Cups of Water

It looks like Katrina will result in the longest and costliest relief effort in American history. In the meantime, it is estimated that it will take nine weeks to pump the water out of New Orleans, much less begin efforts to restore homes, buildings, power, and water services.

Newsweek has published this list of relief agencies that are involved in this monumental undertaking. I hope you’ll consider pulling out your ATM/bank card and donating money toward these efforts.

Even if you can’t give much, remember that a cup of cold water is all it takes to make a difference. In heaven’s eyes, even the smallest gifts can be seen as great acts of heroism.

The Spirituality of Blogging

In this document, entitled We Know More than Our Pastors, Tim Bednar discusses the spirituality of blogging.

The title is intentionally provocative. Bednar isn’t really trying to ‘dis the knowledge that formal, spiritual leaders bring into our faith communities. He is just saying that a community of lay people, writing and sharing their own knowledge and experience in their blogs, can develop a collective wisdom among themselves that is superior to that which can be provided by a single minister or pastor.

Here are a few highlights:
- Blogging can be spiritual discipline
- Blogging is great because it is conversation: people can test ideas and change their minds rather than assume formal, doctrinal “positions”
- Blogging builds community by giving everyone a chance to provide input on ideas
- The participatory nature of blogging means spiritual formation occurs for everyone
- In a healthy blogging community, truth gathers strength and untruth, while present, tends to fade (“We believe that truth is discovered as we live, link, and blog in community.”)
- Because blogging occurs outside formal, denominational structures, there is no pastor or shepherd “overseeing” the conversation. Thus, there is a “priesthood of all bloggers.”

Cool, cool stuff. And it resonates very strongly with my own experiences.

The Theology of Dogbert

Has anyone seen today’s Dilbert?

Is it just me, or is there a pretty powerful commentary hiding behind Dogbert’s remarks?

Untangling the Gospel 8: Baptism

Later this morning, I will be attending the baptism of my niece, Hailee, at my parent’s church here in Cisco. We came in yesterday afternoon and enjoyed a very pleasant, quiet evening sharing a meal with my parents and catching up on each others’ lives.

I also had a chance to run late yesterday afternoon. It was a tough trek – about 96 degrees and lots of hills and difficult roads to navigate – but it was also an insightful experience.

I must have run past dozens of houses that were telling me stories about my childhood and adolescence. A place where I took piano lessons. Homes where friends lived. Homes where family friends lived. Homes where people from my small church lived out their retirement years. Homes of teachers. Homes of babysitters. Homes where I played basketball.

The funny thing was, nothing seemed to be quite right. The buildings all looked the same, to be sure, but something about 20-30 years of life changes your perspective. Some houses I recalled being much larger than they appear now. A few homes seemed larger that I remembered them. One yard in particular seems today cavernous, cool, and beautiful, but I hardly noticed it years ago. In a way, everything looked the same. In a way, it was all completely different.

I think that I’m going to have that same experience this morning at Hailee’s baptism.

That small church in Cisco is where I, too was baptized. It is also where I was married. It is also where I learned most of what I know today about the story of scripture. It also a place where we said goodbye to one of my grandparents.

It is one of the holy places in my life.

Yet, as I reflect on who I was when, at about Hailee’s age, I asked to be baptized myself, I realize that I didn’t quite see the world in general – and my baptism in particular – in the same light that I see it today.

At the time, I was more concerned with making sure that baptism was done at the right place, and with the right frame of mind, and at the right age, and with all of the right words being said. Those seemed like big, important issues to me at that age. Other things, like how baptism was a way of declaring to the world that I was a disciple of Jesus, were present – but they seemed less significant.

But – with a few more years of life behind me , and as I’ve been making my way through this tumultuous, shifting culture – things have changed. The landscape is still familiar, to be sure. Some issues look about the same today as they did around thirty years ago. But some issues that seemed gigantic to me at the time are now very small ones. And some issues that I hardly paid mind to at the time are the ones that now seem deep, inviting, and beautiful.

As I have grown, so has my view of baptism. Every year, I understand more and more of what it meant to step into those waters and declare that Jesus was Lord. I am now less concerned about whether I understood all of the right issues then, and more concerned whether I understand what my baptism means to me today.

