And one more for the road (Owl City on love)

In keeping with our love theme . . .

'I was harrowed by the fact that so many people (specifically me) have a funny tendency to desire romance merely for the sake of avoiding loneliness, which ultimately means it's not about LOVE at all! Sometimes it's easy to be "blinded by the light" and forget all about what true romance is designed by God to be. When all you focus on are the warm fuzzies, a relationship can become dangerous and disastrous very quickly. So the song plays closely to the fact that I needed to pull myself out of the lights and remember what's more important than the romantic butterflies.'

 Your thoughts?  Have you seen or experienced (given or received) this kind of desire?

Six assorted quotes that made me think

Numbered for your commenting convenience.

1. "Miracles happen and people get visions for sure. But mostly God gives us a hoe and some seeds and introduces us to the miracle of work and a lot of common sense."

Stumbled on this while reading Just Do Something, a short and thought-provoking look at why we have such a lot of trouble "discerning the will of God for our lives."  (Hint: sloppy definition and theology have a lot to do with it.)

2. "Serve not to convert," says Roberts. "Serve because you are converted." 

What do you think of churches that say Christians shouldn't help out any humanitarian effort unless we're allowed to directly preach the gospel with words?  It's worthless if we don't share the gospel, is their claim, and they really seem to believe it.

3. "Clearly in the Bible spiritual leaders found ways to get people to pay attention. The prophets would use props such as plumb lines and cisterns. They would set a record for most days spent lying on one side. They would bury and dig up undergarments. They would marry women with shady reputations. Their lives often looked like something between performance art and reality TV."

This is one of the reasons why I love the Old Testament . . .

4. "Scheduling is no small matter. Attending takes time without offering quantifiable results. It requires stillness in a culture that rewards industriousness. It's inefficient in a world that considers getting things done next to godliness. A pastor who refuses to be slothful in the areas of silence and reflection stands a good chance of getting fired."

Someone referred to it as the cult of efficiency, a startling descriptor.

5. "While it may appear as though theological debate today is more polarized than ever, in fact it is perhaps as civil as it's ever been. There are still charges of heresy here and there, but at least we're no longer burning each other at the stake. There is occasional name-calling, but as Luther famously pointed out even Jesus and Paul were fond of coming up with clever names for false teachers."

There's some excellent witty repartee in the gospels between Jesus and said hypocrites and false teachers!

6. And last but not least.

"Spiritual maturity is the capacity to see God in the ordinary. And if you receive that capacity, if you become someone with eyes that can see and ears that can hear, you are given a gift.
It is life beyond boredom. Beyond amusement. Beyond attentive.
It is resurrection"

Discuss.  :)

Grace and consistency

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So, wow, unexpected article I thought I'd share with you.  Here are some of my favorite bits. 

"First, Christian institutions should be clear about the behavioral standards they expect from employees, students, and members, and then enforce them—consistently, but judiciously. There are legal reasons for this. If Christian institutions expect society to let them make religious belief and practice a factor in their employment practices, they need to provide clear and consistent accounts of their standards. "

"Consistency and clarity are essential. Consistency means not singling out those with same-sex orientation. The same standard should apply to all. Wheaton College's Community Covenant is a good model. It says, "[F]ollowers of Jesus Christ will … uphold chastity among the unmarried (1 Cor. 6:18) and the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman (Heb. 13:4) … Scripture condemns … all … sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage between a man and woman." Those standards do not make a special case of homosexuality. To deviate from God's ideal is to deviate from God's ideal."

"Grace does not always, everywhere, and immediately mean wiping the slate clean."

"Grace can be tough, but it always aims at the redemption of the offender."

This is a set of topics that has been on my mind for a few years.  When I realized that there were few examples of correct church discipline, a real inconsistency in the Christian community about moral failures in leadership, and a real double standard about sexual sin in the church, I started thinking.  I'm still thinking.  What are your thoughts?  Your experience with these issues in your church?
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Further thoughts on what I'm ashamed of

I wonder if this dilemma is like people searching for the perfect church.  They look around to find one that's running smoothly and healthily, and they reject any as soon as human cracks become visible to them.  Of course, all human institutions have human cracks.  The longer you're around them, the more cracks you see.  The fall tainted everything.  If you're looking for the perfect anything here on earth, you're on a fool's quest, one that is doomed to failure. 

Is it wrong for me to pull my support of an institution just because I've clearly seen how sinful, fallen, and human the institution is?  If I am unwilling to settle for anything less then perfect, unable to find anything at all, what benefit is that to anyone?  Where's the balance between wise stewardship, wisdom, sour grapes, truth, and consequences?


This is hard.  Any thoughts?

I am ashamed of . . .

My undergraduate institution sent me a new fundraising scheme recently.  Like many colleges, mine had a big rock on campus, and people would paint it with activities and stuff.  Now they're offering to let alumni have it painted for a certain donation.  I already donate (a very small amount) of money to my college, and I'm wondering right now whether I even want to continue doing that.

You see, I am not ashamed of the gospel, but I am ashamed of my college.  I applied for my dream job there recently and got rejected without even being given a fair shake.  It turns out I stepped into the middle of something ugly, sinful, and political, and I can't seem to get the stink of it out of my brain.  I've done some additional research and found out some really appalling things.  Do I really want to be supporting an institution that allows such ugly things to happen to anyone, let alone their own alumni?  Who they then ask for money?!

