Obedience

Wimps & Whackos

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Winter is scaryThe old farmers and their Almanac got it right this year: Looks to be a cold, nasty winter.

They called off school for my son—again. It’s just December, folks. Anytime school is off during December and it’s NOT the Christmas break, something is wrong. I know the state of Ohio mandates that schools close when 10 percent of the roads in a district are considered “impassable.” I know we live in a rural area where everyone seems to have a snowplow on his truck, yet the county is always behind in thoroughfare cleanup.

I know.

But when did a little frozen water become some kind of Kryptonite with a healthy dose of flesh-eating bacteria added for extra toxicity and gruesomeness? I mean, do people really melt into a gelatinous ooze should they venture outside and some tiny, six-pointed daggers of cold death rip them to shreds, slicing them down to the very cellular level?

It sure seems that way.

This weekend, I was out doing the most deadly job any 51-year-old male of suspect physical conditioning can do: shoveling snow. Peers, you know what I mean. Anyway, I somehow avoided a cardiopulmonary event, though there is a stitch in my side now and a troubling cough. I guess I better run for the bottle of NSAIDs and the Mucinex.

OK, so I’m tougher than some couch pilots, but I don’t feel like it. I feel like something vital has gone out of the American psyche when a gentle snowfall causes despair, and everyone is downing rainbow-colored handfuls of Advil, Aleve, and that stuff left over from that last kidney stone (you know, the GOOD stuff) just to make it through another day.

Meanwhile, our political helicopter parents on Capitol Hill are mandating ways to grant workman’s comp to the gal who got a paper cut while sorting files, or to the guy who accidentally ran a staple into his pinkie because the office bombshell walked by in THAT OUTFIT and he was too “distracted” to concentrate on connecting two sheets of paper together safely.

We pout when the grocery store is out of our favorite K-cup.

We whine when the Internet goes down.

We buy $1,000 North Face Everest Expedition parkas so we can endure a trip to the mall.

And yet we’ve never had more superheros in the cineplex or grittier protagonists in our TV programming, people who seem less and less like us even as we spend more and more time and money watching them fight The System, The Unseen Evil, The Alien Threat, The Future Scourge of Humanity, or whatever The Opposition of the Moment might be.

Here’s the spiritual takeaway: a coddled Church is useless. When it comes down to comfort or Christianity, we’re choosing the former while we talk up the latter.

Worse, the peer pressure is so strong that we can’t even support those who eschew comfort and choose to step out and be the Church, even if in being the Church those people take some serious lumps. Such stepper-outers are weirdos to the majority. Sincere, yes. Earnest, sure. But whackos nonetheless. And whacko is a good word when you want to label someone as a deviant outlier. Labeling people is an easy way to dismiss them and to feel better about ourselves.

Let’s give it up it for the whackos, though, because the wimps aren’t accomplishing anything other than complaining online to FOX about the new judges on American Idol. One of these days, Jesus is going to come back, and it won’t be the wimps who hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Real Christian Life–And Why Americans Are Missing It

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Synchronicity is a funny thing.

Been wanting to write this post for a few days, but put it off. Then, on a “lark,” I listened to the podcast of Phil Vischer (of Veggie Tales fame). Having never heard the podcast before, I hoped it might nonetheless prove enlightening, especially since it talks about contemporary issues in the Church. And hey, so do I.  😉

Phil and cohosts Christian Taylor and Skye Jethani discussed a Hell House, the Christianized version of a haunted house, and how kits are now available to help churches use this “evangelistic tool.” Jethani notes that when we see the Gospel presented in Acts and Paul’s outline in 1 Corinthians 15, the apostles “fail” to mention hell or heaven, nor is sin discussed in the majority of presentations, yet what we preach today would focus on all three. Why is our presentation so unlike that of the apostles?

That in itself is a loaded question, but then Jethani hits my issue.

A speaker from Gospel for Asia came to my church Sunday. I support that organization (see the sidebar) because it’s doing a great work getting native missionaries to remote areas in Asia untouched by the Gospel. The numbers the speaker quoted regarding how many are coming to Christ in Asia were staggeringly large. And yet, all the while this man spoke, I kept wondering how it is that America never sees anything like that kind of explosive growth despite having so many “native” missionaries. How is it that we can’t preach the Gospel in a way that resonates with lost Americans?

