I am Thankful…

Thanksgiving is a great holiday for me for many reasons. The food, family, rest from the routine, sports, and Christmas tree shopping remain constants of holiday weekend. However, as much as I enjoy all of these, especially the food, Thanksgiving reminds me to pause and give thanks. The Lord continues to truely bless me and our family in many ways. First we are blessed with being a part of two ministries that desire to impact their respective communities. Our church, Redeemer Community Church, merged this fall with another local church in the area. I am thankful that God allowed us to participate in this merger and in some small way see the manifestation of Christ’s prayer for unity in John 17. Our family remains grateful to be a part of this church. The Lord has also presented many opportunities to minister with the students at Clearwater Christian College. I am careful not to write “minister to” because they have encouraged, admonished, taught me much more than they will ever know.
Second, I am thankful for the work the Lord has done in my family this year. In spite of Julie and my repeated failures to live the gospel in front on them, they have matured in many ways this year, seeing Christ in their trials and desiring to dialogue about their faith with their friends.
There are so many more things that I could mention such as income and health, but these are the thing I realize most this holiday season. For these I am truely thankful.

Idolatry: You worship what you think about?

Couterfeit Gods by Tim Keller

I received my copy of Tim Keller’s new book this week and have begun to work through it.  He made a statement that has caused me to pause and reflect.  I am certain that it will not the last. In explaining a quote by Archbishop William Temple, he explains,

the true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention. What do you enjoy day-dreaming about? What is it that occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about? Do you develop potential scenarios about career advancement? Or material goods such as a dream home? Or a relationship with a particular person? One or two day dreams do not indicate idolatry. Ask rather, what do you habitually think about to get joy and comfort in the privacy of your heart?

This statement demands reflection for all Christ-followers [especially me] because we frequently and eloquently disguise our idols in “good things” that may on the surface appear honorable.

Younger Generation of Evangelicals and Their Mission

Former speech writer for Republican president George W. Bush, Michael Gerson claims the younger generation of Evangelical Christians are shifting away from the social engagement models of the religious right.  Gerson proposes three reasons for this shift: “a recovery of scriptural emphasis, a revolt against the tone and style of the religious right, and the effects of short-term mission trips on young Christians.”

Post-Denominationalism

There has been much talk lately about the current era being post-denominational. This Christianity Today article offers an alternative view:

Spiritual Life and Religious Life: A Contrast of Faith

Carl Barth, in his book The Christian Life, suggests that “the modern usage of the term ’spiritual’ has wrongly been put in embarrassing proximity to the word ‘religious.’”  By comparing the terms geistlich (spiritual) and geistig (religious), Barth concludes that at “at best [religion] can only serve the spiritual (geistlich) life of man and often it will not do so.”  This distinction helps by reminding us that many things we attach to spirituality is really just religious.  I believe in many instances our communities of faith are creating very religious people who think they are spiritual.  Really they are religious: participants in a system of thought about God and what he demands of his followers.  These participants know [at least they think or have be told directly or indirectly] that “spiritual” people DO a certain set of tasks.  In doing the tasks they gain self assurance of their spirituality.  However, tasks many times are centered on the individual and their accomplishments.  The unintended consequence of religious tasks focuses the Christian on himself and his accomplishments.  When tasks are neglected, the Christian “tries harder” or “gets right with God” returning to the list that assures him of his spirituality. Bloesch helps explain the solution to this dilemma.  He explains,

True spirituality begins and ends with God.  False spirituality begins and ends with self.  We do not find the will of God by probing into the searchings and yearnings of self.  We find hope and promise for the self by reflecting on the depth of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ….Our chief concern is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, the necessites of life will then be ours as well (Mt. 6:33; Mk. 10:29-30; Lk. 12:29-31).

So the question becomes how do we do the things that please God without them becoming a list of self-assuring tasks?  Perhaps the answer lies in what tasks we are doing or who is the beneficiary of those tasks.

The marginalized the work of the Spirit

St. Peter Preaching at Pentecost

In his work, The Word and the World, Emil Brunner said,

The Bible without Spirit is orthodoxy; Spirit without the Bible is mysticism or rationalism.  Scripture and the Holy Spirit as one – this was the conception of true revelation which was held by the reformers (90).