What does it mean – here, now – to be a baptized believer, a disciple of Jesus? If scripture is challenging us to think about any one issue regarding baptism, it is this one. Focus too much on issues of infants and adults, sprinklings and emersions, and the verbal formulations that are necessary to do it “right” and you’re missing the most important point.

To be a baptized beliver – regardless of when or how it happened – is to be someone new, someone different today. It is to be moving outside of yourself and reaching out in the world. It is to be observing the life of Jesus and trying to imitate that life in your own walk.

So – what about you? What does your baptism mean to you, today? How has the landscape of your view of baptism changed over the years?

Of Bad Heaven, Parental Smooching, and Other Nonsense

A few random tidbits from life during the past few days:

In support of my argument that the subject of hell (or at least the word itself) has been completely ignored in my faith community and in my own life, my five year-old daughter observed the other day that, after they die, bad people end up in “bad heaven.” She apparently got some of the description right: fire, punishment, etc., but she didn’t have any other word to describe what it is. Later, Sheila and I observed that our back room, which is exposed to a lot of very intense sunlight during the early morning hours was “hotter than bad heaven.”

Ah, yes! Another cute phrase to add to our family’s lexicon of insider jokes.
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Before kissing me last Sunday night, Sheila warned Levi, our fourteen year-old son, not to look.

“Yeah, like I’d look anyway,” he replied, somewhat disgusted.

I consider Sheila and I to be equally responsible for his delightful sense of cynicism.
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Advance sales have begun on X-Box 360 bundles. I’d like to say that I’m excited, but I’m not sure that any of the launch titles are attractive enough to cause me to start saving my money just yet, especially with the price tag that will go with both the system and the games. That only leaves three months for the Microsoft marketing machine to sell me on this thing.

Anyone want to lay odds on how likely it is they will succeed?
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A really good excerpt from Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz has been published on Christianity Today’s web site. If you haven’t read the book, you should go sample this particular chapter, which has to do with a bizarre confession booth, and an even more bizarre series of confessions that followed.

What happened is a model for what the Christian churches in America should be doing in our culture for the next decade or two.
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Raise your hand if you’re excited to see what Demarcus Ware and Roy Williams are going to do to NFL offenses this Fall.
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Has anyone else seen this? You gotta admit, no matter where you come down on the Iraq war issue, this one makes you stop and think.
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Relevant Magazine, one of my semi-daily stops on the web, has had a new beta site up and running for several days now. I really like it.

Great, deep content. Cool looks. And a very honest, real attitude. I wish people would describe me that way.

Untangling the Gospel 7: More on Being “Saved”

In the modern way of thinking, everything must be assigned states and properties. This makes it easier to measure things, to categorize them, to understand what they are. Is matter liquid? Solid? Gas? What is the humidity this morning? The temperature? What philum is that animal? Species? Are you white? Hispanic? Asian? (Political pollsters might combine this information with data about your income to predict your views on important issues in the next election.) Are you a criminal? Or innocent? (The legal system has a process to determine this particular state of being.)

Assign properties to things, categorize them, and then measure them. This makes things predictable, and you can create processes that will hopefully generate similar results every time you repeat the process with similar objects, animals, people, etc.

God’s work in “saving” people is an important concept in scripture. Is it any wonder, then, that modern Christians became obsessed with finding a way to definitively determine whether someone is “saved” or not. Once we know what “saved” means, we can tell who is in and who is out and maybe even generate systems (“evangelism”) that will help to generate the maximum possible number of “saved” people.

At least, that was the theory.

But what was wrongly assumed by a lot of folks (myself included) is that to be “saved” is a simple, measurable state – like a state of matter. In other words, that one is either “saved” or not “saved.” The result? Grossly oversimplified views of scripture that reduce a wonderful, powerful, mysterious concept to a simple statement or act: a single defining event.

Here are a few of the most popular defining events that Christians have used in determining whether a person in a “saved” state:
1. State and intellectually acknolwedge that Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior.
2. Be baptized, while intellectually acknowledging that Jesus is your Savior (this was/is my faith tradition’s approach for many years).
3. Demonstrate a charismatic gift, such as speaking in tongues.

