Insufficiency

I'm often reminded of the insufficiency of words to categorize God and our relationship with him ... her .. it ... God.

I once heard a preacherman ask a room full of texting, ipod weilding teenagers to "friend" Jesus. As in the facebookable verb; to add someone to a friend list. Once every few months I try to trim back the ever-expanding shrubbery of friend lists. I'm terribly afraid of hitting the 1,000 friend mark. I think the crushing reality of 1,000 friends and nothing to do on a Friday night would be too much for my fragile soul to handle.

So, have you "friended" Jesus? Like Hindu-Indians adding Jesus as another god to put on their mantle, have you included Jesus in your ever-expanding circle of influence? Have you allowed the Lord of Lords and King of Kings full access to view your pictures, wall, status updates, and favorite interests?

I'm not just picking on a pastor for creating (or, more likely, recycling) a terrible metaphore. I'm interested in how the me-generation views the very act of personal salvation in a world of social-networking. Our definitions have changed.

When my grandmother was young if she sat and wrote out her friends, there would probably be a dozen names on the list. These names probably included her family, neighbors, and relatives. And people at church. Probably her widest pool of friends was the social networking she experienced at church. Instead of being connected to a household, street, or playground she was connected to a hundred or more people. For a few hours once a week her social circle became too large to comfortably manage.

This morning I have connected with people on 3 continents (some in person, some on-line). I congratulated a dear friend in Russia on her wedding by posting on her wall, spoke on the telephone with a missionary in Mongolia, video-called my mother, watched a Ukrainian nationalist parade in L'viv, talked in person with a few students and sent out a half-dozen e-mails to people in Ukraine and America. I don't need Sunday morning worship to expand my social network - if anything I crave the comfort and safety of fewer, deeper authentic relationships when I worship. It has been over a year since I have worshipped with anyone sharing more than a few months history.

I don't want to "friend" Jesus - I want Jesus to save me from Facebook. More than another casual aquantaince I need an authentic savior. One who will lead me into true and lasting relationships to help me grow into the disciple I need to become.

Our words are insufficient, but increasingly our social constructs are also becoming insufficient. We don't have kings, lords, or fathers in our lives. Most people have never met a shepherd and fishermen are a distant concept or weekend hobbyists. Without a means of comparison, how will we know how to interact with Jesus?

Our words, and the structures they represent are wholly inadequate to help us comprehend Jesus.

Full

Recently I have been hosting an English club once a week. While in East Asia we planned English lessons with the intent of introducing the students to good Christian concepts. We rejoiced when a handful of the students accepted Jesus as their savior after the lesson on the “American holiday” of Easter. When I first began planning English lessons for L’viv, I began with that model. But this approach rung hollow and tinny in this city of ancient cathedrals and war/famine/dictator tested faith. My greatest need was to reevaluate the Gospel message I wished to share.

Personal salvation is not the gospel. It is the stepping stone to the gospel. The gospel includes everything that comes after personal salvation. The gospel is the transformation of the world.

In a culture where everyone seems to scream "look at me!" all day* we have reduced the gospel to its opening act - the one aspect that deals entirely on the personal (me) level. Every other facet of the gospel throws the spotlight away from ourselves and onto God and others. We have managed to turn the good news of Jesus Christ and His transformation of the world into a selfish grasp for attention.

There is this beautiful video of my first Christmas. The camera zooms in on an adorable toddler holding an over sized box and dad says, "Michael is about to open his first Christmas present ever." Like a fuzzy big-foot sighting, my sister Rebecca screams, "Look what I can do!" as she jumps in front of the camera. -- We are the ones who jump into the viewfinder while Christ quietly works in the background.

It is altogether necessary for the survival and advancement of the church that it gets the gospel right - that we, in the words of Landa Cope, whole heartedly take the whole Gospel to the whole world. If churches cannot move beyond the level of personal commitment to the idea of deity - and into the realm of the Kingdom of God - they are doomed to a listless existence of self-preservation.

More and more, I'm convinced that the only message worthy of being preached in the name of Jesus Christ is "Change the World." But I wonder how long a person can really preach this message of “change the world?” Jesus preached the message for 3 years before they killed him for it. Either you preach and fail and then burn out – or you preach and succeed and they kill you for it. I don't see too many other realistic options.

This is our faith - the good news does not call people to choose heaven over hell, the Gospel calls us to choose Christ over ourselves, death over life, and reckless abandon over comfort.

If you think Jesus wants your home to have more bathrooms than people (and it's not functioning as a homeless shelter)then we haven't been reading the same accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. Jesus wants your stuff to matter less every day and the homeless people to matter more.

I can no longer, in good faith, preach a message of personal salvation. In no way do I reject this idea - I believe fully that personal salvation is necessary - I simply believe it to be insufficient compared to the entirety of the Gospel. In order to be faithful to my call I can only preach "Change the World."

* Yes, I fully grasp the irony of complaining about the "me" generation from my personal blog - from which I write to make sure everyone knows what I think about everything.

I think there must be a tremendous sadness in being a saint.

After the SS arrested Casper ten Boom they decided that he was too old - they would prefer he died in his own bed than have an extra body to dispose of. One soldier said, that he was quite old and asked, if they let him go, if he would behave. He responded, "If I go home today, tomorrow I will open my door to anyone who knocks for help."

And this is the Casper ten Boom we have heard about - this is the old grandfatherly man we know and love from his daughter's book, The Hiding Place. But what about the Casper of doubt? What about the man who spent hours wrestling with the idea of turning the jews over to the authorities and protecting his family. Why don't we read about the man who felt like a failure because the jews he was protecting never fully accepted the Christian faith?

