WTETIOGIM?

I've been reading NT Wright's "Suprised by Hope" and my mind is repeatedly being blow over and over again...

I'm in the section right now that's talking about heaven, purgatory, and hell... well I read it yesterday but I'm still just now processing... and I just wanted to share one quick thought.

Wright describes sin as the destruction of the image of God in you, which can be done by a number of different practices. He then goes on to describe the Christian's work as the restoration of the image of God in us, and reflecting it in all of creation.

SO rather than the classic 1990s fad WWJD, what we need to ask ourselves, really we can ask of every thought and action we do... WTETIOGIM?

Will This Enhance The Image Of God In Me?

It seems to me that all moral decisions, all matters of spiritual formation, really any decisions, can be based on this, or a corollary... something like

Will this damage the image of God in me?
Will this enhance/damage the image of God in someone else?

thoughts?

like a new toy...

I had a kind of new thought (new to me, anyway) on the plane last week and it's taken me a while to hash it out... kind of like breaking in a new pair of sneakers or learning to use a new toy. anyway, this is a quick post to try on some ideas, see how they fit. Let me know if you think they look tacky, or clash with my pants or something.

(sorry... we're in seattle with sarah's parents, who have cable, so I've been watching a lot of shows like "what not to wear"... I now remember why we don't have cable... anyway...)

It seems that for years, people have been overstepping their roles as people; we've been putting ourselves in God's place since the very begining. Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, Moses, and right down through the ages. God says "don't eat it" we say "God really just meant we shouldn't eat it right?" God gives us a few broad commandments, we turn it into a jillion specific laws. God sends God's son, we go nutso with rites and rituals and bureaucracy.

I feel like the latest manifestation of this tendancy can been seen in places like aplogetics --places where Christians are trying to convince others of something.

Conviction, I believe, is God's job. Not ours. We can talk people to death, and do, quite often, but if God doesn't work on their heart, it's meaningless. In the same sense someone who's never heard a single evangelistic word can be "strangely warmed" and come into relationship with Jesus Christ in a transforming way.

So if our job is not to convict, what is it?

I think our job as the church is to encourage and hold accountable one another.

THAT DOES NOT MEAN saying things like "what you're doing is wrong by my standards."
I think it looks more like saying "have you really worked that out with God? You really think God is OK with that?" and then, just maybe, being willing to live with the fact that yes, I've worked out my salvation with fear and trembling and no, it does not include some of your sacred moral standards.

What that takes is trust, in two ways. One, it takes trust in others to be honest about their relationship with God and to admit to the things God is convicting them of.

It also takes trust in God to be God. WE CANNOT CONTINUE to be the Church and live as if there IS NO GOD. If there is a God, and God is real, then GOD should be the one changing peoples hearts, convicting them of their sin, shaping their belief. NOT YOU.

OK. end rant. let me know what you think. A little too close to Christian relativism? Maybe. Letting us as leaders off the hook? Yeah, I'd see that, a little. Using scripture out of context? likely. Sorry.

three posts really...

It's been a mad mad month around here, and things aren't getting any saner. I haven't had the time I usually have to blog, which means I haven't really had much time to process lately, which for me is not good. So, I have a long day in the office with a long To-Do list in front of me and I'm going to put it all off a half an hour and do some blogging. Actually I'm going to put blogging on my To Do list. So here they are: three things I want to blog about, take your pick.

1) Worlds of Fun: Christian Edition
This past saturday we went to the "Heartfest" day at Worlds of Fun, our local amusement park. Every ride had at least 30 minute lines and the parking lot was packed with church vans and buses from around the midwest. Surely this would be a great day at Worlds of Fun. We were disappointed. Lots of stories about that, including David Crowder Band's incredibly predictable and uninspired concert, but I just wanted to share this little scene which I feel captures the attitude of a lot of Christians right now: A couple walking through the grassy-hill concert seating area, the one wearing a classic pop-theology, penal-substitutionary-atonement-theory (I think) tee-shirt that said "Jesus died for myspace in heaven" with the word "myspace" using the logo from the popular social networking website. Typical, I thought, but then I had to laugh when I read the t-shirt of the guy she was with; his said "I'm open to suggestions, as long as they're mine." Classic. Nothing like the double barreled shotgun of closed mindedness and narrow mindedness to really express your love of Jesus Christ.


