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How God Is

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On Thursday, my family and I drove up to Columbus, Ohio, to meet up with a friend of mine from my Carnegie Mellon University days back in the early ’80s. That’s a long time to know someone, but old friends are often the best friends of all. The last time Bob and I got together in person was at my wedding 13 years ago, so it has been awhile. Still, we have kept up by phone, email, and now Facebook.

The crux of our getting together this time was another wedding, his. Though we were not able to make the ceremony, as we do not travel well at this time, I was relieved that he and bride Christin would be only two hours away as part of their honeymoon. That WAS doable.

What I didn’t realize until the morning of the meeting was that Bob and Christian were attending the Origins Gaming Fair, the big convention for fans of role-playing games, boardgames, military strategy games, and…well, most any kind of game out there. I’ve never seen so many gaming fans together in one place. Our son was with us, and I knew he would eat up all the fun stuff going in within the many rooms of the convention center, and indeed, we had a blast.

But it wasn’t on the convention floor that I was most blessed.

As it was a meeting to celebrate a wedding, we brought a gift. I thought about that gift a long time and was able to find exactly what I was looking for to give to Bob and Christin. When we met, they were waiting there with a gift in their hands, too, something I did not expect.

Bob asked me to open the bag—inside was something very special.

When I was still in my youth, my brothers and I had a copy of an aerial combat game called Ace of Aces. By using an innovative game mechanic, two people with the small, paired, illustrated books of maneuvers could participate in a real-time dogfight. The game was brilliantly simple, and I loved playing it. And if I loved it, I knew my son would, too.

Sadly, though it was highly regarded, the many Ace of Aces variants are all out of print. Copies sold online command very high prices. I know; I checked. It seemed to me that my son and I would have to pass up playing this game together.

When I opened up the gift bag from Bob and Christin, I found a copy of Ace of Aces. It had been the copy that Bob and his son (now an adult) had played. I couldn’t believe it.

Walking back to my car to safely stow this wonderful gift, I got a tear in my eye. I kept thinking that this is how God is with us. We seek to bless Him, but what He blesses us with in response is much more than we can imagine. Just as my friend had been paying attention to a comment I made on Facebook about searching for this game, God hears us and plans great things for our pleasure, because He loves us so very much.

God cares about our needs, but He also cares about our joy. A little game I can play with my son may not seem like an earthshattering thing, but its an example of God’s goodness in even the smallest things.

After we left Bob and Christin, we met up with a Cerulean Sanctum supporter, Travis, one of the longest-running readers of this blog, A gift from God, one of millions...and someone I had not had the pleasure of meeting face to face. We ate together in a nearly deserted Bob Evans, and we talked about his new daughter. Just some regular folks hanging out and talking about life. Driving home, my family and I saw a rainbow. Last night, we watched two baby finches, whose nest was in our hanging fern outside, take their first flights and disappear into our woods. On a sweltering evening, we felt the first cool breezes of an oncoming nightfall before the stars came out thick and bright, the Milky Way lighting up the sky.

God cares about us and shows it in a million little ways each day. My prayer is that you can find the time to exult in those blessings and realize how much you are loved.

Be blessed and cultivate joy. It’s all around you.

Finding the Center—The Response

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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 19:8

But 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 6:33

These 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 10:5-8

But 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 10:14-15

But [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 4:43

To 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 9:59-62

And [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 12:32

Jesus 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. kingdom_castle.jpgThey 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?

The One Who Left the Gate Ajar

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I’m a bit late to the commentary on iMonk’s post “Another One Gets Off the Evangelical Bus: Thoughts on A De-Conversion,” which is a response to a post by the blogger known as theBEattitude, “Losing my religion. Why I recently walked away from Christianity.” But I have to comment because this issue of people walking away from the faith is something we Christians must address—even more as the days grow darker.

In reading iMonk’s commentary and theBEattitude’s post and its follow-up comments, the one thing that strikes me more than any other is the travesty that is the loss of even one sheep from the fold.

