Finding the Center—The Response
June 22, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Apologetics, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Eschatology, Leadership, Relevance, Uncategorized Feedback : 29 comments
Last week, I asked the question of centeredness. You can’t be a Christian for any length of time and not hear someone talking about themselves or their church as being Christ-centered, Bible-centered, outreach-centered, Gospel-centered, and on and on. After a while, it gets confusing to people. I think this clash of centers also explains much about the condition of the Church today and why we can’t seem to see eye to eye on a lot of issues. Two people with two different centers of operation and experience are simply never going to be on the same page. In essence, they are operating out of two different worldviews.
All that may not be a bad thing, as variety is indeed the spice of life. But as any master chef will tell you, it’s one thing to understand how to mix spices tastefully and quite another to just throw anything into the pot. Our tendency to do the latter is one reason why lost people sample the stew that is American Christianity and wince.
What follows in this post is my opinion. Over the years, I’ve been everywhere on the map on this issue of center. And in each center I explored in the past, I found some glaring problems. Many of those problems stem from simple human nature and our tendency to latch onto one idea and run it into the ground. The idea itself is perfectly sound—under perfect conditions. But the last time I checked, the world wasn’t perfected just yet.
Rather than start with reasons why I think some of the other centers are problematic, I’m just going to come right out and say which center is the only one I think fully reflects what God desires for us. (Feel free to disagree!)
About the Gospel preached by the apostles and early Church:
And [Paul] entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.
—Acts 19:8But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
—Acts 8:12
In the four Gospels, Jesus references this center nearly 120 times. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a subject He spoke about more often:
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
—Matthew 6:33These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay….”
—Matthew 10:5-8But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
—Mark 10:14-15But [Jesus] said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.”
—Luke 4:43To another [Jesus] said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
—Luke 9:59-62And [Jesus] said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come….”
—Luke 11:2“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom….”
—Luke 12:32Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
—John 3:5
And even when Jesus was not doing the speaking, this is how His emphasis was portrayed:
And [Jesus] went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
—Matthew 4:23
And why was the Kingdom so important to Jesus? Because it encompasses all that is seen and unseen. With a Kingdom center, nothing is ignored. It is a truth that maintains a fully systemic expression, not one centered in just one area. As such, it proves more immune to the problems of extremism that may back into a corner other views based on other, more limiting, centers.
A kingdom has a king, lands, work, and people. Those people work the land for the king and offer themselves to him as his subjects. 
They also interact with each other, sharing a collective purpose found within the kingdom. When a king is a good king, he is loved, honored, and obeyed, and his kingdom grows. And as the kingdom grows, the king’s subjects benefit, and he rewards those who faithfully serve him.
In a Kingdom-centered Christianity, the Triune God is honored as King, with those who have given their allegiance to Him comprising His Kingdom people. They do the work God has called them to do in the lands that the He has provided, and they proclaim the truths of the Kingdom and the King in those lands. In the Kingdom of God, He rewards those who serve Him ably, because He loves them and is pleased by their service to Him.
The Kingdom center is the only center that permits the full truth of the following passage without falling into extremes that miss the greater picture:
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
—Luke 10:25-28
The lawyer correctly sums up the Bible, and Jesus Himself verifies his answer: love God and love your neighbor. The problem with many of the other centers is that their practice tends to diminish one or the other portion of that summation.
Take for example a commonly expressed center. When people talk about being Christ-centered, one has to ask what that center looks like if taken to its natural conclusion in an imperfect world. If history has shown us anything, it’s that the answer can only be monasticism.
Few people more devotedly pursued the Christ-centered life than the monastic mystics. Theirs was the sold-out expression of Christ-centeredness, verging on a mysticism few of us understand today and rarely see in America 2009.
But such a center, as practiced by these people utterly devoted to making Christ the center of everything in their existence, didn’t leave much room for loving one’s neighbor. Because, honestly, it’s hard to be that specifically devoted without losing something in practice. Especially when you’ve locked yourself away in a monastery so no one will bother your centering.
Many people who say they are Christ-centered really aren’t. And that’s not to say they are not devoted to Christ, only that their praxis never truly lines up with their devotion. If it did, I believe it would end up moving toward the monastic mystic lifestyle, where loving Christ is everything, while loving people by truly serving them in a Kingdom manner eventually winds up forgotten.
Most of the centers readers listed last week are beautiful and needed. Yet I would contend that they may be too sharply focused, more focused than what even Christ Himself preached.
By being Kingdom-centered, we are forced to look more broadly at what defines the Christian life. While that may be messier than some people are used to confronting, I believe the Kingdom center is the only center that holds in real life. It doesn’t allow us to choose a monastic existence or the social gospel. We can’t latch onto parts we like while ignoring those we don’t. Instead, being Kingdom-centered asks us to embrace a larger vision that is greater than the sum of its parts.
