I had an interesting email conversation with one of my professors one time. Now to start out, I gotta tell you, this professor of mine is one of the smartest people I know. Hands down she could own probably…like everyone I know on intellectual stuff. She's also pretty funny and she's a Christian but a little more old-school. Anyways, I had emailed her over something in, I think, my second class with her and she asked me a question. She said, "Derek, why do you always advertise that you're a Christian? Why do you always wear it on your sleeve out in the open like that?"

This was funny cause I'd been in a couple of her classes already and she was right: I did pretty much wear it on my sleeve most of the time. At least in classes, I was kinda always the one arguing the Christian side, (or at least what I thought was the Christian side), and it seemed like a lot of the time it would always just come out. This was mostly because there either weren't many Christians in the program or they were all much, much quieter than me. You could almost say that given who I was and the situation, it couldn't help but come out.

 

Anyways, all of this to raise the point that I've heard that's been missing lately in some discussions about religion and faith and particularly Christian faith: Christianity may involve a personal faith, but it is certainly not a private one.

 

Now, this might at first seem an odd statement to make as the words 'personal' and 'private' often go together and with Christianity it seems particularly true since, you know, it "Me and Jesus" or "Me and my relationship with God" or "That's between me and God." I mean, that's kind of what its all about right? Jesus died so I could have a direct, no interference relationship with God right?

 

Well…yes…and no.

 

Jesus came to reconcile us to God…yes. But once he does that, he also makes us very public witnesses and ministers of that reconciliation. Jesus came to save us, personally, yes, and he also came to save everybody else and he made you and I the vehicles by which he does that. He came to do a lot of things that have very personal, me and him effects, which quite frankly can't stay between me and him.

 

See, here's the deal, we Christians say that Jesus is our "Lord and Savior" right? And that he's our "King", right? Right. Well, how weird is it for you to have a king that you won't acknowledge in public? Its kind of like being an ambassador to another country and then never telling anyone where you're from and keeping it to yourself most of the time. It's the same thing with us who are supposed to be "ambassadors of Christ", if we keep it under wraps. Now, hopefully people can tell we're a little different because we act like Jesus and we're different in a good, noticeable way, in the way an ambassador from a foreign country is. But, this doesn't do anybody any good unless they know why we're different.

 

They might think good things of us, but they won't know to think good things of Jesus because of us. They might want to move to our country, but they don't know which Lord to swear allegiance to in order to get there.

 

You get what I'm saying?

 

The Gospel, the good news itself, is this very public thing: Jesus is now Lord of the Universe and because of his Life, Death and Resurrection, there is forgiveness of sins and new hope and new life for those who accept it. This isn't a very private piece of news. Its Cosmic. Its public. There's a new king in town and this means something for everybody.

 

Anyways, this has been kind of rambling and random, but the main point is this: if you're a Christian, you're called to be a Christian in public. Its not something that you can be all by yourself that you keep between you and God and nobody else. That doesn't make sense. Now, I'm not saying that everybody needs to go out and tell everybody and their mother about Jesus and the fact that you're a Christian, (although that wouldn't be terrible), but I am saying this: Don't be afraid of being a Christian in public. Its ok. You're supposed to.

Ok, so I don't know about your experience with people but in my 21 years I've come to the opinion that a large percentage of them are extremely unpleasant a lot of the time and that those who aren't to me, either are to others or have the potential to be. I mean, all you have to do is get in your car to see what I'm talking about. I had to drive home from LAX a while ago and it was an extremely unpleasant experience. Why? Because of the other people on the road and at the airport who were rude, pushy, angry, stressed, and generally a nuisance.

 

These people were selfishly absorbed in their own concerns, placing themselves first, caring little about others and even then, mostly in relation to themselves. It was evident in their looks, the comments I heard, their maneuvers and everything else.

 

Last night, there was really nothing about the people I encountered that would endear them to me, cause me to love them, or show them to be deserving of my concern. They exhibited no worthy qualities except for an ingenious talent for wearing at my patience.

 

And you know what? They all could have said the same thing about me. And you know what else? Had you been there, it probably would have been the same with you.

 

Why? Because we're all screwed up. It's a fact. We're all screwed up, imperfect, fallen, sinful, or however else you want to put it and at various moments simply so mean or wrong so as to be unlovable to anyone but our mothers. Even those of us who are good at hiding our unpleasantness better than others, at times can have thoughts, desires or impulses so foul that they'd make curdled milk look like fresh cream.

 

Which brings me to my point: If you're counting on finding the good in someone in order to be able to love them, you're gonna come up empty a lot of the time. If your ability to love is conditioned on someone being loveable, you're going to have a harder time finding candidates.

