f r a c t u r e d

I will confess, I’m feeling fractured and in bits and pieces this week as I prepare to preach on Sunday on the value of wholeness.  Wholeness?  How do I do that while I’m in Canada this week working over 100 hours this week.  Togetherness?  How do I do this when I’m away from my church family?  Contentedness?  How do I do this?  To be sure, I’m feeling very fractured despite the call to be something different.

This isn’t just my story right now.  I’m sure there are many of you out there also feeling pulled apart in different directions.  What makes it worse is on a societal level, our country continues to struggle with the increasing gap between people who have nothing and those that have much.  As I prepare to preach on Phil. 1 I’m reminded on the value of “Koininia”- the greek word for true fellowship and wholeness.  “Together,” says Paul, “we are more valuable than when we’re alone.”  This is what the church teaches and yet at our root, we are living within a capitalistic and individualistic mindset that honors the opposite.  It’s one of the challenges facing our country as we continue to divide the middle class into upper and lower class.  How do we come together?

Looking at the chart here floating around the internet this week, it seems the guilty party might be capitalism.  But is there another financial system that fixes this fractured feeling I experience?  Ask those in North Korea or China how communism feels.  Perhaps we don’t need a different political system, we need a new heart.  And only Christ can change us and make us new and help re-wire us to be agents of love and mercy and grace to the world.  Don’t feel like bridging the gap between rich and poor and serving others?  Doesn’t matter.  Christ calls you to this bridge building work here, and here, and here.  The point is, we’re called to be DOING something in our faith and stepping out and trying to attack some of the demographics on the chart above that are so troubling.

We start with our fractured and harried hearts and ask God to make us new.  And from that place of being forgiven we get a new mission to be about more than just ourselves…we are called to champion the cause of the least of these.  Remember in Matthew 25:40, “As you do for the least of these,” says Jesus, “you do for me.”

How are you engaging actively in the things Jesus talks about?  This is more than a guilt trip; it’s a great question to help you live into the calling of being a  Christ follower.  Because I can honestly say in my 37 years, the people living the richest lives full of joy and hope and gratitude are those that are actively living out their faith in tangible ways and blessing others.  They are those that spend time tearing down the gap, financially or spiritually, that is fracturing our society.

So be encouraged, there is much work to do.  We get to do this as Christ followers, joyfully living into the hope of Christ.  He wants to use us.  How lucky are we???

What’s Missing Here?

The 2001 Santa Picture: No Santa? No problem!

In our family we have a Christmas tradition of taking pictures with Santa.  We do this each and every year, normally incorporating a special holiday meal after the picture is taken.  Since 1999 when we were newlyweds, we’ve been faithfully doing these annual pictures.

One year (2001) we had plans to take a quick picture with Santa and then head to dinner with friends.  We didn’t have much time because our Christmas season was so busy.  As we approached the “Santa Station” in the mall we noticed with disdain Santa was nowhere to seen.  “He’s on a break” one of the elves explained.  Hmm…not good.  How are we going to take a Santa picture with no Santa?  I gave the elf an extra $5 and asked if we could sit in Santa’s throne and take our annual picture.  No problem! He replied and thus, that is how we came to have a Santa picture with no Santa Claus.  When people visit our house now and look at the last 13 years of pictures, most of the time people don’t even realize that one year, Santa wasn’t even in the picture!

My point?  These days it can often seem that we don’t really need Jesus for our current celebration of the Christmas season.  Just as Heather and I didn’t need Santa to continue the tradition, I wonder if Christ’s absence during the Christmas season would even be noticed?  We’ve turned Christmas, the celebration of the birth of the “anti-materialism”, “justice for all” Savior into a kooky, present filled, orgy of gluttony.