As a product of modernism and Christian traditions formed in it, I marginalize the work of the Holy Spirit.  Intellectually, I know all the responsibilities of the Holy Spirit, but a sense of discomfort begins to creep in when people talk about the Spirit leading them and they don’t connect it to scripture.  The Scriptures clearly states the Holy Spirit is our indwelling guide, us leading us to truth (Jn 14:17, 26; 2 Tim 1:14). Still my baggage of a modernistic Christianity tradition had effectively killed the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit as sure as liberalism.  Maybe in an overreaction to the indulgences of the charismatic’s seeming abuse of the Holy Spirit’s work, I was guilty of marginalization of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit involved Himself in the writing of Scripture and indwells believers at their confession of Christ, but effectively [for me] was out of the picture after confession.  In my heart, phrases like “the spirit led me…” was met with internal skepticism.  My faith tradition would not allow me to trust the God-ness of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity; He is an equal in authority, power, essence.  Therefore my trust should be unwavering in His past work carrying along the writers on Scripture and His ongoing work in Christ followers and superintending the church.  The Holy Spirit speaking to those He indwells will never contradict  His superintended work of Scriptures or his guidance of Christ’s church.  It is in the concert of the Holy spirit’s work in the Scriptures (1 Pt. 1:21), the individual believer (2 Tim 1:14), and the church (Eph 2:22), that we see God beautiful sovereign work in his creation.  Therefore His work is not in the past, but in the ongoing present, true revelation, for which I am thankful.

Is serenity necessary for spirituality?

David Augsburger has some insightful reflections in his book, Dissident Discipleship.  He writes,

Serenity is necessary to spirituality because the human experience is by nature anxious.  Anxiety is the primary characteristic of self-awareness.  When it overwhelms us, the rush of life traps our center.  We become hurried, captive souls, entangled in the web of routine involvements, preoccupied with the mundane, caught up in the anxiety of the business of life.  Spirituality shifts our center to a higher vantage point, from which life can be seen with patience, work can be viewed as vocation, and the routine of daily tasks can be met as service…the center of our soul has then relocated above the tyranny of the trivial (89).

I think this might be what the sons of Korah thought also,

Psa. 46:8  ¶     Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
Psa. 46:9     He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
Psa. 46:10     “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

