a place where the gospel is free to all.

Jesus didn't divide his gospel into subcultures. He didn't ask for a separate church for Jews and a separate church for gentiles. A separate church for Romans and a separate church for Ethiopians. A separate church for people who drink and a separate church for people who don't. A separate church for Greeks and a separate church for Samaritans. He made himself available to anyone who made themselves available.

There's a certain pride in pushing people away. You're saying "They do not belong." or "They are not worth my time." You're saying "I can do better." There's someplace you'd rather be. There's someone you'd rather be hanging out with. There's something you'd rather be doing. It's conceitedness.

It's not living in harmony when you say "The people from that church aren't real Christians." You're not being harmonious when you're refusing to share with an ethnic group or organization that has typically discriminated against you in the past. The Pharisees freely said and did both of those things, about the Samaritans and about the Romans. Is that who you want to imitate? We're here to be ambassadors of God's love, and God's love is available to everyone.

Don't hoard the gospel and just share the wealth with people you've picked out yourself. Catch yourself when you're getting cliquey and exclusive. Be on the watch for the temptation to ignore and pass by people who are "difficult." Can you honestly think of anyone who you can say God doesn't want to invite into his kingdom?

Tips for the garden

2010-07-27T19:45:00.002-04:00

This week is on Jeremiah 17:5-8:

This is what the LORD says:
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

My gardening skills are notoriously weak. Anything I grow turns out to be about half the size of anything found in my father's garden. I can water, supplement the soil, weed religiously, plant in advance, and so on, but my father's garden always takes the prize. No matter what efforts I take, it always falls short of what my father can do. He has such abundance that he has to give it away, whereas mine provides only the occasional side dish to meals whose ingredients I have to obtain elsewhere.

My garden looks a lot like the life of the cursed man in Jeremiah's prophesy. It looks wilted, bears little fruit, and generally doesn't win any prizes. It falls short in pretty much every category it can be judged on. My father's garden is the one that looks like God's blessing. It's not neat and orderly, but it does the job extraordinarily well. It has no worries. He never has to hope he gets squash or tomatoes, or wonder why something he planted never matured.

The cursed man's efforts are no good. He says "I can do this myself," but he can't. If he does get something done, he doesn't say "God blessed me," but "Look what I did all by myself." He's proud. He doesn't ask for help. He neglects and is neglected. No matter what he does, it doesn't seem to prosper.

The blessed man has a relationship with God. When something goes well that he didn't do himself, he knows exactly where it's come from. When his efforts fall short, he knows who to turn to. When he needs something extra, God's resources are the limitless stream. Bad stuff doesn't ruin him, because he has hope in an eternal boundless God, who he knows. He's not trusting in the tooth fairy. He's confident in something demonstrably real.

In examining our lives, it's important to ask where we're planted and who is caring for us, our Father or our own black-thumbed hands? We need to connect to God like roots connect to water. Sometimes things go badly for us just because that's how life is. In being connected to God, we know we'll bounce back. Other times, the reason things are a bit droopy and fruitless is because we've lost our connection. It's important to be able to know the difference. If you're not connected, get connected. And if things got a bit fruitless and pest-ridden, call on God to restore you to life. As Christians, we don't have to be cursed. The blessing of a fruitful fulfilling life is ours.

Not the answer you were expecting

2010-07-20T12:28:00.002-04:00

This week is on Habakkuk 1:2-11:

How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

"Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.
I am raising up the Babylonians,
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwelling places not their own.
They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves
and promote their own honor.
Their horses are swifter than leopards,
fiercer than wolves at dusk.
Their cavalry gallops headlong;
their horsemen come from afar.
They fly like a vulture swooping to devour;
they all come bent on violence.
Their hordes advance like a desert wind
and gather prisoners like sand.
They deride kings
and scoff at rulers.
They laugh at all fortified cities;
they build earthen ramps and capture them.
Then they sweep past like the wind and go on—
guilty men, whose own strength is their god."