2) Speaking of being disappointed, Tony Jones is Disappointing me. I read on a blog that he was starting up a new website called "rethink Christianity" intended to be "interactive with posts and videos" I thought that sounded cool, so headed over to the site, and I was intrigued by their tag line, an apparent play on the radio shack commercials, it read "We have questions, you have answers." Now that sounds like a nice idea to me, but then I found that the only way I can post my answer is by video. I contemplated the possiblity of using my morning to shoot,edit, and post a video in response to their question, but besides my not having time I felt it was a bit of cheap gimmick. AND the more I post, the more chances I have to win a free iPod! Woooo! I must have this sort of mental filter that kicks in whenever the words "free" and "iPod" are combined in an effort to get me to do something. But this site, it seems, represents the co-opting and corporatization of at least some of the "emergent" church.

3) A few days ago I had an affirming comment about my "job performance" over the past three years at St Luke. The person who made the comment actually didn't realize it pertained to me in any way, but it did. She found out that I worked at "the church next to penguin park" and started telling me about how she used to go to the youth group there, but that she "just felt like another number" and that every time she was there she ended up being asked to talk or do something else that embarrassed her. The group was just too big. And when I arrived at St Luke, I felt the same way: there were almost 40 kids coming on Wednesday nights. Some people may see the fact that we're down under 10 on a regular basis now as a failure of some kind on my part, remarking how sad it is that we have such a small youth group now, but really I think it's much better this way. It's a tricky balancing act in youth ministry, trying to be responsible in doing outreach but at the same time wanting to have a small enough group that a can get to know them all and build relationships. In the end it looks like I chose a small group of close relationships over a large group with high-energy/high-emotion meetings, and I'm glad I did things the way I did. I think the kids in that group are too. Last night was my last official meeting with them, and we had some really nice conversations. I felt good about where we've come from and where the church is headed based on last night's conversation.

Two DVDs, one big Idea

In the past week I've watched two DVDs. The first was Rhythm, one of the Nooma videos By Rob Bell. The second was August Rush.

August Rush was supposed to be really good, and we finally watched it thanks to a Large drink from McDonald's and a RedBox machine that didn't work. Anyway... It turned out to actually be actually quite good. A bit of a cliffhanger ending, but a really great story. The basic idea is that some people can just hear music in everything. They may be an accomplished musician, a struggling rock star, or just an orphan with no musical training, but if they can hear the music, it will guide them, even haunt them, and never let them go. At one point someone (Robin Williams' kind of deranged character) describes music as "a harmonic connection between all things."

In Rhythm, which is basically a 10 minute sermon with some extra visuals and background music, Rob Bell talks about how he thinks of God like a song. This song is a compelling song, one which is in all people but which some know better than others. It's song we can recognize when we see it, in things like love and truth and justice. And some people, Rob says, have studied it, and know all about the technical aspects of it and can hear things other people can't. Other people just have an innate ability, maybe even an unexplainable ability, to know the song and live it out.

I think as Christians we need to combine these two ideas into a theology of connection, where we recognize that in God we are connected to all people and through God we are shaped and tuned and composed. Different people add harmony. Denominations strengthen the melodies. The song is real, it is everywhere and on some level you can't deny it. God describes God's self as "I am."

God is.

Our striving in life should be to also be as God is.

and the winner is...

me! well, one of the winners. Jesus Manifesto, an online magazine which I really enjoy reading, held a Pentecost Writing Contest, which I entered back around Pentecost time. It's exciting for me because it's the first writing contest I've ever won. Anyway, be sure to read it here and make a comment, either there or here, about what you think!

Love me Light me Give me Guide me

This song came up in the shuffle of mp3s today, and I think it's a good prayer for where I'm at right now. I feel like my life has been in transition for years now, but for the first time I'm actually starting to see a possible clearing up ahead.
press play in the box, then read the words below, and some of my thoughts below that.