Don’t get me wrong. All of these can be part of the process of being saved. But may I suggest a couple of ideas that, though it may cause some distress because of our need to categorize people, may be a better model of the concept of God’s saving work in scripture?

First, like Israel’s exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, salvation is a journey in which God dwells in and among us, leading us to a new place. Second, like a diamond, there are many aspects, or facets to the process by which God is saving us. Thus, no single defining event moves us from one state into another, becuase many, many things are happening, and they are all happening on a long journey.

On one level, to be “saved” by God is to be changed from a person who sins into a person who does not sin. When you have been made completely perfect, the process is complete. To put it another way, at the beginning, we are slaves to sin – we sin whether we want to or not, because our sin controls us. But God “saves” us from sin (giving us freedom) by making us into people who aren’t subject to its control.

On another level, we are saved because God “forgives” our sins. Forgiveness is a really good thing because it makes us aware of a willingness, on God’s part, to come and make the journey with us, even though we can be pretty crummy people . But receiving forgiveness isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of being “saved”. Its only a part of it. Knowing that we are and will be forgiven assures us that God will put up with our shortcomings while we are making the journey.

On another level, God is at work saving the entire world, not just you or me as individuals. There are all kinds of things that people need “saving” from in the world. Oppression. Poverty. Addiction. Sickness. Isolation and rejection. Violence. Thus, there is this movement in the world known as the Kingdom of God, which grows and grows from humble beginnings to something much bigger and more powerful. The Kingdom itself represents God’s saving work in the world, lifting oppression and unfairness and bringing hope to people who are in dark places.

To be “saved” is to experience all of these things, and so much more that I’m not even taking the time to write in this post.

The bad news (for those of us who are obsessed with categorizing everyone and everything) is that salvation isn’t so much about instantly switching from “unsaved” to “saved” states as it is about how we are all being saved. We are all on different parts of a journey, in which God is more or less involved, depending on how much we are inviting him to be involved. Some of us have been “saved” from some things (perhaps, a particular addiction), but are still waiting for salvation to come with respect to other things (illness or poverty or a bad attitude about a relative). In one sense, salvation has yet to reach the world, because there is still oppression and injustice. In another sense, we’re already saved because God has forgiven us, offering his son as a sacrifice, and pledging to walk along side us – as his son did – in our suffering and imperfection.

The good news (for those of us who are willing to let go of ideas that reduce “salvation” to either/or states that result from simple, defining events) is that there is hope for something more than an abstract promise that God will forgive us so that we can someday secure our free pass into heaven. God is here. Now. He wants to save us from things that are important in the here and now. And he wants us to play a role in his saving work in others’ lives and in the world.

Let your ideas about what God is doing when he “saves” people out of the box that you have created, and big, wonder-filled, mysterious possilibites for the future (both yours and that of the world around you) begin to unfold.

Untangling the Gospel #6:On the Meaning of “Saved”

Imagine that you are the parent of a nine year-old child who has stolen a very valuable item (say, an iPod or a nice article of clothing) from a store. The police come to your home and accuse your child of the crime.

In response to this accusation, you have several options. You could…

A. Ask your child to admit guilt, but tell him that if he does so, in exchange, you will pay for the item.
B. As the child’s parent, volunteer to take the punishment upon yourself, paying for the item.
C. Ask the child to admit to the police that he/she took the item and to face the consequences by paying for the item out of his allowance. Then, building on that experience, devote every resource you have to help the child grow into a responsbile adult who does not steal, and who does not even want to steal.

Three questions:

1. All of these options might be viewed as loving responses, but which of these ultimately in the best interest of the child?

2. Which of these options reflect what you have been taught about how God “saves” us from our sins?

3. Which of these best fits your present idea about what it means for God to “save” us from our sins?

BONUS QUESTION: What does it mean that Jesus is the savior of the world? Isn’t he supposed to be a personal Lord and Savior?

[More to come...]

A Shameless Plug

Levi and I have entered a web site in a SONICFLOOd fan site contest. You can find our entry here. The winner of the contest gets a Sony PSP. Runners-up get calls from the band and autographed CDs.