Habakkuk brings a fairly lengthy complaint in prayer to God, about the politics and corruption of his country. God's answer isn't what he was expecting to hear. It almost sounds worse than the problem.

In our made-by-Disney expectations of how an answer to this sort of prayer would go, the corrupt people in Israel all receive visitations from an angel in their sleep. This angel touches them with a kind of magic wand, which changes their hearts and causes them to awaken like a post-visitation Ebenezer Scrooge. They spend the ensuing days righting the injustices they caused, giving back the money they embezzled, and so on, until things are all set straight. The princess marries the plucky beggar boy and a talking dog provides laughs as they live happily ever after.

In God's version, bloodthirsty armies smash through the city walls, and come raping, pillaging and burning their way through Israel. Thousands upon thousands die or are taken into lifelong slavery. There is no Israel anymore, only an occupied territory of the Babylonian Empire. Jerusalem is no longer the center of worship and communication with God, but is a sort of "green zone" for the Babylonians to use in consolidating their power over the region. Nobody lives happily ever after, except for the Babylonian nobility and their soldiers.

What would you do if you did some serious prayer and got that kind of response? Imagine if you prayed "I don't like how my car is running, and coworkers are a pain to work with, can you please fix my car and get me a better job?" and the response was "Everything you own will be stripped from you, and you will lose your job and not be able to find another here." How do you prepare for something like that? How do you react in anything but shock? Nobody's going to say "That's great! I love walking everywhere in the rain, and sleeping under cardboard is so cool! It's like having my very own play fort every single day!"

Sometimes the road from point A to point C doesn't pass through scenic point B, but is routed via a grueling construction detour to horrific point X, with guys standing around burning trash cans, giving you hard looks. It doesn't look at all like the plastic suburban utopia you were expecting, so you give up hope in the directions and look for any way you can to get out of there before you get shot. If you do that, you'll lose your way. Sometimes that point X is the only way to get from point A to point C.

The disciples got a similar disappointment when they wanted to know how God would triumph over the injustices of their day. The answer of Jesus being nailed to a cross and dying a pretty terrible death probably wasn't what they were expecting. Still, if that didn't happen, we'd all be hellbound right now.

In Habakkuk's time, God used Israel's bloodthirsty imperialist neighbors to clean house so that they could continue as a nation, corruption-free. If Israel was a person, it would have been major surgery, with a couple generations of "anesthesia" in the form of exile. (Imagine someone who knows nothing about medical science talking with a doctor who is proposing triple bypass surgery: "What?! You mean you're going to cut holes all over my body, chop up perfectly good veins, saw my chest open, take my blood, shove the veins into my chest and stitch them around my heart, and then sew it all back together, all while you've got me drugged into a freaking coma? How on earth could that possibly help me in any way, you sick, depraved maniac?!") Still, the nation had become so sick that it needed that drastic of a procedure for them to survive as a culture.

God loves us. If we ask for help and get something that seems a bit drastic, it's probably for the best. All we can do is go along with it and continue the dialog. In the end, Habakkuk ends up praising God for what he's about to do, even though it seems horrible. Sometimes the answer we're not expecting is the one that will save us.

That could never happen

2010-07-13T11:49:00.002-04:00

This week's yummy bible morsel is Luke 1:8-18:

Once when Zechariah's division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years."

Zechariah is like the guy who is watching a zombie movie and is like "That could never happen! That shotgun only holds six rounds, and he just fired eight! This movie is so unrealistic!" Dude. Zombies could never happen either, but that never slowed you down. Zechariah is talking to a kind of freaky sci-fi creature, larger than life and probably glowing in some terrible fashion, and this creature knows his name, knows his wife's situation, and has a message from God about what's going to happen. Zechariah has no problem with any of this, until the conversation strays into obstetrics, at which point he's like "Wait a minute. I believe all that other stuff, but there's no way my wife could get pregnant."