"Mansions" by Burlap to Cashmere

God of light, light me some passion.
Green fields and lovely mansions.
Let your mansions live inside me.
Love me, light me, give me, guide me.
Cross of skin and naked figure.
Broken legs and crooked fingers,
Help me live for good tomorrow,
Today's too late and full of sorrow.
Light is good and dark is evil,
But I'm running around
Through the cross and through the steeples,
Trying to make it to higher ground.
Come on light, please live beside me.
Love me, light me, give me, guide me.
Pride and hate, they live inside me.
I need your love enough to guide me.
Help me walk across these borders.
I'm a pilgrim in deep waters.
Faithful God, like faithful sunrise,
Help me break from all these old ties.
Lead me all to that is holy.
Break these chains, but break them slowly.

Some lines in particular that I like...

"...but I'm runnin' around / through the cross and through the steeples / tryin' make it to higher ground "

This speaks more to my cynicism of organized religion than anything else, and I'm trying to be less cynical so I won't go into it. too much. Only to say that I feel disillusioned by the church, even deceived. I felt that the best way to honor my commitment to God was to work in the Church, full time even, and I've since come to realize that it's just not true. I leave my job at St Luke in a little less than 2 months and I do not intend to be employed by the church ever again. Now, having said that, I will not say "no" if God calls me back. I'm just saying I don't think it will happen.

"Help me walk across these borders / I'm a pilgrim in deep waters "
well, that's pretty obvious. I am leaving the US, crossing several borders, and I will be a sort of pilgrimage for Sarah and I. We are even now realizing that this is going to take more then we have, and we will at many times be in deep, deep waters.

"Faithful God, like faithful sunrise,
Help me break from all these old ties.
Lead me all to that is holy.
Break these chains, but break them slowly."

Leaving St Luke, my job, our appartment, and eventually the country will be for us the beginning of a new chapter of life. My prayer is that we will have the strength and courage to turn the page.

"Help me live for good tomorrow / Today's too late and full of sorrow"
another prayer for the next chapter of my life. I don't feel like I've really been "living for good." I've been thinking about it, talking about it, but I haven't really started living it.

"love me light me give me guide me"
This is the Church, or what it's supposed to be, it one of the simplest and most beautiful statements I have come across. People come together to show love and ignite passion for good. then we are sent out, given to the world, and guided.

Amen.

Trip Update

We've been talking a lot about our trip- especially since we announced it to the whole congregation on Sunday- and though we're still both really excited, now the hard part begins.

We are stuck in a series of catch-22's, most of which will hopefully be worked our by a cooperative travel agent and a little higher limit on our credit card...

The biggest problem seems to be that tourist visas to Paraguay only last up to three months, and in order to get one, we have to have a return flight within those three months. We won't be staying in Paraguay the whole time (we'll leave to visit Argentina and renew our visas then) but we aren't planning to fly back until February. One solution is just to buy two round-trip tickets for each of us, but that of course is not cost-effective (they're about $1800 each.)

So we need to buy our tickets ASAP, besides the fact that prices will be going up the longer we wait. However, we need money to do that, and we haven't raised any money yet. So as you can see, it's not all fun and games. But we're working though it all. We also have shots to get, insurance to buy, figure out our mail and storage of our stuff, our car, etc. It's crazy, but it's worth it.

I've been reading a lot about Paraguay lately, mostly on Google news (I told it to show me any story with the word "Paraguay" in it...) I read all about the native Guarani people and their spiritual beliefs, and about the new Presidente Fernando Lugo, who before running for office was a Catholic bishop. Interesting things! I feel like I use the word "excited" so much it looses any meaning, but that's how I feel. Although ost of the stories are just about soccer.

Sarah and I will be in Terre Haute for the weekend visiting family. Also, our Church lost one of it's members yesterday, and we'll be back in town Saturday to help with the funeral. We thought about rescheduling our trip, but we're pretty much booked from now until February of 2009.

Sometimes, God doesn't Call...

...sometimes God just sends an email. Over the past week my wife and I have exchanged several emails with people from the US and the South American Field Office of the Nazarene world mission. The end result of these emails is an exciting new opportunity for Sarah and I:

We're movin' to Paraguay!

