the Eclectic Soul

Do We Still Believe that God can Change a Life?

I've been mulling about this idea for a little while now, and thought I'd through it out there for some friendly conversation. As Christians, a central tenant of our religious and spiritual understanding is that we as human beings are broken and fragmented people. 

Now I know what some of you might be thinking, "here we go, another chucklehead whose just going to bash the human race again and talk about how 'unworthy' we are, blah, blah, blah."

Well that's not exactly where I'm going, but I think that if you truly look around long and hard enough, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we've been beating one another over the head with clubs (and the more advanced we've become, the more sophisticated the club) for eons in hopes of fulfilling our on personal endeavors, however twisted they might be.

You see, when as followers of Jesus, we fail to embrace the notion that we are flawed individuals that create flawed communities, that create flawed governments, that create flawed world-views, that even, and here's the kicker, create flawed churches, why then do we think that we really need Jesus anyway?

I mean, if we're really OK, then, well, we really don't need a savior do we?

I'm not suggesting that we adopt a pessimistic stance and cluck our tongues at "how bad the world is," but what I am suggesting is that understanding that we are bent and broken social creatures is part of the mystery that makes us, well, human, beautiful, and worth redeeming.

News flash:  you don't always get it right.  I don't always get it right.  Sometimes you live for your own desires in a way that says, "forget you world."  Sometimes I live for my own desires in a way that says, "forget you world."

When we fail to remember and embrace our brokenness, then by definition we fail to remember and embrace the need for personal transformation.  We then become, sanctimonious, pharisaical, legalistic, and judgmental.  Everyone else has a problem, except us of course.

From there we move to easily categorizing people into neat little boxes:  conservative/liberal, gay/straight, rich/poor, male/female, in/out, married/divorced, addict/sober, sinner/saint.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard as a pastor something like the following, "well, that's just the way (insert name here) is.  They've always been like that, and they're probably not going to change." 

Really!?

Never!?

If we, as people who bear the name "Christian" fail to carry the standard that declares that not only is real change necessary, but perhaps more importantly, real change is possible, then we might as well throw in the towel.

I'm broken.  I'm a forty-year-old, overweight, child of God, husband, father, friend, and pastor, who cares waaaay too much what people think of him, who gets it wrong probably more than he gets it right, but believes and hopes, beyond all belief and hope that God can change even me.

God can and still does change lives!

So how 'bout you?  Are you perhaps willing to admit and embrace your brokenness and allow God to move you towards wholeness?  Because until you do, you really have no business pretending you need a savior.

This Makes Me Sad....

Now, before you read on, let me just say this:  I don't have all the facts or information, just what I've managed to follow in the news.  So, as you read, please keep this in mind.

This article from the UM Reporter really saddened me on many levels, one of which is the incessant fear of what appears to be competition between local pastors and churches.  Sometimes I fear that if we're not careful, we can be all too busy building our own kingdoms instead of the kingdom of God.

While I honestly sympathize with Bryson Butts, the former pastor of Gracepoint UMC - I hear in his responses a primal call to reach the unchurched that isn't always appreciated within institutional churches like the UMC - I am saddened that a church plant opportunity in Kansas has succumbed under the strain of it's tearing apart.

My prayer is for the Bryson and his new congregation and the 17 original members of Gracepoint UMC that suddenly are left without a church.

Peace,

E

Why I Love This Man...

Back in the early nineties I was introduced to the writings of Brennan Manning when someone gave me a copy of the Ragamuffin Gospel.  Needless to say, that book transformed my life to such a degree that when my first son was born, I named him Brennan.

If you haven't ever read anything by Brennan Manning, I suggest with everything that I am that you go and buy everything that he's ever read!

Listen to what he writes in his latest book, The Furious Longing of God:

"Jesus said you are to love one another as I have loved you, a love that will probably lead to the bloody, anguished gift of yourself; a love that forgives seventy times seven, that keeps no score of wrongdoing. Jesus said this, this love, is the one criterion, the sole norm, the standard of discipleship in the New Israel of God.  He said you're going to be identified as his disciples, not because of your church-going, Bible-toting, or song-singing.  No, you'll be identified as his by one sign only: the deep and delicate respect for one another, the cordial love impregnated with reverence for the sacred dimension of the human personality of the mysterious substitution of Christ for the Christian...if we as a Christian community took seriously that the sign of our love for Jesus is our love for one another, I am convinced it would change the world.  We're denying to the world the one witness Jesus asked for: Love  one another as I've loved  you (John 15.12)."

--Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing of God, pp. 86, 89

Tis the Season...

Isaiah 2.7-8

 Their land is full of silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; Their land is full of horses, and there is no end to their chariots.

