Dying to Self

Bruised Reeds, Smoldering Wicks

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Lone reedI promise my series on "Unshackling the Church" WILL continue, but I cannot write the next installment, which deals with community and fraternity, unless I go back to what is basic. Milk.

The last couple weeks have seen some real rancor in the Godblogosphere and I'll be frank in saying that I'm progressively sickened by the appalling meanness we ambassadors for Christ heap on each other in a sort of theological one-upmanship. I refrained from saying anything about the now infamous Mark Driscoll roasting that began at Tim Challies' otherwise normal site and spread out like so many firebrands to sites across the Godblogosphere. But as no one wants to let this one drop, I can't be silent when brother turns on sister turns on brother.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.
–2 Peter 1:5-10 ESV

Many smart people inhabit the Godblogosphere, certainly some of the most knowledgeable people you will find this side of a divinity school. We show off our knowledge of infralapsarianism, dispensationalism, trinitarianism, and a whole lot more -isms than some of us can name, wielding it like a weapon to slay enemies. Unfortunately, too often those enemies are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Peter's progression is informative. The starting point in Christian maturity is faith, then goodness. Most of us are there, I hope. Then comes knowledge.

The problem with those of us who have knowledge is we too often stop there and believe it is the be all and end all of the faith, a dire mistake and the source of much of the pummeling that occurs on the Web. Knowledge must be supplemented with self-control, otherwise we become a human bomb, blowing up and damaging others with what we know. Everyone of us has encountered a know-it-all and few of us like being around them. The reason? They lack an off switch. They also tend to lack all the other traits Peter mentions that follow self-control.

We may think we're mature, but what does Peter put at the end of his list? Brotherly kindness and love, two traits increasingly missing from the Godblogosphere. Instead, we see the spiritual blackjack, the whip to stun our opponents.

Paul spoke of this type of correction, but had nothing good to say about it:

What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?
—1 Corinthians 4:21 ESV

Paul seems to be saying the same thing as Peter. Are we Godbloggers listening?

I don't think so. Instead, what we seem to be listening for is our opponents to drop down on both knees and confess that we are right and they are wrong. Strange, I don't see "being right all the time" as one of the qualities in Peter's list. Even if "being right all the time" were in that list, it would be trumped by brotherly affection and love.

We've got to ask ourselves at what point the following verse becomes true:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
—1 Peter 4:8 ESV

Anyone? 

Now some will say that wielding the knowledge of the Scriptures compels us to right bad theology at all cost. Those some would be dancing around the greater meaning of knowing the Scriptures, though. 

A favorite passage of those folks:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV

What is the chief end of knowing the Scriptures according to this passage? For what reason do we know the Bible inside and out? To pummel others with it? No, to serve. The chief end of knowing the Scriptures is that we be quipped for GOOD WORKS. In other words, serving others. Serving others means only one thing: putting others first.

Stephen was a model Christian. His defense of the Lord and the entire plan of salvation before his stoning is a masterful exposition by a man who understood the Scriptures like few others. What role did Stephen play in the nascent Church? He served food to widows and orphans. His godliness was not measured by what he knew but how he served others humbly, lovingly, and without complaining. By esteeming the forgotten and the least of these, Stephen was mourned and cried over by strong men.

The least of these…

Of the Lord it says,

…a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench….
—Isaiah 42:3 ESV

In the house of the pharisee, we see the bruised reed, the smoldering wick:

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner."
—Luke 7:36-39 ESV

In the minds of judgmental men who have no real love of God in their hearts, the first thought is "Who let the filthy whore in here?"

See, these men possessed enough knowledge to rightly distinguish just what kind of woman this was. Not only that, but their own pride that they did guess correctly—while some backwoods rabbi was evidently clueless—puffed them up. I'm certain a few chuckled inappropriately while others seethed.

What was Jesus' response?

Jesus saw the bruised reed, the smoldering wick. He could have easily broken that reed, or pinched out what little flame danced in the core of that smoking wick. He could have wielded the rod that Paul spoke of. He could have come down on the side of the pharisees and recoiled in horror that this used-up hooker touched him. But no, he responded with tender loving grace.

Is this how we respond to others in the Godblogsphere? Or are we the breakers of reeds and quenchers of wicks?

I've written elsewhere that the anonymous nature of the Internet makes us meaner people. Something changes when we have to confront others face-to-face. I read awful things about other brothers and sisters in Christ on supposedly Christian Web sites. What makes me the most downhearted is our selfish frame of reference when we devastate another Christian with our loose words.

You see, I don't know you and you don't know me. One slice of interaction on some tiny Godblog that perhaps 0.0001% of the country reads in a day does not give any of us the right to lay into anyone. Which of us knows another's path? I may have been a heroin addict last year before I found Christ, but I open my mouth to say one thing in the comments section of some obscure blog and a half-dozen fifty-year-old-walking-with-the-Lord-since-I-was-a-toddler Christians savage me because I defend a pastor—the guy who led me to Christ, BTW—who dropped an F-bomb once.

