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Giving it all up

In A Renegade’s Guide to God, David Foster tells a story of a wealthy man who built a large art collection with his son. The son goes off to war and is killed. Later a soldier shows up at the man’s door with a portrait that he had painted of the man’s son, saying that the son had saved his life. The portrait is given an honored place in the man’s art collection.

The wealthy man dies and his entire estate is put up for auction. The first item is the portrait of the son. The crowd is waiting for the “good stuff” i.e. the Picassos, Rembrandts, and other great works. No one bids on the portrait. Finally a man bids ten dollars. It is the one who painted it and ten dollars is all he has to give. Because no one else bids he is the highst bidder. The auctioneer then says that the auction is closed. There was a clause in the will that states that the son’s portrait was to be the only thing auctioned and that whoever bought the picture would get the entire estate. So the soldier, who gave everything he had to get the son’s picture, also got everything else.

That’s what being a Christian is all about. You give up everything you have to “get the Son”, and you get everything else that the Father has. It’s all about a relationship with Jesus. It’s not about a bunch of rules, how you dress, what kind of Bible you carry, how you vote, what kind of music you listen to, whether you smoke or drink, or any other external things. It’s about whether you realize that you can not save yourself and that Jesus Christ loves you and has died for you so you don’t have to die. It’s about having a relationship of love with the Creator. It’s about following Jesus and letting his Spirit guide you and form you into his image.

Jesus said he came to give us a life that is abundant and full. That’s the way Christians should be. Are we?
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Are you a hippie?

Are you a hippie?

You are a Hippie

You are a total hippie. While you may not wear birks or smell of incense, you have the soul of a hippie.
You don’t trust authority, and you do as you please. You’re willing to take a stand, even when what you believe isn’t popular.

You like to experiment with ideas, lifestyles, and different subcultures.
You always gravitate toward what’s radical and subversive. Normal, mainstream culture doesn’t really resonate with you.

I wonder if some of the things that supposedly make one a hippie are some of the same things that are characteristic of a follower of Jesus.

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Lent

Over at http://www.jesuscreed.org, Scot McKnight suggests a good thing to do for Lent. I’m going to do this as a way of doing something positive rather than just giving something up. You’re invited to join in, as something on its own or along with something you are already doing.

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Meme

I was sort of tagged by a couple of people. So here’s the way this one goes:
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
Find page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

Here’s my 3 sentences.
“Reading my essay usually took me about ten minutes, though I have heard of men who occupied almost the whole hour. Lewis listened with extreme intentness, not, I am all too sure, because of the fascination of my words, but because it was his duty. Once, in the middle of my essay, his phone rang.”

I figure since there are probably only 5 people who read this, I’ll tag all of you. 🙂

Edit: Thanks to re:patrick for bringing to my attention that I forgot to mention the book title. 🙁 It’s Remembering C. S. Lewis: Recollections of Those Who Knew Him

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The End?

Internet monk has an interesting post concerning evangelicalism here

What do you think? Is the end of evangelicalism as we know it near?

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Commitment

In The New Christians: Dispatches From the Emergent Frontier, Tony Jones writes:

“Just ten percent of Americans are not affiliated with a church or synagogue, and another five percent hold a faith other than Judaism or Christianity. That leaves eighty-five percent of Americans who can write down the name and address of the congregation with which they are affiliated. Yes, that bears repeating: eighty-five percent. There are about 255 million church-affiliated Americans.What can be questioned is the level of commitment that Americans have to their churches. They may know the address, but do they know the doctrinal statement? Or the denominational affiliation? Do they care? The answer to the last question is most decidedly no. American Christians care less and less about the denominational divides that are so important to their seminary-trained pastors.”

