Benevolence

Reality, Part 1

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What now?In the nearly three years that Cerulean Sanctum has existed, I've posted many times about the disconnect between the American Church and economic issues. We've approved of Crown Financial or Ron Blue budget classes because they cater to the individual making personal decisions (reinforcing the stereotype that Christianity is all about "a personal Jesus"), but we're pathologically quiet about macro monetary issues.

I believe this to be an enormous mistake. If the Church cannot speak to larger issues than personal ones, we will increasingly be seen as irrelevant. We may already be there.

Many blanch at the mere mention of relevance, but I think that what is at issue here is not relevance per se, but the fact that we Christians in America can't seem to live out what we believe on any scale beyond the personal. That gives Christianity the sheen of being a religion that might speak to me, but can't speak to my neighborhood. In lieu of this, our faith falls into a category of just another personal decision, like whether to shop at Target or WalMart.

Gasoline is poised to spring up to $4 a gallon in some parts of the country. To the minimum wage earner, this translates into heightened desperation. Many people who work minimum wage jobs are forced to live outside the more costly areas of town, necessitating longer drives. If I make $6 an hour and have a forty mile round trip to make every day, I'm in trouble.

When I lived in Silicon Valley from 1996-2000, the cost of living was so exorbitant that the average two bedroom apartment rented for more than $2000 a month. No one making less than $15 an hour could possibly live there. Those folks lived in outlying areas and suffered through daily one to three hour commutes from up to a hundred miles away. I once talked to a Safeway grocery store clerk who commuted an hour and forty minutes one way to get to work every day. Now ask her to pay $4 a gallon for gas.

Ford announced record losses last week. They piggybacked a historically large recall on top of that bad news. Their bonds are junk. Toyota just passed them as the second largest automaker in the world. And carmakers aren't looking to build more plants in the US, but in China.

The sheer number of companies in this country that depend on Ford for business should give us pause. The sheer number of Americans who are now paying spiraling prices for every staple of life that is transported by oil-consuming vehicles should start us talking.

But the Church in this country has nothing to say about any of this.

When my wife and I moved into our house five years ago, gas in our area was about $1.35 a gallon. The digits swapped this year and the price of gas this last Saturday was $3.15. We own a thirteen-year-old four-cylinder pickup truck that gets about 22 mpg on the highway and a compact car that gets about 38 mpg. In 2003, we spent about $290 a month on gas under normal usage. We now drive less than we did then, but with inflated gas prices, we're at nearly $600 a month now.

We're not rich; nor are we poor. Kissing $310 a month goodbye hurts. It hurts even more through the ripple effect. The cereal we bought two years ago for $1.50 a box is now about $2.75. Multiply that ad infinitum.

We hear about a good economy, but the real facts are depressing. The latest numbers reported one year ago show that while Americans did enjoy more income, with steadily rising salaries, factoring out the top one percent of wage earners nearly eliminated all gains.  In fact, 99 percent of Americans enjoyed a 1.5 percent increase in salary over the dog days of the last recession. The 12.5 percent increase in wages among the top one percent accounted for the offset. Translation? The rich got richer and inflation ate the average family's wage increase.

Being better educated didn't help, either, despite the prevailing wisdom. Salaries for college educated Americans declined in 2004.

And don't talk about savings. Last year, Americans on average saved zero percent of their income. Nothing. This year, economists are already saying that we could be looking at a negative one percent savings rate. 

The figures cited here are the most recent we have. And that's before gasoline above $2 a gallon and Ford and GM bonds falling into the basement. 

Yet what are we as a Church doing in light of this? Not one thing that I can see. Did we champion the recent push for an increase in the minimum wage? (In Ohio, the $4.25 state mandated minimum wage hasn't changed since 1990!) Certainly no Evangelical worth his conservative salt mentioned this lest he be lumped in with Jim Wallis. Are we Christian conservatives true to our nomenclature by calling for conservation of resources? All such calls that I've seen have been lampooned. What are our plans to help each other cope with looming economic disaster for many households? Or is the mantra we're chanting in our churches today, "Every man for himself"?

I don't know why we're so shortsighted.

I want to tell you something you may not consider: There are people in your church who are really smarting from this increase in the cost of gas that is progressively trickling down into all goods and services. They're wondering how they'll cope. With China and India industrializing faster than you can say "globalization," capitalism's market forces dictate that demand drives price, and that demand for oil will only increase. What then, if salaries do not keep pace? As we've seen, they aren't.

