Current Troubles And The Need For Peace

We are living in some turbulent days. Unemployment is currently at levels that have not been reached for decades. Our nation is in the midst of increasing commitment to the war in Afghanistan even as the prospects of a bright future for that country are far from certain. Our national leadership is currently engaged in momentous debates concerning the expansion of our national debt and the future of the American health care system. In the swirl of issues, arguments and predictions that surround these and a host of other issues, the average person can feel more than a bit overwhelmed and confused. Anxiety has become a constant companion to many parents, workers and business owners as many feel uncertain about the future. Many investors are seeking safety and security in the form of buying gold which has increased in value over 30% since July. There is, however, an asset that is increasingly precious to many because it is so rare. That asset is peace. We often fail to realize it, but what we are truly seeking in our investing, political action, therapy, counseling and religious activities is peace. The absence of conflict. The confidence that all is well and that all will be well in the future.

The truth is that ever since the fall of man we have been a people tossed and turned by fears, worries and guilt. God told Adam and Eve that in the day they ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree they would die. Physically speaking Adam and Eve lived many years after eating the fruit, but one thing died instantly in the moment that their eyes were opened: peace. A dread of the future began to hang over them. "What would God say?" "What would happen to them?" They heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. His presence, which previously had always been a delight and joy to them, was now a reason to run and hide. They were in conflict with God now and they knew it. Peace was gone and now there remained only fear and alienation. This is the world into which Jesus was born.

The Bible tells us that Christ came not only to bring peace but that He is Himself our peace (Ephesians 2.14). What this means is that when a believer truly has peace he or she has Jesus. This needs to be distinguished from the teachings of Jesus. There are many who have the teachings of Jesus but they do not have Him. Jesus invited the weary and burdened to come to Him. Not to a set of rituals based upon Him. Not to a religion spun off of His life. Jesus is not merely a pattern to follow in order to have peace. He is that, but He is infinitely more than that. Jesus is not merely the pattern of peace He is the presence of peace. In Christ, God was giving back to His people the peace that had been lost in the garden of Eden. The man whose birth we are currently celebrating would eventually give His life in order to bring His disciples back into the very presence of God. In Christ, our forgiveness is certain and our future is secure. This is the peace that He brings. This is the peace that He is. Let us give thanks to God for Jesus: the peace and presence of God.

A Thanksgiving Wish For Gilead

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.*

I have borrowed the words of the apostle Paul above in order to tell you all how much I love you and how thankful I am for the responsibility and privilege that God has given me to be a pastor in this fellowship. I am sometimes struck by a sense of my own unworthiness for this calling and by a deep sense of gratitude for the fact that God continues to hold on to me. I find that my thanksgiving is always mixed with requests for more. More harmony. More openness. More ministry and more engagement of our world. I pray that God will make our love abound more and more. That He will increase our insight into one another and our depth of knowledge of His ways. That the seed of Christ’s life will be planted ever deeper into our lives and that it may bear increasing yields of goodness, mercy, joy and thanksgiving. That God will make us a blessing to our brothers, sisters, and neighbors.

In this sense, I am not merely giving thanks for the past but for the future as well. A future that has been purchased and secured for us by the sacrifice of Jesus. My thanksgiving wish this year is that God would work through us even more in the next year than He has in the last. I pray that we will have ever more reason to celebrate the changes that God has wrought and the wonders He has manifested in our fellowship with each passing year. And may all of this be to the glory and praise of God. That is a future worthy of thanksgiving.


* Philippians 1.3-11.

The Hope For Forgiveness

I am convinced that there are few actions that are more difficult in life than the act of forgiving someone who has wronged you. I am not talking about the minor accidents and bumps of life that can be easily addressed by a simple, “I’m sorry about that.” I am referring to the things that make our emotional temperature rise. The things that make our chest tighten and our mind grow dark with anger. The devastating results of a lack of forgiveness can be seen all around us as we survey the landscape of broken homes, estranged parents, fractured friendships and even dysfunctional Churches. Ironically though there is something strangely comfortable and alluring to us about resentment and anger. To be sure no one sets out in a relationship seeking to be resentful or angry. Instead we hope to find joy, happiness and fun, but then someone says or does something wrong. Perhaps they say or do several things that are wrong. Then our hopes of joy and happiness come falling to earth as we slowly begin to realize, “This person can hurt me too” or “This person can and has let me down.”

The hurt, pain and consequences are real and sometimes profound. There is a part of us that demands that a price be paid for the wrong we have endured. This is where we are tempted to get cynical. Rather than believing in God’s power to renew relationships and to heal wounds, we content ourselves with the consolation prize of resentment. It hurts too much to hold out hope for reconciliation and so we settle for nursing our grudges and boldly prophesying that, “It’s never going to change.” What I have just described is one of many variations of the easy road. You don’t have to be exceptional or spiritually insightful to move toward cynicism, resentment and unforgiveness. Just throw the gear of your heart into neutral and the natural inertia of life will pull you to that unforgiving place. This is why we live in a world that is profoundly affected by the power of unforgiven wrongs. It was into this world that God sent His Son to demonstrate for us what the true dimensions of forgiveness look like.

Hebrews 9.22 tells us that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” In other words a price must be paid to purchase forgiveness. We instinctively know this. That is part of what motivates our disappointment and anger when people hurt us. We know that the hurt is real and that it can only be removed by a real payment. Jesus is the payment, His is the blood shed, in order to pay the high price that true forgiveness requires. As believers, we have come to understand this and have come to look to the cross for confidence that we are truly forgiven. We have come to see ourselves as being forgiven, restored and reconciled because of the price that has been paid for us. We have begun to see our sins in the light of the cross, and, as a result, we refuse to give in to the voice of cynicism that says, “It’s never going to change”. We have hope for our future. We have hope for our change.

We need to learn to apply this same hope to the relationships that we have with others. To do for them what we have done for ourselves. To love them in the same way that we have loved ourselves, namely by believing that the blood of Christ can lead them to repentance, forgive them and make them new just as it has for us. This hope does not mean that we minimize the hurt, or call sin by a different name. It simply means that we never stop loving the offender and hoping for his or her restoration. C.S. Lewis describes this dynamic this way: “I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must … hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself … In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them … but it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.”* We know by faith that it is possible that "somehow", "sometime" and "somewhere" offenders can be cured and restoration can be made. We know that it is possible because Christ has made it possible and we have experienced that possibility in our own hearts. I pray that the Lord will give us the grace to be able to hold out this type of hope and forgiveness to those who have offended us. Perhaps when we realize how much we have been forgiven it will make the difficult task of forgiving others easier.

* C. S. Lewis The Joyful Christian (Simon & Schuster, 1977) p. 143.

Is There Hope For Marriage?

The cover article for the July 13th edition of TIME Magazine headlined with this question: “Is there hope for the American marriage?” The article was written by Caitlin Flanagan, who is a columnist known for her ability to stir up controversy by pointing out some of the more disturbing and ridiculous aspects of American family life. In the article, Flanagan claims that one of her principal provocations for writing on the subject of marriage was the announced separation of Jon and Kate Gosselin. She says that she had come to have a mild sympathy and respect for the couple who were, in her words, “dedicated not to making themselves happy but to taking care of the cavalcade of children they had produced, they were laboring at something more significant than their own pleasure.”1 In light of the general decay of marriage in America in general, Flanagan found encouragement in the fact that Jon and Kate could stay the course under some extraordinary circumstances. It gave her hope, in a symbolic way, that perhaps marriage did still have some staying power as an institution. Then came the announcement that the Gosselins had filed for divorce. Flanagan subsequently watched as they were “catapulted to the forefront of trash culture” and began to “command more attention now that their union [was] broken than they did when it was intact.”2 This story, combined with the recent revelations of extramarital dalliances by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and former Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards, led Flanagan to do little soul searching on behalf of the United States and ask whether marriage has any real future in this country.