Their land is full of idols; they worship the works of their hands, that which their fingers have made.

Psalm 10.2;8-12

Arrogant scoundrels pursue the poor; they trap them by their cunning schemes. They wait in ambush near towns; their eyes watch for the helpless. to murder the innocent in secret. They lurk in ambush like lions in a thicket, hide there to trap the poor, snare them and close the net. The helpless are crushed, laid low; they fall into the power of the wicked, Who say in their hearts, "God pays no attention, shows no concern, never bothers to look."

Rise up, LORD God! Raise your arm! Do not forget the poor!

 

I’ve waited a few days to formulate my thoughts on Black Friday in the age of what is now being officially called a national recession.

I have used the 4 Volume Liturgy of the Hours now for about 1 ½ years as a way to mark time throughout the day in my attempt to remain connected to the Vine.  This mornings readings made me think of some of the local expressions of Black Friday that I’ve heard about over the last several days.

One instance that I’m thinking of involves a man probably in his fifties who reportedly knocked a young boy down in order to rip an Xbox 360 from his grip and then sprint down the aisle towards the check out while a young boy lay helpless on the floor surrounded by stunned onlookers.

Another instance was reported to me by a friend who works at one of the Big Box Mart stores.  On Black Friday, this particular retail change lines their main aisles with sealed crated pallets of goods.  In order to attempt to create an atmosphere of sanity, customers are allowed to place one hand on the crate and then are given a corresponding number. 

One guy came in to the game late and attempted to muscle his way to the front, knocking people out of the way who had been there for some time.

He went on to become particularly obstinate, my friend told me, and began to harass the store employee so this particular person said that this was NOT in fact how it worked and that since he had such a poor attitude, he would not be given a number and would have to go to the rear of the line.  He exploded as you can imagine.

It seems to me that the prophet and the psalmist were on to something that is hardwired into any people group who has gained enough power to somehow believe that they are entitled to walking over anyone to get what they possess; that somehow, by marveling at the sheer work of their hands and what they have been able to produce, then somehow they are entitled to the choicest places of power, no matter who it hurts, even if it’s a little kid.

My prayer is that we, as the Body of the One whose birth we are about to celebrate, will model a different alternative to the narrative of our commercial culture.  That we might take the opportunities and the gifts and resources we have been given and model what it looks like to live this new humanity that the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus has made possible.

Peace,

E

The Blue Parakeet Takes Flight...

I recently volunteered to review Scot McKnight's latest offering, the Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible.  I must say, so far Mr. Mcknight hasn't disappointed yet!

We all, to one degree or another, pick and choose when it comes to biblical interpretation and application; that is to say that we all approach the text with a bias and and list of presuppositions that we believe about any given text or even the Bible as a whole.  The problem, McKnight suggests, is that we don't often understand why we do it, or even that we do it.  He cites in his opening introduction the pithy statement that I too share a great disdain for and yet it appears on many a car's rear bumper as it chugs down the highway [often at speeds exceeding the local speed limits]: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!"  To be sure, we may have our own rationale for approaching the text like we do, but it often simply reinforces our own biases. 

McKnight lets us in on his primordial journey into the Christian faith as along the way he encountered people who "said" that they "believed" that the Bible should be taken literally.  The problem was for McKNight, and for many of us, that many people who hold this stand don't back it up with how they live their lives.  Simply the fruit wasn't ever brought to bear upon their belief.

McKinght cites example after example of how we approach the Bible with certain assumptions about what we believe is applicable and why.

For Mcknight, the solution is twofold:  1.  Admit our biases and accept them for what they are.  2.  As the deeper question of how it is that we should live out the Bible today. 

I would call this endeavor a movement towards a authentic and consistent hermeneutic. 

In the second part of the intro, McKnight unpacks for us the metaphor for the book's title:  his backyard encounter with a once tame but now wild blue Parakeet that is reeking havoc on its unsuspecting species-mates the sparrows.  For McKnight, this blue Parakeet at first is an anomaly and then becomes an influence that changes the dynamic of the entire pecking order around the bird feeder [pardon the pun].  Foe becomes friend, but only forever under a cloud of anxious suspicion as the sparrows are never quiet sure they can trust their new found friend.  Yet the parakeet is allowed to be true to who he [or she] is.

While there are numerous ways to read the Scriptures, McKinght suggests that there are three that servve as a good starting point to begin discussion.  He suggests that we as readers might: Read to Retrieve; Read Through Tradition; Read With Tradition.  Let me explain.

Read to Retrieve:
McKnight states on page 25:  "Some of us have been taught to read the Bible in such as way that we return to the times of the Bible in order to retrieve biblical ideas and practices for today"  He goes on to suggest that we do this as a whole or in select parts that we the reader believe to be important.

