Cerulean Sanctum

The Missing Virtue

2008-09-06T15:16:17Z

Almost a year ago, I wrote about 100 truths I’d learned in 30 years as a Christian. Every year I learn a few more truths about life and faith.

I consider this to be one of the most penetrating truths I’ve learned this year:

A man who lacks humility, no matter how gifted he might be , will have that lack taint everything good in his nature. On the other hand, a man who is humble will bolster the excellence of every positive trait he possesses.

God is holy. His holiness permeates every trait in Him. I believe that humility may be the equivalent transcendent virtue in men and women. It may be that this is the reason Jesus found pride to be so hellish.

Indeed, humilty may be the one virtue most lacking not only in Americans in general, but in American Evangelicals. I used to know many more humble people, mostly older. With that generation dying off, I fear that those humble folks have been replaced by a generation characterized by boasting and privilege.

Jesus must increase, while we decrease. I hope we learn this reality before it is too late.

The Missing Virtue

Tags: Boasting, Holiness, Humbleness, Humility, Pride, Self-Examination

It’s Still Who We Know

2008-09-03T15:38:49Z

If you’re single, I doubt that most people’s advice to you on finding a mate would be to sit home alone. Instead, they’ll say you need to get out and meet people.

If you are led to be a doctor, I doubt that most people would suggest you avoid college. Instead, they’ll advise you to get the proper education.

I suspect that few people would argue against that advice. I doubt that few Christians would, either, albeit with an added caution not to forget prayer and seeking God’s direction in the process.

No, I doubt that many Christians out there would argue against a person working to accumulate as many resources as possible before an undertaking, no matter what that undertaking might be. Even Jesus said that no king sets out for war without checking his resources

I interview people and write stories about them as part of my work. What perpetually strikes me is that these people rose to influential positions largely because of their social networks. They knew the right people, others who were influential and could make things happen. Now they are influencers themselves.

What also stands out to me is how well people who make no pretenses to being born again use their network of contacts, yet so many Christians I know are absolutely awful at doing the same.

As I look around at Christians that I know, it’s remarkable to me how few of us are connected to genuine influencers, the people who can pick up a phone, make a call, and put good things into motion. Instead, too many of the networks of these fellow Christians are more like puddles than teeming lakes or are so highly compartmentalized as to exemplify a ghetto. Is that not a squandering of resources that could be used for the Kingdom of God?

What’s utterly counterintuitive is that the decisions we may have believed were more “godly” stuck us with these tiny, fragile networks. Jesus Himself had 12 disciples, but He still went out of His way to snag that one critical influencer, Saul of Tarsus. That’s how important this issue is. Why then do we act as if it’s not?

As an example of my own personal failure in this regard, I bought the consistent Christian advice that I should devote more time to my family. What Christian hasn’t been bombarded with the “sanctity of family” message? It practically defines 21st century Evangelicalism. However, pouring time back into my family by eschewing happy hour with coworkers, including influencers, and begging off the Saturday morning golf outings has limited my network.

In talking with most of my Christian peers, we seem to all have the same story. Comparing networks reveals that we have little or no connection to influencers, just each other. And we’re definitely NOT influencers ourselves as a result.

Unbelievers, on the other hand, absolutely live and die by their networks. The smart ones play those networks constantly because they realize that doing so yields positive results in their favor. They know influencers, and those influencers make things happen for them.

Why, then, are Western born-again Christians so terrible at this?

I think part of it comes down to the thinking that God is all we need. On most levels that is true, but I don’t think that God created us to be disconnected from each other. Yet that is what ultimately happens. Some people feel like islands even in church, a most dreadful reality that should never occur.

There’s a disease in Western Christianity that spreads through the message that we don’t need our brothers and sisters in Christ. The result is that people languish as lone rangers. They ultimately question God about why He didn’t do such and such when the reality is that the person never had the right social resources in place for God to bring all the pieces together. Like I mentioned at the beginning, not a person here would expect God to make someone into a doctor without that person having the right educational resources first. Yet how is it that we scratch our heads when a ministry plan fails to come together for want of connections to the right people to help make that plan a reality? Yes, the Lord may build the house, but He still builds it from existing material.

All this disconnection leads to marginalization. We have our ghetto and we’re fine with it. And that’s a shame because I think it keeps too many of us back. It prevents us from being all we can be. It means we rarely interact with outsiders, including unbelievers. It backs us into a corner. Worse, it robs the world of the light of Christ in us. If we don’t interact with the darker world, how then will it fill with light?

I don’t think it has to be this way. How we build (or rebuild) networks, especially for us old guys, is the harder question. If we start working on that network, I suspect the inevitable catcalls from fellow believers will come. The sad part may be that we have to reduce our involvement in some unhealthy networks to spend time in better ones, and some fellow Christians may comprise that unhealthy network.

Hey, no matter how we look at it, it still comes down to who we know.