I'm not a fearmonger. I'm only calling for common sense. Our churches MUST speak to this reality and start doing something immediately to ensure that the least of those in our churches are not bankrupted by forces they cannot control. Because right now, someone in your church is weeping over bills they could easily pay two years ago, but not today.

That person might even be you. 

More tomorrow… 

What the American Church Is Doing Right, Part 2

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Yesterday, I began a two-part series looking at six things the American Church is doing right. In the day since I posted the first part, I’ve added one more positive I feel needs to be listed, so the total now comes to seven.

So without further delay, four more things the American Church is doing right:

4. Addressing major American social ills positively

Much has been made of the culture wars, and there are good people on both sides of the engagement/disengagement battle. Yet no matter how much we shy away from discussing whether Christians should be engaging in those skirmishes, the reality is that some of our American social ills would be far worse if Christians weren’t out on the front lines.

Roe vs. Wade decriminalized murder in America. Christians were asleep at their posts in the early Seventies when this horror was enacted, but if not for Christians working hard against abortion since then, millions more human beings never would have been. Thumbs Up!Crisis Pregnancy Centers operated by churches and other Christian organizations have saved countless babies. Many mothers who were considering abortion ultimately found Christ through the ministrations of dedicated Christian workers. No matter where we stand on fighting culture wars, fighting against the abortion mills has reaped rewards. Just ask someone saved from being aborted how important it was that Christians got involved.

Other areas have seen Christians move in and bring life-altering aid. In a culture that lives to shop, millions of Americans have dug themselves a financial hole. God honors hilarious giving, but not ridiculous consumption. Many have been rescued from financial ruin by churches and individual Christians who stepped in as financial mentors and worked alongside the nearly bankrupt to pay off their debt in a responsible manner. That may not seem like much, but to a person buried under a mountain of credit card debt, having that free help might be the only thing that keeps some folks from homelessness.

At a time when nearly everyone in America has heard the Gospel, but fewer have seen it in action, Christians working to be salt and light in a dying culture have affected countless people. That’s impossible to write off.

5. Developing new evangelistic methodologies

As I just wrote, I’m of the firm belief that everyone in this country has heard the name of Jesus and had some minor education (whether wrong or right) in the Faith. This makes our situation today totally unlike that of Paul’s day, when no one outside of Jerusalem had heard the name of Jesus.

I believe this saturation has put us into a mopping-up mode when it comes to evangelism. People have heard some parts of the Gospel, but what they’re not seeing is us Christians truly live it out.

My former pastor, Steve Sjogren, has pioneered many servant evangelism strategies for helping Christians put their walk where their talk is. While these methodologies cannot substitute for the Spirit of God bringing conviction into a sinner’s life, they create enough cognitive dissonance to blast through the walls people have erected against hearing the true Gospel. People can rail against talk, but seeing Christians actually living out their faith by serving others can’t be argued against. Christian scholars have definitively shown that one of the reasons the early Church grew exponentially in Rome was because Christians tended the sick when no one else in Roman society dared even touch them. People saw that and took notice.

No, I am not for many of the evangelistic ideas that many are championing that make concessions to worldliness, gutting the Gospel message and substituting nonsense. But serving others in a way that lives what we believe isn’t nonsense. It’s what we need to be doing—and fortunately, many are.

6. Rediscovering experiential faith

I know I’ll be branded a postmodern acolyte for writing this, but I’ve honestly thought that the Church in this country has been too rational and cerebral. I run across so many Christians who treat Jesus Christ as a theoretical rather than someone to be known as a real person. The Bible is the document of experiential faith, yet so many Christians are living out a set of beliefs rather than a real relationship with the Lord of the Universe.

This has been slowly changing in the last twenty years, a good thing, if you ask me. More and more Christians have a hunger for God, not being satisfied with being told about Him, but actually encountering Him themselves. In a way, this is a repeat of what happened during the Reformation. It’s what’s been happening in non-Western countries for a while now. I believe it’s one of the many reasons that non-Western Christians are so vital.

Now it’s coming to America.

And yes, it can be a bad thing if we jettison all common sense in search of experiences. Truthfully, some of the experiential bent needs to be reined in or tempered with the intellect. I’d be a fool to claim otherwise. The pendulum has moved the other way, and has, of course, overshot the blessed middle tension between experience and intellect.