 

This is what makes me grateful when I think about God's love. His love is unconditioned. His love is directed towards everyone, even at their most unlovable. At me, at you, at the jerk on the I-5 who cuts people off in his 20-inch, raised F-550, at EVERYONE. He loves all of us, all the time. His love is the kind of love that would send him to the Cross, not after we loved him, not while we were his friends, not while we were serving him, but rather while we were cursing him, while we were in rebellion, while we "were still enemies", as Paul says, "Christ died for us."

 

And this guys, this is amazing. This love is what we sing about, this love is what's so radically different from any other kind of love you can find. This is the kind of love that changes and redeems and transforms us from within. And you know what else? This is the kind of love that demands that we love others in the same way. God's love that he lavishes on us, compels us to love others the way he loves us. You know why? Because, this is the kind of love that makes you more and more like the one who loves you. It's the kind of love that takes you as you are and yet changes you into something that you're not and it gives you the ability to begin to love like God loves. And the thing that happens with that, is that you begin to see like God sees, and then you begin to realize, "God loves them all like that."

 

God loves each and every one of them, just as they are, even at their most unlovable, "warts and all." Not because they're so great, but because his love is so big. And then, you begin to realize, each and every one of them is God-loved. And that's what we love them; because God does. 

 

This is something I have to continually work to remember. Each and every time I'm dealing with someone who is just the most frustrating, infuriating, unlovable person, and I want to just turn away in anger and disgust, I have to remember: God loves them, so should I. I have to remember: God loves me, and so I can love them.

So, it's been an odd thing for me to be following the recent primaries and caucuses for both the Democrats and the Republicans as I really haven't paid attention to politics much for a couple of years now. I actually used to be obsessed with politics for years until around after the 2004 elections when I basically got burned out with the pettiness of it all and picked up philosophy, Bible study and theology as my main focuses. During that time I kind of detoxxed on politics and restructured my grid so to speak. Its interesting for me in that while I think I still have a bit of a knack for following the issues, the polls and all that goes along with pragmatic political analysis, my theology has seriously shifted and ramped up, and along with it, my serious distrust and disgust with so much of current political discourse and practice.

 

I really think that now more than ever, Christians are realizing that their beliefs and their relationship with Jesus does play a part in the way they relate themselves to the political system, but many are not quite sure how. Now, I'm not going to weigh in on specific issues so much here or who you should vote for and all that, but as I've been reading and watching and studying and praying, some things are becoming more and more clear to me every day. One of these is the rampant sin of political idolatry.

 

As I look at the various campaigns that are getting run left and right and the claims being made by various partisans about the candidates and the parties and their programs and qualifications, there is a very serious danger in forgetting one clear and crucial point for all Christians: Jesus is the Messiah and he alone died, rose again to save the world and ascended into heaven to assume his rightful place as its Lord. It is to King Jesus only that we owe uncompromising, unbending allegiance. Jesus is the only Savior who will not fail and who is righteous in all that he does. He is the only one who can finally and definitively save and set the world right. It is only Jesus whose Kingdom will know no end and in which the fullness of justice, truth, righteousness and peace will find their ultimate fulfillment. It is in Jesus and Jesus alone that we are to put our fullest faith, hope, and trust. It is Jesus' Kingdom that Christians are to be working for primarily and only in submission to this first Reign ought we work for any other nation or kingdom or party or candidate.

 

This is something that we are all going to need to keep in mind over these next months as the campaigns and elections continue on as the dangers of giving ourselves over various forms of idolatrous loyalties which result in blasphemous disunity will increase and political tensions increase. I see these various campaigns and I have to say I find increasingly creepy the kind of messianic claims that are being made about certain candidates or programs who are being put forwards as Saviors who will rescue our nation from seemingly every evil and bring justice and truth to the nations. I'm sorry, but the only person I know of who's going to do that one day is Jesus and we as Christians should never forget that. 

 

Don't read me wrong here. I'm not saying that these candidates can't do some real good in the world when elected or that governments are totally useless and false, but I will say that it is wrong and downright evil to place in them the kind of faith and hope and love which rightly belongs only to Jesus. All humans are fallible, all parties seek their own power, and all governments are broken and unjust to lesser and greater degrees. That is the way of the systems of the world. As such, those of us who are called to serve the king whose kingdom is not from this world (but for it), shouldn't consider our affiliations with these imperfect and ultimately temporary powers as the most important definition of who we are. It is never to be "American, Republican, Democrat, Independent, etc. First." It is always to be "Servant of Christ, first." All else is subject to that.