Lord help us in our unbelief…

We are all in the construction business

George Bernard Shaw once stated, “God created us in his image and we decided to return the favor.”  Genesis 11 illustrates Shaw’s statement in a most vivid manner.   The story of the tower of Babel comes at the end of the first major section of the Hebrew Bible.  Some introductory thoughts might be helpful here.  The Babel Episode is the pinnacle of the previous events recorded in Genesis 1-11.  The story of Babel stands between the previous events…events that continually reflect man’s failure but it also introduces the family of Abraham, God’s chosen one, through Shem’s (son of Noah) genealogy bringing hope to dark stories of repeated failure.
This Babel story gives us a snapshot of life through a story related to the genealogy of Ham.  In Ham’s genealogy, we find that Nimrod, descendant of Ham, developed cities.  Much like Genesis 2 reflects back into day six of Genesis one providing more detail, the tower of Babel reflects back into that genealogy to report of the result of building these cities.  It is a story that tells us the general condition of humankind.  Moses has placed the tower of Babel story as a bookend that mirrors Genesis 1:1-2:3.   The verbiage of both the creation story and the tower of Babel are similar as they both speak of mankind [adam], heavens [man’s relation to it], both passages have a divine plural (“Let us”), and we are introduced to the motif of blessing through filling the earth.  It is evident in the story of Babel that the divine mandate to fill full the earth and subdue it has not been taken up mankind.
Not only does it serve as a bookend to the storyline of Genesis 1-11, but also it picks up several pieces of imagery from the individual stories of Genesis 1-11.  For example, the Tower of Babel mirrors the attempt of humanity in the garden (2:4-3:24) to achieve power independently of God.  The divine plural appear in the garden story distressed about man’s condition if left in the present state just as in the Babel story.  Geographically the Garden story and the Tower story occur in the same region, near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  From this perspective, it would seem humanity has come full circle.  The Babel story picks up pieces of the Cain and Able story with Cain’s migration and building cities (4:17), Both Cain and Babel boast of advanced civilizations.  Themes from Noah’s flood are also present in the vocabulary such as “heavens” and “all the earth” dominates both stories.  The characteristic of pride or renown (6:4) is also introduced in both Noah’s flood and the Babel story.  Elements from all the previous stories have found their way into the Babel story revealing that man has not become resolute in his commitment to the Creator.  In fact the opposite has happened.  In spite of the Creator’s intervention at times throughout Genesis 1-11, man has continued his pursuits with little regard for God’s mandates.
The story of Babel also has literary qualities that reveal the condition of God’s creation.  The Babel episode illustrates both human endeavor (vs. 1-4) and divine deed (6-9).  The peak of the story, which is found in verse 5, separates these two activities, “the Lord came down.”  So the story begins with human construction that results in divine activity triggering the city’s deconstruction.  Sarcasm and Irony are also present in the story.  First, humankind’s unity enabled the project to be built, but it was the partnership that brought their demise.  Second, they sought a “name” (vs 4), they received a humiliating name, “Babble” (vs 9).  Third, they set out to build a tower to reach the heavens (vs. 4), but God has to come down to see their puny efforts (vs 5).  Moses is telling the freed Israelite slaves from Egypt, to whom the story is written: the divine mandate is not happening.  The image of the divine king is not being proclaimed throughout the earth. Humankind is rebelling against their creator again.  Therefore, God comes down to take corrective action.
So what is the crime that is committed by humankind that evokes divine judgment?  Some commentators have said pride as seen in making a name, but we see throughout scripture a prominent name in itself is not wrong.   Pride can be a motivator for making a name, but it does not have to be.  Some has also claimed that the scattering was an indication of divine judgment, but filling full the earth was a divine blessing in the creation story.  The filling the earth had more to do with reproducing not scattering.  The point of the divine blessing in creation was to create more little images of God through reproduction to rule and subdue the earth. Both pride and refusing to subdue the earth reveal a heart issue that demanded God’s intervention.
The heart issue reveals itself through understanding the significance of cities and the role of towers (ziggurats) in the ancient Near East (back to Nimrod).  Mesopotamian religions claimed that their cities were of divine parentage (originated from the gods).  Inside these cities, Mesopotamians erected was the ziggurats as a prominent feature.  They developed a mythology that the towers formed a stairway between the gods and earth.  Therefore they believed, the gods, including the Creator God, could be manipulated through offerings and celebrations in the god’s honor.  Simply put humankind had clustered together for the purpose of God abuse.  They were attempting to communicate with God for their own gain.  They had turned the Creator God into someone they could manipulate for their own purposes.  They replaced belief in the Creator God with paganism.  They made him into a needy god (other examples: Prayer of Mursili, 1400 B.C.).  In the middle of our story, God almighty in need of nothing breaks into their pagan mythology.  He comes down as would have been requested through temple offerings, but he does not come in weakness or need, he comes in power and decisiveness.
It is here that we can inject the implications of pride and refusal to spread out thereby subduing God’s creation.  You see if you can manipulate God, then his divine mandates, his rules, can be disregarded.  Therefore, why travel away from the peace and security of the city?  Similarly, humankind exhibits their pride by their belief that they can manipulate the Creator God.  The image of God, tarnished by sin, is forced to disperse and fill full the earth.  God will now call one individual, Abraham, to father a nation to reflect his image and bless the nations that rejected his kingship through the stories of Genesis 1-11.
In the story of the tower of Babel, God gives us lessons for today.  The Bible serves us many reminders activities that fall short of God’s purpose for his image bearers.   We many times create our tower of Babel.  We attempt manipulate God as if he is in need of us.  As Shaw stated, we have created God in our image.  We demand God carry out our desires instead of submitting to his mandates. In doing this, we dilute our understanding of his person and our mission in his creation.  John Walton suggests three ways that we dilute God.  First, we dilute God through redistributing his power.  Instead of resting on God as the supreme originator and sustainer of the universe, we redistribute his power to human entities.  We rely on government, technology, education or relationships to solve our problems.  Second, we dilute God by restricting his autonomy.  We want to make God a debtor to us.  Anytime God is viewed under obligation, we restrict his autonomy.  We sometimes think God owes us something because we serve him or give material things to him.  Third, we dilute God by regulating his power.  We are delighted for God’s power to work wonders in our lives but reluctant to allow his power to cleanse and purify us.  Sometimes we pray, “improve my health but don’t make demands on my attitude.”  “Help me get a promotion, but don’t change my habits.” “Work changes for me, but don’t work changes in me.”  If we search our hearts and motives, we all dilute God. We build our towers of Babel that make demands on God and set terms for his work, marking off boundaries around the areas of our life that are “off limits” to his work.
However, as we find ourselves in this destructive pattern, there is also gospel in this story.  Genesis chapters 1-11 culminating in the Tower of Babel story illustrates the pursuit that God will undertake to have a relationship with his created ones.  For in our times of self-destructive behavior, God intervenes to save us from devouring ourselves.  That is the grace of the gospel.  God intervened in the garden with Adam and Eve, He intervened in the times of Noah; He intervened at the tower of Babel.  His rescue appears in the stories of Genesis 1-11 in ways that seem painful, yet necessary and for our own good.
Even in our pride of our elegant towers, let us run to cross…seek the hope and restoration found in the gospel.  For it is in the gospel we see the living Christ in all his majesty, power, glory, greatness and we find forgiveness.  Let us seek to make his name renown, not our own.  May Jesus’ prayer to God the Father in John 17, be our desire this day: I have revealed your Name to men and have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