Jesus says this:

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
—Matthew 18:12-14

I believe one of the most hollow vows American Evangelicals take occurs during infant baptisms and dedications. In nearly every church I have been a part of, the congregation pledges to join the parents in the spiritual development of the child. God takes such vows seriously, yet I would guess that fewer than ten adults in any given church will have any meaningful spiritual impact on that child’s life, even through adulthood. (And I believe that number to be generous.) When you consider the size of some churches, that’s an abysmal number.

The fact is, the average person in the pew has very little spiritual impact on the lives of fellow believers. The compartmentalized island that we call My Life™ here in America doesn’t make a whole lot of room for other people, and one of the areas we make the least amount of time for is discipling the less mature in the faith.

When I read the pile-on that functions as comments to theBEattitude’s post, it’s a stunning indictment of the spiritual wasteland that passes for modern Evangelicalism. I read through at least a hundred comments and most consisted of individuals stating (a) it sure is freeing to cast off the chains of religion, or (b) now you’re going to burn in hell, and it’s your own damned fault.

Apart from atheists rejoicing in their folly (Psalm 14:1), what got me more than anything was that the Christians who responded placed all the responsibility on theBEattitude for wandering out of the fold. To that I ask one hard question, “Oh, yeah?Well, which one of us left the sheep pen gate ajar?”

In a Christian culture that has de-evolved into the same “every man for himself” mentality that afflicts the worldly, placing the entirety of the blame on theBEattitude for apostasizing should come as no surprise. gate_sheep.jpgWhile it is true that each of us must give an account before God, it is just as true that too many of us who claim to be Christians don’t give a hoot about our culpability when the  gate goes unlocked.

When I read theBEattitude’s tale of apostasizing after 33 years of being in the faith and the junior-high-school-level questions posted that form the backbone of his wandering through the open gate, I have to wonder, What mature Christians invested in theBEattitude’s discipleship? How blind were they to his building on sand?

Yet on reading the comments to his post, I did not see any that said, “We fellow Christians failed you.” Instead, we want to blame theBEattitude for his failure. Rather than wonder how his end might have been different if all those adults at his baptism had actually followed through on their pledge to raise him up firm in the faith, we want to blame him exclusively for wandering out the open gate when there never should have been an open gate to begin with.

How easy it is to point the finger of blame at the person who was wronged.

And theBEattitude was wronged. I wronged him and so did you. We didn’t keep up our end of the discipleship bargain. No, we hoped that someone else would. And all that hope led to nothing but apostasy.

In every church around this country, there are people like theBEattitude. He is representative of an enormous problem facing the Church in America, a massive failure that increases each year with little effort on our part to lay aside our own little kingdoms and do something to stop the flight from the unsecured sheep pen.

It is a failure of individuals to take time for others in genuine community.

It is a failure to see the necessity of solid, biblical teaching.

It is a failure to build a comprehensive Christian worldview in impressionable people.

It is a failure to address the issues of the day from an intellectually rigorous viewp0int.

It is a failure to understand the eternal life-and-death nature of raising up the next generation of believers.

It is a failure to take seriously the vows we make concerning our young people.

It is a failure to read the times and prepare for the future.

It is a failure to understand what is most important in life.

It is a failure on our parts to humbly accept part of the blame when those in our care wander away from the faith.

It is a failure to love our brothers and sisters and, most of all, to love Jesus.

What tears me up every day is that this most precious charge doesn’t have to end in failure. That it does is mostly a reflection of our smothering love for our own lives. The first casualty is people like theBEattitude. We are the second casualty (Mark 8:35).

Jesus says:

Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!
—Luke 12:48b-49

We have been entrusted with so much here in America. Yet how is it that we care so little for that trust that we so easily blame the weak for their own destruction!

The following is a well-known verse most often used in a completely different context, but it applies most fully here:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?
—Proverbs 24:11-12

Instead, how easy it is to blame those who are wandering off to destruction and absolve ourselves of any responsibility for them. The sheep have left the pen. Oh well, guess they’ll get eaten by the wolves. That’ll teach ’em!

But our God neither sleeps nor slumbers, and He knows who left the gate ajar.