And that’s an enormous problem because so few Christians, Christian leaders, and churches in America comprehend the Kingdom. Despite the fact that Jesus spoke about it more than just about anything else, I can’t remember the last sermon I heard about the Kingdom of God.
We tend to shy away from the Kingdom because it’s so vast. It’s God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Heaven, Earth, angels, demons, you, me, us, them, grace, mercy, wealth, poverty, healings, miracles, prophecy, tongues, deliverance, peace, war, love, hate—it just goes on and on. It’s all wrapped up in one very big package that is hard for an adult to grasp (though the Scriptures claim that even children understand it).
Despite its enormity, we can’t excuse ourselves from the scope of a Kingdom center, because the Kingdom stretches all through history and into eternity.
When I look at the ending of the Scriptures, I see that God’s original intent for His creation is the same at its end as it was at its beginning. The difference is that evil has been utterly destroyed. The kind of Kingdom God created for Man in the beginning is, for the most part, the same kind of Kingdom we will see in eternity. The roles and relationships of God to Man, Man to God, and Man to Man are spiritually the same. There are kingdoms and sub-kingdoms. Work will exist, even in eternity, only it will no longer be under the curse. The Kingdom will persist.
All this is why I can’t see any better center than a Kingdom one. If that’s what Jesus focused on, then how can I focus on anything else?
Tags: Gospel, King, Kingdom, Kingdom Center, Kingdom-centeredRelated posts
The American Religion on Parade?
October 31, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Discernment, Dying to Self, Godly Character, Holiness, In the News, Maturity, Oddities, Simplicity, Uncategorized Feedback : 11 comments
The image is of an event held this past Wednesday calling Christians to pray for the world’s economies.
A quote unrelated to the event::
Conversion in the U.S. seems to mean we’ve exchanged some of our shopping at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Borders for the Christian bookstore down the street. We’ve taken our lack of purchasing control to God’s store, where we buy our office supplies in Jesus’ name.
I’ll let you draw all the conclusions you wish.
Tags: American Dream, Consumerism, Economy, Idolatry, Religion, ShoppingRelated posts
The “Please, Someone Notice Me!” Generation—More Thoughts
September 10, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Godly Character, Hospitality, Love, Oddities, Technical, Uncategorized Feedback : 11 comments
The comments on my previous post were so good that I decided to air a few more thoughts on the phenomenon of social networking Web sites and widgets. If you missed the previous post that featured my take on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, AIM, and their ilk, plus the more pressing issue they magnify, that of a desperate need for people today to be noticed, then you can read it here.
I found it strange that most people glossed over the greater statement in that post that ours is a voyeuristic/celebrity generation intent on, if not its 15 minutes of fame, avoiding anonymity on a larger scale. The Wall Street Journal ran an article a few months ago that explained the sudden rise in unusual names for children. Parents, not wishing their li’l darlings to suffer the damning fate of being invisible to search engines, are eschewing the common names of the past for ones easily Googled. Pity poor John Joseph Smith! All hail Aloysius Percival Smith!
It’s a strange disconnect with the past and a harbinger of a global future. Our ancestors’ greatest aspirations lay in being a known entity in the local community. Competition for attention typically did not extend more than a dozen miles in any direction. Today, though, Thomas Friedman’s flattening necessitates, in some people’s minds, a sphere of influence no smaller than a continent, and, more optimally, the entirety of planet Earth. It’s not enough to be the town mayor. Unless one shoots for Emperor of the Universe, others might deem one’s aspirations a bit too meager.
So we’re thrust into this bizarre world of everyone scrambling for attention. The oddest part of the odyssey we’ve taken toward essential global recognition through our friend-laden Facebook page or Twitter-a-minute updates is that it began long before the Web took off.
I remember back to the Stone Age of 1992 when I was a senior in college. We had a special assembly that was supposed to promote diversity on campus. One ethnic group of students after another would come on stage and tell why their group was worthy of attention and celebration. Afterwards, I ran into one of my friends on campus, also an older student, who happened to be of African ancestry. We both expressed the awful feeling we had on leaving the assembly. He said, “It’s as if each group got up there and yelled, ‘Don’t look at them! Look at us instead!.’” And you know, he nailed that observation. It was the first time in my life that I realized that everyone is dying to be center stage, even if it means trampling someone else to get there.