Why do we have such absolute faith in useless wrong crap, but very little in things which are actually true? We believe unwaveringly that our political party has all of the answers and that the other one is only full of uneducated rubes or evil communists bent on world domination, and that we and the TV/radio personalities that tell us this are the only ones to see clearly on the subject. We believe that we can actually be chased down by attractive members of the opposite sex merely by spraying a certain scent on ourselves or buying/drinking a certain brand of beer. We believe whatever the computer tells us, no matter how absurd, and if it turns out not to be true, it's some nerd's fault. But if God tells us something, or even suggests that he might exist for real, we start asking all kinds of questions. Why?

I don't have an answer for you. (Even if I did, why would you believe me? I'm just the nerd in the computer, trying to spread God's word, not some official TV guy in an expensive pair of pants nobody can see, or some flashy thirty second blurb with its own theme song.) Still, I think the first step is acknowledging that we don't always trust in the right things, and don't always put our confidence where confidence is due. Zechariah trusted God enough to serve in the temple, but not enough to put aside his bad science. (Any science that doesn't acknowledge God's override button is bad science.) We're bound to find ourselves in similar situations, where our foolish thinking is exposed. Lets hope we don't get stricken dumb to shut us up about it, like poor Zechariah was.

The best place to start is by trusting God. Do you know you're supposed to do something or go someplace? Then do it or go there! Do you know you're not supposed to do something? Then don't do it! Don't try to reason your way out of it like Zechariah did. Why even believe in God if you're not going to trust what he says? That's silly! If we're going to be comfortable knowing the supreme being and creator of the universe, and we have no problem with the idea that God can talk to us, is it really that much of a stretch to believe the rest?

Holy tutoring

2010-07-06T10:33:00.003-04:00

This week's magnificent secret is Mark 4:30-34:

Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade."
With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

Jesus shared a lot of knowledge through stories. Not only are stories a great way to secretly share controversial teaching in a way that you can later deny, but they also allow you to transmit a lot of information in a small space. Think of them as cleverly disguised knowledge bombs. "Hey, what a nice little story about mustard seeds... *BAM!* Wow, now I understand the kingdom of God!" Meanwhile the bureaucrats listening to the same teaching, who have no interest in learning about God, but would love to gather some incriminating quotes, don't hear anything but a bunch of harmless boring farm talk.

The thing is, the parable doesn't always detonate. Some people's minds are a bit damp and dull. I know a couple people who don't get parables at all. If you tell them a story, they just stare back at you with glassy eyes and an irritated expression for having wasted their time. "Dude, I asked you to teach me something cool about God, so why are you blathering on about goats and crap? Are you messing with me?" So what do those people do?

The good news is that Jesus loves "those people." Some of "those people" were his disciples and close friends. He'd teach stuff that we all understand clearly, but a few people were still confused. He didn't leave them stranded. He explained everything to them.

Parables allow God to charge our brains up like Neo's kung fu lesson in The Matrix. In very little time, we can learn a lot. Still, if we don't have the kind of brains that can learn from stories, we are not left out. God won't let people remain in ignorance if they want understanding. He'll break knowledge into whatever size pieces we can chew.

If there's something you don't understand about God and his kingdom, and you want to know it, rest assured that he will give you your answers. Along with being interested in mankind getting to know him, he is interested in you specifically. Ask him to explain things you don't understand. He'll teach you all you want to know.

Being movable

2010-06-29T11:15:00.003-04:00

This week is on Isaiah 4:2-6:

In that day the Branch of the LORD will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire. Then the LORD will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.