Spirituality

I have been contemplating spirituality in the Christian faith and the reflection of it in our present world.  We see reflections of spirituality all around us in symbols, activities and conversation.  In my own experience, I have mostly been exposed to a spirituality that manifests itself in the form of accomplishments.  Spiritual people do things and do them consistently.  In my world, for example, spiritual people always read their Bible, went church (all services), abstained from “worldly practices” (undefined or succinctly defined depending on what served the interest of the power).  While all these may be activities that should remain in the Christ follower (depending on how you define the latter activity), they do not provide an adequate picture of spirituality.  Further, in our present world setting, many people claim to be spiritual, but in a way apart from the Christian faith. Yet in their own way, they express adherence to spirituality in ways that bear results similar to Christ followers.  For example, their ability to see a spiritual connectivity to nature demands that they treat the earth in a responsible way.  Similarly, their ability to see a spiritual connectivity to all other humans demands that they treat them with respect and dignity.  However, both the secular and Christ follower are seeing their spirituality centered on them.  Their tasks reflect their spirituality.  Therefore it becomes about the individual and not about anything outside of their ability to show self restraint or consistency.  The late Robert Webber identifies three types of spiritualies situated on self: Spiritual legalism, Intellectual Spirituality, and Experiential Spirituality.  The three forms of spirituality outlined by Webber grow from one another.  Many times a quest end as defeated Christ follower becomes resigned to choosing the one that made him feel most spiritual. Spiritual legalism is about tasks, what you do and don’t do.  Webber fitly critiques this view by suggesting that it “goes beyond biblical faith and practice to require adherence to systems of behavior and belief that go beyond the story of God and the freedom to live in the new life modeled by Jesus” (83).  Intellectual spirituality seeks to “know God,” and is rooted in the enlightenment emphasis of reason and science.  Intellectual spirituality finds similar results as spiritual legalism in that it many times results in pride or unwarranted separation from other Christ followers.  Webber again proposes that, “while knowledge is an important aspect of the Christian faith, it is not to be confused with the spirituality of our mystical union with God.  Often the lust to embrace higher knowledge forms within us attitudes that are the opposite of Christian spirituality” (86).  Experiential spirituality is found many times in revivalism and Pentecostal/holiness/Charismatic movements.  Experiential spirituality reacting against intellectual spirituality, seeks to know God, but through experience instead of intellectual knowledge.  Therefore, for Experiential spirituality, knowing God is squarely rooted in an event.  For example, the revivalist may experience the “personal relationship with Jesus” that began at an altar call.  The emphasis centers on the date of the event instead of the process.  This category bases their spirituality many times on their feeling about God’s view of them or his action toward them.  Webber concludes that, “to suggest that ‘I am a spiritual person because I felt the forgiveness of God in a particular experience’ places confidence in my own experience rather than in God’s embrace of me on the hard wood of the cross” (89).  So if these three views provide an insufficient concept of Christian spirituality, what is the answer?  I have been ensnared in all of these three ideas of spirituality and found all of them fruitless and frustrating.  Webber suggests a solution that I am trying understand, but have yet to exhaust its ramifications.  He proposes,

historic spirituality situates spirituality in the story of the Triune God, who creates, became incarnate, took my humanity up to his, entered the suffering of the cross, and rose from the grave.  God drew me unto himself and did for me what I could not do – He himself restored my union with himself.  Now having been baptized into this great mystery, I contemplate God’s work for me and the whole world and I participate in God’s purposes for the world revealed in Jesus Christ.  Spirituality is a gift.  The spiritual life is the surrendered life. (90)

Who is the working poor?

In reading Responsive Labor: A Theology of Work (Jenson, 2006) [a full coming review soon], I am reminded of how we Christians [particularly in the west] see our work as meaning in life.  The result of this thinking many times allows us to classify those without work as less meaningful in this world.  Jenson, in discussing the working poor in the U.S., places the notion of work=meaning in the context of the Lord’s Supper.  He States,

At the Lord’s Supper, there are no working poor: all are poor standing in need of God’s grace, and all are fed abundantly when the bread is broken and the wine is poured in Christ’s name. Our work, in the end, renders us worthy of none of this abundance.

This reminded me, in the context of our current economic downturn when it is easy to look out only for ourselves, that our sufficency is in Christ and our meaning in this world is found in his graceful act of salvation which brought restoration with the Father.  Apart from this act of grace, we are all destitute and without purpose.  God sees us as his image bearers some employed, some unemployed, some wealthy, some working poor.