Internet-based social networking takes this to another level. Since there must be winners and losers in the push to be noticed, people have to stay current and hot. It’s now not enough that an actor must keep his or her face out there, even if it means slumming in C-Movie Land, your average Jane is compelled to keep her MySpace page up-to-the-minute or else face obscurity, buried under a hundred million other pages that are hipper and more relevant. To this generation, nothing could be more damning than to find no one cares that you think Timbaland is teh hot because they’ve moved on to someone else’s minty-fresh page.
Some may be laughing about this, but for too many people it’s a serious thing. The hit counter decelerates and depression sets in. The Internet, in many ways, amplifies the feeling that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and you might be a 2-pound Yorkie-poo.
For others, it may be the opposite problem. A little attention and up sprouts the deceptive kingdom of “I Am Somebody!” Suddenly, your Barbie Fashions Designed By Bobby Mackie page has a thousand subscribers who consider you the guru of Barbie fashions designed by Bobby Mackie. (Until they find someone else filled with more Barbie-fashions-designed-by-Bobby-Mackie goodness. See above.)
Whether on the way up to Internet fame or spiraling down into irrelevance, people have to get in on the game. To not play means an anonymous fate worse than death.
But what of the face-to-face encounter?
If my senior year in college was the Stone Age, then my sophomore year must’ve have been the Cambrian Era, when giant trilobites roamed vast continent-spanning oceans in search of some place to drop a quarter on Centipede, Qix, or Dig Dug. (Yeah, I managed to wedge in a decade between my sophomore and senior year.)
For the rehash of my point, I’ll dig into the guts from a past post (“Has the Christian Blogosphere Lost Its Collective Mind“):
When I was at Carnegie Mellon University studying artificial intelligence and robotics in the early 1980s, CMU was on the cutting edge of the pre-Internet world. Every dorm had networked computers, IBM was opening up a networking research center on campus, and there was so much stinking CPU horsepower at the school that they ran their HVAC systems through the mainframe cooling systems to heat the academic buildings. In short, only MIT was even close in computing power.
One of the cool things about the school was that it was on ARPANET. I could e-mail a friend at MIT. Back then that was something. We also had a college online community that existed only in cyberspace. We talked about every subject imaginable. Everyone had cool handles, so it was easy to hide behind our anonymity and be “free.”
I liked to hang out in an area discussing Christianity. Needless to say, it got contentious considering that the (self-identified) “heathen” to Christian ratio was about 500:1. One day a heathen posted something really sick, and the worst flame war I’ve ever seen in my life erupted. I tried with all my might to keep it civil, but things got out of control. I’ve never seen such hateful things said in my life from people with handles like Blasphemer, Bot, Mr. Wizard, and Grue.
Yet behind each of those handles was a person—someone I could be sitting next to in class and not even know it. So I proposed something radical: I asked that the most vocal people—about forty altogether—meet up at a local Italian restaurant for dinner. We could talk face-to-face, drop the anonymity, and be real people. Maybe then we could come to a better understanding. Everyone in the flame war agreed, all forty.
I reserved a room at the Italian place, set up carpools with the forty, arranged a rendezvous on campus so we could drive down in the carpools, and had the whole thing worked out. I was really looking forward to it.
The day comes, and my watch shows 4:30 PM. I’m in the meeting spot for the carpools and no one shows. Around 4:40, my laid-back, barefoot Christian buddy, Tom (aka “Captain Zodiac”), arrives and says, “Hey, where is everybody?” Tom and I sat there until 5:15 before we finally called the restaurant, canceled, and went upstairs to grab a burger in the lounge cafeteria.
Two days later, most everyone was at it again on the BBS system, flaming away. When I asked where everyone had been, there was a vast silence. I never got a response. As for me, I gradually bowed out of the “conversation” having learned a great lesson about human nature.
Nothing we do replaces the face-to-face. God wrapped so much of who we are in these flesh-and-bone bodies. He gave us intonations, facial expressions, and all other manner of communication that is lost through the Internet. Most of all, He gave us a soul. And no matter how eloquent we might be online, we can’t communicate that soul through our high-tech gadgets.
That distance so readily on display in the flame war above only illustrates the ultimate Achilles heel we build into every techno-whizbang toy we consider so vital to our personae. Yet how easily we lose ourselves in the the distant world of iPods, tweets, and Facebook pages.
This is not to say that high-tech social networking tools have no value, only that their value may be far more limited than we understand. The devil in this is that none of us is ubiquitous and neither is our time. Something MUST give. If the sociologists are to be believed, perhaps the give is our surrendering of the face-to-face for the security of a Twitter tweet.