 

Keeping this in mind is the only way Christians will be able to keep themselves from falling into the demonic political antagonisms that rip apart the rest of the nation. Guys, we need to realize that no matter Republican or Democrat, McCain or Obama, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, Jesus is Lord and we who claim to love him shouldn't let these difference either divide us or stop us from loving people on the other side of the issue. It's only in this way that we'll be able to remember that because Jesus is Lord, there is always hope, no matter what party wins, which issues get heard, or who is in the White House.

 

So, for those of us who find ourselves watching the current political battles now or in the months to come, who happen to call Jesus Christ our Lord, this might be an opportunity to stop and think and evaluate whether or not we really believe that; we need to stop and think on whether Jesus really is the Lord in whom we place all our hope and trust, or whether we've allowed someone or some party or some program to take his place in our minds as the Savior of the world and if so, we need to repent and turn and walk the other way.

Ok, so I haven't posted in a while and I've decided to hopefully start writing again soon, but I thought I'd repost this blog in honor of a book I just finished. Its called "Surprised by Hope: Rethinking the Resurrection, Heaven, and the Mission of the Church", by N.T. Wright. Its an amazing book and its much better than this blog, but here it for those who haven't seen it or those who need to see it again:

Resurrection Starts Now

 

Ok, so, I have a friend, who we will call Don, whose been going through a hard time for the last couple of months, I'm not going to go into everything that he's been trucking through, but I'm just gonna say that it has been an extremely draining, emotional, spiritual roller-coaster that has taken him to the edges of his faith and back. (You know, an average day with Jesus.) Anyways, we've been talking a lot and praying and reading and yesterday I was trying to encourage him and I had this to say to him: Resurrection starts now.

 

What does that mean?

 

Well, first of all, we have to track back a little bit to some basic Christian doctrine: Resurrection.  The Doctrine of Resurrection is one of the basic beliefs of the Christian faith which we inherited from our Jewish roots. It is also a belief that, like many others, was given a twist and refocus in and through Jesus. You see, as Christians, we believe that after Jesus was crucified he rose in a new glorified body 3 days later. On top of that, we believe that when we die, we don't just "go to heaven" up in the clouds like ghosts and float around. We believe that when Jesus comes back to restore heaven and earth in beauty and justice, we get new improved bodies just like He did. Death for us is not the end. (That's the reason the early church didn't talk about Christians dying, but rather, they were "sleeping.")

 

Ok, so where does that put us with Don? Well, thing is, something implicit in the Christian hope of Resurrection is death. Things have to die to be resurrected. So, one of the things that Jesus and then his later follower Paul talked about was "dying to yourself" and "dying to the old man". They talked about killing those old parts of your life that grew up when we were "living" apart from Jesus; letting all of the destructive habits and survival patterns like lies, jealousy, hate, and pride, fall away in light of life with Jesus. They talked about dying to these things daily.

 

Why?

 

Because those things only get in the way of the "new man" and the "eternal kind of life" that comes to replace them. This is what I mean when I say that Resurrection starts now.

I mean that every time you feel a little part of your old self die, every time an old sinful desire starts to get peeled away, every time a piece of your idolatrous self-reliance begins to slip, every time that old habits and patterns that defined your pre-Jesus life die, the resurrection process is going on.

 

What does that mean for Don? It means that right now, as God is allowing him to go through all of this junk that he doesn't entirely understand, God is raising him from the dead. You see, by God allowing him to suffer, and through suffering teaching him how to rely on Jesus and get rid of all kinds of sinful habits and patterns, He is helping Don die to himself and begin the resurrection process in a powerful way.

 

In the same way for those of us who are allowing Jesus to wreck us and remake us: Resurrection starts now. Every little death is the seed of our new life.

I have the flu. I am sick. I am miserable. I am one of the first cases all season and quite frankly I would give up the honor in a heartbeat. On top of this I am contagious, which means I had to cancel a trip up north with my best friends the day after Thanksgiving, which I will probably have to spend upstairs like Quasimodo in his tower so that I don't get all the guests sick. Wonderful.

 

I do find it fascinating though that a 200 LB, athletic male can be reduced to a shivering pile of misery by a bug that can only be seen with a microscope.

 

So, I was sitting on the can, (Yes, I said it), trying to relieve myself, (which the pain medicines make it very hard to do), and thinking about how miserable I was when it hit me, "You Derek, are truly blessed." What? I am currently a "shivering pile of misery", how can I be blessed? Well, first off Derek, you are a "shivering pile of misery" who has a real toilet to sit on, with real running water, real soap, lights, seat cover, TOILET PAPER, and , if you want it…baby wipes.

 

Yes, Derek, you are blessed if only because you are not one of the 2.6 billion people on the face of the planet who do not have proper access to sanitation. Note, this does not mean, have a toilet in their house. This means simply having access to water that isn't regularly used to dispose of human waste and other trash.