Her research led her to observe the following rather disturbing distinctive of family life in the U.S. :

“In the past 40 years, the face of the American family has changed profoundly. As sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin observes in a landmark new book called The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of ‘frequent marriage, frequent divorce’ and the high number of ‘short-term co-habiting relationships.’ Taken together, these forces ‘create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country.’ … the intact, two-parent family remains our cultural ideal, but it exists under constant assault. It is buffeted by affairs and ennui, subject to the eternal American hope for greater happiness, for changing the hand you dealt yourself. Getting married for life, having children and raising them with your partner — this is still the way most Americans are conducting adult life, but the numbers who are moving in a different direction continue to rise. Most notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that births to unmarried women have reached an astonishing 39.7%.

How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass.”3

This final observation has particular resonance in light of the debates that surround social policy in the U.S. The vast majority of social services money4 that is spent by American government institutions is aimed at counteracting the corrosive effects of broken marriages and families. In other words, the government would save an enormous amount of money if marriages and families were more stable. The monetary impact, however, pails in comparison to the personal aftermath of broken homes. Flanagan points out that, “on every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being and long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households … in all cases, the kids living with both parents drastically outperform the others.”5 This should not be read as a prophecy that children in single-parent homes are all going to wind up with a substance abuse problem or in trouble with law enforcement, but it does indicate that broken marriages have definite consequences that must be faced honestly. This is especially true because, as Flanagan points out, it is becoming increasingly clear that affluence can not insulate families from the aftermath of divorce. Consider the following excerpt from her article:

“Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home … This turns out to be true across the economic spectrum. The groundbreaking research on the effects of divorce on children from middle- and upper-income households comes from a surprising source: a Princeton sociologist and single mother named Sara McLanahan, who decided to study the fates of these children with the tacit assumption that once you control for income, being part of a single-parent household does not adversely affect kids. The results — which she published in the 1994 book Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps — were surprising. ‘Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent,’ she found, ‘are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents' race or educational background.’

The consequences for more-affluent kids tend to be far less devastating than for poor ones; they are less likely to become teenage parents and high school dropouts. But children of divorced middle-class parents do less well in school and at college compared with underprivileged kids from two-parent households. ‘There's a 'sleeper effect' to divorce that we are just beginning to understand,’ says David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. It is an effect that pioneering scholars like McLanahan … have devoted their careers to studying, revealing truths that many of us may find uncomfortable. It's dismissive of the human experience, says Blankenhorn, to suggest that kids don't suffer, extraordinarily, from divorce: ‘Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal.’"6

It is fascinating that an article with sentiments like these ever found its way onto the cover of TIME Magazine. It may indicate that there are serious concerns, even within secular publishing circles, about where our concepts of marriage are heading and what consequences those concepts may bring with them. Sadly, the Church’s failure to speak with clarity and live with conviction concerning the subject of marriage and family have given proponents of “alternative marital norms” reason to suspect that what Christians call a biblical view of marriage and family is really an arbitrary personal preference masquerading as a timeless mandate from God. May God give us both clarity and conviction to speak and live in such a way that others see that marriage, as God intends it, is something for which we can have enormous hope.

1 From Time article: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1908243,00.html
2 Same as above.
3 Same as above.
4 With the exception of eldercare.
5 See Time article above.
6 Same as above.

Hopes & Dreams For Gilead - Letting Our Light Shine

When Jesus came to earth He intended to do more than establish a system of beliefs. He came to create a new way of living. Our beliefs and convictions are an essential part of the lifestyle that we have been called to live, but there is more to our discipleship than talking and listening. There is doing. There is living. There is lighting up a dark world. We live in a dark world that is full of things that grieve our hearts and the heart of God. The Bible teaches us that God had every right to leave the world darkened and dead, but He didn’t. Instead He sent His Son to light the flame of a new way of living life. We know this as living in Jesus. Jesus described of this “way” of living life like this: "You are the light that gives light to the world. A city that is built on a hill cannot be hidden. And people don't hide a light under a bowl. They put it on a lampstand so the light shines for all the people in the house. In the same way, you should be a light for other people. Live so that they will see the good things you do and will praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5.14-16 [NCV]) Jesus is not just speaking about thinking something; He is talking about being something. “You are the light of the world”, so let your light shine. Let the life of Jesus be evident in the way that you live your life. Jesus says that this “way” of living life will begin to shed light on … what? On what God is really like. The darkness of this world is because there are so many wrong beliefs about who God is and what He is like. People don’t see the real Jesus unless they see it by the light of the way that we live our lives. My prayer for Gilead is that we will ever be a gathering of true believers who cast light on who God is by the way that we live.

I want to praise God for one instance in which He has used us to shed light on Himself. Last Saturday, many of our brothers and sisters went to a local gas station to give a gift of gasoline to some of the patrons and to serve them by pumping their gas and washing their windshields. Our hope was that in so doing we could demonstrate the unmerited love and compassion of God to some people who need to see that about Him. We could have simply told them about God’s grace and love, but we wanted to go even further by showing them that grace. What a blessing it was to serve in the name of Jesus and trust that He would use our work to be a witness to the world. How encouraging it was to see fellow believers giving up precious hours out of their Saturday afternoon in order to “show” Jesus to some strangers.

One doesn’t always receive feedback on an outreach like this, but this week we received the following message from Wanda from Louisville:

“I want to thank you and your Church again for the warm welcome plus twenty cents off at a local E’town filling station on Saturday. I was on my way back to Louisville after stopping to visit my aunt at the nursing home when I knew that I needed a fill up before getting on the interstate. Before getting to the station I noticed the price per gallon. WOW! Yes, twenty cents cheaper than what I had been seeing since I left Green county earlier that day. Also, your Church members were very visible to anyone driving by or approaching.
Anyway, so I stopped because I needed gas. As I waited my turn, they explained their mission and task for the day. I really appreciated their time and effort to spread the word of their Church and fellowship. I’m sure that the youth were learning to step out into the world that day. I am sorry that I live too far to attend your Church as I am sure that you must be a friendly and loving Church.
Thanks again for this noticeable effort to spread the gospel. May God continue to bless your Church and membership.”

I hope that you find this message as encouraging as I did. This is just one of the many ways that God has been using our lives to light up the world, and I am excited by it. My prayer is that we will burn even brighter in the future. I don’t just want people to hear about our Father; I want them to see Him in us.

Religious Liberty Or Neighborhood Insanity?

Pastor David Jones of San Diego County holds a Bible study in his home every Tuesday night for about fifteen people. This Bible study group has been grabbing national headlines over the past few days. Why? Because the County has informed him that the study constitutes an “unlawful assembly” that must either be properly licensed or discontinued. David and his wife Mary have been hosting the home based Bible group for about five years, but they recently received a visit from San Diego County officials who were responding to a complaint that his group was impeding traffic in the neighborhood and causing a fire hazard. According to Jones, the official asked some rather peculiar questions about the study group. A local news station relates the details of the interview as follows:

A county code enforcement officer visited the house and asked Jones' wife about the weekly Bible studies. “She said, `Do you say `Amen?" And my wife said, "Well, yes," Jones recalled. “And she said, `Do you say `Praise The Lord?’ She said, "Well, yes.’ What would that have to do with it?"