I liken this to doing an autopsy on a living being.  We strip mine the Scriptures to find the "essence" of a given text simply so that we can take it and attempt to make it fit into our day, time, and culture.

Reading Through Tradition:
McKnight states on page 29 that they Reading Through Tradition folks feel that, "ordinary people need to learn to read the Bible through tradition or they will misread the Bible and create schisms in the church."  The caution he suggests is that we need to make sure that we are not simply reading the Bible with a "whatever I believe the text says is what it says" mentality. 

Biblical interpretation is not done in a vacuum and we need to make sure that we test our hypothesis with the history of ecclesilogical interpretation.  But the other danger is that we can make one tradition "truer" than another.  Tradition therefore trumps interpretation and we end up reading the Scriptures solely through the lens of our tradition which leads to what McKnight calls traditionalism: "the inflexible, don't-ask-questions-do-it-the way-it-has-always-been-done approach to bible reading." [p.31]

Reading With Tradition:
Again, McKnight: "We dare not ignore what God has said to the church through the ages, nor dare we fossilize past interpretation into traditionalism.  Instead we need to go back to the Bible so we can move forward through the church and speak God's Word in our days in our ways." [p. 34]

For McKnight, although the Bible is written within the context of a given culture and time period, it is not bound and limited.  That is to say that although we need some element of reading to retrieve and some element of reading through tradition to grasp the full bodied meaning of the Scriptures, we must allow the Bible the freedom to speak to our day and time in a way that is authentic, true, consistent, and yet fresh.

Rob Bell, in my opinion has said something similar in his book Velvet Elvis when he uses the metaphor of doctrine [read tradition] as "springs" or "bricks."  One is dynamic and the other static.  How we interpret those two will say a lot about how we interpret Scripture.  Does the past great tradition of the church serve to propel us forward like springs.  Or does it serve as firm unmovable fossilized traditions that don't have the flexibility for us to build upon them.

Make no mistake, McKnight, in my opinion, is not one who takes a low view of the Scriptures at all.  In fact like most orthodox [small on the "o"] followers of Jesus, the Scriptures are for him still awarded primacy in all things.  Yet there is a sense in which we must approach them with a freshness and humility if we are to do justice to what the Scriptures actually say.

Well, those are some thoughts.  More to come as I move through the chapters.

Peace,

E

Fixed Hour Prayer....

For a while now I have used multiple methods to keep my spiritual life alive and flourishing.  Usually it involves spending sometime reading the Scriptures daily and making use of a prayer journal.

Over the last several years I've become increasingly aware of this practice of fixed hour prayer.  Guided by a prayerbook, alone or preferably in community, an individual or group of individuals marks time throughout the day with "fixed" short periods of prayer. 

There are a good number of excellent prayer books out there and my good friend Alan has recommended some helpful ones on his blog.  For me though, I wanted something beefy; something with bulk and muscle.  Over the last year I used the Episcopal two-volume Daily Office, which was pretty good.  This year I made the switch to using the Catholic four-volume Liturgy of the Hours.  Structured by the liturgical seasons the LOH offers both readings form the Scriptures and the early church fathers and mothers all in one portable volume [you only use one at a time].  Sure there are some places where you are asking to pray for the Pope and Bishops, but what I find myself doing, in addition to praying for them, is to pray for my own denominational leaders.

So I've been experimenting with guided prayer at 6 a.m., noon, and 8 p.m. [after my kids go to bed].  Actually, with fixed hour prayer, the ideal is to prayer every 3 hours: 6, 9 [a.m.], noon, 3, 6, 9 [p.m.] and then if you're truly spiritual wake up you wake up in the middle of the night to pray [guess I'm not truly spiritual].

If you haven't tried it let me encourage you to check out some of these really helpful resources.  Since my good friend Alan has already made the effort to compile a fine list, just link to his blog to get started.

Peace,

E

What Do Adam Hamilton and I Have in Common?

Well, not much, other than the fact that we're both pastors in the tribe we call United Methodists and we both do this...

"Every summer the church allows me to take a week away from the office in order to develop sermon series outlines for the next 18 - 24 months..."

Check out his blog for the full post.

Peace,

E

Willow Creekings Continued...

After having set the bar for what it means to be an attractional seeker sensitive model church Willow Creek is shifting its weekend emphasis from primarily seeker sensitive to believer centered.  

Of course no one is sure what exactly this means and if Sunday will now look like Wednesday night services, but a recent article from Christianity Today attempts to get at the rationale for the change.

Honestly, I've been to both and I think its probably a good change.  The biggest difference that I saw in my few times there was that Sunday mornings was more of a experiential worship wherein participants "watched" the action of worship leaders and Wednesdays was much more participatory wherein participants were invited to take part in what was being lead on the platform.  Also the Scriptural diet on Sundays was a much lighter fare than Wednesday nights.