 

Yes, yes Derek, you are blessed. If that's all you had, you would be immensely blessed. But, you have so much more. You have a roof over your head, you have a car, a job, an education, and a computer on which to writ e your lame blogs. You have family, friends, a kickbutt girlfriend, and an amazing Church.

 

And most of all, you have the one thing for which you would be an idiot to not trade all that in: an intimate relationship with Jesus. You have forgiveness, you have grace, you have mercy, the promise of sanctification, holiness, righteousness in Christ, and the hope of Resurrection and the redemption of all things which conquers all despair over the troubles of this life.

 

And once again….you have a bathroom.

 

So, this is what sitting on the Toilet taught me, so, I suggest that you all go somewhere you can think today, (and yes, you can copy me), and begin thinking of all the ways that you have been blessed and prepare yourself to celebrate God's goodness in a special way tomorrow.

 

Happy Thanksgiving Kids!

Ok, so I was having a conversation with some of my friends the other day about church and music and life we noticed that we had never really seen a worship song where you get to tell God how raging pissed off you are. Have any of you ever noticed that?

 

I mean, not once have I heard a song in church about you're just so bleeding angry about something and full of rage you wish you could smash a wall in. And, I've certainly never heard one where anyone goes off on how pissed and frustrated you are at God. Or, I've also never really seen one that takes you down into the gut-wrenching depths of loss. I mean, I've seen some that talk about our pain and God's comfort, but they're sung to the softest, most pleasant chords you can imagine so it kinda numbs the effect.

 

We got into this while we were talking about hardcore music and what its appeal is and we realize that part of it was the way a throbbing double-bass and vocal chords stretched to the limit that taps right into that angst, rage, pain and darker more visceral part of our human existence. The thing that's interesting about this is that if this side of things is part of our existence as humans, then we should be able to bring it to God.

 

I mean, that's one of the strikingly powerful things that you first notice about the Psalms, especially the Psalms of David. I mean, if you want to hear pissed off rage and angst you have to read the Psalms. Or certainly the book of Jeremiah. David and Jeremiah put to poetry their frustration, angst, rage and accusations against the Almighty in a way we probably would think was blasphemous if it wasn't in the Bible. I mean read this complaint of Jeremiah's, "O LORD, you deceived ^[b] me, and I was deceived ^[c] ;
       you overpowered me and prevailed. Cursed be the day I was born!
       May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!

 15 Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,
       who made him very glad, saying,
       "A child is born to you, a son!"

 16 May that man be like the towns
       the LORD overthrew without pity.
       May he hear wailing in the morning,
       a battle cry at noon.

 17 For he did not kill me in the womb,
       with my mother as my grave,
       her womb enlarged forever.

 18 Why did I ever come out of the womb
       to see trouble and sorrow
       and to end my days in shame?"

And yet this is in the Scriptures. Jeremiah curses the day he was born because of the sorrow and the anguish of the life God has led him into. And that's in the Bible! And you know what? I could multiply passages like this a dozen times over all over the Scriptures in the mouths of some of the holiest men and women within its pages. I mean, there is an entire book of the Bible called Lamentations which is just one big, moaning, groaning song of pain and destruction.

This is extremely interesting to me in that it seems to explode this concept of worship that I've grown up with my whole life and that is of worship just bringing God clean little songs and the clean little parts of our lives and editing and cutting out the rest. Well, in light of these Scriptures and songs it seems that concept just doesn't cut it. These songs and complaints seem to point to the idea that we are to bring God our whole selves, our whole lives, complaints, bitterness, rage and everything. Basically, when it comes to worshipping God with our lives, we're not supposed to hit the edit button. He wants all of it and as God, he is due all of it.

 

You know what's interesting about this though? Something unexpected often happens when we decide to do that, when we decide to give God all of it. See, in the middle of giving God all of it, this seed of praise and hope begins to come out in the midst of all the pain and crap. We see this in many of those same raging pissed off complaints and Psalms that in the middle of giving God all of it, something else comes out:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
       Why are you so far from saving me,
       so far from the words of my groaning?

 2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
       by night, and am not silent.

 3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
       you are the praise of Israel. ^[a]

 4 In you our fathers put their trust;
       they trusted and you delivered them."

Hope is often, (not always immediately), found again. Reason to trust and love returns and we find ourselves praising the living God for who he is. But, this won't happen if we keep it bottled up. This won't happen if we don't invite God into our rage and pain. It's only when we're honest and vulnerable about that darker and painful side of our existence that God will begin to become real for it we allow him to move in it.