Chandra Wallar, the general manager of the County’s Land Use and Environment Group, was asked by the news station if these were really the kind of questions that County officials would ask. She responded that what the “officer was trying to do is establish what the use is so that we know what regulations to actually utilize.”* In other words, the County’s principle concern was that the Jones’s activity was drawing enough people to their home that it became a nuisance to one of the neighbors. The person who filed the complaint is anonymous so we have no idea whether he or she was motivated by general annoyance or by a more specific antipathy toward religion. Regardless of the complainant’s motivations, the County has proceeded to handle the situation in a clumsy way that has garnered nationwide attention. Based upon the evidence so far, this does not appear to be a case of government intentionally seeking to curb religious expression. Rather, it is an unfortunate example of our country’s increasing propensity to view personal conflict through the ridiculous prism of regulations and ordinances without any consideration of common sense principles of being a good neighbor. Wouldn’t it have been better for everyone involved if the person who had filed the complaint had been encouraged to simply talk with David Jones and let him know what the concerns were? If it was simply a matter of parking space, then surely the Pastor could have come to some compromise that would have satisfied everyone.

Instead an “investigator” was dispatched to the Jones’s house to see whether the assembly at their house could be described as an “unlawful use of land”. A citation was issued because the fact that Bible study participants said “amen” and “praise the Lord” obviously meant that a major violation of land use was occurring. Pastor Jones was subsequently informed that the whole mess could be cleared up if he would only apply for a “major use permit” that apparently makes it legal for him to “annoy” his neighbors with cars on the street. This nifty little permit would only cost the Pastor a few thousand dollars. Even if Jones came up with the cash for a permit, does San Diego County really believe that the person who made the complaint would be happy with the cars being parked on the street as long as he knew that the Joneses had paid a year’s salary to make it legal? I somehow doubt it.

As the case currently stands this is not at heart a religious liberties issue. (Although, if the ineptitude of County officials continues unabated it could soon become one.) Essentially, this is about neighbors who need to sit down and have a heart to heart chat about the Tuesday night parking situation and see if come mutually satisfying agreement can be reached. I doubt seriously whether the person who filed the complaint ever spoke to the Joneses about it, and it is unlikely that he ever will. Instead we are likely to see laws and litigation used where conversation and compromise should have been. Appealing to the authorities should be a method of final resort rather than the default method used to arbitrate disputes between neighbors. Only after personal contact and dialogue has been attempted and failed would it be time to seek redress in the courts and to appeal to the government. Let us pray that sanity will ultimately prevail in this situation and someone in the San Diego County government will become acquainted with this proverb: “If you and your neighbor have a difference of opinion, settle it between yourselves and do not reveal any secrets. Otherwise … you will never live down the shame.” (Proverbs 25.9-10 [TEV])

* http://www.10news.com/news/19595677/detail.html
* You can see an interview with the Joneses at this web address. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522637,00.html

Hopes & Dreams For Gilead – Making "Necessary" Connections

In my last post I told you that I had been thinking a lot about the kinds of relational connections that God wants His children to be making. In particular, I mentioned the importance of making “new” connections and “necessary” connections. You could also think of this as growing broader and deeper in the relational patterns in our lives. Last time I went to some length to describe what new connections are and why they are so important in the life of a Christian fellowship, but now I want to consider the importance of growing necessary relationships. A necessary relationship is one which you feel is deep and important enough that losing it would make a significant impact on your life. New relationships are important, but they naturally come and go. You can make countless new connections in a week or over a period of months, but they are by their nature relatively shallow. If someone is only growing broader in connecting then he or she will be like butter on a slice of bread: tasty but not terribly filling; or like a large but shallow pool in which you can do little more than get your feet wet. God not only wants us to have big hearts but deep hearts as well.

This depth of heart comes through necessary relationships with people to whom we are intensely devoted and with whom we are increasingly honest. One of the best biblical examples of such a relationship was that between Jonathan and David. Samuel tells us that, “the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” (1 Samuel 18.1 [ESV]) Do you hear the depth of connection in this description? Jonathan and David felt that their friendship and brotherhood was necessary to them. Obviously, there will be few relationships in the life of a Christian that can be described in this way, but there should be some. My fear is that the majority of Christians have no brother or sister in their lives whose input and encouragement is necessary. Paul told Timothy, “I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy.” (2 Timothy 1.3-4 [ESV]) In those words you can hear the affection and devotion that these brothers had one for another. They knew one another and prayed fervently for one another and God used them to do incredible things for His kingdom. The early Church grew because believers were going new places in order to make new connections with new people, but it also grew because believers were making necessary connections with people that they had known for some time. That same dynamic continues to be relevant to us today. I am thankful for the relationships that I see growing inside our fellowship through our small groups, because I know that the Lord is using them to make our Church stronger and more fruitful. Even so, I desire for us to grow more in this area.

I do not want our fellowship to be a mile wide and an inch deep. I want Gilead to be a family where people can find new relationships that God wants to use to broaden them, but I also want it to be a place where people find necessary relationships that God uses to deepen them. I realize that making this dream a reality will require us to be daring and deliberate in how we come together. That is why we will be engaging in a LIFE Group emphasis in August that will serve as a challenge to us to grow deeper in our fellowship with one another. I ask you to be in prayer for this emphasis. Pray that the Lord will help us as we seek to open our hearts more to Him and to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Hopes & Dreams For Gilead - Making "New" Connections

The idea of making connections has been on my mind a lot lately as I have thought about the mission that God has for our fellowship here at Gilead. My desire for us is to spend the rest of this year intentionally focused on making broader and deeper connections with other people. The life of God is experienced in community and in relationships, and as such it requires believers to be constantly living their faith in relation to other people. When God wants to do something in the life of a particular person or a particular congregation, He does it through the contacts that they make with others. We mustn’t forget that God uses human communication and contact to transfer the truth of the gospel from one person to another. “But before people can ask the Lord for help, they must believe in him; and before they can believe in him, they must hear about him; and for them to hear about the Lord, someone must tell them.” (Romans 10.14 [NCV]) This verse is simply the Bible’s way of saying that human connections are essential to the spread of the knowledge and love of God. Our connections need to grow in two directions: new and necessary. I'll talk about necessary connections next week but right now I want to think a little about "new" connections.

