A Little Parable

As I have been reflecting on the news recently, this little parable has bubbled up into my mind. It's something that has helped give me some clarity of thought:

There was a wealthy man with two sons who decided to take in a poor young man--not out of pity but to work on their property. Though occasionally to the outside world the family would act as though he was part of the family, he was treated harshly, forced into hard labor and punished severely when he displeased them. Eventually, the young man's true parents died in their poverty, and the young man had no home but the cruel place of his masters.

The older son began taking pity on the young man, saying that his father should pay him for his work and that he should be treated less harshly. Eventually, after much internal conflict in the family, the father decided to adopt the orphaned young man as his son. 

But the two natural sons did not receive him as a brother. The younger son, who had relied much more on the young man's work than the older son, refused to recognize him as a brother at all, treating him as a slave as much as his father would allow. The older son likewise worked to deceive his adopted brother, making sure that he would lose none of his inheritance to this outsider, even as he relished in being considered the kinder of the two brothers.

Finally, after years of mistreatment and wondering if he could ever truly be part of the family, the poor adopted son came to his father with one question: "Do you love me?"
The father was taken aback by the question. He had taken him in, after all. He had adopted him and given him a home. His time as a mere servant was long ago. How could he ask such a question? The father's reply: "I love all my sons." 

"Yes," the adopted son begged, "but do you love me?"

I grew up understanding that "God loves everyone," but when I was struggling with depression in my late 20s, I came to the realization that although I believed that God loved me because "God loves everybody," I really needed to receive the truth that God loves me. It was a great gift to feel God speak into my heart that God truly loves me. If I continued to believe only that God loves all, without really applying that to me personally, it would have been devastating.

That's the problem with responding "All Lives Matter" to the cry of "Black Lives Matter." Generalizing when someone is asking for a personal affirmation is to deny them of that affirmation, just as this father in the parable was doing. We need to affirm and demonstrate that "all lives" really does include "black lives" by saying, yes, black lives indeed matter, and repenting of everything that we have done to make them bring that question to us in the first place.

“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone”

- Ephesians 2:14-20 (ESV) 

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

- Galatians 3:28 (ESV)

When Church Leaders Let You Down

It is a sobering time for the church right now. As a Southern Baptist, I am sickened by the details of the recent Houston Chronicle report on sexual abuse, cover-up, and inaction within our denomination. Even locally, we have seen ministers leaving their posts suddenly for reasons ranging from criminal acts, to moral failure, to personal weakness—leaving their churches to figure out how to pick up the pieces.

The Bible tells us that the devil shoots at us with flaming arrows (Ephesians 6:16). The reason a warrior would set fire to his arrow is not only to kill his enemy, but to burn down everything around him. When a pastor or other prominent Christian is hit by one of these arrows, it threatens to burn down the church, his family, and the reputation of Christ in the community. How do we keep the flames from spreading? How do you keep your own faith from burning up when your spiritual leader falls?

It’s Not OK

One impulse we might have is, out of love for the person, to minimize or dismiss the sin. None of us is perfect, after all, and we all sin. We might write it off as a “mistake,” and, in the name of “grace,” restore the offender in short order. We might even help him cover it up. This course of action is the worst we could possibly take. It’s not truthful or helpful to deny the seriousness of the sin, the hurt that it caused, or the damage it has done to the minister’s spiritual readiness to lead. Often these cover-ups cause the innocent to leave the church, unhealed and unhelped, while the perpetrator becomes the target of sympathy. It is vital to fully acknowledge the sin.

And if you are angry, it’s important for you to understand that your anger is justified. God is angry, too. Jesus’ words for those who cause people to fall away couldn’t be any stronger (look at Luke 17:1-2). It’s not OK for church leaders to act this way.

Look to Jesus

The Bible tells us that sin, when it is full-grown, leads to death (James 1:15). Many pastors who sin are good men whose sin went unchecked, grew into a monster, and destroyed them. The Bible also warns us that some who pass themselves off as ministers are wolves (Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:29); such men are deceivers and manipulators who gained their position with false motives.

Regardless, you need to know that the truth and your faith are not invalidated if the person you heard the gospel from turns out to be a fake. Paul knew that some preachers were selfish troublemakers, but he still rejoiced that Christ was preached (Philippians 1:18). The one who called you to faith was not some pastor but the Holy Spirit himself, and he is the Spirit of truth, who has the power through the Bible to speak to you even through the mouths of imperfect or even fraudulent preachers.

Look to Jesus. Ask him to remind you of the truth of your relationship to him. Ask him to heal your hurts. And don’t forget to turn to others.