We mainly entered the contest to give Levi some motivation to learn a little about Flash animation. Our site banner was done entirely in Flash – it was Levi’s first effort. It doesn’t look like much, but – believe me – it took some work for him to get that much done, and I’m proud of him.

We’ve tried to avoid the typical fan site cliches (“SONICFLOOD is the MOST AWESOME CHRISTIAN BAND EVER!!!! THEY ROCK!!! I MET THEM ONCE AND THEY WERE THE COOLEST GUYS EVER!!!”) and, instead, we’ve tried to add some thoughtful things about the band, its sound, and its history. We’ve also done a couple of simple devotionals (geared toward a younger, less churched audience) to provide some additional distinctiveness. Unfortunately, however, we’re not as flashy as some of the other sites, and since the contest will be determined based on the votes of anyone who wishes to participate, meaning – I suspect – lots of 16-24 year old kids, flashiness will mean a lot.

The odds, I’m afraid, are very much against us becoming proud owners of a PSP.

Which brings me to the reason for this post…

I consider my relationship with my blog readers (all three of you) to be a sacred trust. This is a place where I pour myself out discussing some of the deepest, most important spiritual issues and struggles in my life and in the life of my faith community. I would NEVER, NEVER think of using this blog as a means of trying to generate votes for a web site in a shameless effort to acquire a cool portable gaming system. However, if you just HAPPEN to type “http://www.inorecords.com/sonicflood/fansite/vote.php” into the address bar of your browser, and if you just HAPPEN to click on site #34 when you reach that page, and if you just HAPPEN to feel like entering your email address and clicking the “Vote Now!” button at the bottom of the page, well – I don’t have much control over any of that, now do I?

Poverty as Blessing

…and speaking of ways that you can miss the point, I am struck this morning by these words from Henri Nouwen:

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: “What is my poverty?” Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That’s the place where God wants to dwell! “How blessed are the poor,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.

We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let’s dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.

Here are the words I can’t shake: “…our blessing is hidden in our poverty.”

This morning, I find myself wondering: how would our faith communities be different if, instead of emphasizing God’s blessings in providing abundance, we talked about how God finds us in our places of poverty? How would that change the way we worship? Or the things we talk about in small groups and bible classes? How would our day-to-day conversations with each other be changed? Would those who are financially poor feel more welcome in a community where poverty is seen as God’s dwelling place?

Untangling the Gospel #5: The Point of the Story

Scripture doesn’t come to us as a scientific, historical, or legal text. Don’t get me wrong. At certain points, elements of law and history peek through the pages. But scripture’s purpose isn’t to provide historical or scientific knowledge, nor does it lay out for us, point-by-point all of the regulations that we should follow to be pleasing to God.

Scripture is telling a story.

Or better yet: it is asking us to become a part of its story.

For the better part of human history, people have been defined by their stories. You name the culture: native American, African, Asian, Polynesian. All of them possess strong traditions of oral and written storytelling. Mythologies about everything from mermaids to gods on Mount Olympus to great spirits and animal guides rest at the center of life for such people. Stories define cultures, belief systems, and especially faiths.

But in our culture, the power of storytelling has been lost. Mythology has become important not because of what it teaches us, but because of how it helps us to understand others from a sociological viewpoint. Or, alternatively, stories are important only because of their capacity to entertain.

Think about how dismissive we are about stories, mythologies, and fables.

“Its just a myth.”

“Thats only an old wives tale.”

Or, when a child is in trouble:”Katie? Are you telling a story again?”

“Well, I’m not sure I believe it, but his story is…”

But stories, especially mythologies – old, old ones – and some new ones (I’m thinking of Lord of the Rings or even Star Wars here) contain more truth than all of the scientific and historical texts in the Library of Congress.

Why? Because, unlike the tools of analysis and science, they tell us who we are. They connect with something deep within us – something beyond reason, causing that which we know (but don’t necessarily understand) to resonate as truth.

Scripture is a story. A true myth. It may inform science and help us to understand history in useful ways. It may even give us some guidance on how to live our lives in a way that is consistent with God’s holiness. But that isn’t where the power of scripture lies.