Right now we're planning to leave in early August to volunteer for 6 months with missionaries in Asunción, Paraguay. The details are still hazy (and mostly in Spanish) right now, but we are really beginning to sense God's call for the next part of our life. We formally (Sarah more formally than me, of course) submitted our resignations last night, and tonight at Youth and Children's activities we told some of the people closest to us that we will be leaving at the end of the summer. That was that tough part, but went well. Now all we have to do is raise $9000... any suggestions?

time meta-blog 2

I've been working on blogging about time for... well a long time now here's what I've come up with. To start us off I want to look at this verse from Ecclesiastes 3:11 – He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

I think this shows us the time-less-ness of God, having already “made everything beautiful in it’s time” and also done everything “from the beginning to the end,” all past tense. It’s not what God has done and what God will do, but one statement, past tense, about what God has done. From an outside-of-time perspective, everything God does is done. Form an inside-time perspective this may look like some things are still happening, but from God’s perspective it is done.

If this is correct it means two things;

1) a shift in our thinking about things like predestination, free will, and prayer. I might get into those things more later. (I’ve been talking about them with my wife for years)

2) an incredible hope, following a God who already knows the way it all ends

So lets look at this a little more. This post was motivated by a conversation I had with some friends about life and death and I found it difficult to explain and support the point I was trying to make about time. I started out by looking through the New Testament for references to “eternal” or “eternity” that might give us more insight into the idea of time, I found the following: there are 69 references in the new testament, 63 of them don’t really say anything specific about time. Here are the other 6:

John 6.40:This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

The last day (end of time) is the beginning of eternal life, which I think shows that time ends and then eternity begins.

Romans 6.22:But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.

This could be understood to mean that at the end of everything, including time, is eternal life.

2 Corinthians 4.17:For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,

On the issue of time, this seems to me to say that now we are in time (momentary being a reference to an amount of time) and that now is preparation for eternity which is beyond all measure. Time is a measure, and the glory of eternity is beyond even the measure of time.

Titus 1.2:in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began—

Here we have an example of how eternal life was promised before time began, showing that it is something outside of time.

2 Peter 3.18: But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

“day” is a measure of time, which here is linked with eternity. I think this shows that our understanding of time with at very least be different in eternity, because “day” is used to mean an ambiguous (or even infinite) amount of time, not a 24 hour period

Luke 18.30: who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Here eternal life is referred to as an age, which seems to imply an amount of time with a beginning and an end. I suppose eternity could be an “age” with a beginning and simply no end, but it seems clearer to understand it as a starting point for an existence not governed by time whatsoever.

Other things like “eternal life”, “eternal glory”, “eternal dwelling”, “eternal fire”, --none of these terms imply a dynamic state of time in “eternity.” In fact, they all seem to point to eternity as a state of existence, without really specifying an amount (or lack) of time.

It comes down to this: is eternity infinite time, or an actual lack of time? I think there is scripture that hints at the latter, but nothing entirely decisive.

When scripture lets me down, of course I turn to Scot McKnight…

In Scot’s blogging about the Jesus and the kingdom, he shows how Jesus uses the term “kingdom” as both earthly and eternal, but there is a theme of “eternity” to the understanding of kingdom emphasized over and over again in the gospels.

Again in his discussion there doesn’t seem to be much that indicates whether there is in eternity an experience of time or whether eternity exists apart from time I read through it again and I didn't catch anything, but I could be wrong.

Right now I’m working on reading N.T. Wright’s book Surprised By Hope, which is what sparked this conversation in the first place and hopefully will help me as I continue to read it. If he says anything meaningful relating to time and eternity, I’ll post it!

What do you think? Time? No time? Waste of time? Don’t have time to think about it?

irrelevance

Today I was struck with several glaring examples of irrelevance in the Church. I know there is a lot of back and forth about being "relevant" and "contextualizing" the message, and I get both sides. Some people say "your message is always contextualized whether you know it or not, so I might as well be aware of how you're coming across to others" and the other side basically says "to contextualize the gospel is to give room for relativism, and ultimately to the erosion of absolute truth." I can understand both sides, but here's my point: if you're not going to be "relevant" at least don't be irrelevant.