Still, I’m hopeful that it won’t perpetually stay at either extreme.

7. Understanding that the Spirit of God is moving

Though I thoroughly endorse the charismata and will be seen by many to be a charismatic, I don’t jump on “fresh move of the Spirit” bandwagons. Folks in charismatic and Pentecostal realms have been claiming a fresh wind of the Spirit is just around the corner since…well, since Azusa Street. Needless to say, that’s been a hundred years now.

But I’m seeing real signs that the Spirit of God is moving, and sources not usually given over those proclamations are, too. People are tiring of the Joel Osteen flavor of “Christianity”; they aren’t satisfied with feel-good pseudo-Christianity anymore. They want meat. And God will give them meat if they repent and cleave to Him.

Many of the pseudo-Christian fads foisted off on unsuspecting Christians have been weighed in the scale and found wanting. People who got burned once aren’t willing to rush into the next fad quite so easily. They’re looking for honesty before God. And God will honor that kind of desire in people who truly seek Him transparently.

Aslan is on the move, as it was once said. I think that’s happening right now. We need to be prepared when God moves.

Those are my seven things the American Church is doing right.

What are yours?

A Delightful Inheritance

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In 1981, at the Baccalaureate presentation a few days before graduation, a packed house of about 2,000 filled my high school auditorium. Superlative students received scholarships and kudos, offered up prayers of thanks, gave speeches, and filled the evening with hope. Only one award remained—the one honoring the student most involved in school activities.

My folks and I sat together, and as the award recipient's list of clubs and groups grew, I sat on the edge of my seat.

"National Honor Society, Science Club, Math Club, Photography Club, Chess Club, French Club, French National Honor Society…"

I knew most of the folks in those groups and started narrowing down the list of contenders. More clubs and groups rattled by. I said to my mom, "The person getting this is never home." She nodded.

When the Student Body President started in on the astonishing number of band-related functions—Orchestra, Pep Band, Concert Band, Marching Band, Chorale, Stage Band, Theater Orchestra—I had to admit I had no idea who this nut could be who was so massively involved in the school.

Then she read my name.

I fell out of my chair and somehow landed on my feet, rubbery legs guiding me from my spot way in the back of the auditorium to the stage. People were standing and cheering. Shock and disbelief on my part. Harrington Mann's "Angel Plucking Tulips"I'll probably never again get that feeling of being a celebrity.

And not once during the reciting of that list had I realized I was that highly involved person.

Last Monday, I attended the memorial service of a friend who spent the best years of his life giving his time and talents to others. When we pulled into the massive church, the parking lot bulged with cars. A human line streamed down the stairs into the church's auditorium. I suspect more than 1,300 people came to remember one man.

Upon witnessing the crowd, I failed to hold back the tears. Our friend was so well loved. During the service, a mic was handed around and people shared their stories of how our friend had touched others with his faith in Christ and his overt generosity, always giving away, always meeting a need. I think everyone there could have shared a special moment in which they'd been the recipient of this man's large heart. His past and present students spoke and when asked to rise, it seemed like the room was filled with people standing.

What a good, godly man. A man who never took the spotlight, but who gave and gave until it was time to go home. When a soloist sang Ray Boltz's classic "Thank You", there in that crowd I considered that never before had that song been so fitting a tribute.

One day, out on the boat from which he taught kids to water ski, he shared with me a Scripture he said was his life verse. A new believer at that time, his excitement at finding this verse was electric and his joy palpable: 

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
—Psalms 16:6 NIV

When the discouragements of life press down on you, know this: you have a delightful inheritance. One day, you'll be standing among the saints in the presence of God and one of his angels will read through a list of godly acts rendered to others over the course of a full and blessed lifetime.

And then he'll call your name.

Was that you who helped the old lady get to her car without slipping on the ice? Or who taught the third grade Sunday School class? Did you sit and weep with a neighbor whose child died far too young? Did you prepare the communion elements alone in the church kitchen? Or pray through the church directory every day?

Thank you. Bless you for giving to the Lord. Surely you have a delightful inheritance.

And when you turn around to face that multitude in glory, we'll all be cheering.

{Image: Harrington Mann's Angel Plucking Tulips 1894}