When we think about the spread of God’s truth we often think of it in the newness direction. We traditionally call this evangelism or reaching out to someone new and sharing the truth of the gospel that is “new” to them. These new connections are ones that God often uses to introduce people to Himself. They happen whenever a believer moves out in faith and makes him or herself available for new intersections in life. This often means placing yourself in new situations. As an example of this the Pastors of Gilead and some of our members have been assisting Creekside Elementary School with and after school homework help program. We have done this to make new connections and recently we received a note of thanks from the Director of the schools Family Resource Center:

'Brothers Sam, Michael, and Bryan,
Guys you are so appreciated! Thank you for all your time and love you gave to the children in the homework help program. You all are a blessing to the children. The boys especially need a positive male role model. I am excited that you will be able to stay in touch with some of the children over the summer.
God Bless You and the work you are doing in our community,
Debbie

I am glad to say that this is just one of the ways in which God is reaching out through the members of our fellowship and making new and meaningful connections. I will be challenging you over the next few months to reach out even more and be bold in putting yourself in new situations. We are going to be handing out free coffee to vendors and visitors during the Springfest, we are going to be doing a gas station service project in June and a free car wash in July. Our GO Team will be making another round of community contacts this summer to try and welcome people who are new to our area. We will be reaching out through VBS in July and going on a mission trip to Princeton in September. I don’t know what the Lord will do through all of these efforts, but I do know that it will bring us into contact with people that the Lord wants us to meet. When God has a work that He wants to do in someone’s life He sends someone into their life to provide the knowledge, insight, or conviction that they need in order to see that work. I am thankful that you are ready to be sent.

American Christianity In Decline

The latest newsstand edition of Newsweek magazine features a provocative article from the magazine’s religion editor, Jon Meacham, entitled “The Decline and Fall of Christian America”. Armed with results from several recent polls that gauge religious sentiments in the United States, Meacham argues that America is quickly moving toward a more secular future where societal norms and public policy will be shaped less and less by biblical concepts. Instead, he sees America as becoming a place where religion is increasingly private for most and increasingly unnecessary for many. In addition to analyzing poll results, Meacham also gives a thumbnail sketch of evangelical Christianity’s largely unsuccessful attempts over the last thirty years to make America a more “Christian” nation through political activism and popular elections. He celebrates these trends as he thinks that they will make the nation stronger and will make religion even more meaningful for the dwindling numbers who actually possess any religion. I found the article thought-provoking, and I want to bring a few of Meacham’s facts and statistics forward for consideration:

“… the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent.”
“… the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million.”
“The proportion of Americans who think religion ‘can answer all or most of today’s problems’ is now at a historic low of 48 percent.”
“… terrible economic times have not lead to an increase in church attendance.” *

As we contemplate facts such as these, we begin to get a picture of a land in which people want “spirituality” that has no authoritative strings attached. It is sobering to think that there are 2.6 million more atheists and agnostics in the U.S. than there were twenty years ago. Over the last twenty years, over two million people have decided that there either is no god or, at the very least, there is no god who makes any difference. Apparently, even those who believe in God are increasingly convinced that their pastor and Bible have little to say that can make any difference in the problems of the world. Even a financial crisis and predictions of looming economic doom have not induced people to seek answers at a place of worship.

I am not, for the moment, concerned with how we have gotten to this place. Nor am I idealizing America’s past because, for better or for worse, it is past and we do not live there any longer. Furthermore, I believe that hanging on to a misty-eyed reminiscence of “what used to be” will keep us from addressing the days that the Lord has given us in the present. Right now, we probably know or come into contact with one of the people represented by these numbers. The question we have to answer is what are we going to do in light of the fact that we live in a world in which people are increasingly isolated from one another and are principally looking to their own preferences in order to guide them spiritually. What is the Christian call? What is the Christian answer to this age? Jesus challenged His disciples to “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5.16 [NAS]) This passage contains some strong clues concerning how we are to engage our world with the transforming truth of the gospel. I will point to two.

First: The essence of what we have to communicate to the world is an intimate relationship with God. Jesus says that God is our Father and that He takes personal interest in the details of our lives. It glorifies our Father when people see the relationship that we have with Him and find it attractive. Our message is not that we have better ways of describing God; it is that we know Him better because of our relationship to Jesus.

Second: The way that we share this truth with outsiders is through community. Jesus said that our lights can shine in such a way that other people see our good works. The way to which He is referring is not merely a set of ethical rules to live by, but a pattern of shared life that only God’s family has. To be literal, every time you see the word “you” in Matthew 5.16 you should think, “y’all” (or “you guys” for those outside of the South). Jesus is not simply speaking to a group of individuals and telling them that they each need to set about tending to their own personal “light”. He is speaking to a community and telling them corporately to relate, share, and live together in such a way that outsiders see it and glorify the God of that community.

According to Meacham, fewer people today feel that the Church has answers to the pressing problems that real people have to face. I believe that the Body of Christ has something vital to share with our world. We need to realize, however, that the answers people need are not simply words about life but a way of living life. Our message is not one that can be conveyed by any one individual or even a group of "individuals". It has to be carried by a community. To quote High School Musical, "We're all in this together." Our message is a relationship communicated through relationship. I pray that God will help us to demonstrate this way with increasing love and power over the days that are ahead.

* All quotes taken from the Newsweek article “The End Of Christian America”. Article can be accessed at http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583.

When Your Efforts Seem Like Nothing

“On October 17 of that same year, the Lord sent another message through the prophet Haggai. ‘Say this to Zerubbabel, to Jeshua, the high priest, and to the remnant of God's people there in the land: Is there anyone who can remember this house—the Temple—as it was before? In comparison, how does it look to you now? It must seem like nothing at all!’” (Haggai 2.1-3 [NLT])

Around 520 B.C., the prophet Haggai brought these words to Zerubbabel who was the governor appointed over Jerusalem by the Persians. Almost seventy years earlier the city of Jerusalem had fallen to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon in a massacre of rape and pillage. The Bible describes the fall of Jerusalem this way,"The king killed the young men even when they were in the Temple. He had no mercy on the young men or women, the old men or those who were sick. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon all the things from the Temple of God, both large and small, and all the treasures from the Temple of the Lord and from the king and his officers. Nebuchadnezzar and his army set fire to God's Temple and broke down Jerusalem's wall and burned all the palaces. They took or destroyed every valuable thing in Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar took captive to Babylon the people who were left alive, and he forced them to be slaves for him and his descendants ... The country was an empty wasteland for seventy years …” (2 Chronicles 36.17-21 [NCV]) It had been a bitter time for the children of Israel. They had lost their homes and livelihoods. All that was once familiar to them had been stripped from them as they were led, some mutilated and in chains, hundreds of miles away to the kingdom of Babylon to be slaves. Many had seen wives, children, husbands, and parents cut down by the Babylonian sword and, understandably, they had very little hope for the future. The prophet of those days, Jeremiah, had been fittingly referred to as “the weeping prophet”, for there were many reasons for despair and sorrow.

