Christianity in North America

What Being a Church Family Means, Part 3

Standard

Life is most assuredly strange. In the course of this mini-series on being a church family, I ran across the following video by Mark Driscoll. This Seattle-based pastor has a reputation for being the modern Christian firebrand, dividing people into “love him” or “hate him” categories (kind of like yours truly). What he says in the following video not only reinforces what I said in my previous post, but he completely covers the issue I wanted to end this mini-series with and does it better than I would.

So enjoy. And let me know what you think:

Other posts in this series:
What Being a Church Family Means, Part 1
What Being a Church Family Means, Part 2

What Being a Church Family Means, Part 2

Standard

I finally got back to the second part of this short series  (Part 1 here) on the Church as family. The irony is that some of the delay was due to family issues, both biological and Church.

And that’s a good segue into what I want to write about today.

What else derails the tidiness of life like family? Should I view my Facebook wall, there’s a good chance that someone’s talking about plans that went awry because of family issues. In contrast, I’ll see just as many people talking about the blessings they enjoy with their families.

You can’t have one without the other, though.

To a lot of Christians, the mark of a good church is that it doesn’t add any discomfort to their lives. In fact, I believe the number one reason that people choose one church over another relates to comfort. Norman Rockwell - "Connoisseur"(What I don’t ever hear is “The Holy Spirit told us we need to join this church.” If you’ve ever heard someone say that, please let me know. )

What if we chose our biological families based solely on how little they irritate us?

We’d all be orphans.

About a year ago, I wrote on the growing issue of Christians dropping out of church life to go at the Faith as Lone Rangers. That mindset comes, in large part, from an inability to deal with the messiness that accompanies church life.

We lose something when we bolt from the messiness, though. We miss out on the character-building actions that accompany church family problems.

Those of us who have dealt with a dying parent, wayward child, addicted uncle, or perpetually needy cousin will tell you that being forced to walk through that family member’s pain, stupidity, fear, sinfulness, or need forged us stronger. If it didn’t drive us closer to Christ or show us something about our own pain, stupidity, fear, and sinfulness, I’d be shocked.

I think Rick Ianniello read my post last week, because he had a stunning quote on his blog, one I hope will make us all think:

“The central reality of church is a group of people called to an ever-deepening personal belonging of friendship with Jesus of Nazareth. The command is to abide, to dwell in him as he dwelt in the Father. You have an image that Jesus used of total intimacy. But Jesus doesn’t give us a deeper relationship with him apart from his Body. Jesus does not come alone. He can’t because Jesus already has a people, he has a family. And when Jesus comes to us he always bring his family with him. Then we say, ‘No, I want just you. What I’ve heard about you is fairly good but what I’ve heard about your family is not so good.’ And Jesus says, ‘We come together.'”— Gordon Cosby

I’m an unabashed Protestant with a leery eye for Roman Catholicism, but the one thing the Catholics do well is reinforce the idea that there’s no life outside the Church. The Cosby quote  adds to this by making it clear that if you want Jesus, then you just may get the crazy aunt in the attic along with Him. If she’s a believer, that is. And she probably is. (If you’ve been a Christian long enough, you know what I mean.)

Do we think of the Body of Christ as baggage? We may say we don’t, but our actions speak otherwise:

Some lose themselves in a megachurch because they like the anonymity of the masses.

Some show up on Sunday and go invisible the rest of the week.

Some think nothing of dumping a couple grand into the church building fund, yet they can’t loosen the vise on their wallets to help a single mom pay for her son to go to church camp.

Some worry so much about their careers that they can’t take a moment away from climbing the corporate ladder to show up at an elderly church member’s house to see how she’s doing.

Some never once had the thought to sit down and hand-write a letter of gratefulness to the people who helped them become a Christian.

Some praise God with their lips on Sunday morning only to gripe about brother so-and-so on the car ride home an hour later.

Some jump from one church to another and consider themselves wise for doing so.

That last one is more like the life cycle of a common parasite, not a human being, yet this is how some people act with regards to church family.