The Advent season, the time of expectation and awaiting of the coming King, should be a time centered on Jesus Christ.  We wait.  We long for His arrival.  We tell stories of His goodness.  And we tell others about the significance of the baby from Bethlehem that would change the world forever.  Before Christ’s birth, we were cut off from God because of our own sin and fallenness.  Humans could approach God through purity and cleanliness and worshipping at the temple.  But no matter how hard humans tried, we couldn’t get it right.  So God fixed it.  He sent His son, part of the Holy Trinity, to a simple birth in a barn in a backwater town called Bethlehem.  And Jesus, God in a Human Bod, lived among the people, healing and teaching and changing the rules of the game.  This was the same Jesus who was later put to death on a cross and rose 3 days later.  It is the victory that we celebrate at Easter.  But before all that, there is a beautifully simple birth story in a barn. 

The challenge this month in the chaos of the Christmas season is to continue to think about Jesus.  Tell stories about Jesus.  Let your life shine for Jesus.  This is how we fight back against the cultural forces of Black Friday.  This is how we swim upstream and leave Christ on the throne.  So that on Christmas Day, as we celebrate Christ’s birth, we would realize that nothing is missing– we are celebrating the very Savior who makes our lives whole.

Surfing for something good

In our family we have a tradition of sacred Fridays that end with a family movie night.  We all cozy up on our oversized couch and sink our teeth into a movie that the kids have chosen (or sometimes we help choose 🙂 ).  Someone had recommended Soul Surfer to us and so movie night last weekend was Soul Surfer, the true story of a 13 year old named Bethany Hamilton that had her arm bitten off by a shark.  Through the tragedy, she became a very strong witness to Christ’s presence in her life.  Her story has been chronicled by this book, she has become a national celebrity and been honored with an MTV  Teen Choice Award and became a professional surfer.  All the while, professing her love and trust in Jesus Christ.  Her life turned out different than she expected but she still trusted God with her life and wasn’t poisoned by anger or bitterness.  And as a result her life has turned out beautiful and she’s been a blessing to many.

The movie, Soul Surfer, tells this tale.  And as I sat down to watch the movie, I could feel the cynical Scott take center stage.  “This movie is going to blow,” I told myself.  It will be melodramatic, overly pulsating with Hollywood cheese, and so full of trying to be Christian that it won’t tell a good story.  Because let’s face it…there have been a TON of horrible “Christian” movies.  Sometimes Christian films try so hard to have a message of Christ that they just don’t tell a compelling or realistic story.  And as a result, the cynic in me wanted to throw out the film before watching it.  But you know what?  Soul Surfer is a great movie, and it taught me a few things about my cynical lens I can view Christian art with sometimes.

In the 70’s and 80’s, in a decision that shows the ways we had been polluted by the modernist mindset that divided Christianity into a merely private sphere that couldn’t influence the external sphere, Christians responded by being “in the world but not of it.” Ask most Christians and they will tell you that this phrase is in the bible- it is not.  (Great article about where the phrase actually comes from here).  It belongs to one of those Christian cultural aphorisms that we believe God must have said because it seems so true.  Want another one?  How about “God helps those who help themselves.”  Really?  And what book is that in?  Didn’t think so.  It actually is part of Greek mythology…read it here. The reality is that God wants us “in the world” because we are called to mirror Christ, to be a blessing to His creation here and now and not just wait for heaven.  Don’t mistake what I’m saying…we are called to be agents of change in our culture and not merely go with the flow of a pop-culture that averts things that are of Christ.  But we’re called to be agents of change in the world here and now.  Today.

So back to the 70’s and 80’s, the church seemed to decide the real world, and real art, was too dangerous.  So we invented Christian art.  Real films?  Too much sin.  We need Christian movies.  Real music?  Too much Satan.  We need Christian music.  We made “Christian” an adjective instead of a noun like it should be.  Like we can take a real thing, pour a little “Christian” over the top like sugar or saccharine, and then wow!  Christian stuff comes out!  The reality is that most of the movies, the art, the music, the “whatever” that has a label “Christian” in front of it has done the real art form a bit of a disservice.  You can find me sacrilegious or disrespectful but this is my experience.  So I went to Amy Grant & Michael W Smith concert as a kid.  I watched the Left Behind movies.  I tried to hide behind “Christian stuff” but the real world beckoned and my relationship with Christ seemed to be at odds with the rest of the world.  But if we believe that God really created the world, really created us, really made things “good” in His image, than everything here on earth that is good and beautiful and true and valuable was created by God to embody His goodness and show a future picture of God’s good reign.