Its real value is light years beyond all of those things.

Scripture is telling us a story. Not just a story, but the story. The story that every other great tale ever told, from The Illiad to The Matrix, is trying to get across.

It is a story with good news. Great news. Unbelievable news. So preposterous sounding that it is almost lauguable. But only almost laughable, because somewhere deep inside of us, it also seems to be resonating, telling us that it is true.

Here, in short, is the plot: God is redeeming all the people of the earth through his son Jesus. Not just you. Not just me. Not just a small collection of people that have their righteousness act together. Everyone. Jews. Christians. Asians. Africans. Homeless. Fatherless. Friendless. Poor. Rich. Crazy. Young. Old. Cranky. Sweet. Selfish. Kind. Sons-of-you-know-whats. All of them.

And before he is done, he will have re-made the entire universe into an unimaginably wonderful place, full of unending life in the wildest ways conceivable.

Here is the thing, however, that, for some reason, we don’t want to hear: God wants to partner with us in this redemptive act. He wants us to be representatives of his saving and redeeming presence in the world. He wants us to be the ones that bring peace and hope and joy to the fatherless, the homeless, the orphans, the poor, the dejected.

To join in that story has always required, and will always require, sacrifices and hard choices. To be part of the story, we must learn to give up that part of us that wants to hang on to everything we can get our hands on, and begin to give what we have instead.

“Loose your life,” Jesus told us, “and you’ll find it.”

Because it is so difficult to enter the story, you have to be careful. You may end up trading God’s real story for a cheap substitute – a set of modernized “beliefs” that define a God who is small enough to fit in your brain and “easy” enough to make you comfortable in your lifestyle.

Here are a few examples:

The God of the Church Consumer. (“I really love my church/bible class/preacher. I get a lot out of my church.”). Church is a great place that has an important part in the story, but if you decide that its purpose is to make you feel good once a week because of the preaching or company that you find there, you aren’t yet in the story. You’ve given it up for a country club that has a few “God trappings” in it.

The God of Worship. In the same way, you might decide that your purpose is to enjoy worship, by singing great songs and praying great prayers and being around people who are passionate about the way they do these things. And don’t get me wrong. I love to worship in these ways. I am a huge defender of modern worship against some of its more voiciferous critics. But if you think that you’re fulfilling your purpose by having these experiences, you’re still not there. You’re only touching the surface of the experiences that are waiting for you in the real story.

The God of Blessings. You may be thinking that God’s primary role in your life is to provide blessings, especially financial blessings. Again, God has certainly done these things in his story. But the point of following God isn’t to cash in on material gain (I actually saw a book cover on this very subject last Sunday that used the words “guaranteed financial results” – or something like that). To the contrary, in that sense, God is really calling you to cash out. God wants to use you to bless others with what you have. If you don’t understand that, and you only want to think of God as the God who blesses you, then you still haven’t made it into the story.

The God of Prophecy/End Times. You may be thinking that we’re living in or near the end times. And, though a lot of people have wrongly believed the same thing throughout history, you could be right, of course. But if you aren’t careful, you’ll spend all of your time waiting for the end of the story and miss your part in the story in the here and now. Don’t miss some of the best chapters in the story in your eagerness to jump to the end.

The God of Science. You may be thinking that the most important thing you can do in life is convince yourself and others that God’s existence can be proven scientifically. You may be out to show everyone that a literal seven day creation could have occurred. Or that the entire earth really was covered by a flood at one time. Or that dinosaurs were a part of human history. Or that archaeological evidence supports the biblical record. You need to understand that studying or even proving the historical accuracy of older parts of the story doesn’t necessarily get you into the story. Also, please don’t get me wrong here, but the story doesn’t need your help in that sense. When they see the story in action in the way you live (rather than theory in the way you speak), the deep truths that flow from this story will grab people and shake them. Don’t worry. People will make their way into it without all of the science you’re bringing to the table.

So, join me, why don’t you? Together, lets leave behind all of these cheap substitutes and follow this crazy invitation into Kingdom life, finding our own unique place in the story.

Up next (I think): Being “saved” – what it really means.