Minister to the Hurting

When a church leader’s sin comes to light, a lot of attention often goes to damage control—how to save the church institution from catastrophe. The ones that often get lost in the shuffle are the ones who are hurt the most. Jesus will heal us as we concern ourselves with ministering to those in pain. Who is caring for the abuser’s victims? What about the family the adulterous pastor left behind? Who is left most alienated and hurt by the minister’s departure? When a church rallies around the hurting, showering them with grace and love, we show ourselves to be true disciples, the Body of Christ in the world.

Light is good. When light hits and evil deeds are exposed, it is painful, and our impulse is to hide or flee (John 3:19-20). But if we dare to fight through the pain, stepping into the light instead of fleeing, we find there healing and glory as God works through us (John 3:21). The redemption that comes through the cross of Jesus is powerful enough to overcome any sin, even the sin of church leaders. When a leader falls, we can see plainly that the only legitimate head of the church is not any sinful man, but Jesus Christ himself, and he is always faithful, always trustworthy, and always able to heal our deepest hurts.

What Is the Christian's Responsibility in Regard to Voting?

One of the things that is true everywhere in ministry is that there are, from time to time, issues that hijack everyone's attention.  Sometimes it's a local tragedy.  Sometimes it's something exciting or fun, like a championship run by the local team.  Right now, it's the election.  So please indulge me for this post as we address what is dominating the news, as well as the conversations of our people.

For most Southern white Evangelicals, the question in this election is not really one or the other; it's one or neither.  Other church leaders may have reason to address why Hillary Clinton is not fit for our vote, but that's not what we're struggling with here.  It's all about Donald Trump, and it goes like this: Christians have the civic duty to vote, we can't vote for Hillary, a write-in or third-party vote is as just like not voting at all, so we must vote for Trump, regardless of his perceived flaws.  You've heard this line of reasoning rolled out in various forms for months now, and it's been effective.  Many Christians who initially found Trump to be repugnant are now fervently on his side.  Trump/Pence yard signs are popping up everywhere around town.

I accept only one premise in that argument: for her radically pro-abortion stance, her general hostility toward biblically conservative Christians, and a host of other reasons, I cannot recommend that anyone vote for Hillary Clinton.  But I want to examine the question of what a Christian's civic duty really is in regard to voting, and I'd like us to center our thoughts on five guidelines for our political engagement:

1 - Pay attention

10 Ways God is Different from "the Force"

With the hysteria at fever-pitch this week as Star Wars, Episode VII, is set to premiere later this week, I thought I would take a look at the "theology" of these movies compared with what has been revealed to us in the Bible about God.

This type of exercise is fun in a way, but it also serves a purpose.  Competing ideas about God are everywhere, and when a mythology such as what Star Wars has built becomes so ingrained in our cultural consciousness, it can create confusion.  Particularly if you are a parent of a Star-Wars-crazy kid (like I am), these distinctions might be some talking points to cover when you enjoy these adventures together.

And since everyone loves lists on the Internet, here are Ten Ways God is Different from the Force:

August 6th

August 6th is my son's birthday.  This year, he turns eight.  Eight seems pretty old to me, hard to believe.  (I remember when I turned eight, I thought I was big stuff, challenging my much larger brother with an ill-advised, "Don't mess with the eight-year-old.")

August 6th is also the anniversary of two of the scariest days of my life...

20-Year Reflections

It's a week for nostalgia.  Tomorrow we leave for a summer Kansas City vacation, just like I used to have when I was a kid.  It will be fun to take my kids and Liz to the sites I looked forward to visiting each summer, as well as spending some time with the people (whom I have rarely seen in the last decade or so) that made those trips so special.

Sunday is also our 12th wedding anniversary.  It's hard to believe it's been 12 years.  It's also hard to believe it's only been 12 years, since it's hard to remember life without Liz.  Twelve years is how long it takes to get through school, and I must say I've enjoyed these dozen years much more than those school years.

Speaking of which, chance would have it that tonight is also the day of my 20-year high school reunion.  I can't attend, of course, since it's pretty impossible to get to an 8 p.m. party on a Saturday night in south Texas when you need to preach in Arkansas on Sunday morning.  But I have been seeing pictures on Facebook, and, along with all the other nostalgia of the week (did I mention the KC trip winds up with a family reunion?), it's got me in a reflective mood.

I think the first thing that pops into your mind when you think about seeing people from high school is whether or not you have met the expectations that you imagine that they had for you.  I think I sort of imagined ten years ago that I was "proving" something when I was able to come and "show off" Liz a little bit (I did get married!).  And I was a little sheepish about my weight gain.

So looking back, I'm happy to realize that, although I've been packing it on lately, I'm no fatter than I was ten years ago.  And we've added three impossibly adorable kids to the family since then.  But I also remember the plans I told people about back then, and I've lived to see them altered, crushed, re-shaped, and re-made over the past decade.