But as a result, now it feels like the pendulum has swung too far the other way.  Most Christians I know and respect laugh about Christian music.  They would never frequent a gallery with a showing of Christian art.  And as far as Soul Surfer or any other movie that is purported to have a Christian message, they would stay away.  We’ve done such a good job of saying that the word isn’t an adjective that we now poo-poo anything that calls itself Christian.  And sometimes this is an unhealthy bias.  The reality is that as disciples who seek to mirror Christ, the things we digest can slowly taint us.  Though God can be seen in everything, there is nothing wrong with filling our lives with things that will build us up and not tear us down.  Want to see the latest Cohen brothers film or a horror movie?  Sure..do it.  God will still love you and your witness to Christ isn’t ruined.  But remember your mind is like a sponge and some of the art we digest isn’t edifying or helping to build us up.  Paul talks about it here…we should drink of the source of Christ.  Stuff that builds us up.  And doesn’t fill our mind with things that are not of God.  I had this feeling after seeing Munich or Kill Bill or No Country for Old Men.  Good movies?  Sure…well acted and well directed and well told stories.  But the images they left behind?   Very dark.

What did the critics of Soul Surfer think?  Well they hated it!  One said, “The film that follows is thin and frothy, though watch out for that final sentimental upsurge. It could drag and lift you against your will.” Another wrote, “Unless you like your inspiration in heavy-handed doses, you might be better off watching the real thing – on YouTube.”  And lastly this reviewer nailed it, “An amazing true story for sure, but this earnest dramatization is so wholesome, it feels like being stuck in a never-ending Activia advertisement.”

Don’t get me wrong.  There are places in this film where more nuance could be used, where more drama could have unfolded.  It was so wholesome that it turned people off.  As humans we want pain!  Give me suffering!  Give me an unhappy ending!  But this girl, with her one arm and her passion for Jesus that doesn’t wane through her struggles?  Impossible!

For me, I was left moved by the film.  Moved by this example of this young girl who trusted God.  We had a good conversation after the film about how things turn out different than we expect in life but God can still be trusted.  Yes life can be painful but God is still good.  He still loves us.  Want my proof of this?  You can see that here.  For this movie night, wholesome worked just fine.  The movie was moving and actually not very heavy-handed in its Christian message.  But the impact for Christ this girl had was extraordinary.  Check it out.

Does God have THE PLAN for your life?

I just rented the movie The Adjustment Bureau.  Heard of it?  All I knew was kind of sci-fi action flic about the choices we make.  Turns out it has a lot of theological undercurrents running through it.  Matt Damon is a character in the movie that is being messed with by the agency that works for the chairman.  And (spoiler alert) the big reveal by the end of the Act I is that the chairman is actually God and the agency are angels.  The agency is trying to separate Matt Damon from Emily Blunt.  Why?  Well because it isn’t in THE PLAN that they are to be together.  Much of the movie is the quest for the 2 lovers to reunite and fight against the angels who are trying to keep them apart.

Matt Damon asks, “If its not supposed to happen, why do I feel like this?”  The angel, one of the FBI-looking guys responds, “It doesn’t matter how you feel, it matters what’s in black and white.”  The angels all carry magic black books that show THE PLAN for each human being.  When someone changes what they are supposed to do, the entire plan changes.  Then as Matt Damon tries to run from the plan, a car accident unfolds in front of his eyes and the message is clear.  God, the movie seems to say, is at work against us for the sake of the plan, which we would call God’s will.  In the movie, God is in the top floor of a big stone building (we think).  Matt Damon reunites with the girl of his dreams, but the agency sends in a particularly nasty angel named “the Hammer”.  His advice for Damon:  “You can’t outrun your fate.”

Is this what we think life is?  A fated plan from God and we’re stuck on it?

Damon asks, “what ever happened to free will?  The Hammer responds, (in one of the best written parts of dialogue of the movie) “We gave you free will, and you gave us the dark ages…you don’t have free will.  You have the appearance of free will.  Humanity is too stupid for free will.”