This is a glimpse of the future. Once disasters fade and God resettles Jerusalem and reestablishes a holy place, this is kind of what he has in mind. It'll be a beautiful and fruitful place, and in the middle of it you'd imagine some kind of gleaming jewel-encrusted citadel, maybe a compound with satellite dishes on it and a helipad, neon signs pointing the way to God, etc. Instead, we get this:

1. Some kind of fire thingie.
2. Smoke (surprise, surprise, given item one.)
3. A party tent.

If you were a kid handed a box of crayons and tasked with drawing God's ideal place for meeting mankind, if he'd subdued the earth for us again and set things up himself, this is not what you would probably draw. This is the God who presides over a sea of glass, from a throne surrounded by custom-built science fiction creatures. A giant tent with smoky fire seems a bit anticlimactic.

The fire and smoke are all we really need. The tent is God's first "dwelling" among us. People can find smoke easily in the daytime, and fire easily at night. (Or at least before we had our skies blasted open with zillions of street lights.) A tent can be set up anywhere quickly. That's why we use them in refugee camps and relief efforts, and don't do too much in the way of stone buildings with flying buttresses and stained glass windows.

The holy campfire and tent setup says a couple things about God's relationship with us. First, he wants us to find him. Fire and smoke are dead giveaways in finding where someone's camp is. Secondly, he wants us to get to him quickly. If we had to build a proper church before we could invite God into our community, that could take generations to complete. (Look up cathedral building times if you don't believe me.) God is on the scene quickly, and he's easy to find. After all of mankind has been through when these verses take place, that's exactly what we need.

God wants to be obvious and accessible. And so he is. We are so lucky. Next time you've got a few minutes, invite God to set things up in your life in that moment. It's not the complicated affair you'd imagine it to be.

Helpful repetitions

2010-06-22T19:47:00.002-04:00

This week's mystical goodness is a short bit from Revelation 4:8-11:

Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
"You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being."

These verses do a great job of summarizing the meaning of life and the starting point for God's glory. God is worthy to receive glory and honor and power. We don't just worship him in order to kiss up to him for goodies. It isn't mere flattery. God truly is great.

God created all things. It was his idea and desire to create them just as they are. It was his idea and desire that they exist. He is the designer. He is the inventor. He is the financier and producer of all we see. Do you have a problem with spiders? Take it up with God. He is the one who decided that they were good and necessary. Are you really into fresh black raspberries? Give the praise to him. He's the one who decided to innovate and coax them out as a separate tasty berry species. He doesn't patent them and charge us royalties for what he has created. Everything was made for us, and is free for us to enjoy and use and modify as we see fit. We're stewards of his creation, not its copyright lawyers or its licensees.

It's important to remember that God does not require our praise, but he really is worthy of being praised. Everything is his creation. If we are not happy with it, we can't really criticize it, because it's his idea, and his resources went into building it. Take the four pieces-parts creatures who are announcing his praise 24/7, for example. Does that seem a little weird to you? Does IBM corporation pay people to sit in its lobby and extol their products all day, every day, out loud? Does the US have people sitting in its capitol building singing patriotic songs 24/7? It seems like kind of a waste of resources, especially if you've gone through the extra trouble of engineering a whole specific line of custom-made creatures to do exactly that, but it's God's idea. He has such abundance, and such creativity, and such power, that it's both possible and necessary for who he is. If you want to draw a blue six-legged duck on your paper when it's arts and crafts time, that's your right. The world is God's paper, and he can produce whatever he wants. He is uniquely gifted in that sense, and he makes that power available to us. God is truly Great.

Not only can God do all of that cool stuff, and not only is he really beneficial to us, but he's going to live forever. He's always lived, and he will always live. He's not going to quit after a four eon term, or take a two millennium vacation and leave us to run the store. He's not going to die and leave us orphans. Nobody and nothing else is that permanent, except us in relationship with him. And that's his gift too.

It's easy to forgot all of why we're here and what is so great about God and Christianity. You can't just praise God because the hymnbook says so, or because your friends will like you better if you do. You have to remember that God really is great, and that the world is full of reasons why.