As a struggling Christian, it's easy to look to the great men and women of the faith as examples. When my doubts are heavier than my faith - I can idolize the faith of men and women like those found in the ten Boom family. But what do you do when you are the saint? When you are seen as the spiritual giant, what do you do with your doubts, your temptations, your sins, and your failures?

How sad must it be to realize the depth of your own doubt, frustration, sin, and laziness and then to realize that you're probably it. You are probably as faithful as anyone else. What pain must belong in the knowledge that after you are gone, people will remember your name - that you lived for Christ so poorly that people will remember you first and then Christ; that people will make you an idol.

What a sad life Mother Theresa and John Paul II must have led - living with the full knowledge that this is probably it - this is probably the extent to which the frail human form can live fully for God.

Pictures from Kiev.

 
 
 

This is me and some of the students I work with (from L'viv Ukraine), and two pictures I took of an ancient church.

Happy Mothers' Day!

Yes, I know you're reading this Debbie Airgood.

Sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you!

Love, (your son) Michael.

Some rules

We're incredibly talented at getting everything wrong.



I saw a copy of this statue in Moscow a few years ago. I genuinely thought that it had been mislabeled - because I couldn't think of any story in the Bible where Moses grew horns.

When the Bible was first translated into Latin this was one of the linguistic mistakes. When Moses came down off the mountain his face shone with a beam of light ... but it was originally translated that his face had a large horn on it.

Hundreds of years after the mis-translation this beautiful statue was painstakingly carved by a great master. But, it's wrong.

The Jews genuinely believed that they had the whole "Messiah thing" figured out. They thought they knew when he would come, how he would come, what he would look like, and what he would do. They were wrong. When the Messiah came he was backwards of everything they expected. He never had great wealth, he never commanded an army - their Messiah was a homeless teacher/carpenter. They had all these strongly held beliefs, but they were wrong.

I see millions of Christians with very strong opinions. Some Christians believe that it is okay to kill abortion doctors to stop abortion because abortion is murder. Some Christians believe that immigration is a social justice issue and that we should support all immigrants, legal and illegal. Christians on one side of an issue believe very passionately that God hates ___________________ and Christians on the other side of the issue believe very passionately that God supports _________________. Of course both sides manage to pluck a few words from the Bible to tell us all how God feels.

The more I study the Bible the more I realize that I don't really know how God feels about many things - and neither does anyone else. And that's okay.

Here are a few things that I think Christians should think about before declaring how God feels about a topic:

1. How important is this issue in the long run? I know it's important to Fox News and CNN, but how important is it to Jesus and His bride? Is it as important as 30,000 children dying every day? Does a wrong answer to this question send people to Hell? Did Jesus spend any time talking about it? How important is this issue?

2. Does the whole cannon of scripture back up my strongly held belief? Yes, I know what First Hesitations 2:19 says ... , but if that stands in contrast to the life and ministry of Jesus, are you really willing to bet all your chips on this belief? Would you have found the Bible verse that supports your cause on your own? Do you only know it exists in the Bible because of propaganda material you have read that supports your strongly held belief? Is it only mentioned once? In passing? By someone other than Jesus? In a long list that we otherwise disregard? If this issue is really important in the long run I believe that it would be a recurring theme in the Bible.

3. Is there a third way? Solomon charged the women to saw the baby in half, knowing that the mother would want her child to live no matter what. Solomon had two options - mother 1 or mother 2 - but he chose the third way. Do we really believe that the God of this universe will only pick from the two options we clearly see and that God couldn't find a third way? Really? Before we declare that God loves black and hates white or loves white and hates black - let's step back and realize that perhaps God's solution is bigger than we might realize.

4. Are we interpreting the Bible passages correctly to arrive at our strongly held belief? (Hint - if your strongly held belief is based on something in Revelation you should probably tone down your rhetoric a bit!) Are we reading Paul like a new Christian in Corinth or are we reading him like an American sitting inside our air-conditioned den? Leave room for grace in instances where our reading might be mistaken.

5. Does my strongly held belief leave room for the Grace of God in case I'm wrong? When you get to the Pearly Gates will God chuckle amusedly that you really thought ________________________? Or will God grieve that thousands of people are in Hell because you falsely taught ____________________________?

I hope these rules and guidelines help everyone understand where I come from when I write about socio-political topics. I hope these are useful for everyone else, as well.

Rhubarb

It's a good day.

I bought rhubarb in the marketplace this morning. I didn't need rhubarb, it was an impulse buy. Like twinkies, ho-hos, or Taco Bell. But who impulse buys rhubarb. I'm not even sure I remember what rhubarb pie tastes like. I think I've only had it once.

Betty made rhubarb pie. When we were young we would go to Betty's house and have tea and cookies while my mom talked with Betty and Althea. We were always treated like grown-ups - just miniature. I drank coffee like Bill. Bill & Betty were always simply ancient. While I know now that they were about the same age as my grandparents - Bill & Betty always seemed so much older.

Bill had served in the war, the second great one. He had a fun story of how he got drafted. I don't remember it well, but basically - he had an old truck that he was driving even though he was too young to drive on the roads. A cop pulled him over for not having a taillight and found that the driver was unlicensed. He told Bill that he could pay a fine of $400, go to prison for a week, or (if he was really as old as he said!)join the service. Bill had never seen $400 and he had seen the outside of a prison and didn't want to see the inside ... so he chose to join the service.

After tea and cookies we would all go for a long walk. I only loved the walks when we would stroll through the woods behind their house. With them, in those woods, I saw a tranquilized bear, deer, and large fields of blueberry bushes. In season we would pick for hours. My mother always seemed to pick thousands more than my sister and I could. Even Betty's arthritic hands managed to pick faster than us.

So maybe tomorrow I'll work on a rhubarb pie. We'll see.