Unless sanctification is instant, who are we, locked away in some office blogging, to take that one slice of interaction and condemn another person? What profound spiritual arrogance! 

What if the Christians we knew who guided us in life quenched our wicks at that one point when our theology was less than perfect? Which of us reached maturity in the blink of an eye? Haven't we all been wrong a million times or more as we grew in grace and put away childishness? Would I assault my own child verbally because he doesn't know about life the way I do after the benefit of 43 years? Yet too often, this is what we supposedly mature people do to those who are still growing in grace.

Wanna know a secret? We're all growing in grace. We will all sin. We will all be found lacking at some point in our walk with Christ. We should all be extending love and grace first.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his book, Life Together:

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutory, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

It's easy to imagine some day that one of us Godbloggers will be standing inside the gates of heaven when a commenter we routinely trash, or a well-known pastor we don't like, or some person of the Arminian/Calvinist/Dispensational/Paedobaptist or whatever ilk should walk through those gates and we say, "Who let this filthy whore in here?"

To which the voice of Jesus says, "I did."

God have mercy on us for our critical spirits and our unloving hearts.

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Previous posts on this sad, recurring topic:

The Godblogosphere’s Black Hole

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: Correctness Before Love

That Other Standoff

Tearing Down the Gallows

Has the Christian Blogosphere Lost Its Collective Mind?

On Consigning Enemies of Christ to Hell

Witch Hunt

Let’s Play “Spot the Heretic!”

Who Watches the Watchers?

“Unshackling the American Church” Series Announcement

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Rarely do I read a book that leaves me saying “Amen” after every sentence. More amazing is the fact that this book, while it does deal with Christian thought and living, resides in the Politics section of your average secular bookstore. So dead-on accurate is the content, though, that I’m considering starting a new category of Essential Reading in my sidebar just to house it.

Long-time readers know that I take great care to avoid bringing politics into this blog. But this book is not so much a tome on politics as it is on living a sacramental lifestyle that goes beyond the glitz and gloss of modern-day Evangelicalism in America to a new vision of life that is truly ancient.Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons

The book? Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher.

Dreher’s released one for the ages. In fact, this book is so good that I’m hacked off at him for writing it because what he’s penned is the next book I had planned to write (although mine was aimed more squarely at the Church).

The gist of this book explores a little-known tribe living in the United States: Political conservatives, usually Evangelical Christians, who are dropping out of the rat race by going back to traditional ways of life that existed in pre-Industrial-Revolution America. Anyone who’s caught my epic The Christian & the Business World series is well-acquainted with my views on the dire need for Christians to rise up and question our lifestyles, the non-stop, community-destroying, materialistic live-for-today zeitgeist we’ve adopted indiscriminantly.

As the subtitle proclaims, the book gathers under its wings the disenfranchised out there who firmly believe that conserving the family unit, better stewarding creation, restoring genuine community, and overseeing local market economies by restoring America’s agrarian heritage, will recapture the essence of what it means to live a full life that honors God, family, neighbor, and country.

Weeping is not my normal reaction to reading anything, but this book has so far uncorked a torrent in me. And while too many Christians in America brush all this off as utopian nonsense—even as they adjust the volume on their latest in a string of iPods and munch on genetically-modified tasteless veggies—I’m imploring readers of this book to check it out, if only for the first few chapters.

Despite the finale of the subtitle, I’m personally not interested in saving the Republican Party, but I am for saving conservative values—even if truly conservative values look more like some of the elements of the Left than the Right. The kind of conservativism championed by Edmund Burke in no way bears any resemblance to the “free-markets-at-any-cost” stupidity we see enshrined by today’s GOP, but that’s okay. If enough of us drop out of the prevailing societal madness, someone will notice and want to court our vote.

Though Dreher’s beaten me to the punch, I know that you know I’ve been talking these points for a while, so in concert with my reading of Crunchy Cons, I’ll be starting a series called “Unshackling the American Church” that will further examine many of the issues I’ve touched on at Cerulean Sanctum, ideas that dovetail with Dreher’s book.

Stay tuned. I promise a mind—and possibly soul—altering ride.

***

Other posts in the “Unshackling the American Church” series:

Hyperbolic Missionary Tales and the Exalted American Christian

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Normally, I don’t sweat the titles of posts much. However, I thought about this one a lot. Why? Because it says something about where many Christians in this country are today.

But what do I mean by that snarky title? Let me explain by telling five missionary stories.

Story 1:

    A team of young American men are ministering in SW Asia. Evangelizing door to door down a street, they are cautioned by residents to avoid what looks like an empty brownstone. Fearless, they enter the building and note that no one seems to live inside. As they climb the steps, they note Bible verses scribbled on the wall, but certain words in them are wrong. Only when they reach the top apartment do they find the building’s sole occupant: a bent old lady. The woman invites them in, and they begin to share the Gospel. Immediately, one of the missionaries has trouble breathing. Another feels hands around his throat, but there is no one behind him. Another feels something hit him forcefully. The room’s temperature drops. Unable to breath, the one young man falls to the floor and suffers respiratory collapse. The men gather up their fallen friend and beat it out of that apartment. Some have to be hospitalized. Later, they regroup after realizing they’d had an encounter with the demonic, bringing in some older men who have encountered this type of dark power before.