Or is this just irritation that the reason I didn't get what I wanted had nothing to do with me? 

Am I trying to avoid guilt by association?  Can I when it's my alma mater?  I'm already tainted by this new legacy of dishonor.  Not giving them my $5 a month will hardly send them into a spiral of financial destruction.  And what about all the decent faculty members suffering under this administration?  Do I withdraw my support of them and their livelihoods because of the despicable behavior of their superiors?

Any input, opinions, or advice?

Church/Business

A friend in need of a steady job applied for a seemingly providentially open music position in his church, but the church, like most modern US churches, decided to form a search committee to look for the best qualified candidate (in theory both inside and outside the church).  The search committee (as they most always do) ended up hiring one of these outside people  who is now moving here.  They just have to pray she works out.  They don't really know if she will because, you see, she's not an active member of their church body, and they've never lived alongside her.  Apparently it's an acceptable risk.  As a result, an active member of their church body who was equipped for that ministry is now once again trying to find a job to help support his family.

Some churches do this because they want to be taken seriously.  They want to show that they are seeking high quality.  They don't want to be tied just to their own small talent pools.  They want to bring in new blood and not just stagnate with the people they have on hand.  They want to be like businesses, more or less. 

I guess they don't know that this strategy often doesn't work in businesses either.  Many businesses say they promote internally, but most who say that still hire externally.  When they do, they hire people who take a ton of time to train up to speed when a competent, tested candidate already exists inside the business.  There's a lot of irritation and frustration in these situations, as there often are when upper management dictates policies that work poorly on the front lines.

What I can't understand is why the local church wants to act like a business anyway.  We're supposed to be a body of believers with a common purpose.  The Holy Spirit equips us all for ministry to each other and to the world.  I guess it just seems odd to me that we're so unwilling to trust that the Holy Spirit equips each church body to sustain itself.

It's not that I think local churches should never allow "outsiders" in.  However, don't you think the Holy Spirit brings in/provides who is needed to support the local body from within the local body itself?  Shouldn't the church look within to find who they can train and equip for necessary ministries?  If there is no one, then it would make sense to look out in the wider body. 

When we start acting like a business first, we lose sight of the fact that we are supposed to be first of all a community, a family of believers made up of many members who all function as a whole.  When we take matters into our own hands, it's like we don't trust God to get it right.  We end up leaving our own in need out in the cold when we had it within our power to help them by letting them use their gifts to benefit the body as a whole.  Isn't that what the church should be?  Why should we quench their use of that spiritual gift in our quest for "legitimacy" and "being taken seriously" by the world.  Is that right?  Is that where our focus should be?

Why Jesus wept the second time

In the short-term Sunday school class our church held for Lent, I learned that those palm branches on Palm Sunday were actually a symbol of political freedom/rebellion, and that whole Hosanna thing was a cry to be saved by a king from political affliction.

No wonder Jesus cried.  He was there to save them from something much bigger than subservience to Rome, but that's not what they wanted.  And sometimes it seems like that's not what the church in the U.S. wants, either.

Jesus came to forgive us our debts, but nowadays we often seem more interested in asking Jesus to save us from debt.  We want Him to make us healthy and wealthy.  We want Him to grant us good fortune in business and better church attendance numbers.  We want Him to keep pain and conflict away from us and our children.  We want Him to make us comfortable. He wants to make us holy.  Rather incompatible desires.

Sometimes I wonder if we still think we're living in the Old Covenant, the one where obedience = physical blessing.  We think that prosperity and comfort is a sign that we are doing the right thing.  It's not.  By that standard, Jesus definitely didn't seem to be doing the right thing.  It's a good thing he brought a new covenant.  The Old Covenant didn't work out too well for God's people in terms of overall comfort, either.  Thank the Lord we live under the New Covenant.  I could never keep the law well enough to earn blessing under the Old Covenant, but it has been made available to me eternally through the gracious and terrible sacrifice of Christ who calls us to be like Him.

Personal comfort is not what He came to save us for.  It's not what He's called us to.  If people who call themselves "Christians" but pursue lives of ease and comfort and seem just as interested in worldly success as the world, how are they followers of Christ?  When the church lets the world define success for us, we fail.  God wants to give His children things that are much more than the American dream.  Why are we so eager to settle for less?

Laura Story has a new song called "Blessings."  She asks some good questions in it; it deserves an attentive listen.  (If you know anything about her life, you will find that she is testifying from personal experience.)  "You love us way to much to give us lesser things," she says.  The easy way of comfort is not the way we are called toward.  We are called to something greater.

The biblical Jesus never promised us comfort.  In fact, He called us to take up our crosses and follow Him. (He went on to unfair torture and death [and resurrection]).  He called us to love and to give and to serve and to sacrifice.  He called us to a life of persecution and disfavor.  He called us to be crazy as far as the world is concerned.  He did not call us to be happy.  He did not call us to charmed lives where nothing ever goes wrong.  This is not how He shows His favor under the New Covenant.  Prosperity is not how people can tell to whom we belong.

If you're getting too comfortable, maybe it's time to rethink, reread, and do some serious praying.  Which is what I'm doing right now.  Care to join me?