I wasn’t feeling well today and I was fortunate enough to take the day off. While doing a little cleaning around the house I came across this 40 cents. If I’m being honest (which I am) I was just going to throw this into the trash pile. I had no container nearby to put it into and after all it was only 40 cents. But then I realized that somewhere in the world someone is working very hard(much harder and in much worse conditions than I do at my comfortable office job) to make less than 40 cents a day. Its very easy to forget how fortunate we are. 40 cents means food and clothing to someone. To me it was trash. Shame on me.

A normal saturday morning at Bob Evans

My previous post contained a quote from Religious Literacy about the church seeing great growth because it conformed to the culture. It’s something I haven’t been able to get off my mind for some time now. It didn’t help when a buddy of mine read me a quote from a book called the Psychology of Redemption by a guy named Oswald Chambers. I don’t have the book in front of me, so I’m not even going to try to quote  it; but the gist of it is something like this:

Will the church that bows down to the culture succeed? Of course it will!

Of course the church that gives the people what they want will succeed. The problem with this is that we’ve seen the gospel fail – at least what we might think is the gospel.

When we preach a gospel that says, “Jesus wants you to be rich,” what do we expect? I would expect that if Jesus really is who he says he is then I’d get rich. When we preach a gospel that says, “Jesus came to fix all the injustice,” what should happen? There should be no more injustice. When we preach a gospel that says, “If you will just be moral enough Jesus will be happy with you,” what happens when we fail even our own morals (which we will)?

In all of these scenarios the gospel has failed, yet the Church has succeeded. There are lots of people preaching prosperity, and the seats are full. Plenty of people want to see the kingdom break through, and they see that happening by feeding the poor and doing acts of social justice. I’ve been around my fair share of people that think if they dress the right way and listen to the right music and say all the right things that they’ll be okay. The problem is that the gospel is failing. None of those things are necessarily wrong, but apart from heeding the call of Christ to repent they are empty.  Without the understanding that Christ makes us new and that’s why we do or believe these things, we will still be prideful of our works. The Church cannot continue to preach certain facets of the gospel and leave the rest for fear of offending someone or just because they don’t want to believe it. We cannot pick and choose what our gospel will be. The gospel is Christ and his redeeming power in this world. Nothing good comes apart from that. The Church cannot continue to expand at the expense of the Gospel.

This season in baseball there is a guy named Josh Hamilton who has taken the league by storm. The story was no different last night in the Homerun derby. Hamilton dominated by hitting 28 homeruns in the first round. That number beat out Bobby Abreus previous single round record of 24 (which I was lucky enough to be present for here in Detroit). But the real story of Josh Hamilton is how he went from being a number one pick to sleeping with rats to where he is today. In July of 2007 he did an article for ESPN the magazine. Here’s the link.  Enjoy!

I’ve recently been reading the book, Religious Literacy, by Steve Prothero, and this passage has stuck with me the over the last few days:

Half a century ago, in Protestant-Catholic-Jew (1955), sociologist Will Herberg wrote that “the religion which actually prevails among Americans today has lost much of its authentic Christian (or Jewish) content.” The postwar religious revival, which saw church membership and attendance rates rocket to all-time highs, came according to Herberg at a cost. And the cost was religious content. In conforming themselves to American culture, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism had become little more than parallel paths up the mountain of the American dream. Instead of quaking in the presence of the Almighty, Herberg observed, Americans blithely pledged their allegiance to “religion that makes religion its own object.” In the process Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism became, at least in their American incarnations, “so empty and contentless, so conformist, so utilitarian, so sentimental, so individualistic, and so self-righteous.”

The content of this quote is great, but what intrigues me is that this was said in 1955. I’ve lived on this earth for 23 years now, and I’m really just coming to this realization of how much of the “church” is lined up with the American dream. Herberg saw this 53 years ago. Why have these realizations not changed the way we articulate the gospel? or, more importantly, why has it not changed the way we live out our faith? The American dream tells us to get educated and make a lot of money, settle down in a big house, have a few kids, and live happily ever after. The scripture calls us to live sacrificially, depending on Jesus and our fellow believers. The scripture seems to me to indicate that we should be living freely, not in the chains of the debt we find ourselves because of all the “stuff” we’re trying to accumulate.

I’ve lived much of my life trying to achieve this dream. I’ve got my house, my wife, my kid, and my two cars. I found myself on the track to full time ministry. I would be this great youth pastor and have 200 kids in my youth group, and it would be great. I still don’t think that would be a bad gig in some sense, but lately God has been telling me I need to check my ego at the door.  It’s not about what I think is best but what He thinks is best. As my wife and I were having a conversation the other day about moving next door to some friends of ours because we want to be somewhere and make a difference, the Holy Spirit said something to me and through me that I am so grateful for and am really starting to believe, “IT COULD TAKE 30 YEARS . WHO KNOWS, WE’VE JUST GOT TO BE SO COMMITTED TO THE MISSION THAT IF THIS IS ALL WE DO AND AT THE END OF THE DAY WE CAN LOOK BACK AND SEE PLACE X LOOK RADICALLY DIFFERENT BECAUSE THE KINGDOM WAS ABLE TO BREAK IN, THEN THAT’S ENOUGH.”