We watched a video where Bill Hybels explained in under 8 minutes how to present the gospel in three different ways using only a sharpie and a restaurant napkin. come on... seriously? The sad part is that it probably was their attempt at being relevant. I'm not saying I've never drawn a napkin diagram to explain something to someone, I just think we're looking for more than napkin theology. Although that would make an interesting Christian spin off of indexed, which is one of my favorite blogs.

Earlier today was St. Luke's (presumably) first-ever "healing service" we put a sign out front, a note in the bulletin, and I think people came with mixed expectations. I think they were probably all disappointed. Here was the message, summarized as best I could (I took notes)

Three signs of Abundant Life:
1)if healing doesn't come it's because you don't have enough faith
2)healing will always come for everyone in death
3)therefore, abundant life is all about life after death, not before.

a direct quote: "The secret to good health is knowing that Jesus loves you"

summary thought (paraphrased, but pretty close:) sure you can pray for healing, but you won't be really healed until you're dead and gone to heaven, but we can all get together and pray anyway because it might make us feel better.

THAT is the kind of genuine spiritual truth our generation needs someone to speak to us. THAT is a message of hope. I think sermon time should always be followed by "question time" and in this case maybe even "rebuttal" time.

for more on my thoughts on the issue of prayer and healing, you can check out my other blog.

ALSO, I am still working on my post about time. It's turned out to be a little harder to nail down than I originally thought it would be, so it might be a few more days.

Time MetaBlog

I had a really good talk with some guys this morning that made me want to really nail down some of my more "unorthodox" (in the common sense, not the literal sense, I hope) views on time. I'm going to do this in three ways:

1) First I'm going to read through Scot McKnight's extensive blogging about the use of the word "Kingdom" in the N.T. looking at the ones that use the word in the "future" sense rather than the "now" sense.

2) I'm going to go through each use of the word Eternity in the new testement (70 in ESV)

3) For each of these references (probably around 100) I'll rate whether or not time is an inherent aspect of the Biblical description of the next life.

we'll see what happens I guess.

Ideas : actual writting

So those of you who know me know that I have a very skewed ratio of ideas to actual writing. So the other day I got an idea for a story and decided I was going to just do it.

here's the result.

being my first short story I've actually finished and posted for people to read, I would love your feedback! i.e. when you read, don't just say to yourself this stinks, post it in the comments (I fixed them so people can comment now, I hope) and tell me why it stinks so that the next thing I write doesn't stink so bad.

Two Ideas I'm thinking through

I've been doing some reading today that was probably a little out of my league. This morning while I was getting my car not fixed I started "Escape From Reason" by Francis Schaeffer. Then this evening I read a post by Stanley Fish which you can find here (good luck understanding it...) So these are two thoughts that are going through my head after reading those two things. I post it here mostly because this is how I process information, but also because I want to see what other people think. (i.e. am I that crazy?)

1) truth is a word; it describes other sets of words. It's a tool rooted in language, but in the absence of words what becomes of truth? Is truth something, as Derrida might put it, exist outside the text? And by that, I don't mean is there reality outside the text. I mean is there truth apart from language, or is truth simply a measure of words in the right order. Makes me want to stop blogging and start doing some form of visual art that has no words attached.

2) When I think does my mind actually create new realities of consciousness? These mental images and events floating like dreams, do they have real existence in some dimension, the way God exists even though we don't see God? When God thinks, creation happens; matter and energy are formed in our world. When we think, do new spiritual realities exist in the realm of God? Do we, in the image of God, have the ability to think things into spiritual exisitance?

OK so there you go. If you've known me for a while you may know I have a tendency to try to think about "theories" like these. My wife knows I've always imagined being some sort of theoretical physicist. I think it has to do with the fact that I read some really interesting books about theoretical physics when I was in college. The best by far was called "Einstein's Dreams"

So no, I'm not on drugs. Other then Mucinex for a bad chest cold I've been fighting. And Claritin. maybe that's a psychoactive combination, I don't know...