Packing what's important

2010-06-15T14:34:00.002-04:00

This week is on 2 Peter 3:10-14:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

We're lucky enough, as a people, to have a general idea of where we're going, or at least of where things are going in general. Either we're going to live during a time where the world as we know it will be destroyed, or we're going to die some ordinary death and be woken up once all of the fireworks have died down. Whatever happens, our souls are going to survive intact, while everything else we know of is going to disappear. That makes the idea of renting a self-storage unit seem rather silly.

Peter was lucky enough to have hung out with Jesus despite being what we might call a slow learner. Still, Peter is fully aware that we're all going somewhere. This life we've got right now isn't the condition we're going to be in forever. That knowledge should affect our priorities.

When Noah found out what was coming, his priorities were adjusted to focus on building his giant boat, even though his neighbors and friends were continuing with life as normal. For us, our souls are our boats. Our time here is for getting closer to the God and creator we'll be spending eternity with, and for learning to be better people. What good are working extra hours to pay for the fancy sports car and the grandiose extra wing on your house, if you can't use them for any more than the tiny blip of time we spend here on earth? Why not spend those hours on improving your soul? Those improvements are something you can take with you.

Things we have here are comforts, not part of who we are. Our soul is what gets preserved for eternity, installed into an improved body when the new earth is created. Your clothes are not part of your soul. Your physical body is not part of your soul. Your car, ipod, cell phone, fancy plates with Elvis on them, gym membership card, national flag, and collection of fine silver pimp chalices are not part of your soul. All of that stuff disappears as eternity stretches out. If we really are eternal beings, if we believe all of that stuff about Jesus dying so that we can have quality eternal lives, then the only thing we can invest in here that has an eternal payoff is our relationship with God and our investments in who we are in relation to that. Everything else has a rapidly approaching use-by date. You might as well be stockpiling milk for the apocalypse.

We're looking forward to what the future holds for us. Eternity with God is a great destination, no matter what we have to pass through to get there. Imagine packing for a really fun trip that you've been looking forward to for a very long time. That's what we do when we invest in the right things in our lives. Those things are things we can bring with us. Everything else is temporary comfort, like overpriced airport food, or those foil-bagged food replicas you shell out handfuls of change to get from a machine. Nobody pretends that's normal food. But in not investing in the future, that's exactly what we're doing. Right now is temporary. It's an unusual layover in the midst of eternity. Are you going to spend what you've got on stuff you can only enjoy here, stuff that isn't even all that good? Or are you going to invest in what is coming, stuff that you can probably enjoy both here and there?

Make every effort to have a peaceful relationship with God. Make every effort to welcome the changes that would make you a better person. We're already accepted. Why not acquire some things we can cherish together, now and in the future? Stuff like integrity, discipline, selflessness, etc. Those are important things you can pack for eternity. The rest is just ultimately junk.

Why not you?

2010-06-08T14:51:00.003-04:00

This week's magical Bible story is on James 2:14-17:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

Sometimes there's a fairly big gap between talk and action. It's the difference between a press release and meaningful results. One of my pet peeves is when a politician or corporate spokesperson says "We take full responsibility for INSERT MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE OR CALLOUSLY NEGLIGENT ACT HERE." And then they do nothing, or offer some lame excuse as to why they screwed up epically. Nobody gets fired. No behavior changes. No reparations are paid to injured parties. Nobody goes to jail, or even admits guilt in a court room. Absolutely nothing happens except for the crocodile tears and a thirty second sound bite.

The thing is, we can be like that sometimes. It's not just that we do evil and then pretend to care only when we get caught, and only until people get distracted by something else and we're off the hook. We talk about believing in the right thing, and wanting to do the right thing, while actually doing nothing to make it happen. "Your call is important to us. Estimated wait time is four hours and thirty seven minutes."