So, the point is, don't be afraid of bringing God your whole self. Every little, raging pissed off part. He wants it, he wants all of it.

"What is Judah's high place?

    Is it not Jerusalem?" Micah 1:5

 

So, this verse kinda hit me in the face yesterday while I was reading so I figured I'd chew on it a little bit with you and see what came out. So, here goes:

 

This is the rhetorical question that the prophet Micah was asking in the 8^th century B.C.  A little background on that for those of you not entirely dialed in on the prophets and the history of Ancient Israel. Back in the day, God saved the people of Israel out of slavery to the Egyptians and made a covenant with them to the effect that that they were to be his special people who worshipped him alone and that he would bless them and use them to bless the nations around them. He gave them the Torah, his law, which showed them how to live rightly and justly and also how to worship him properly. He led them to a land and established them there and blessed them.

 

During this time, the Bible gives us the story of their spotty record in being able to stay faithful to God and the covenant. Within that story are the stories and the writings of the Prophets, God's messengers. The Prophets in Ancient Israel were basically the people whom God called up to speak for him from time to time. Most of the time they were the ones who told the Israelites they were screwing up and worshipping other gods and being unjust to the poor and so forth and that they should knock it off or God was going to have to punish them. Occasionally they foretold the future, but mostly they issued warnings and judgments.

 

Final notes: "High places" in Ancient Israel are usually the sites of idolatrous heathen ritual worship with everything from religious prostitution to child sacrifice going on there. Jerusalem on the other hand was where the Temple of the Lord was; it was the center of the cultic worship of the Creator God of Israel and the holiest of places in Ancient Israel. "Judah", was often a way of referring to one of the two kingdoms of Israel at the time.

 

So, what is Micah saying when he says, "What is Judah's high place? Is it not Jerusalem?"

 

Well, from what I can tell, Micah is saying that of all the high places, of all the idolatrous worship of false gods going on in Israel at the time, the worst is going on right in the Temple! THE high place, THE worst site of offense, THE place where idolatry had its home was in the Church.

 

Wow. I don't know how that hits you, but when I read it I was just floored. I mean, the Temple?! Jerusalem?! There is psalm after psalm in the OT about how Jerusalem is THE place where God's glory is and so on and then Micah comes along and drops this statement.

And then I started thinking about it. I started thinking back to verse after verse, chapter after chapter, in the other prophets like Ezekiel and Isaiah where they start going off on the same kind of thing. And I started thinking about Jesus, as he called the religious leaders to account for their own distortions and idolatry in his own day. And so I started to see a pattern.

 

I started to see this pattern and thinking about name after name of men and women in the Church who have lodged this same charge of idolatry in the Church.  And then I started thinking about the Church today. I started thinking about the gods that are often-times worshipped in "Christian" churches and I began to hear Micah's voice speaking not to the 750 BC, but rather A.D. 2007.

 

I mean, think about it: how many different Jesus' do we see being offered up in churches these days? The prosperity Jesus, the health Jesus, the comfortable Jesus, the white, suburban Jesus, the Communist Jesus, the Capitalist Jesus, the Modern Jesus, the Post-Modern Jesus, the Everything's-gonna-be-just-fine-if-you-take-these-7-easy-steps Jesus and so on.  And the thing is all of them are being passed off as the Jesus of the Bible and so we worship them and commit the idolatry that comes with worshipping a false god, a god we've made up set up in our churches to worship as the real one. Why? Because the gods we make up are usually a lot easier to manage. They demand less of what we don't like and promise more of what we do. They resemble us and so we find them quite appealing.

 

The problem with this is that, just as the Prophets gave witness to in Scriptures, a made up "god" is no god at all and ultimately when we worship things that are not worthy of worship, not only do we offend God and not pay him the honor he is due, but we become distorted ourselves. We mold ourselves to fit these false gods of our own making and become even more distorted by sin and the life-change and blessing that God intends for us is lost.

 

Well, how do we avoid this? How do we come away from this? How do we recognize the false gods we've come to worship? A couple of clear ways is prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and then a continual return to the Scriptures to learn, encounter and check ourselves against the God revealed in those pages. These and thoughtful conversation and an open heart that will receive correction and is quick to repent, are what is needed if we are to keep our churches from being the high places that Micah saw that Jerusalem had become. These and of course the grace of the Faithful God who seem to always send someone along when we've gotten too far off track.

Hey kids, its been a while but I thought I'd throw up a quick thought (that I happen to have been thinking about for quite some time now) before I hit the hay tonight, so here goes:

One of the most central doctrines of the Christian faith is given to us in the first verse of the Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Christianity inherited from her Jewish roots the conviction that God created the universe by the word of His mouth at his sovereign command. God is responsible for the emergence and the continued existence of all of created reality from the largest galaxies down to the smallest sub-atomic particles. Without him, none of it would be here. The corollary doctrine that we also get from our Jewish roots is that if God created the heavens and the earth, then he can give life to the dead again. He called the universe into existence and so he can call dead to life again.