Evangelism 1

Tonight at our New Hope small group we started a church-wide study about evangelism. These kinds of studies aren’t really my kind of thing, but I think there is a lot to be said for doing something as a part of the larger body of Christ, even if it is just the larger body of our (other) church. It’s a series from Willow Creek called Just Walk Across the Room, a four week series of DVD’s about relational evangelism. As long as I can be at each week’s lesson, I plan to blog about it here.

Tonight was called The Single Greatest Gift. In the video we were introduced to a man named Brian, to whom Bill Hybels just walked across a soccer field. Brian eventually converted to Christianity and is now an active “creeker” (Bill’s word, not mine).

yadda yadda yadda skip to the conversation... Me and Billy are worlds apart in the way we see the Church, so I mostly just want to share about the conversations we have around the subject.

We started out just discussing the idea of “walking across the room” by which they mean starting casual friendships with people, presumably with the intent to convert them to our religion. It seems to be a sort of post-modern idea, but the B.H. version looks a little one sided; meeting someone so you can change their life. We talked about seeing it as a little more two sided –meeting people to talk, listen, and learn.

This illustrates what I see as a central difference between the conservative evangelical perspective and the postmodern “emergent” perspective. The former see relational ministry as a means to an end –the old “meet a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ” paradigm. The latter see it more as a part of the end- the atonement as restoration of relationships between people, not just between God and us.

The key scripture for this section of the study was Luke 19:10, which I think puts the two perspectives into a good scriptural context. It’s introduced as a statement of Jesus’ mission, but different translations encourage significantly different understandings.

in the NIV it says “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost”

Tim pointed out something about this and I liked the way he put it: he said this could be a reference to the idea of God recovering the broken image of God in humanity. “That which was lost” is “the image of God” and the mission of Christ is therefore framed more as a restoration of humanity than a conversion of individuals. That seems to me to fit really well with the rest of scripture as well as my experience with “evangelism.”

But the other way to look at this verse is what the ESV says: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” which doesn’t specifically refer to “lost people” but seems to have that implication. (I talked to my resident-Greek-expert-wife, and she said that it’s kind of ambiguous about which is more true to the Greek, though the ESV seems to be closer to the original sentence) This perspective seems to promote a kind of penal-substitution type idea that Jesus’ mission was to pay the price for each sinner who believes. While I don’t dispute the truth of that statement, it doesn’t seem to be the focus of Jesus’ ministry.

It seems to me Jesus’ ministry was much more relational and less entrepreneurial. The language of restoration makes a lot more sense to me than the language of commerce when we’re talking about the work of God.

That led us in to a little bit of discussion about our language and the way it frames our belief about an issue. When God is leading a person to reach out to someone, I think their response is shaped by the language with which they frame evangelism. For example, if I felt the Lord leading me to “walk across the room,” I may go and start a conversation, talk about life, ask some questions, learn about the person, and go from there. However, someone from a more solidly conservative-evangelical background might approach the situation differently. Feeling that same call to “walk across the room”, the conversation may quickly lead to something like “if you were to die tomorrow, do you know where you would be?” or maybe four spiritual laws, or the sinner’s prayer.

Granted this is not what B-Hizzle is advocating. He seems to fall somewhere in the middle, admitting he felt an urge to keep bringing up Church but at the same time feeling a need to let the relationship run it’s course and let the Lord work.

So after week one I have to say, I got more out of it than I thought I would. Although I feel like we pretty much got our collective head around the idea of “Just walking across the room” so it will be interesting to see what the next 3 weeks are about.

Ideas

I walked to work today, which takes me 30-35 minutes depending (today it depended on the WIND! took me 10 minutes just to go the last 3 blocks the wind was so strong!)

anyway that's a lot of time to think, and for some reason today I was thinking about some of my favorite movies. I realized that 3 of my all time favorite movies have a very strong common theme. The movies are (in no particular order) V For Vendetta, The Dancer Upstairs, and Stranger Than Fiction. The common theme is this: Ideas can be more powerful than even the people who thought them. This is a desire for my life- to have ideas that are bigger than me. Here are the ways this theme plays out in each of these movies (in case for some reason you GASP! haven't seen them!!)