But now things were different for Zerubbabel, fifteen years earlier he had led the children of Israel out of their captivity and reunited them with their homeland. But he was dismayed at how the people, busied with the work of reconstructing their lives, had quickly forgotten the lessons that God had intended to teach through their exile. They built houses. They planted fields. They rebuilt and opened shops and trades that had once belonged to their parents. They sorted out, and in many cases bickered over, what land belonged to whom. The older people were thrilled to be back in their native land where they could show their children all the places about which they had told stories during the long years of exile. Zerubbabel had himself been swept up into the euphoria of having returned to Jerusalem, but an unsettling awareness had slowly made him realize that things were not what they had been when Judah was an independent state. Charred piles of rubble now lay humbly where the king’s palace, the city walls, and the temple of the Lord had once proudly stood. They served as constant reminders of the pillage, rape, and destitution of that miserable day seventy years past. Yet the children of Israel, consumed in the pursuit of new personal opportunities after their many years of waiting, seemed indifferent to how the center of Israel’s corporate identity lay in ruins. But the Lord was unwilling to let them ignore their past and sent the prophet Haggai to tell the people that they had become so busy about their own lives that they had forsaken the God who had delivered them from captivity

The Lord had spoken through the prophet Haggai and told the people that although they had taken great pains to live well, they had not concerned themselves with rebuilding the temple. As a result of Haggai’s message, the people had set about the temple’s reconstruction. The prospect of restoring Jerusalem to its former glory excited the people, and they looked forward to once again being able to worship God as He deserved. Rebuilding the temple, however, was a daunting task that required intense effort and yielded disappointing results that eventually discouraged the Hebrews. Many who had seen Solomon’s original temple watched with disappointment as the new temple was constructed, as they realized that this temple would pale in comparison to the majesty and craftsmanship of Solomon’s. It was against this backdrop that God began speaking through the prophet Haggai to encourage the people:

“But now take courage ... all you people still left in the land, says the Lord. Take courage and work, for I am with you, says the Lord Almighty. My Spirit remains among you, just as I promised when you came out of Egypt. So do not be afraid. For this is what the Lord Almighty says: The future glory of this Temple will be greater than its past glory, says the Lord Almighty. And in this place I will bring peace. I, the Lord Almighty, have spoken!" (Haggai 2.4-9 [NLT])

“It must seem like nothing at all!” It is possible that many of you feel this way about some aspect of your lives. You have seen the Lord do great things through you. You have aspired to accomplish great things for His name’s sake. You set about cleaning up the charred rubble of some past decisions in your life. But the going has gotten tough and the results seem small. You look at the work that you set out to do and the people you intended to reach and you think, “It all seems so small.” Perhaps you have made sacrifices for someone close to you or have extended yourself financially in order to reach out and you had great dreams of what success might look like. Right now, however, you are questioning the wisdom of your sacrifice and may be feeling as though you have accomplished little for God. My encouragement to you is the encouragement of Haggai, pluck up your courage and work with confidence that God has not called His children to futility or fruitlessness. I am sure that in your heart you sincerely believe in the commitments and the sacrifices you’ve made. However, I also understand that you sometimes feel discouraged by the steepness of the climb and the slow pace of progress. Brother. Sister. Church. “The future glory of this Temple will be greater than its past glory.” God is not done with you yet. His plan continues to unfold with you as an integral part, fulfilling the purposes that He has given you. Let this be an encouragement to you: the best is yet to come.

The Last Sermon

Fred Winters had been Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Maryville, Illinois, for over 22 years when he took the pulpit for the Sunday morning service on March 8th. It would be fascinating to know if Pastor Winters had any forebodings of what would transpire during that early morning service. The following are details of what occurred according to an affidavit obtained by a local St. Louis television station: “Terry Sedlacek walked toward the pulpit area and was addressed by Pastor Winters. Sedlacek then raised a weapon and fired one round in the direction of the Pastor. The bullet pierced the pastor's bible sending confetti into the air. Pastor Winters began running west toward the edge of the stage with Sedlacek running parallel next to the stage. Pastor Winters then jumped from the stage where he landed on the ground. Sedlacek then placed himself next to the Pastor and fired multiple shots striking Winters.”* This is a rather sterile recounting of the last moments of Fred Winters’ earthly life. He was declared dead on arrival at a local hospital. There is much about this story that is perplexing and horrifying. The motives of the assailant are still a mystery, and the process of coming to grips with the tragedy has only started to come home to his church and family members. There are, of course, the larger questions concerning how a senseless episode like this could possibly serve God’s greater purposes. Fred Winters’ wife and two young daughters will have to grapple with these “larger questions” on a very personal and immediate level. A rock of this magnitude is bound to make ripples when it is thrown into the pond of life.

The last sermon of Fred Winters served as a particularly poignant and provocative image for me because it cast the calling of the ministry of the Word of God in sharp relief. I could not help but imagine myself in a similar situation. What if my next sermon were to be my last before I was called Home? What if I were called directly from the pulpit and into the very presence of God to hear His final verdict on my life and work? How would I feel about the way I had handled the Word of Truth? Would I feel as though I had hearkened to Paul’s challenge: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2.15 [NIV]) The events of last Sunday morning were a powerful reminder to me that compromising with the truth of God is a perilous pastime. Every thinking preacher realizes that there will be portions of Scripture that will be harder for his fellow believers to receive than others. Every discerning pastor is aware of the potential for offense and misunderstanding that is present every time he brings a message from the Bible. Preachers want to be liked just like everyone else does; thus, there is a constant pressure to steer clear of difficult teachings and to tell half-truths, instead of the whole truth. I will one day be called to give an account of my stewardship of the pulpit of Gilead Baptist Church. Brothers and Sisters, pray for me that I may proclaim the truth in a manner that is worthy of the One who shed His blood to buy me and gave His Spirit to empower me for this work.

There is no better prayer that you could pray for me and others who are telling forth the Word of God on Sunday mornings than to pray in line with 2 Timothy 4, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” (vv.1-5 [NIV]) Pray that I will discharge all the duties of my calling, not just the ones that are pleasant, simple, and easy. Like Fred Winters, we never know which message might be our last.

* This and other details are available at: http://www.fox2now.com/ktvi-church-shooting-clearer031009,0,5967220.story.

Of Mice & Men: A Plea For Peace

Just when you thought the daily news couldn’t grow any worse there appears the story of a Massachusetts father who assaulted Chuck E. Cheese in a Dartmouth pizzeria. According to SouthCoastToday.com, 34 year old, Trahan Pires “ripped the mascot's headwear off, pointed a finger at the man underneath the mouse costume and yelled at him”.* How could a nice day at Chuck E. Cheese’s go so wrong? According to court documents, it started out as just “another day at the office” for 19 year old Jessie Carvalho. He punched his time card, went to the costume closet and donned the trademark Chuck E. Cheese regalia; prepared to spread excitement and good cheer to delighted children scattered throughout the dining area. Unfortunately sinister forces were lurking in the gaming area in the form of a group of youths who had decided to ambush “Chuck” whenever he made an appearance. They had decided that it would be terrific fun to “behead” the mouse in the middle of the restaurant, while traumatized youngsters looked on. Mr. Cheese, however, proved more difficult to take down than they expected. Even hobbled by a clumsy mouse outfit, Carvalho proved to be too nimble for the youths to apprehend, but his evasive maneuvers ended up costing him dearly. He inadvertently bumped into a young boy who felt as though he had been “manhandled” by the mouse. The boy ran crying to his father (the aforementioned Mr. Pires), who rose to defend his son’s honor by proceeding to “lay the smack down” on Mr. Cheese. As a result, Mr. Pires was able to succeed where the band of youths had failed: off came the mouse’s head.