At this, Damon decides to change fate, he enlists the help of his helper angel Harry and they devise a system for Damon to schedule an appointment with God.  The story gets a bit far-fetched and silly here but Damon and co-star Emily Blunt run through the streets of New York to schedule an appointment with God.  At the seemingly end of the rope (uh oh, God’s not at the top of the stairway of the big building) and with the bad guys (angels) all around, ready to destroy the lovers or if nothing else, their love, the two humans kiss with such passion and force that the angels disappear.  The helper angel reappears and said God has “rewrote the plan.”  He tells them “Its all a test” and God rewrote the plan because their love won out.

If you haven’t seen the movie you are either annoyed or utterly confused by now, but the plot is solid and the Phillip Dick short story unfolds decently on screen.  Its not going to win the Oscar for Best Picture but it is a fun movie.  But theologically, watching this movie sets some major questions about how God operates in the world.  Are our emotions the most powerful thing about us?  Has God stripped us of free will and now gives us small nominal decisions on what color tie we where or what we order for breakfast but He’s got all the big decisions all mapped out?  The movie is far-fetched fantasy (especially the end).  And yet, as Christians, we operate in many of the same naïve beliefs.

What does God want me to do with my life?  Who should I love?  What should my employment be?  Will I discover the plan that He has mapped out?  The question is imbued with hope and faith but it is laced with the same insidious sub question: “what if I miss out and fail to figure out the right thing God has for me?”  Or worse…”what if God is actively at work against the thing I want to do with my life and I’m going to be stuck doing something I don’t want to do?”  Or in the movie’s case, “what if we are pulled apart from the love of our lives?”  This belief of A PLAN has done major damage to Christians for centuries and instead of empowering us to follow Him, we waste days, months, and years sitting around waiting to figure out when God will show the plan to us.

“But doesn’t the bible say we are all on a plan that God has to reveal to us?” I often am asked.  We Christians love to quote Jeremy 29:11, “For I know the PLANS I have for you says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”  Beautiful and powerful words right?  God has a plan for us!  Yes!  This is fantastic!  But wait…at the end of Jeremiah the Jewish people were taken captive by the Babylonians and made slaves and most of Jerusalem was destroyed.  Is this in the Plan?

My argument is that searching for God’s will shouldn’t be quoting Jeremiah as much as Philippians 2:13,
”It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”  Or this one, James 1:5
, ”If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach.”  God’s plans for humanity involve reconciling us to His great love.  Healing the world now to prepare for the future Kingdom of Heaven.   Being instruments of His great mercy.  Now.  Life is less about the plan, and more about His provision of grace and love and relationship with Him and others.

Still waiting for the PLAN?  There are many websites out there telling people specifically how God is waiting to unfold his plan to us…we just have to wait and it will all come crystal clear, like the magic black books in The Adjustment Bureau.  Want proof?  Sure just click this website and following God’s will is very simple progression of steps.  The site seems to say, “read a couple verses and sit back and POW! God will unfold the whole PLAN for your life!”

So often though, God’s will is unfolded not in plans or in progressions, but through relationships, struggles and journey.  Look at the story of the bible, sometimes God broke in and said “Paul why are you persecuting me?” or from the burning bush to Moses.  But for most Christians, God’s voice isn’t from blinding lights or burning bushes but in the still, small voice that isn’t so easy to perceive.  Through reading scripture, through teachings in church, through the beauty of a sunrise, through the intimacy of prayer…this is how God reveals Himself to us in tiny, steady steps.  The way of Christ is a journey, and the connotation of journey isn’t an overnight or instantaneous thing…it often takes a long time for a journey to unfold.  God does speak to us and make Himself known to us, but not plans that come out of black books but in a love relationship He has been writing with you since the day you were born.

Make no mistake – God does have a plan for you.  His plan is for you to follow Him, and be shaped by Him, so that you can be a blessing in this world today to help others see God’s great light.  He can use you as a teacher, and he can use you as a mother.  He can use you as a pastor (although a bit more difficult!) or he can use you as a contractor.  He can use you no matter what your context is, He’s more worried about your heart.