Story 2:

    Another team of missionaries in Asia have been working in a village for some time, but have had no success in converting the villagers. One day, a man comes down from one of the nearby mountains, walks into the village, starts preaching and healing the sick, and the entire village is converted. The man goes back to the mountain, leaving the missionaries to tend the new flock.

Story 3:

    A teen is part of a 10-day mission trip to Russia, but is bedridden after picking up the flu. She spends her entire trip unable to leave the hotel. On her last day there, while everyone else is getting ready to pack, she ventures out for what will be the only time she’s been outside the whole trip. Brokenhearted, she sits on the curb and asks God why this happened. A woman comes by and the Lord tells the teen to go talk with her. She walks over to the women, and despite not knowing any Russian at all, opens her mouth to speak , only to find she is speaking to the woman in a language she doesn’t know. The woman begins to cry, says something to the teen, and gives her a handshake.Back in the United States, it’s a couple months before the youth minister at the church receives a letter (and a translation written by another person) from a woman in Russia who says she had met a teen from the church. That teen had approached her on the street and—in fluent Russian—told her the story of Jesus and what He had done for the woman. The woman had gone home, prayed to accept Christ, and had started to tell everyone she knew about Jesus—all thanks to the fluent Russian-speaking girl from the church.

Story 4:

    A missionary team is preaching to a large crowd in Africa when a wailing family brings in a woman who has obviously been dead for a few days. The family says that if what the missionaries are preaching is true, like Lazarus, this woman could be raised to life. The team is taken aback, but all eyes are on them, so they begin to pray. Soon, the presence of God is heavy on them and they see the dead woman’s eyes flutter, then open. Minutes later, the woman is on her feet praising God.

Story 5:

    A missionary plants a church in a burned-out Eastern European town. One day, a man with AIDS comes in and requests prayer. The church leaders pray and the man is healed. This starts a revival in that town, especially among AIDS sufferers, who are healed of the disease by the laying on of hands.

We’ve all heard missionary stories, right? But do we believe them?

Now I ask you, can you spot the true story among the false ones?

Over my nearly thirty years as a believer, I’ve heard my fair share of firsthand missionary stories. I never fail to be enthralled by these tales, and have long wanted to do missions work myself. Just this last Saturday, Missionary to HawaiiI had folks from my church praying that one day I’d have the opportunity to serve as a missionary in some capacity.

Besides the accounts I’ve heard in person are the amazing adventures of missionaries that I’ve read in books. It’s hard not to be caught up in the glory of God’s working in amazing ways in countries whose culture is not far removed from the kind we see in the Book of Acts.

So have you separated the real stories from the false ones yet? Tell you what, I’ll save you some time by telling you that they’re all true. Not only did I hear them firsthand, but I personally knew most of the missionaries involved. Amazingly, one of the stories (#2) I’ve heard from more than one source, happening 0n two different occasions in two different places. And story #4 had video corroboration!

The problem with these stories is that too few Christians are ready to believe they’re true.

I don’t know when American Christians (and Western Christianity, for that matter) got so smug, but we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that we’re the final measure of ALL THINGS CHRISTIAN. We live our comfortable lives in the U.S. free from the burden of believing that anything supernatural occurs anymore, so when we hear these kinds of tales from missionaries—tales that are quite commonplace, actually—we chalk it up to some kind of hysteria. We find ways to explain those stories away. The woman in story #4 wasn’t really dead, even if the missionaries claim rot had set in. The teen in story #3 actually said something to the Russian woman in English and just forgot about it later on. People just don’t come out of nowhere and heal people. A revival featuring converted AIDS sufferers who are freed of the disease? No way.

All I can figure is that those kinds of stories scare the average American Christian. We don’t want to think the demonic is real or that healings and evangelism go together. We don’t see that kind of stuff at home, so why should we believe it goes on in backwater nations? We want to live our Christian life out of our head knowledge about the Faith. We don’t want to confront the truth of these wild stories spun by people laboring in Third World countries because if we do, that truth asks something of us, challenging our careful, comfortable existences. Too many Christians in the West want to make liars out of missionaries rather than accept their tales as true and be forced to deal with the ramifications.

This is not a post about charismata or the continuationist/cessationist battle, but a wake-up call to Westernized Christians that we are not the be all and end all of Christianity. In fact, I would argue that we Christians in America are woefully behind the leading edge of what God is doing around the globe. In fact, the Lord may even have passed us by and gone on to those places in the world that aren’t so cocksure of being the top of the spiritual foodchain.

When missionaries tell us the kinds of stories I shared above, do we really believe them, or do we make them out to be liars by brushing off their encounters with the miraculous power of Jesus Christ?

When did we Christians in America become the sole measure of true faith?