Let's use the hypothetical example of someone who cares deeply about child literacy. Furthermore, they have a call to reach kids and share the gospel with them. You know this, because they've told you like eighty zillion times. Day after day, they talk about how they care about the kids, and how they want to see kids saved. Whenever there's an altar call about missionary callings, they're always up there to get prayed for and commissioned to go work with kids. Seems like a pretty straightforward calling, right?

Let's see what the person's actual actions are. Do they contribute money to literacy organizations? No. Do they volunteer at literacy programs locally? No. Do they work with the kids ministry in their church? No. Do they use vacation time to volunteer with missionary organizations who do exactly what it is they say they're called to do? Nope. Do they even share the gospel with their own nieces and nephews? Nope again. Why? Well, they can't donate money to help the needy because they'd have to give up cable. And if they donated time in the evenings they'd miss their shows, which they've already paid for and therefore have to watch. Weekends are the only time they can hang out with their friends, so that's out of the question. And they can't take vacation, because they're up for a promotion at work, and they need that job to pay for the cable bill and the fancy clothes for going out on weekends. But they still want to help kids. Or do they?

Wanting something is nothing more than an emotion. Everybody wants stuff like world peace, but not many are willing to commit their own resources to it. That's the distinction James is trying to point out in his letter. It's one thing to believe in turning the other cheek if someone strikes you, and quite another to actually take the abuse when some misguided soul slugs you in the mouth for being a public Christian. James saw plenty of "paper Christians" who claimed to believe what Jesus said, but didn't actually put any of their own resources behind it. They'd see someone in need and say "I hope things get better for you," without hoping enough to actually let it cost them something. It's all about the sound bites, and these people knew exactly what to say when the cameras were pointed at them.

If you see a need, how about contributing something towards its fulfillment? If you're called to do something, how about taking a step towards doing what it is you're called towards. That's how you put your faith into practice. It's how you prove your beliefs are yours, and not just a set of "talking points" you learned in church. You don't always have to solve the whole problem yourself, but you can at least do what you can to make a difference.

So, the question you have to ask yourself, when you examine your beliefs, is "Is it just my mouth that has faith, or does the rest of me sort of believe this stuff too?" If it's not just your mouth, see if you can convince those other parts to act just as enthusiastically about this thing as your mouth seems to be. Otherwise tell your mouth to shut up, because, at this point, it's not fooling anyone.

Full coverage

2010-06-01T15:34:00.002-04:00

This week is on Hebrews 7:23-28:

Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.

Jesus is worthy of our total devotion, because he is totally devoted to us. He sacrificed his life in order to save us the misery of depending on a failed human priest to stand between us and God the Father. Before Jesus' sacrifice, all interaction with God went through career priests who people relied upon to argue their case with God. These political priests held a lot of power, and could basically stand between a needy person and God. They also weren't very attentive, and could miss out on interceding for someone with God, thus leaving their sins unforgiven. People's interaction with God would vary depending on who was their priest and how devoted he was to God. People talk about the harrowing experience of having to get things taken care of at the DMV. Imagine that hassle for anything that you would need to talk to God about!

Before Jesus, we had to wait in line, pay arbitrary "fees", endure bad treatment and shoddy service, and still sometimes not get what we came for. Our salvation depended on an inconvenient connection to an unreliable representative whose awkward and clumsy methods were supposed to solve an impossible problem. And on top of that, it was expensive! Imagine all of the problems we have now with taxation and politics, applied to the church.

Jesus as our high priest is a miracle. No longer do we need to debase ourselves before our fellow human beings in order to be allowed to communicate with God. Our connection is direct. No longer do we have to follow arbitrary and pointless rules on top of what God already wants for us, just so we can gain the favor of the priest and thereby bribe him to do his job. We have Jesus' favor, and Jesus has the authority to forgive our sins directly. And he already has! Jesus has paid the price. No longer do we have to struggle and sacrifice only to ultimately fail anyway. Jesus' sacrifice carries us through, and he does all of the heavy lifting.