I've also come to realize that these thoughts I've imagined in others are just my own insecurities and expectations reflected back to me.  Because my high school social circle was small and I've been removed from that area since that time, I'm firmly in the category of "Who?" or "Oh yeah, I guess I remember him" for 98% of the people in my class.  The question really is whether I feel good about my life right now, and my definition of success has undergone a radical overhaul over the past couple of decades.

The Forgotten Nation

I invite you to imagine with me a country with a rich Christian heritage.  Old church buildings dot the landscape, once filled to capacity but now home to a dozen members in one building, a couple dozen in another, perhaps a hundred in the larger churches.  These nearly empty places of worship are signs of the declining influence and impact of the gospel in these communities.  A remnant remains, but these faithful people have aged, grown tired and defeated, seemingly overwhelmed by the cultural changes around them.

You might be imagining a country in "post-Christian" Europe, and though the country I am describing does have a population roughly the same as the United Kingdom or France, it is much closer to home.  Yet this country is usually seen not as a missions priority but as a stepping-stone for a young minister to gain experience for a couple of years before moving on, or a soft landing for a tired old pastor, working his way toward retirement.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the "nation" I am describing is rural America.

Indiana Straw Man

A "straw man" is defined as "a weak or imaginary argument or opponent that is set up to be easily defeated."

It seems like the best concept to introduce when attempting to address the hysteria surrounding Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was signed into law in Indiana last week.

Now, with Arkansas passing a similar law today, we need to take time to see through the absurdities and look at what this is really all about.

It's easy to get people to hate a law when it is characterized as "a license to discriminate" (particularly against homosexuals), and boy do people hate it.  Companies have already announced they are not coming to Indiana, the NCAA has expressed concern about its continued presence there, a liberal church denomination has decided to change the venue of its upcoming convention to a different state, and now the governor of New York is placing some sort of restriction on travel to Indiana for state employees.  #BoycottIndiana has been trending on Twitter for days, and now it's #Boycott Arkansas.

How could anyone stand for such an odious law? 

The answer is that no one can and no one will, because the law as it is being portrayed is a myth.  It does not exist.  It is a straw man.

In a recent post, I expressed concern that the current political/news climate of our country is turning us into a nation of what the Bible calls fools.  In the Bible, fools are people who make no attempt at understanding but will angrily air their own opinions.  This post is an attempt to help us really understand what is going on here.

Movie Review: Disney's Cinderella (2015)

Today I saw Disney's new live-action Cinderella with my daughter Hope.  It may be that my heart was so full from having some quality daddy-daughter time that it skews my perception a bit, but it was a wonderful experience.  Right now I think it is the best fairy tale movie I have ever seen.

I may do a movie review from time to time just for the sake of sharing my thoughts on the quality of the movie, but this one had such positive themes that I will have to share some of the scriptural stories and principles I found at work in this film.

So read on for my Four Reasons Disney's (New) Cinderella Is Fantastic...

Oprah Wants to Kill White People with Alaskan Wolves (or something like that)

Every day, I check Facebook and Twitter, and on my newsfeed or among the trending topics are the controversies du jour.

One day, President Obama says "Michael and I" in a speech, thus "proving" (to some bloggers, at least) that he is, in fact, homosexual and Michelle is really a man named Michael (not that a very tired man misread a teleprompter at a minor state function.)

Another day, a Christian Mets player uses the outdated term "lifestyle" while trying to answer questions respectfully about how he feels about a homosexual activist visiting spring training, and thus revealing (to those who want to be angry) that he is really a hateful homophobe (not that these reporters already know his beliefs and are trying to entrap him).

This never-ending back-and-forth game we play is turning us into a country of what the Bible calls fools.

Two stories I saw in the last week are prime examples...

Judges 7 Moment in America?

I was reading the story of Gideon to my kids the other day, and it reminded me of the American church. 

The story is really amazing every time.  Gideon is about to face a coalition of the armies of several Midianite tribes.  His army of 32,000 men seems smallish already and woefully ill-equipped for this mission.

But God doesn't say they have too few; He says they have too many.  So Gideon invites everyone who is afraid to leave.  You can imagine how a couple of people left sort of sheepishly, until more and more decided to go, and then it hit a tipping point where it seemed everyone was going to leave.  When everyone had made their choice, 22,000 men had deserted, and only 10,000 remained. 

Now the army seemed really small, but God still said it was too many.  He had Gideon watch the men drink from the river, and everyone who got down on their knees and put their face in the water was sent away.  Well, that seemed to be the normal way to drink from a river in that time, because 9,700
men drank from their knees and were sent home.  Only 300 men remained.

What did these men have in common?  What does it have to do with the American church?