Now, with all the emphasis that seems to be given nowadays in the media to Christian fundamentalists pushing for "Creation Science" being taught in school alongside evolutionary theory you'd think that this doctrine of Creation would be something that has sunk down deep into the psyches and souls of the Christian Church, but if you ask me, it seems that in the Church today we seem to be very unaware of what this doctrine actually means for us. (Interestingly enough, it seems that focus on side-issues like evolutionary theory and so forth seems to contribute to our missing the point.)

The Biblical teaching of God as Creator of the universe is not of primary importance because of what it says (or doesn't say) about the biological origins of the species. The teaching is important for the life of the believer because of what it says about the life-giving power of God and this is where I think we in the Church miss it so often. 

Now, what relevance does this doctrine of God as Creator and Resurrector have to our lives today? Its quite simple really: If God really created the heavens and the earth and everything with them all the way from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy, then he is quite competent enough to handle anything you've got going on in your life.

Let's say that again only a little differently: If God can bring a dead guy back to life, he can certainly fix whatever's troubling you.

So, this is where you have to ask yourself whether you really believe in the Creator God who raised Jesus to life from the dead. Cause if you do then you have to believe in a God who can sustain us with that same power in the midst of the difficulties of life and who can bring new life where there seems to be only pain and death. You have to believe in a God who is not helpless before what seem to be the insurmountable problems of our journeys. He is a God who can bring life and hope to the depressed, peace and comfort to the anxious, courage and strength to the oppressed and freedom and grace to those in bondage. He is the God who can recreate a broken life, mend frayed relationships, and resurrect dead marriages.

He is also the God who has promised to give life to our bodies again and transform this whole world before our very eyes when Jesus returns to make all things new. This is the God who Created the heavens and the Earth and Raised Jesus Christ from the dead and it is this God in who we hope.

 

Ok, so funny thought occurred to me a long time ago that I just remembered the other day when talking to a friend. I thought I'd share it with you.

 

So, in the beginning of the Bible it says that humanity was made in the "image and likeness" of God. God made humans to be a representation or little copy of himself in the world and they were supposed to rule it, govern it, take care of it, etc. In essence, we were made to represent or reflect God to the rest of the world, to show the world what God is like. We were made to "reflect his glory" and such by being wise, generous, kind governors of the created order. So, Biblically, part of what it means to be human, or really, the basic definition of what it means to be human is to represent and reflect God.

 

Well, we screwed that up pretty quick.

 

There is a total of one chapter between the first account of the creation of man and the Fall of man. As soon as we start out in the world, we blow it, sin and, in a sense, fail at our task of being humans. So, so far as we know of, no human has been able to pull off the job yet.

 

Well, almost nobody.

 

See, when we say that Jesus was both God and man, we really mean that he was both fully God and fully human. And, given that he was perfect and without sin, the revelation of God's character, "the image of the invisible God", and so forth, he was the only human ever to pull off the job of reflecting and representing God to the world. He was the only perfectly human person ever to walk the earth.

 

That's a funny thought to me. I mean, think about it, God himself is the only person who has ever pulled off being perfectly human. Being a human is such a high task and calling that God himself had to show us how to do it. And note: He didn't consider it to be beneath him to do so. God himself humbled himself and took on human flesh and nature, identified himself with us so that he might redeem us and save us. God, the God of the Universe, the self-existing, self-sufficient, perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, all-holy, Creator of everything good is humble and gives himself for others. No place is that more clearly seen than on the Cross.

 

Now, if it's the case that Jesus is the perfect reflection of God as the perfect man, then he is the pattern by which we know what it is to be human, which is to say, what it means to represent God. And if it is our task as humans, to reflect God, then what other life can we live than one of self-sacrifice for others in all humility as God himself sacrificed for us?

There is no higher calling on earth than to live a life of service of others for the purpose of making God's Name and character known to them. And note: that is the purpose. The purpose is to make God known to the world. That is why Jesus served others. He served others that they might come to know who God is and possibly know him in relationship.

 

Our task is the same. We serve others in all humility to make known the humble yet Glorious God who gives himself for others.

This is the belief statement of Mars Hill Bible Church. It is probably the best, shortest, clearest picture of what Jesus, Christianity all that stuff is all about. I did not write this, but I wish I had. Read it, consider it, and be blessed.