The podcast clip below starts as Jethani and Taylor discuss what is not working with our Gospel presentation.

Jethani references the late Dallas Willard’s Vision, Intention, and Means concept to explain how Americans Christians are overloaded with means for growing in Jesus. The problem is that we lack vision for who Jesus is and subsequently have made pale substitutions of practical desires.

Yes.

If we Christians in America do not have a clear vision of who Jesus is, then we cannot communicate that vision to anyone else. As a result, if people already have a means for achieving personal desires, they won’t consider Jesus at all.

And this is the problem we find ourselves in.

Worse, Christians who default to seeing Jesus solely as a means for achieving personal desires (even the desire of heaven) will be unable to communicate the Gospel to people because that means of achieving those desires may not be as effective as the means chosen by that lost person. In short, we set ourselves up for having to be seen as a greater success in life than that lost person or else our “gospel” will fail. I’ve written about this before, but Jethani puts it all into the proper “lack of vision of Jesus” framework.

If the Church can’t communicate a real vision for Jesus and downplay this mentality of Jesus as desire-granter, then we will never understand what the Christian life is genuinely about.

Note that I did not say that Jesus never grants people’s desires. But any desire outside of Jesus as our unequaled primary desire is going to distort and weaken the Gospel message.

The American Church has got to stop with all the self-help and personal fulfillment junk and get back to raising up Jesus and focusing on relationship with Him. Nothing else matters.

Experience and the Authority of Scripture

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A Facebook conversation yesterday discussed the problem of experiences in the Christian life and how those experiences must be made to conform to Scriptural authority. In other words, Scripture must determine our understanding of experiences.

Now I’m going to write something controversial: That previous sentence is not entirely accurate.

Certainly, Scripture must be a bedrock for understanding experiences, but there’s a weakness inherent in that fact: Us. Because we are human, our understanding is not always complete. While we may think we understand the depths of a Scriptural injunction, it may only be through experience that we can understand it more completely. And in understanding it more completely, our understanding may flip 180 degrees.

An example of how one apostle got his understanding of Scripture altered by experience:

The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven. Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”
—Acts 10:9-20 ESV

'Peter's Vision' by Doug JaquesPeter knew the Scriptures and was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then he experienced this vision.

Notice how Peter answers, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” He was responding using the Scriptures as he understood them and practiced them.

Notice too how God makes it clear that there is a deeper meaning to the Scriptures that Peter must understand. God uses an experience to alter and expand Peter’s understanding.

This led to a problem:

Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
—Acts 11:1-3 ESV

The circumcision party had the same understanding of the Scriptures that Peter had. They accused Peter based on that understanding.

Peter explained his experience of the vision and replied:

And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
—Acts 11:11-17 ESV

Peter experienced a vision.

Peter experienced the Holy Spirit speaking to Him.

Peter experienced that same Holy Spirit falling on the Gentiles.

Peter had his understanding of the Scriptures altered by those experiences.

And so did others:

When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
—Acts 11:18 ESV

Sometimes, experience expands our understanding of the Scriptures and alters everything.

Anyone who has had a loved one die will tell you the experience of death alters their understanding of the Scriptures. In fact, it is almost impossible for it not to.

Anyone who has been taught the Bible has had an experience in that very act of teaching and learning that will alter understanding. Raise your hand if you were instructed in a Scriptural truth that altered how you understood it. Does everyone have a hand up? You should.

Every day, our experiences modify our understanding of  the Scriptures. And sometimes those modifications flip everything.

And while those flips may be the work of God in our lives to deepen our understanding of Him and this wild life we live, sometimes the flips aren’t of God. Sometimes, we go off the path.

This is why we must also learn to live by the Spirit.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”–these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
—1 Corinthians 2:7-14 ESV

If we live by the Spirit with the Scriptures as our counsel, we will not fall into error. Indeed, our experiences will only serve to help us grow deeper in both.