One last illustration culled from a previous post (one that also looks at fractured community, “Radical Thoughts, Real Community“):
I remember many years ago how my old neighborhood experienced a power outage that blackened TVs, silenced video games (Atari 2600s back then), and quieted the bits and bytes of computers (Commodore 64 and Apple IIe). Right after supper, with the electronics stilled, the soft voice of that beautiful summer night called to people. The next thing I knew neighbors were chatting in each other’s yards, kids were playing impromptu games of Kick the Can and softball, and the neighborhood came alive. But when the power kicked on an hour or so later, the neighborhood took on the feel of a tomb. People had trudged back to their electronic distractions, each homeowner shutting the door on his or her personal fortress.
We’re still locked up today. Perhaps more so.
Bowling alone, anyone? On the Wii?
I don’t believe we have to live this way. I don’t believe the disconnected humanity depicted in Pixar’s Wall-E must be our future.
A couple readers asked for my take on solutions. As I’ve written on the subject of community extensively, I suggest selecting that blog category in the sidebar or clicking on this link and this one.
As for the irony of me discussing this through a blog, well, you’re right. Still, this is more about trying to make a difference than it is about getting someone to notice yours truly. And yes, if no one noticed, then nothing in this blog would make a difference. It’s not a perfect medium. God help me if it substitutes for my time in flesh-and-blood, face-to-face connection. May that never be the case.
Thanks for reading. The comments, as always, are open.
Tags: Alone, Community, Facebook, Interpersonal Skills, Loneliness, MySpace, Relationships, Social Networks, Technology, Twitter, TwitteringRelated posts
Compromise
July 8, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Dying to Self, Heresy, Holiness, Homeschooling, Humility, Men, Perseverance, Poll, Relevance, Uncategorized Feedback : 18 comments
Making dinner this evening, I opened up my favorite olive oil spread and realized that it was now whipped.
At some point, a group locked away in a corporate office park somewhere, figured consumers would love the new, improved, more spreadable spread. They’d worked hard to perfect this latest incarnation of the product, and were proud of the results.
Here’s how I saw their triumph: same size container, now with just more air.
Do I truly believe that the manufacturers of what used to be my favorite spread slaved night and day to better the product that I now held in my hand? That engineers worked feverishly to improve the silky smoothness? That marketing convened panel after panel to test all their hard work?
Nope.
Here’s what the fly on the wall of some mucky-muck’s office heard:
Mucky-Muck: “Rodney, we’ve got PPP.”
Rodney: “Yeah, ‘price point pressure.’ Engineering’s on it.”
Mucky-Muck: “The usual?”
Rodney: “They blow some nitrogen in and we’re golden, boss.”
Mucky-Muck: “Make it so, Number One.”
And thus is born yet another compromise.
Now you can contend I’m just a spoiled American consumer griping about non-dairy spreads. You’d be right, of course. No points for stating the obvious.
But in a much deeper way, I’m not upset about the spread. I’m upset about what it says about us.
Somewhere, the people behind the air-laden spread are going home to their wives and kids having never once considered that they sold a little piece of their soul that afternoon. Now repeat that same tiny moral death a million times over in America today. Little concessions to the lowest common denominator, to the cheap, to the compromise.
What’s truly sad is that not a person reading this today is immune. Not me and not you. We all get mired in the “Oh well, no one will notice” shtick until we don’t feel the twinge of guilt anymore. It’s all in a day’s work, and the day’s work counts more than anything else, right? Keep your nose clean, even if no one’s ever is.
I think these concessions are what’s wrong with our country.
Somewhere, someplace, sometime, it stopped being about principles. It stopped being about a God outside of us. Instead, it became the little deaths each of us suffers when we compromise on things that are dear to the heart of God. Those little deaths that no longer hurt because repetition numbed the sting.
A person doesn’t get a hard heart overnight. Yes, the raw materials for one lurk within all of us. No, a hard heart comes from compromising day in and day out on those tiny decisions that eaither bring us nearer to God or separate us from Him.
I honestly believe that people used to be more thoughtful when faced with compromise. I’m not necessarily saying that the compromise never occurred, only that we today think so little on matters of importance. In many ways our past compromise renders us incapable of even understanding what is important and what is inconsequential. The trite and lightweight takes precedent over considering what might destroy a future generation.
“The shareholders are hungry for a better quarter next quarter. If it means we burn the building down to make our numbers, then let’s do it.” Such a CEO would not last long in a rational world, but I suspect ours instead waits with baited breath from said CEO and his “I Did It My Way!” book, I Burned Down the Company and Made Everyone a Mint. Just don’t read the final chapter wherein the same CEO asks, “Hey, where did my yak bladder leather chair go?”
Are we operating like this in the Church? In what ways? And how do we stop the compromise when compromise is what we have become?
Because we can’t keep pumping air into the spread because one day someone’s going to open the container and find nothing but air.
Tags: Compromise, Numbness, Settling
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