He is answering the notion that America is becoming more and more secularized by stating that the majority of Americans are spiritual, but without the concern with denominational teachings that divide. I think to some degree that is true, especially with those who consider themselves emerging. The emerging conversation definitely cuts across denominational lines.
The statement, “What can be questioned is the level of commitment that Americans have to their churches”, raises a different issue. Looking at the fact that eighty-five percent of Americans are associated with a church (or synagogue), I question the level of commitment that American Christians have to Jesus.
We are called to be salt and light. Salt flavors and preserves, and light allows us to see. When a great deal of what passes as the “Christian” arts is nothing more than cheap knock-offs of what is already out there, and when much of the preaching is really self-help philosophy wrapped in Scripture – where is the flavoring? When we are more concerned with beginning more programs and building bigger buildings than we are with the homeless, the poor, and the hurting in the neighborhoods surrounding those buildings – where is the preservation?
We say we have the light, but instead of going and shining that light into the darkness, we want people to somehow stumble out of the darkness into the light inside the walls we have put up to protect the light.
We have become so afraid that somehow the corruption in society will overcome the salt, or that the darkness will overcome the light that we have put ourselves in a ghetto where we are safe within its walls and from which we lob scud missiles at those outside – with the same effect.
We say we believe that God has called us out of darkness into the light, that he has saved us by his grace, that grace gives us the power to follow Jesus and that God is forming us into Christ’s likeness. We say that Jesus told us to go and make disciples. We claim to follow the King of Kings. Yet we live in fear. Fear of the culture capturing and corrupting us, fear of screwing up, fear of somehow not quite measuring up.
We are loved by the Creator of the universe! His word tells us that this love is perfect and that perfect love drives fear out! If we belong to Jesus, our day-to-day life, not just our salvation, is by God’s grace and not our feeble effort! Our Father loves us and accepts us just as we are, and will change us and make us grow. He will not leave us in our current state. Yes, there are commands in Scripture for us to follow. We are not absolved of all responsibility. But the power is from the Holy Spirit.
As we focus on Jesus Christ and the amazing grace that God has given us, we will desire to follow Jesus closer and closer. We will, as the Jewish rabbis used to say, be “covered in the dust” of our Rabbi. As we become more like Christ we will truly be salt and light. We will mess up from time to time. We will fall. When we do, we just pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, agree with God that we screwed up, and turn away from it and move on. I believe it was Martin Luther who said, “Sin boldly, trust God more boldly still.” Walk with Jesus and trust him to guide your steps.
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VBS and Church

My sister-in-law’s church held Vacation Bible School last June and she was in charge of refreshments. In the past, people brought brownies and stuff, and the adults stood around in the kitchen, talking and drinking coffee. When it was time, someone took the food to the classrooms.

This time, the kids came down to the kitchen to make their own snacks. The snacks corresponded to the lesson, so they were a teachable moment. The adults, however, were upset because they didn’t get to continue their tradition of being together and drinking coffee in the kitchen. They had forgotten that VBS is supposed to be about ministering to the kids, not the desires of the adults.

I thought that is a perfect picture of many churches today. They continue in the same ways of “doing church” that they had in the middle of the last century. As the culture around them has changed, they have remained stuck in the past and either been unable or unwilling to change.

It’s so easy for us to stick with what is comfortable, what has worked in the past. I have heard many times, “Why can’t we just go back to what we did when the church was growing back in the 1980s?” The problem is that what worked in the past does not work today. Yes, there are pockets around the country where some of the old things work, but for the most part, it is a new world. What worked in a culture that had at least a memory of Christianity will not work in a culture that has no idea.

We need to fulfill Jesus’ command to go out and make disciples in the twenty first century. To do this, we need ways that fit today, not yesterday. As missionaries study the culture they are going into, we need to study this culture and give the gospel in a way that is relevant.

Like the VBS adults, we need to remember that we are to be about ministering to others, not ensuring our comfort and benefit.

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Putting Holes in the Darkness

A while back I read a story about Robert Louis Stevenson. One night when he was a little boy, his nanny called for him to come to bed. He didn’t hear her since he was intently staring out the window. When his nanny asked him what he was looking at, he pointed at the lamplighter lighting the street lights and said, “Look Nanny! That man is putting holes in the darkness!”

I got to thinking that that ‘s a large part of what being a follower of Jesus is. We’re to put holes in the darkness. We may not be able to save the world, but we can at least shine the love of Christ in the darkness around us. As Jesus said, “Let your light shine among men, so they can see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”