V for Vendetta- The Ideas V lives and dies for are powerful ones, so much so that people put on the mask and overthrow the government, even though V is dead by that point. V also talks quite eloquently about the power of ideas.

The Dancer Upstairs- One man's ideas about government turn into a grass-roots revolution to which he is only very loosely connected. He has an alias ("Ezekiel") but most people have no idea who "Ezekiel" is, saying things like "he is the wind in the trees" "he is every tick of every clock" or something like that. In the end... well, I won't give away the end. GO RENT IT! I can let you borrow it if you want (might not find it at blockbuster...)

Stranger Than Fiction- Karen Eiffel is an author, and her ideas have power over the life of Harold Crick. The theme is much more of a metaphor in this movie, whereas the other two are more overt (talking about revolution and power) but it's there, and it's great.

"A Community"

I finished reading Scot McKnight's book A Community Called Atonement yesterday, and so in classic Scot McKnight fashion, I will now blog about it. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the Jesus Creed blog. He blogs through a number of books... pretty good reading)

Before I picked this book up I knew relatively little about atonement theories. I knew there were a few, and that Penal Substitution was the dominant one in evangelicalism, but I couldn't really name any of the others. Actually I bought this book on amazon with the specific hope that I would learn more about the atonement theories. He does talk about them some, I feel like I have a better sense of what an atonement theory is, but not really what each one is about.

But that wasn't the point of the book. The main metaphor in the book is a bag of golf clubs. He says that just as no one goes out on the golf course with just one club, we shouldn't approach Christianity through only one atonement theory. The metaphor seems to work, though I was a little hazy on what game of golf itself represents in the metaphor. I think it must just be Christianity as a whole, or maybe Christian Theology.

But the ideas of the book do more then explain atonement theories. First, he shows the basic things all atonement theories have in common, then he explains what that should mean for Christians.

That's the part that I want to talk about. What does the atonement mean for our lives?

Scot describes atonement as "identification for incorporation" by which I think he means this: God in Jesus identifies with us so that we can be a part of what God is doing in the world. This, Scot says, is a commonality that all atonement theories have- it is the bag to hold the clubs.

Another idea that runs throughout the book is people as "cracked Eikons", Eikon being a word for image, in this case the image of God. Cracked as we are, the work of atonement is the restoration of Eikons, and ultimately the incorporation of those Eikons into the mission of God.

What I love about this language is the emphasis on justice and mission. As Christians, we're not just "evangelists" trying to "win souls" we're broken people participating in the mission of God to restore all the broken people. And it's not just about the afterlife; it's about life now, and it requires action.

Too often, it seems, we try to make Christianity into an intellectual pursuit while ignoring the injustice and oppression around us. "Know the right stuff, believe the right way, and behave yourself" thats what we're told it means to be a Christian. I believe Scot McKnight, and also the New Testament, give us a different mandate:

Accept the atonement.
Share the atonement.
Do the work of the atonement.
Live in a community called atonement.

Justice

I've been thinking about Justice a lot lately, and I've found some interesting insights in the book I'm currently reading, A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight. Scot's basic ideas so far (I'm about 3/4 through the book...) are this: The Atonement, however we are to understand it, is ultimately about restoration of relationships between ourselves, God, others, and the world. He then explains that this relational view of atonement leads to a relational view of Justice, insofar as practicing justice means doing the work of healing relationships with God, others, and the world. I'm doing kind of a bad job of summarizing, so you should just read the book, but my point is this: The work of justice has to be about redemptive relationships. This is something that's going to take some more processing before I know what it looks like in my life, but I know that it's something I want to spend my life doing: working for justice wherever I happen to be.

One way I feel I can do that is in the midst of disagreement. I feel like God has been showing me more and more that beliefs are often the result of dramatic and painful experiences in people's lives. I've been learning that people believe differently things --about God, about religion, about everything-- simply because they have experienced life differently. Pain, or the avoidance of pain, has this amazing power that causes us to contort our beliefs into shapes that are least painful. We see many examples of this every day, and probably most of the time we don't even realize it.