Jesus isn't connected to a particular political party, ethnic group, wealthy family, tribe, or corporation. He isn't tied to geography. He's available to all of us, equally. There's no more corruption, incompetence, apathy, laziness, or any of the other human flaws. He is ours, and we are his, directly.

Be thankful for what Jesus has won for us. Be especially wary of people who claim that things are still the old way, where you have to have someone pray for you in order for God to hear you, or where you have to submit yourself to a specific human authority in order to be able to find favor with God. Those structures have their place, and can be helpful, but they are no longer required. Even the most powerful, spiritual, and helpful person is only a speck of dirt compared to Jesus. If you go back to filtering your connection to God through that speck of dirt, what have you gained?

Guard jealously that gift of being able to connect directly to Jesus. It is the most precious thing you will ever have. In any bad experiences you have with human authority, whether it's corrupt police or incompetent bureaucrats, instead of being angry, be so thankful that you don't have to deal with that eternally, that your salvation doesn't depend on some idiot with control issues, or some lazy dullard who doesn't care about you, or anything that will ever matter to you, as long as they're getting their money. We're free not just from hell, but from the agony of depending on undependable people to get free.

Jesus is our high priest. His service is perfect. His coverage is complete. And he's ours, wholly, forever.

Hard hearts

2010-05-25T10:35:00.002-04:00

This week is on Joshua 11:19-20:

Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Things end badly for those communities who don't know God. They lost their birthright to the land they possessed, and were killed in an act of genocide prearranged by God himself. God hardened their hearts and made them pointlessly stubborn, like kamikaze pilots attacking a decoy ship. Why?

The stuff about God hardening people's hearts is always hard to explain in the context of "buddy Jesus." Why would God constrict people's free will, or aid and abet them in pursuing a suicidal, self-destructive path? How do people get themselves into a situation where that can happen?

I believe that people often get themselves into a mindset where they figure they can avoid God if they just ignore him. They picture it like Lord of the Rings, where if they just keep from putting on the "ring" that lets them see God, God won't be able to see them either. In reality, it's more like the two year old sticking his head in a box and thinking he's invisible. It just doesn't work like that.

The people groups surrounding the nation of Israel were living a lifestyle apart from God. They chose to ignore God, and so that opened them up to being treated as foreigners by him. He could still see and affect every single detail about them, but he didn't have a relationship with them, and so they weren't really significantly different than any other object he's created. There was no difference between clearing the land of these willfully ignorant peoples and clearing the land of overgrown brush, when it came down to it. They're collections of molecules, not friends.

Things change when we get to know God. We're reunited with our creator. We share experience and eternity. Ironically, the way to avoid the consequences of our sin and to live the best life possible is not to hide from God, but to meet him. The people whose hearts God hardened were people who chose to harden themselves against God. In trying to steal God's mercy, they brought his judgment upon themselves.

Knowing God seemingly transforms us from broken machinery to living eternal beings. We're no longer collections of molecules and metabolic processes, flesh-robots controlled by electrical signals firing in our brains, but God's adopted children. The breath he breathed into us is reconnected with its source. It's so important to make that connection before it's too late.

The people God threw before the Israelites to be slaughtered were strong, prosperous peoples. The fact that they ended up on the business end of ethnic cleansing wasn't due to some kind of inherent weakness. They were proud, hard-working people who stood tall and thought they could stand apart from God. Every one of us has probably been in that position before, and most of us probably know people today who are still in that situation: People who refuse to be corrected, refuse to forgive, refuse to admit weakness, refuse to share their hard-earned stuff, refuse to be helped, and so on, because they're so very strong and so very proud. Pray for those people.

Take a moment and be thankful for your relationship with God. Thank God for your freedom and the grace you've been willing to accept. Ask for ways to help others find that same freedom and grace and peace. Things did not end well for the people who ignored God and thought they could run things on their own. We are surrounded by those people today.