If this story had taken place in a more civilized country then the misunderstandings could probably have been tidily handled by a few clarifying explanations and a heartfelt apology or two … but … this is America. In America, things don’t get solved unless they go to court and this story is no different. Carvalho (or Chuck E. Cheese) was charged with assault and battery because Pires alleged that the young man had “picked up his son and pinned him against a video game”*. It took eight months for the unfortunate mascot to be acquitted of all charges before a jury of his peers. Mr. Pires was not so fortunate. Monday he pled guilty to assault and battery charges and was slapped with a $500 fine for his misdemeanor. The moral of this story seems to be that a kid really cannot be a kid at the Chuck E. Cheese in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

There is, of course, a healthy dose of comedy about this whole episode, but I want it to serve as an example of how misunderstandings and overreaction can turn a relatively harmless situation into a colossal waste of time, money and emotion. The Bible warns us that “A quick-tempered man does foolish things” (Proverbs 14.17 [NIV]) and that “anger will not help you live the right kind of life God wants.” (James 1.20 [NCV]) My prayer is that we will take words like these to heart as we seek to be people who are governed by wisdom, peace and brotherly love. I hope that Chuck E. Cheese can be a sort of symbol for us of what happens when we storm into a situation with a head full of assumptions but devoid of facts. The next time you are about to speculate about the reason why someone said what they did to you … remember Chuck E. Cheese. The next time you are about to get upset because you feel that someone was insensitive to your situation … remember Chuck E. Cheese. Give people the benefit of your good opinion and take time to talk to them so you can see what they are really thinking. It may keep you from literally “ripping their head off”.

* http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090303/NEWS/903030336

Is True Love Lacking In The Church?

In 2007, LifeWay Research partnered with the North American Mission Board’s Center for Missional Research to conduct a survey of the attitudes and beliefs of Americans who had not attended a church in the last six months or longer. These people tend to fall into two categories: (1) the “unchurched”, or those who have never had any significant interaction with or membership in a church and (2) the “dechurched”, or those who have attended churches in the past but who no longer do so. The researchers asked these people a series of questions aimed at trying to understand what they believe about God and how they perceive the Church and Christians. There are two of their findings that I find particularly disturbing because they will present us with enormous challenges in the way that we share our faith and expand our community. Those surveyed were asked to respond to this statement: “The church is full of hypocrites, people who criticize others for doing the same things they do themselves.” 72% of respondents agreed (Many strongly agreed.) that this accurately describes the Church. They were also asked to respond to this statement: “I think Christianity today is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people.” 79% of those surveyed agreed with this characterization of our faith.*

Let me try to put these numbers in a practical light and show you why we must take them seriously in our own fellowship. Imagine that I take ten random people who do not go to church from places all over Hardin County and bring them into your life over the next month and have them get to know you. As they come to realize that you are a believer and a member of Gilead Baptist Church, seven of them will initially and naturally suspect that you probably do not live up to the beliefs you hold and that your church is full of people just like you. They will expect you to criticize others for things that you routinely do yourself. Additionally, of those same ten people, eight will naturally assume that your involvement in our congregation is principally because you find some significance in the rituals and routines of your religion. They will not assume that you know God any better than they do, nor will they expect that you know how to love people any better than they do. In other words, most of those outside the Church think that we Christians talk a great deal about a God that we do not really know and preach to people that we do not really care about.

This paints a daunting picture of the environment in which we are sharing our faith and seeking to build relationships with people outside of our church. Many of the people we come into contact with simply do not see how God uses the gathered body of Christ to manifest His glory or to change lives. Gathered worship and Bible study are being increasingly viewed as unnecessary to develop meaningful relationships with God or men. One of the directors of the LifeWay study described the difficulty this way, “The belief that church attendance isn’t necessary for spiritual well-being is just as common among adults who grew up in church as it is among those who attended church less often as children. Unchurched people do not understand the connection between having a relationship with God and being with other believers in church.”** As a pastor, this troubles me greatly. I want people to see the love that we have for one another and for our God. If someone rejects the God that we love, then that is a tragedy for them; however, if they reject the assertion that we love our God, then that is a tragedy for us. Furthermore, if someone rejects the brotherhood of our gathered body, then that is a loss for them. If this same someone rejects the idea that we have any brotherhood worthy of the name, then that is a loss for us.

God has not been silent about the fact that He intends for His children to be more than a bunch of individuals that have similar beliefs. He wants us to be a growing family of transformed and transforming disciples who really belong to one another. Consider the following description of this family of God, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts … bearing with one another … forgiving each other … put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body … teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3.12-16 [ESV]) Our unchurched community needs to see this kind of family in our church. I am convinced that God’s agenda for us at Gilead is that we live up to the calling that He has given us and that one of the most important ways to do that is through small group interactions with one another. Our LIFE group ministry is intended to give our family a chance to grow in the areas of forgiving, encouraging and teaching one another. Not only is this the kind of community that God has called us to be but, as the survey data have indicated, it is also the best way to demonstrate that we are not hypocrites who care more about buildings and programs than people. Please pray with me that God would continue to bless our work to become a church that is known primarily because of the way we love God and the way we love one another.

* For analysis and summary of the data for this survey refer to http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/mainpage/0,1701,M%253D200900,00.html or http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0%2C1703%2CA%25253D166950%252526M%25253D200906%2C00.html
** Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research, quoted from above article.

Observations On An Ice Storm - A Parable

On Wednesday morning, January 28, most of us in Hardin County woke up to the sad reality that we were without power. Dark hallways, frigid indoor temperatures, and dead appliances served as somber testaments to the fact that our homes had no electricity. All of us have endured a temporary loss of electricity before, but few were prepared for the extent of “roughing it” that we would have to endure. Kentucky’s meteorological misfortunes have earned it the dubious distinction of being featured in a TIME magazine article*. Journalist S. James Snyder reports that the aftermath of the recent ice storms is impressive from both a statistical and personal standpoint. He reports that “Gov. Steve Beshear described the fallout from last week's ice storm as the state's largest-ever natural disaster,”** as 700,000 homes and businesses were deprived of power as a result of the ice storm. As of this writing, seven days after the storm, Kentucky power companies report that there are still in excess of 200,000 customers who have yet to see power restored.*** On a recent trip to Wal-Mart, I saw first-hand evidence of the extent to which this event has affected people: batteries and flashlights of any appreciable size, camping stoves, lanterns, propane tanks, candles and corded phones were scarcely to be found. The proportions of the storm’s impact have been both numerically and geographically impressive as people from Arkansas to Illinois have had to cope with the aftermath.

This last week has also seen profound personal drama associated with the advent of ice. The Associated Press today reported that the Kentucky death toll attributed to the storm had risen to 24. On a more pedestrian note, Snyder reports that some local officials have been enormously frustrated in their attempts to address the week’s difficulties:

“Perhaps no one in the state was more frustrated than Randell Smith, the emergency management director of Grayson County in western Kentucky, who told the Associated Press Friday that they had yet to receive any aid from either the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Red Cross. As for the 25 National Guardsman who had arrived in his county, Smith said they did not have any of the equipment needed to clear away fallen trees. 'Disgusted' was the word that the mayor of Leitchfield, Ky., William Thomason, used to describe his frustration with state and federal officials.” **

These are merely a small example of abnormal stresses bringing out the worst in people, as they try to cope with a situation where questions far outnumber answers, and where, what few answers there are, seem to satisfy no one. Complaining, confusion, and frustration are standard ingredients in a situation of this kind, but there has been a positive side as well. Neighbors have opened their homes to one another and have reached out to help each other. Many discovered new found space for conversation and reflection in a world temporarily cleansed from the din of electronic media.