"We believe God inspired the authors of Scripture by his Spirit to speak to all generations of believers, including us, today. God calls us to immerse ourselves in this authoritative narrative individually and communally to faithfully interpret and live out that story today as we are led by the Spirit of God.

In the beginning God created all things good. He was and always will be in a communal relationship with himself - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God created us to be relational as well and marked us with an identity as his image bearers and with a missional calling to serve, care for, and cultivate the earth. God created humans in his image to live in fellowship with him, one another, our inner self, and creation. We recognize that through human sin, darkness and evil entered the story and are a part of the world, fracturing our relationships with God, others, ourselves, and creation.

We believe God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay; rather he promised to restore this broken world. As part of this purpose, God chose a people, Abraham and his descendants, to represent him in the world. God promised to bless them as a nation so that through them all nations would be blessed. In time they became enslaved in Egypt and cried out to God because of their oppression. God heard their cry, and he liberated them from their oppressor and brought them to Sinai where he gave them an identity and a mission as his treasured possession, a Kingdom of priests, a holy people. Throughout the story of Israel, God refuses to give up on his people despite their frequent acts of unfaithfulness to him.

God brought his people into the Promised Land. Their state of blessing from God was intimately bound to their calling to embody the living God to other nations. They made movement toward this missional calling, yet they disobeyed and allowed foreign gods into the land, overlooked the poor, and mistreated the foreigner. The prophetic voices that emerge from the Scriptures held the calling of Israel to the mirror of how they treated the oppressed and marginalized. Through the prophets, God's heart for the poor was made known, and we believe that God cares deeply for the marginalized and oppressed among us today.

In Israel's disobedience, they became indifferent and in turn irrelevant to the purposes to which God had called them. For a time, they were sent into exile; yet a hopeful remnant was always looking ahead with longing and hope to a renewed reign of God, where peace and justice would prevail.

We believe these longings found their fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, mysteriously God in the flesh. Jesus came to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted and to set captives free, proclaiming a new arrival of the Kingdom of God, bringing about a New Exodus, and restoring our fractured world. He and his message were rejected by many as he confronted the oppressive nature of the religious elite and the empire of Rome. Yet his path of suffering, death, burial, and resurrection has brought hope to all creation. Jesus is our only hope for bringing reconciliation between God and humans. Through Jesus we have been forgiven and reconciled to God. God is now reconciling us to each other, ourselves, and creation.

For all who trust Jesus, the Spirit of God affirms as children of God, empowers with gifts, convicts, guides, comforts, counsels, and leads into truth through a communal life of worship and a missional expression of our faith. The church is a global and local expression of living out the way of Jesus through love, sacrifice, and healing as we embody the resurrected Christ, who lives in and through us, to a broken and hurting world.

We believe the day is coming when Jesus will return and judge the world, bringing an end to injustice and restoring all things to God's original intent. He will reclaim this world and rule forever. The earth's groaning will cease, and God will dwell with us here in a restored creation. On that day we will beat swords into tools for cultivating the earth, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, there will be no more death, and God will wipe away all our tears. Our relationships with God, others, ourselves, and creation will be whole. All will flourish as God intends. This is what we long for. This is what we hope for. And we have given our lives to living out that future reality now."

 

Ok, so I haven't written anything in a while and I haven't written anything specifically philosophic in a very long while so here's a quickie:

Ok, so have you ever heard someone object to Christianity with some kind of statement like, "Comeon man The Virgin Birth?  The Resurrection? Everybody knows that kind of thing doesn't happen and can't happen. Virgins just don't give birth and dead people stay dead. Its science so I just can't believe that."

First thing I want to point out: Christians don't dispute the fact that dead people generally stay dead and that virgins don't usually give birth. In fact, they believe that just as much as everybody else. That's why they say that when these things happened with Jesus they were miracles.

The second thing I want to point out, and this is the main point, is that if the first verse of the Bible is true, if there is a God who created the cosmos and everything in it, if there is a God who made atoms and molecules and universal constants and the elements and the billions of stars in the uncounted galaxies in the known universe, if there is a God who is responsible for all that, well, then it seems that making one virgin pregnant or bringing one dead guy back to life wouldn't be all that much of a problem.

So, the argument in short form goes:

If God exists and created everything, then miracles are possible.

I mean, really, lets think about it. If you're willing to admit that there is a creator God with anything approaching the level of power it would take to create the universe, then it seems slightly inconsistent to not accept the possibility of miracles. (That is, unless you've read Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion, but I'm guessing that most people haven't and in any case his argument against miracles has been refuted anyways.)