The Presidential Election: An Attempt at an Eternal Perspective

I mentioned on Facebook last week that while I cannot vote for Barack Obama to be re-elected, I was very uneasy with the prospect of Mitt Romney becoming President as well.  It was a feeling that had been growing since the second debate, when a better performance by the President did not stop Romney's momentum in the polls.  More than that, the uneasiness was prompted by a statement by Romney in closing moments of the debate. 

More on that in a minute.

I am also trying in my life to look at things through an eternal lens.  I think that is our task as Christian pilgrims in this temporary world.  The world should be better for our passing through, but this world is not our home, and we have the knowledge that a far greater reality awaits beyond this world, and that reality is more truthful and more real than what we experience right now.

First I suppose that I should explain why I cannot vote for Barack Obama.

Movie Thoughts: Inception

When I wrote about Rob Bell last week, I said I was "late to the party."  I guess when you review a movie that has been out on video for at least several weeks and was the #1 movie in theaters months ago, you could say I arrived at the party when the dip is gone and the drinks are warm.  Still, I have some thoughts about how the ideas of Inception relate to our own understanding of reality.

This is not really a movie review, though.  This post is really for people who have already seen the movie or intend never to see it (it has lots of spoilers).  I am not necessarily recommending the movie (it is really violent in places, has some language issues, and there aren't really any strong positive characters), but I did enjoy it.  Director Christopher Nolan has a knack for producing thought-provoking movies that raise interesting questions about human nature and how we cope with the world around us.  The ideas in Inception relate directly to both the Christian hope and the lie of the devil in Genesis 3...

Rob Bell and Eternal Destinies

I know I'm really late to the party, but I had a lot of thoughts last week about the whole Rob Bell "Love Wins" controversy (for more info, click here, here, and here), and I wanted to share them, in case anybody wanted to read them.  I guess the central fear here is that Rob Bell, who has been called a "rock star" in the Christian world, is now teaching universalism, or that everyone will eventually be saved.  He also seems to suggest that good people in other religions, Gandhi specifically, can gain salvation without a Christian conversion.  The caveat here, of course, is that the book hasn't come out yet, so I'm not going to address Rob Bell specifically, but instead express some of my thoughts (guided, I think, by the Spirit through prayer and by Scripture) about some of these issues.

Treating the "Unpresentable" with Modesty

"...those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment..." -- 1 Corinthians 12:22-24

 

The phrase that jumped out to me when I read this section recently was "the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty."  What is Paul talking about here?  In our human bodies, he is obviously talking about those parts that are indecent to expose to the public.  But how does that relate to the Body of Christ? 

 

I think the "unpresentable" here are those situations and people that are not (or not yet) "presentable" to the world for one reason or another, yet are so important to the life of the church.  For example, we must confess our sins to one another and deal with sin, but these things must be carefully protected within the Body.  There are also immature Christians who are sinful and rough around the edges, but if a church has no immature Christians, then no one is being reached.  These are not "presentable" parts of the life of the Body, but they are "indispensable."  We cannot pretend these parts do not exist or try to force them out.  Instead, although we're not ashamed of them, we know it is not proper to expose these to anyone and everyone.  Instead, we lovingly shelter these treasured and indispensable parts so that they can serve their purpose in the Body.

Brushing Teeth and Discipleship

Every night before Joseph goes to bed, he has a routine.  And the beginning of bedtime begins with telling him it is time for him to brush his teeth.  In the last couple of months, Joseph has been insisting that he brush his teeth himself.  Liz has taught him how to brush his teeth, so no big deal.  All the better for lazy Daddy, so I just have been leaving his toothpaste on the toothbrush and leaving him to have at it.    But there was a problem.  His idea of brushing his teeth had devolved, without supervision, into sucking the bubble-gum-flavored toothpaste off the brush and chewing on it.  And I wasted many irritating nights telling him to stop chewing on his toothbrush and to start brushing (and making sure he knew I was annoyed that he was doing it).   But then it occurred to me: the boy is three years old.  He has not mastered tooth-brushing.  He still needs help and a model.  So last night, I brushed my teeth with him (even though I still hadn't had my after-the-kids-go-to-bed dessert) and showed him what I was doing.  He did a great job, and it was even kind of fun to teach him.   It occured to me this morning as I was brushing my teeth alone that this story is similar to discipleship.  Making disciples is about relationships and modeling.  We cannot tell someone once how to do something, lay out materials, make programs available, and then expect spiritual toddlers to get it right.  (Sometimes we even express shock or irritation when they get it terribly wrong.)  People need models and they need patience.  And if we actually take the time to do it, we might find that we find just as much joy in it as they do.   "For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?"-- 1 Thessalonians 2:19