As profound as the statistical and personal impact of this storm have been, I believe that there is an even greater impression that God wants us to receive from this episode. First, He wants us to see how powerless we really are to control the world around us. Most of us had plans for the last seven days that scarcely involved kerosene and chainsaws. There were things to be bought, meetings to be made, events to be attended, and programs to be watched. For the most part, we did not question our ability to accomplish what we set out to do a week ago, and we believed that our plans had the air of certainty about them. In this, however, we were wrong. The ice on my power lines may as well have had this statement written across it, “People can make all kinds of plans, but only the Lord's plan will happen.” (Proverbs 19.21 [NCV]) Our lack of electrical power served as a poignant parable of our lack of power in a far more important area: the circumstances of our future. The splintered remains of the trees in my front yard may as well bear James’ words “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go … and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring … Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” (James 4.13-15 [ESV]) It is helpful for us to be reminded that, as children of God, we can never have too much humility. Though it might be disconcerting to an unbeliever to be confronted with the realization that he does not hold the future, we are to reckon our security upon a different scale. Because we understand that the One who is ordering this world toward its appointed end is both the most powerful and the most benevolent being in the universe, we realize that our future is secure in the hands of God. This is a realization that produces humility.

The second truth that I believe God wants us to be cognizant of is that He has blessed us tremendously through civilized society. A disaster like this one demonstrates how much energy is necessary to keep the world civilized. It takes enormous amounts of money, cooperation, and coordination to engineer an electrical grid. We are benefitting from the functioning and funding of government and business institutions at various levels. The prevalence of these institutions in our experience can tempt us to take them for granted, but just reflect for a moment on how much more difficult this past week would have been without the ability to receive assistance from utility companies from other states or without road crews who are trained and designated to assist us during times of distress. The fact that our social institutions function as well as they do is a blessing for which we ought to be legitimately thankful, and our thanks should principally be directed heavenward. "Lord, God of our ancestors, you are the God in heaven. You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. You have power and strength, so no one can stand against you.” (2 Chronicles 20.6 [NCV]) God uses institutions like businesses, families, societies, and governments to mercifully benefit us and to keep our lives from being as hard as they might be otherwise. This is a realization that engenders thankfulness.

There are certainly other truths that can be gleaned from times of unusual deprivation, but for the moment I am content to pray that God will use this ice storm to make us more humble and more thankful people. According to God those are precisely the kind of people that He uses to bless others.

* article can be viewed at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1876304,00.html
** see article above.
*** Further details at: http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=9786584

The Shack - A New Portrayal Of God (Part 2)

This week I will be addressing the final concern that I have with William P. Young’s bestselling book, The Shack. It surrounds the issue of the nature of sin and the work that Christ has done in order to address that problem in the lives of people. The question of what Jesus accomplished on the cross is vital because it will be intimately attached to how one sees the world’s problems and what one sees as being the solution for those problems. As I pointed out last week, Young defines sin as being a failure or refusal to depend totally upon God in life. Presumably, this refusal to trust God is motivated by a fear that He will somehow hurt us or that we will be betrayed. Young does not present it as a moral defect or an illicit love for that which we should not have. His portrayal has the effect of moving sin out of a moral category where judgment would be appropriate to a relational category of fear and distrust that seems to call for understanding and nurture. It is important to realize that the Bible represents sin as having both moral and relational origins and consequences. Young does not appear to understand this and presents only part of the truth. This would not be a problem if Young were clear that he is only presenting part of the truth, but sadly this is not the case. Instead he portrays a “softer” picture both of sin and of God’s reaction to it as being the whole truth. Consider the following quote from “Papa” [the representation of God the Father]: “I am not who you think I am … I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” (p. 120) This is simply an insufficient view of humanity’s sin problem. Sin is certainly its own punishment, but that is not all that it is. It is also a moral evil that needs to be addressed judicially. The Bible is clear that God is merciful and patient, but that He is also an avenger of evil. Compare the quotation above with the Scripture’s comprehensive presentation of God’s character in Psalm 99: “O LORD our God, You answered them; You were a forgiving God to them, And yet an avenger of their evil deeds.” (Psalm 99.8 [NAS]) The Biblical writers understood that God’s mercy was not inconsistent with His justice.

Young’s treatment of sin simply as a failure to live in complete dependence upon God presents too passive a picture. Our problem is not merely that we fail to trust God, but that we have a nature that actively opposes His work in our lives. Young does not seem to grasp the fact that humans not only struggle to believe that God is good, but even when they believe in His goodness, they still struggle to conform their behavior and affections to that goodness. Papa misdiagnoses when she tells Mack, “The real underlying flaw in your life … is that you don’t think that I am good. If you knew I was good and that everything—the means, the ends, and all the processes of individual lives—is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me.” (p. 126)

This incomplete picture of sin and its consequences lead Young to an incomplete picture of the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. “Papa” describes Jesus’ significance in this way: “He [Jesus] gave up everything, so that by his dependent life he opened a door that would allow you to live free enough to give your rights.” (p. 137) In other words, since man’s problem is that he is not dependent enough upon God, Jesus came to provide an example of what the totally dependent life should look like. This makes His dependence upon God the central mission of His life rather than His sacrificial death and miraculous resurrection. Young sees the significance of Jesus in the fact that He provided a preeminent moral example that teaches His followers how they might come to live in radical dependence upon God. Papa describes this to Mack in the following ways:

“Although he [Jesus] is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything.”
“He is just the first to … absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence … Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.” (pp. 99-100)

While the moral example of Jesus is indispensable to His followers, it is not the central reason that He came. In His own words, He came, “to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10.45 [NIV]) Isaiah describes the nature of this ransom as follows, “For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53.12 [NIV]) Both these verses describe Jesus as coming to redeem people from the power and guilt of sin. His example did not bring about this redemption, but His death and resurrection did. This is because of His unique position as both God and man who could both satisfy the demands of God’s justice as well as reveal the triumph of His mercy. This is the preeminent message of Jesus’ life and of the Scriptures that testify about Him; however, this message receives no attention in The Shack. God is said to have been completely reconciled to the whole world through the death and resurrection of Jesus, but Papa, who has much to say in the book about many other issues, devotes little time to explaining in more detail how the cross and empty tomb brought this reconciliation about.

In Young’s mind, the life of Jesus seems to be saying that God no longer has an axe to grind with anyone, and thus, the ball is in our corner and it is up to us to come to Him. But how we are to come is scarcely delineated in the book because apparently God no longer has any requirements of people. For instance, Papa tells Mack that, “I’ve never placed an expectation on you or anyone else … because I have no expectations, you never disappoint me.” (p. 206) Apparently, among the expectations that God has dispensed with, is His insistence that conscious faith in Jesus is the only way to come to Him. In the novel “Jesus” tells Mack that, “I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu (i.e. the Holy Spirit).” (p. 110) This is in sharp distinction to the words of Jesus in John 14.6 wherein He claimed to be “the” way, not simply the best way. In fact, The Shack advances the notion that God is savingly revealed through many different systems of faith. Consider the following quote from “Jesus” in the book:
“Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans … I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous … I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, in to my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.” (p. 182)

I will conclude my treatment of this book by acknowledging that there are some useful things to be gained from it. Young employs some compelling metaphors and images that help the reader to approach certain truths from a fresh standpoint. He attempts to grapple intelligently with the perplexing mystery of how such evil could exist in a world created by a perfect and loving God. He seems to sense the ineffectiveness of much of what goes under the name of Christianity to address people on a profound heart level, and he desires that people should relate to God in a more intimate and transformative manner. I commend him for his aims and for his obvious literary talents, but as I have delineated above, I have grave reservations about some of the partial truths that he has presented as whole truths. Consequently, I cannot recommend the book to anyone except those who will read it with a keen and discerning eye. I pray that I have not been uncharitable to William Young or to the points that he intended to make.