My only question is, if Herberg saw this problem 53 years ago and nothing has happened, how do we make sure that in 50 years somebody isn’t saying these same things about me? How do we break the “religious” cycle and really begin to see our faith change things?

As many people who would stop in here at Kingdom Living know, for the last 9 weeks I’ve been going through this thing called Story Formed Life. In short it’s a 10 week course touching on critical doctrines of the faith: Creation, Fall, Gospel, Lordship, etc. I’m posting this in response to a question from my cousin, Mike, today asking for a descriptive paragraph of the Story Formed Life. While this post will probably be longer, here are my thoughts:

I watched an intriguing hockey game last night (with a bummer of an ending). I was engaged from the first drop of the puck until the tragedy that was Peter Sykora’s game winning goal in the third overtime. I felt the shock and depression of the Red Wings going down 2-0. The glory of the Wings going up 3-2.  The sick feeling in my gut when the penguins scored with 34.3 seconds left. And the final blow when Sykora’s goal soared over Chris Osgood’s shoulder.

Now I very easily could have woken up this morning and skirted over to espn.com and read the box score. I could have read everything I just wrote about and had all the facts of the game. One thing would have been missing though – a real connection with the game. I know for a fact that I would not have been sitting on the edge of my seat while reading the box score this morning. I could hardly sit while watching the game last night.

So to bring it home, I can relate to the box score in my relationship with Christ. For many a year I knew the box score. I could tell you about the doctrines of grace and propitiation. I could quote John 3:16 and the like, but I had never been engaged in the story. I was never on the edge of my seat to hear what Jesus had to say next. My gut was never sick over the fall. I had never REALLY seen the glory of the gospel. Story Formed Life has opened my eyes to the reality of many of the doctrines of the faith. I’m beginning to see more than just the boxscore. I’m seeing the game as it happens in my life.

Please don’t tell Jesus that he didn’t have to waste 3 1/2 teaching and training up disciples. If he figures out it was this easy he’ll be pissed.  If you just click yes at the end they can send you information so perhaps you can understand the huge decision you just made. Sad really

1 Corinthians 5

    9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges [2] those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

I found it interesting a few days ago when I read this scripture because it’s completely contrary to my experience with the Church. In my experience, although we understand that we’re all sinners, it’s sort of okay for those of us within the Church because we’ve said the magic prayer and have been forgiven. At that point it was our job to keep our distance from those outside. If we could get them inside the Church to minister to them, then great. If we could get them to say the magic prayer and conform to the “lifestyle” we lived, then we had succeeded. Brothers and sisters within the Church were hardly ever held accountable to the Church. Jesus had saved them, and that was enough.

Paul echoes the words of Jesus [John 17:15-18] in verse 10. Just as Jesus, Paul understood that Christians were supposed to be in the world. We are sent into the world. We are meant to be in the lives of those who don’t know Jesus. We are to love them. Once we learn that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts, we won’t have to try so hard to get people to follow all of our rules. We can love them and share the true gospel with them and let the Holy Spirit do the work that He does. Instead we think, “If so and so would just stop watching porn or drinking beer or smoking or committing sin x, y, or z, then they would be alright.”  The truth is that unless God covers them in HIS grace they will never be okay. Salvation doesn’t come by the law. It comes by a sovereign God. 

What I’m not saying here is that we should validate sin in any way. God takes offense to all sin. We must understand though that it is not the duty of the Church to condemn, but to love. We are commissioned to preach the gospel and make disciples. God will call to salvation those whom he chooses. If we can get a grip on just how disconnected WE are from our creator because of our fallen nature, we will be able to look at those who don’t know Christ with sadness. We’ll be broken that they’re so far from the intent that God had for his creation. We’ll understand that we’re no better than the rapist, the criminal, the murderer, etc. Everything within us will want to preach the gospel that they might know how good God is. In the book, All of Grace, Spurgeon says, “Jesus did not come into the world expecting to find goodness and righteousness, but to bestow them upon those who do not have them. He comes not because we are just, but to make us so.”  We are ALL unjust, and the only way to become justified is through Christ. If only we could find ourselves in that “ALL” boat, we could love those outside the Church in the way Christ has called us.

After being away from the world of blogging for about a year and a half I’m back in action.  In that time I’ve had a beautiful baby girl, bought a house, and have begun to learn who I am in light of who Christ is.  This is a place for me to share my thoughts on any number of topics. Feel free to engage.