It’s Still Who We Know

Tags: Connections, Evangelism, Interpersonal Skills, Networks, Relationships, Social Networks, Sociology

Pentecost, 21st Century

2008-09-01T22:25:54Z

I have a nagging question that will not go away:

How is it that so many Christians in the West willingly endorse the idea that the Gospel of Grace lay fallow for 1,000 years until “rediscovered” by the Reformation generation (Hus, Luther, Calvin), yet they find it incomprehensible that any other major component of God’s word might lie fallow longer and only find its rediscovery in our generation?

Yet that is what many Christians believe. It is as if the worldwide Church ceased to exist from 500-1500 A.D., flowered in the revelation of the Reformation, but has been on a deaf, downhill slide since. That belief also renders it impossible that our generation may experience any kind of renaissance in Christian spirituality.

I believe that this belief is the primary reason why so many people reject the charismata, not any Scriptural injunction, but an idea that, in essence, “it’ll never be better than Luther’s day.” Therefore, God will never choose to revitalize part of the True Faith during our day.

That’s too bad. It’s awfully presumptive as well.

Lakeland was a huge blow to the charismatic movement. And in a way, I thank God for it. Because it’s time for the foolishness to stop.

But it’s a logical fallacy to conclude that a charismatic reading of the Scriptures is wrong because some unhinged people claim to be charismatics. If one wanted to prove guilt by blanket condemnation, one would have to argue that the Holy Bible is not to be trusted because of the existence of The Book of Mormon or the New World Translation or any of the so-called “mystery books” or apocryphal writings that were supposedly “left out” of the Bible. And who now reading this believes that position?

It bothers me that so few people are able to look at catastrophes and meltdowns and glean anything from them other than polarizing positions. There never seems to be any middle ground, therefore the autopsy of the event thrusts people into starkly held positions. Positions which, when you get right down to it, end up not being the truth at all because prejudices get in the way of objective analysis.

But plenty of people want to dance on the grave of the charismatic movement. Me, I say, “Let ‘em.” Why? Because I don’t acknowledge that what is commonly called “The Charismatic Movement” by outsiders and critics defines the genuine expression of the Holy Spirit operating through charismata in the True Church today. That label is far too broad, so it winds up encompassing both legitimate and illegitimate expressions of the charismata. Critics then look at the invalid expressions and label the entirety corrupt.

No better example of this exists than Pentecostal and charismatic TV ministries. And here’s the rub: I suspect that they dominate the airwaves and present a much broader, polarizing picture of what is deemed charismatic than really exists. What gets put on the airwaves is the flash, the dog and pony shows, that represent the worst, not the best, of what is deemed charismatic or Pentecostal.

If aliens from beyond our galaxy were able to intercept television signals from Earth, yet the only show they could receive was Teletubbies, what kind of whacked-out interpretation of life here would they form? So it is with charismania on TV. It may make for a wild show, but it’s not reality.

You want to know what is the genuine reality for charismatic and Pentecostal churches today?

Whenever we talk about the persecuted church in the world, those churches most oppressed by dictatorial regimes, those churches are, in many cases, Pentecostal. The Chinese underground Church so revered here by high-minded Western Christians? Mostly Pentecostal or with a belief that the charismata exist today. In fact, if one were to look around the globe, the revivals we see in developing countries, the thousands coming to Christ in the “backwaters” of the globe, those new Christians are Pentecostals/charismatics. For the far greater part, they are NOT Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Methodists, Lutherans, Reformed, Brethren, Episcopalian, or any other denomination of that type.

This is not some kind of slam on those other denominations. It’s just an acknowledgment that it is easy to bash Pentecostals and charismatics with blanket statements that end up making all us Western Christians look foolish.

What is the common denominator between the televised dog and pony shows fronted by red-faced, Armani-wearing Branham devotees and the persecuted Chinese Church? Not a whole lot. At all. Yet far too many people want to mash them up and label them the same thing.

There’s a word for that: lazy.

So if anyone out there wants to dance on the grave of what was epitomized by Lakeland, be my guest. But be exceptionally careful where else you jig because you may very well be contributing to the persecution of genuine, faithful, humble Christians who just so happen to believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit are still for today.

Pentecost, 21st Century

Tags: Charismania, Charismata, Charismatic, Chinese Church, Pentecost, Pentecostal, Pentecostalism, Persecuted Church, Persecution, Spiritual Gifts, Underground Church

Miscellaneous Thoughts on a Labor Day Weekend

2008-08-29T16:24:41Z

Spent most of the week “riding the chair” as I like to say. Misunderstood a timetable point on a project I was working on, so I had to kick it into overdrive. Cerulean Sanctum went on the backburner. Apologies if I felt a bit distant and uninvolved this week.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking:

I hated Blue Like Jazz and didn’t even bother to finish it—something I never do, even with the worst books—but I thought Don Miller’s prayer at the Democratic National Convention was worthy in light of the venue. Yes, it did have a liberal feel to it and, yes, he did absolve others from believing in Jesus by using himself as a proxy for their belief in his comments at the end, and, yes, he could have been more of a burning witness for Christ, but he did one thing that I admired: He touched on all the social aspects of the Gospel that never get one hint of mention during a typical prayer at a GOP/Evangelical-dominated event. We can say what we will about how we live out the Gospel, but Miller’s prayer highlights one very sad truth about American Christians: Each of us has a half-empty cup when it comes to understanding what it means to live out the full Gospel of Jesus Christ on a practical, daily basis.