That said, there is no difference between where the parasite and the genuine member of Christ dwell. If both are true to their natures, they should be right there in the blood and guts of the body, down amid the bile and urine, doing what they do best. Yet one sucks away life and the other gives it.

This Body of Christ, this family of God, is messy. Yet who among us would stand at the cross of Jesus and see only the mess of it and none of the glory?

Other posts in this series:
What Being a Church Family Means, Part 1
What Being a Church Family Means, Part 3

Elusive Wisdom

Standard

Before we get to the second part of my posting on being a Church family, I want to add some thoughts on wisdom in a modern age. I couldn’t stop thinking about the issue this weekend, and as I was out on my tractor for several hours Sunday, I had plenty of time to think.

I was interviewed for a radio show called “Wise People” this last Saturday and will be again this Saturday. But the fact is, despite the title of the show, I find wisdom elusive.

I’m 47 years old, and if I were asked to comment on the pat answer about getting older and gaining wisdom, I’d have to say that the conventional wisdom on wisdom and age just doesn’t work. Or at least it doesn’t work in the conventional sense.

At the age of 21, I didn’t have a lot of room for “wisdom” that didn’t meet my preconceptions. I was pretty much the standard angry, young know-it-all. Sadly, that was a state that persisted for far too long.

But as I’ve gotten older, I seem to have fewer prepackaged answers and a whole lot more questions. The list of “Stuff I Don’t Get” gets added to daily.

When you get down to it, all practical wisdom concerns making sense of people and God. In 47 years, what I have come to understand of people is that I don’t understand them at all. And while I can definitely see God  moving in certain situations, it’s those situations in which I don’t see Him that I come to realize that my understanding of God could fill a thimble—one made for Barbie.

The supposedly wise person makes sense of people in light of sin. Understand the nature of sin and you understand why people do what they do.

But honestly, the older I get, the less satisfying that response becomes. And it is less satisfying because no one can know the future, and it’s our relationship to the past, present, and future that makes understanding humanity so difficult. How sin informs the past and present is hard enough to comprehend, but add the future and I don’t see how any nonprognosticator can make predictions.

Now put God into that mix. The result, at least to me, is too big to get one’s head around.

Which is why Romans 8:28 is so hard for me to understand:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
—Romans 8:28

The first part is hard enough to grasp, but it’s the phrase after the comma that makes my head spin.

If you’re couple who spent years trying to conceive, and finally that blessed bundle comes, what is to be said when the little baby dies unexpectedly? Did that babe get in the way of your purpose in life? Is it a good thing then that the baby died? And what can be said when no more children come?

Or you’re a missionary couple with kids, and after 25 years of marriage the whole couple thing crumbles. One day you were sharing the Lord with lost tribes of people in the backwaters of India, and the next day you’re in divorce court. PotholeHow did it all go so wrong? If the calling to marriage and mission were there, why did it end up like this?

Or you’re part of a leadership team at your church, and one by one every person on that team gets hit with calamity: cancer, divorce, depression, suicide, and so on. Do all those calamities really work together for good? Is it enough to say, “I survived,” and call that outcome good?

I talked about Christian maturity in the radio interview, but defining maturity is hard. We tend to think of it as some kind of Ph.D. in theology, but if my own experiences are any indicator, perhaps it’s something else entirely. And perhaps there’s some other meaning behind Romans  8:28 that eludes us.

Karl Barth, when asked to summarize the contents of his massive book Church Dogmatics, responded, “Jesus loves me/This I know/For the Bible tells me so.”

A children’s song.

In response to Barth’s answer, I’m sure some “wise” people snickered. Yet when faced with all the craziness, the nonsensical happens, the head-shaking personal calamities in the lives of ordinary people, the godly decisions that went south, the hopes that fell to pieces, and the general nastiness of human existence 2010, perhaps Barth’s answer is the wisest of all.

God knows that I don’t understand life—or Him—any better than that.

{Update: I had originally thought J.I. Packer was behind the “Jesus Loves Me” quote, but it was Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth.}