We waste a lot of time obsessing over the Plan, and Jesus says upon leaving earth, just “follow Me”, and I will lead you.  Sometimes God might take you and put you in a specific place at a specific time, which is definitely more a concrete plan.  My friend Tracy Stover had this happen recently as she was praying for direction and God called her to Africa to serve with World Concern in the Horn of Africa drought.  And she faithfully followed Him.  God called her to Africa and she followed Him.

A few years ago God called me to come and help build the church and I followed Him and it has been amazing.

But for many others that haven’t been called to Africa or to come and be a pastor, God has also called you to the plan of following Him daily here in your normal life.  Work your job where you find yourself, work hard in the relationships you find yourself in, draw upon strength from the Lord, and be a blessing to all of the creation here on earth.  This is His plan for you today.  I’m sure of it.

Do you speak Christian-ese?

Not sure if you caught this article on cnn.com this weekend about Speaking Christian.  “Can you speak Christian?” asks author John Blake.  The article speaks towards terms like ‘rapture’ and ‘salvation’ and others like it that the average person in our culture wouldn’t necessarily understand.  It caught my eye because Bethany (the church I belong to) has had a summer course about “Speaking Christianese.”  The problem with speaking Christian, the author suggests, “When Christians develop their own private language for one another, they forget how Jesus made faith accessible to ordinary people.”  Jesus spent his ministry drawing people in, does our church do that?  Jesus spoke in such a way that all wanted to hear more.  Do we do that?

One writer said this about Jesus:  “He communicated in images that both the religious folks and nonreligious folks of his day understand.”  Jesus didn’t give a lot of requirements to be his followers.  He didn’t create a system for leaving people out.  Think of how he started the most famous of all his sermons in Matthew 5:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”  Down and out?  Good news, Jesus says, you are on my team.  Everything is going to be okay.

It’s important as our church grows and we seek to expand God’s people that we are speaking and discussing God in such a way that people can connect with.  When I was in high school, I spent 2 years studying Japanese.  Studying might be a bit of an overstatement because the final year my Japanese class was independent study.  I basically was allowed to sit in the common area between the classes and have a Japanese book open in front of me.  Friends were heading over to a buddy’s house to play dunk ball during Japanese?  No problem!  I’ll study more tomorrow.  At the completion of two years of Japanese, and while receiving A’s in the course, I could say the following words or phrases in Japanese:  “hello…good morning….you are welcome.”  And that was it!

That summer we had some guests from Japan at the fishing lodge where I work.  This group of men spoke only Japanese and not a word of English and after hearing that I had studied their language, I was assigned to be their fishing guide in their boat for the next day’s fishing trip of 8 hours.  They spoke Japanese at me for the first hour and I muttered, “Hello…good morning….you are welcome.”  By mid morning they were painfully aware that I didn’t speak Japanese at all.  They stopped speaking to me, and the next four hours they spoke between themselves while I looked on (it was a very frustrating day because they also broke 3 fishing rods that day).  My problem was that I was familiar with the letters and the sounds and the feel of the Japanese language… but I couldn’t speak the words.  It had no meaning for me.

Sometimes in our churches, we speak Christian words and phrases and terms that no one understands.  We assume people know the value of the words we use but it’s like we’re speaking Japanese.  And people feel left out.  The answer isn’t to “not speak Christian” but rather to act in such a way that the language for our actions comes from the things we do, not the phrases we repeat.  The world has heard a lot of what the Church says, but I would argue, needs to see more of what we do.  Even Jesus at the end of Matthew commands the disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”  ‘Don’t teach people to speak the words,’ Jesus says, ‘but rather show them how to follow Me with their lifestyles.’

I hope our church grows by continuing to develop into people of action, using our lives as our greatest figures of speech.  May we be held accountable to the ultimate truth of speech, that it should only flow after our lives reflect the values we believe in.  This is how we’ll start to speak the language of the culture today as people can see the church stepping in and helping feed the homeless and restore broken relationships and genuinely allow people to learn more of God’s great love for them.  This is the highest of callings for us as we continue growing into God’s people.

 

 

 

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