All in all I think it's a smart move.  Although I'm not really sure what the difference will pragmatically mean for their Sunday gatherings.  I give them credit for doing a pretty authentic self evaluation and then actually making some decisions based on the results that they faced.

Way to go Willow!

Peace,

E

I Don't Agree With Mr. Colson

Chuck Colson in his latest BreakPoint commentary reviews William Young's The Shack. If you haven't heard about the book yet, you soon will.

The story is a powerful journey through one man's grief in the midst of a relationship the Triune God.

Now mind you, I thought some of the dialogue was a bit hokey and when God appeared as an Aunt Jemima type figure I had to pause for just a minute. This is one of the things that Colson reacts to.

In the western mind God "The Father" has always been understood with masculine stereotypes and there is much scriptural warrant for this. But we must understand that gender is specificially a "creature characteristic." That is to say that God, whom we address as "Father," transcends and is in and of Godself not limited to gender. I still use the term "Father" for God. I think it is important for several reasons: 1. It's personal; 2. It's the term Jesus used; 3. It's support by the majority of the canon and orthodox church history. When Colson reacts so strongly to God "the Father" being revealed as a motherly figure I believe he feels it is an attack against Christian orthodoxy. I do not believe it to be so.

We must understand that for God to interact with human beings God has chosen to limit Godself in order that we might relate with God. We see this most clearly of course in the incarnation. For those who don't agree see Moses encounter with God on the mountain.

To be sure God isn't our buddy or pal, but God is an intimate friend. Too often I fear God gets depicted as a stern authority figure who is perpetually ticked off and whose son Jesus begs him to give his kids a break . And, God can only do this by unleashing all hell on his son. Let me be clear. The Scriptures are unified in their understanding that God takes no pleasure in wrath. But on the same hand I understand that there are consequences that come from arrogance and disobedience [again lets leave room for multiple understandings of atonement because multiple understandings are both Scriptural and needed].

But like any parent, I think we need to remember that this comes as a last resort. In Matthew 7.10-12 Jesus compares God to human parents thus implying, "if you broken and evil people know how to care for your children and love them. Don't you think your heavenly father can do at least as good as you?" [I'll grant you here that the context of the conversation is prayer. But if this is representative of how God loves those who ask, does his love extent any less to other areas of how God relates?].

Colson also goes on to say that he believes the author has a low opinion of the Scriptures and cites two entries that I found puzzling as to how they relate to his point. Then he says this:

The Bible, it seems, is just one among many equally valid ways in which God reveals Himself. And, we are told, the Bible is not about rules and principles; it is about relationship.

That's exactly the problem with how modernism has handled the Scriptures: as a rule book to mine for principles. The entire narrative of the Scriptures is about a God who purses a broken and rebellious humanity precisely TO have relationship with them. Come on Chuck!

What Colson in my opinion leaves out of his review is the insightful treatment of what theologians have called theodicy or the problem of pain and the goodness of God. There are some incredible insights in this book about the grace of God and God's steadfast love.

Colson goes on to suggest that we not be comfortable with The Shacks depiction of God and our presumptions about God either. He writes: "As Papa warns Mack, God is not who Mack expects He is. But He is also not what our creative imaginations make Him to be either." But I cannot help but wonder if Mr. Colson feels that he has God all too figured out himself.

Is the book great? Well, no. Frankly I didn't care for some of the writing and some of the depictions of God were a bit hokey. Is it heretical? In my opinion no. No more than Pilgrims Progress anyway. It's a book that's definitely worth the read and the discussion.

I'm not about being controversial but my dander goes up when we simply begin boycotting things because of our own personal opinions. This book is not going to destroy any ones theology any more than reading the local newspaper. I guess I'm on day two of laryngitis and I'm getting irritable.

Peace,
E

Noteable Quotables....

This past Monday & Tuesday some of the pastors of my area had the opportunity to spend some time in Sabbath retreat. It's an annual time to reconnect and recenter with lots of free time simply to be.

One of my favorite people in the whole world was there and we got to spend some time together. Phil Tousley is a fellow pastor and brother who truly drinks deep from the Spirit's well.

Anyway, we were talking a bit about the church and it's leaders when he said something that just rung so true to me. We were lamenting the whole movement of Christianity as the new self-help-self-fulfillment placebo and how this even creeps into pastoral leadership and our constant fear of "burnout" when he said:

"I'm not sure that we [pastors/leaders] really ever suffer from "burn out" as much as it is a question of spiritual bankruptcy."

Wow! We went on to talk about how the means of grace are such a vital connection between who we have been created and called to be and the One who created and called us in the first place.