As for Obama, for someone who keeps talking about change and pushing past old paradigms, he could not have chosen a bigger old paradigm ball-and-chain than Joe “Tony Blair Said It and So Will I” Biden. I mean, seriously. Talk about “old boy networks” and “this is my time” privilege! Joe Biden? Some DNC bigwigs took Obama into a back room and said, “If you have any party loyalty at all, you WILL be choosing the biggest character we owe now that Ted Kennedy’s out of the picture.” Seriously. That conversation happened. I’ll bet good money on it.

This just in: John McCain shows he’s got the mojo Obama lacks in picking veeps: It’s Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, and a darned good choice, too. She’s the closest thing to Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher that we’ve seen in American politics since Elizabeth Dole ( whom I thought was a more viable presidential candidate than her husband, Bob).

The more I think about it, the more I realize that one of the most important and influential figures of the 20th century was not a politician, but an explorer, filmmaker, inventor, scientist, firebrand, and intellect: Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He’s one of the most underestimated and overlooked figure of our day. To say he’s the greatest person to come out of 20th century France takes no effort. His global influence even after his death is extraordinary. Do the research and you’ll see what I mean.

Doesn’t it bother you that we have to go back more than fifty years to begin to find great Americans that commanded the world’s stage? I think nothing speaks louder about the shriveled figures we thrust into the global spotlight today than that sad truth.

In other news, The Wall Street Journal now claims that there are more ultra-rich than ever before in this country. On the other hand, in the same edition, it claims the middle class are getting killed. Hmm. Two Americas? Where have we heard that before?

Irony of the Day: I got my renewal for The Wall Street Journal two weeks ago. One year? $349. Ouch! Six years ago when I started reading it, I paid $149 for a year. Then $179. Then $199. Then $219. Then they offered me $299 for 18 months and I thought I was actually getting a deal. Now it looks like the newspaper of record in the Edelen household is going bye-bye. I guess this is why Rupert Murdoch, the new owner, is one of the world’s richest men. If we need any further commentary on the decline of newspaper readership in the United States, I can post the renewal notice online so we can all cringe.

By far, the most read post on Cerulean Sanctum is this one. It’s also the most Googled post. Every day of the year I get about a dozen search engine hits on that post and hundreds at the start of a new year. What does that say about churches that so many people are Googling to find the direction they need on this issue?

The runner-up in Googling and reading? This post. I’ll leave you to guess why.

Is there any weirder holiday than Labor Day? Honestly, I sometimes get Labor Day and Memorial Day mixed up.

Anyway, have a wonderful, relaxing weekend, no matter what holiday it is.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on a Labor Day Weekend

Tags: Biden, Cousteau, Democrats, DNC, Don Miller, Donald Miller, GOP, Heroes, McCain, Middle Class, Miscellany, Obama, Palin, Politics, Ramblings, Republicans, Rich, Thoughts, Wall Street Journal

To My Brother, MIA

2008-08-27T04:54:39Z

When I was a kid, they built this suburban church near I-275 that rivaled the Colosseum in Rome. It looked like you could fit four of my church inside it. Every time we drove past, my folks would comment on how big it was. In my mind, it was as close as you could get for the 1970s to a genuine megachurch. Imagine a sea of cars on Sunday nights. Heck, we’d even watch them park cars on the church lawn. (Hey, there were no Sunday night services at the Lutheran church, so yeah, we were out and about.)

Funny thing is, I’m 45 years old now and have lived in the Greater Cincinnati area for most of my life, yet I’ve never met a single person who went to that church. The Christian world is an impossibly small one, and I swear sometimes that while the world has its six degrees of separation for Christians it’s about half that many.

Still, I’ve never met anyone from that church. Doesn’t that raise a bunch of questions about that church’s ability to evangelize? If they aren’t getting out and meeting people randomly, including a fellow brother like me, how will they ever lead anyone to Christ? What is it about them that they have no presence?

Here’s the deeper question: What’s wrong with me that I’ve never encountered one of them? What’s that say about my presence in the community, my willingness to share Christ with someone new, even if that someone new turns out to be another brother in Christ?

You see, it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

I drove past that church the other night, and it seemed small. And the more I stared at it, the longer I hunted for signs of life, the more it looked abandoned.

To My Brother, MIA

Tags: Brotherhood, Community, Discipleship, Ecumenism, Evangelism, Fellowship, Sharing, Sharing Christ

Cerulean Sanctum

The Missing Virtue

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