Now, if you don't believe in God at all, then it's perfectly fine to not allow for the possibility of miracles. Go ahead, that is a perfectly intellectually consistent position to hold. But, if it is the case that you do say you believe or accept the possibility that some kind of deity exists, it is inconsistent to rule out a priori the possibility of miracles. It's fine to admit that you don't think that the Christian miracles actually happened, but if you say you believe in God, it is inconsistent to say that they couldn't have possibly happened.

So, pretty much, either you believe in God and at least the possibility of miracles or you don't.

Note: I didn't address pantheistic or New Age views of any kind and I acknowledge that. But, if it is the case that you subscribe to these views, then its less likely that miracles are a sticking point for you.

From the earliest beginnings of Christianity, one of the most offensive things about the religion was its belief in a Crucified God. Paul, one of the earliest leaders of the Church wrote that the Cross is foolishness to the world. The Cross was a stumbling block, it was an offense, and it was a scandal.

 

In pagan Roman society it was scandalous in the highest degree for the Christians to claim that the God of the world had been crucified. In the Roman Empire, crucifixion was the most brutal of executions reserved for the most contemptible of criminals and political revolutionaries. It was so bad, that it was illegal to put a Roman citizen to death this way, which is why Paul was executed by beheading. Cicero, a Roman statesman of around the time a little before Jesus wrote about crucifixion that, "Let even the name of the cross be kept away not only from the bodies of the citizens of Rome, but also from their thought, sight & hearing." That was how offensive the Cross was to the Romans. And yet the Christians preached Christ crucified.

 

To the Jews, it was possibly even more of a scandal, because of the Christian's claim that Jesus was the Messiah. They claimed that Jesus was the promised king of Israel, come to save them as God had promised. Yet, he was killed by the Romans and in the Jewish mindset of the time a crucified messiah was no messiah at all. Not only that, he was crucified on a cross or a "tree" and in the Jewish law it was written, "cursed is anyone who is hung from a tree." And yet, the Christians preached Jesus the Messiah, Son of God, Crucified.

 

The Crucified God was a horror to think about. Today it would be like the like claiming that God had overdosed or been beaten and shivved in prison or been sent to the electric chair. And really, these pictures don't capture the horror of what the early Christians proclaimed. It was a question of shame and disgrace; of being named an outcast and beyond social acceptability by all the powers that be.

 

And why does this offend? Well, quite reasonably, on one level it offends our proprieties, our sense of how things should be. It seems absurd to imagine that God almighty should die on a Cross. It seems irrational and indefensible, not to mention brutal and unjust. In fact, it can seem downright gross that Jesus, the innocent should suffer. But, I think that is only one level to the offense. There is a second level which goes deeper and constitutes the greatest part of the offense. It is not so much that Christianity preaches Christ crucified that offends us, it is that it preaches Christ crucified for me.

 

The claim that offends is that the pain, the cruelty, the humiliation and the shame were all suffered for me and for you. This is what offends us. The Cross stands as a double offense in that it makes two paradoxical claims that both offend parts of us in nearly opposite ways.

 

The first claim that it makes is that human sinfulness and rebellion is so gross, foul, and heinous before him that the only way God could blot it out is through the violent, undeserved-but-willingly-offered death of his son, the Godman. It took his own death to wipe away our sin. This offends us in the extreme in that it is an indictment of our pride and our arrogance. It gives the lie to all our false ideas of our own goodness and our own righteousness. It shows the grossness of what we have made ourselves because it is our sin that put him there. And it put him there, not only in the metaphorical sense of him paying for our sins, but in that concrete, human power structures, human greed, pride and arrogance drove men to put the innocent Jesus on the Cross. In this way the Cross refutes the lie that we are sinless gods and brings us to our knees.

 

The second and seemingly contradictory offense that flows from that statement that "Jesus died for me" is that it challenges our false sense of lowness and self-negation. It offends us to think that the God of the universe would stoop so low and suffer the ugliness of the Cross because of his great love for us. There is a sinful part of us that refuses to recognize the immense value that we as humans possess simply because we are made in the image of God. We refuse to recognize this so that we can be free to treat ourselves with contempt by engaging in all sorts of shameful, self-destructive behaviors. Now the thing that needs to be seen here is that this "lowness" is really pride in hiding, because it is a denial of the goodness of God's creation. (Not the moral goodness, cause that's not there, but rather the intrinsic worth we have simply by being creations.) The Cross refutes this false sense of lowness by showing God's view of the immense worth of his image-bearers in Creation and his willingness to die and suffer in order to save them. In this way, the Cross refutes the lie that we are simply animals and brings our faces out of the mud and turns it towards the Heavens.

 

This is the offense of the Cross. It is this double message that humbles and exalts that makes the Cross an offense to an unbelieving world. It is this message that we need to regain.