For me, this is where justice comes in. I believe it's a form of injustice in our society when we tell people they must believe all things exactly the way we do. Now please don't misunderstand me, I still believe there are certain universal truths that are non-negotiable. But for me, that list has been melting away at an alarming rate. And what's more, the way I react to someone who disagrees with me has changed dramatically. I used to get really defensive and try to explain why my way was right, and more and more I find myself simply trying to understand why someone believes they way they do. This has lead me to much more peaceful and healthy relationships with people around me, and a more peaceful state of mind in general.

I don't know what God has in store for me next in life, but I do know that whatever it is, I will be working for justice, and I will be doing it through redemptive, relational ways. ways that hear and understand the pain behind belief.

My Call

A lot of people lately have been asking me to explain my "call to ministry," and this is not really an easy thing for me. It's looked a lot of different ways over the years, and sometimes even nonexistent, and yet it remains. I have been learning these past few years to broaden my idea of "God's Call" from something specific like a job to something broad like a general frame of mind. God has called me to peace. God has called me to openness. God has called me to understanding.

I will follow that call.

A lot of times God's call also sounds a lot like my wife. Now I know this is a totally lame cliché that old pastors whip out at their own retirement parties, but it also happens to be true for me. I would be frothing lattés and wondering where my life went wrong if it weren't for Sarah, and now together we are looking forward to a new chapter of life and ministry. Right now I know more about what I don't want to do then what I do (one word: evangicube) but I know God will bring us to something that's right for us. Either that or I will have a lot to write about this fall...

Rob Bell: Rock Star Pastor

NOTE: I wrote the following as a potential magazine article, but it wasn't ever published so I'm reposting it here (because I like it.) I have, however, changed my feelings about some of the included ideas... I would HIGHLY recommend you watch "The gods aren't angry" DVD when it comes out in June (or a bootleg version online) and let me know what you think.


I recently paid $22.50 to see a pastor give a sermon. It sounds little absurd, so I prefer to think of it as watching ten back-to-back Nooma videos, normally about $11 each, I got a sweet bargain. Everything about Rob Bell's recent "the gods aren't angry tour" screamed rock star; From the website to the tickets to the hip midtown theater where he spoke, he truly is the first postmodern rock star preacher. Except he wasn't really preaching.


Instead, he did pretty much exactly what the tour website would lead you to believe. He stood up and spoke for an hour and a half about "how humans invented religion to make themselves feel better." Rob's still on tour, and I don't want to give away the details of his masterfully constructed narrative. But I did feel like a serious issue was never resolved; he never said anything that even so much as hinted at an actual belief in God.


The stage was empty except for a large stone altar in the center, which he occasionally used as he talked about the methods and reasons and origins of sacrifices. He spent the first 45 minutes or so explaining how over time people developed their superstitious ideas of the "gods" into intricate systems for sacrifice. But he never divorced the made-up acts of religion from the made-up realm of the gods. Even when his story arrived at the life of Christ, he described Jesus as "a radical, progressive Rabbi guy from Galilee" and then went on to tell us that much of what Jesus did was a profound exhibition of performance art. I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting for the resurrection, but it never came. If Rob Bell was going to reverse thousands of years of people inventing stuff about imaginary gods, I thought for sure he would find that redemption in the resurrection. But I was disappointed. Rob mentioned the resurrection twice, and both times only as a fleeting footnote to the rebellion-crushing efforts in the crucifixion. Rob seemed to think that the resurrection was a rumor spread among early disciples, but not something relevant to us today. And how could he? A Rabbi from Galilee rising from the dead would prove that humans didn't invent God.


The night concluded with some very moving stories of compassion. Rob showed us how Jesus' death changed the way we relate to our concept of ultimate reality, and he beautifully illustrated how love and peace and justice are more important then any ritual or pious act. He seemed to be trying to leave any decision of objective truth up to the audience; trying not to alienate anyone with language of "one true God." But as the music faded in and he gave his trademark "so may you…" benediction, he left me inexplicably thirsty for an actual encounter with the God he almost talked about.