The Shack - A New Portrayal Of God (Part 1)

Few people who run in Christian circles have not heard of The Shack, a surprisingly successful book that the author, William P. Young, originally wrote as a personal story for his children. In 2007, Young published the novel himself at the suggestion of friends and has watched as it has sold over 1 million copies. It is the fictional story of a man named “Mack” whose young daughter was abducted and killed by a serial murderer in a shack in the Oregon wilderness. Years later, Mack receives an invitation from God to meet Him at the shack so that He can help Mack work through the pain and anger he feels toward God over the death of his daughter. When Mack arrives at the shack he meets God as a trinity of a large African-American woman, a Jewish man, and a small Asian woman who correspond to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, respectively. Most of the novel is dialogue between Mack and the members of the trinity as they explain the nature of life more fully and seek to disabuse him of several misperceptions he has about the nature of God. The object of this divine dialogue is to relieve Mack from “the Great Sadness” that has descended upon his life since the murder.

Judging from the sales figures and the buzz that this book has generated, it is clear that people are finding something compelling in The Shack. Everyone I know who has read the book has come away with strong opinions, some positive and some negative. Several people have asked me to read the book and provide them with an assessment of its message. They have asked me to do this because they feel that this is a novel that clearly has some lessons it is trying to teach about how we should relate to and understand God. I have read no other opinions or reviews of the book so that my assessment might be as unbiased as possible. I do, however, view this book, as I must view all lessons, through the lens of God’s Word. I have endeavored to be like the people described in Acts 17: “And the people of Berea were more open-minded … and they listened eagerly to Paul's message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to check up on Paul and Silas, to see if they were really teaching the truth.” (Acts 17.11 [NLT]) As believers, we are called to be an open-minded but discerning people. It is in that spirit that I read The Shack and have come away with serious concerns about many of the assertions that it makes. My concerns fall within three broad categories which I will describe below.

My first concern is that The Shack paints a rather dim view of Biblical revelation and the teaching ministry of the Church. I would be the first to admit that churches are not what they should be and that the Bible is too often taught in a spiritless, impractical manner, but Young seems to be taking issue with more than the fact that there is room for improvement in these areas. In various places in the novel, his main character, Mack, expresses frustration with the very idea that God principally reveals Himself through the Word of the Bible and the work of His Church. Consider passages like the following:

“In seminary [Mack] had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper … it seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.” (pp. 65-66)

Apparently, God needs to make Himself more plain to us than is possible through reading and being taught the Scriptures. This comes to Mack in the form of a note from God in the mailbox. In response, Mack comments that “part of me would like to believe that God would care enough about me to send a note.” (p. 71) Mack thinks that a note is a better way for God to express His love for us because otherwise all we have is a dusty book whose study is often a “tedious and boring exercise in coming up with the right answers, or rather, the same old answers to the same old Bible story questions, and then trying to stay awake during … excruciatingly long prayers.” (p. 107) This is the way that interaction with God’s Word is described in the book, and it is not presented as the biased view of one particular man. It is crucial for the reader to understand that the God of Young’s book is constantly challenging Mack’s “religious conditioning” and his “preconceived notions” which is the obvious agenda of the novel. The Shack is not targeted at unbelievers but at those of us who have grown up under Biblical instruction all of our lives, and the essential message is summed up by what God, the Father figure, (i.e. “Papa”) tells Mack: “I’m not asking you to believe anything, but I will tell you that you’re going to find this day a lot easier if you simply accept what is, instead of trying to fit it into your preconceived notions.” (p. 119) Unlike the Bereans, Mack is not urged to assess whether his notions are Biblical but rather to abandon his notions en masse. As he does so, he tells God that “This weekend, sharing life with you [i.e. with God] has been far more illuminating than any of those answers.” (p. 198)

Similarly, Mack is told to abandon the way in which he has commonly understood the Church. The Jesus character tells him that Christians have gotten the Church all wrong by failing to understand that, “It’s all about relationships and simply sharing life.” (p. 178) There is certainly a valid critique in this assessment of the Church as it is understood by many, but Young’s description of the “ideal Church” as needing no organization or expectations is overly simplistic and puts forth an organic and natural association that requires no effort, struggle or work. Mack responds to this revelation in these excerpts:

“For Mack these words were like a breath of fresh air! Simple. Not a bunch of exhausting work and long list of demands, and not the sitting in endless meetings staring at the backs of people’s heads, people he really didn’t even know. Just sharing life.” (p. 178)

“I find the way you are so different from the will-intentioned religious stuff I’m familiar with.” (p. 179)

“Mack was thinking of his friends, church people who had expressed love to him and his family. He knew they loved Jesus, but were also sold out to religious activity …” (p. 181)

I have no problem admitting that the Church needs to always keep relationships and life sharing at the center of its existence, but I do have a problem with the way in which Young portrays life sharing and relationships as being diametrically opposed to “meetings”, “exhausting work”, and “religious activity”. He seems to be advocating a Christian life that has everything to do with “being” and very little to do with “doing”. It is closer to the truth to say that our being and our doing must work in tandem.

My second broad concern is that The Shack seeks to explain something of the nature of God as three persons in one essence; however, it does so in ways that must be approached with caution. As the Trinity is an incomprehensible reality, I am inclined to grant Young a significant amount of latitude and artistic license in his portrayal. He rightly indicates that relationship is bound up within the very nature of God and that love is not merely a created reality, but that it is the essence of the dynamic that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. No doubt the portrayal of this in the book will provide some help in attempting to apprehend this reality; yet, Young makes certain assertions about the nature of the relationship within the Trinity that need to be read with discernment. The two assertions that are most problematic concern authority and gender. The Bible is clear that God does not possess gender, bot He clearly reveals Himself to us in Scripture in masculine terms. Young’s portrayal of God the Father as an Aunt Jemima figure (a.k.a. “Papa”) is intended to be an iconoclastic way of declaring that God is neither male nor female. As “Papa” tells Mack, “For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning” (p. 93) Here we see what we have seen earlier, namely that “religious conditioning”, even that formed by Biblical truth must be overcome. In light of this, Mack asks why God seems to prefer being referred to in masculine terms in the Bible:

He asks, “why is there such an emphasis on you being a Father? I mean, it seems to be the way you most reveal yourself.”
“Papa” responds, “Well … there are many reasons for that and some of them go very deep. Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don’t misunderstand me, both are needed—but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence.” (p. 94)

In other words, the principle factors that have motivated God’s self-revelation in masculine terms have been pragmatic. God reveals Himself as Father because the state of fatherhood is so deplorable. Presumably, He would have revealed Himself as mother had motherhood not been in relatively good shape. This is the typical way that feminist scholars deal with the Bible’s treatment of gender. Any portrayal of gender roles or distinctions are attributed to God’s accommodating Himself to cultural pressures or practical realities and are never seen as being in any way essential to the nature of God Himself. It should be understood that there is no Scriptural reason to believe that God’s masculine self-revelation is simply a concession to human depravity.

Young’s treatment of authority is equally troubling. He asserts that all authority is a result of man’s attempt to exert his independence from God. Authority structures have absolutely been corrupted by the fall, but the message of The Shack is that submission to authority itself is a result of the fall. Or, in other words, the universe is intended to have no authority structure to it because God’s nature is without authority. Jesus explains this to Mack as follows:

“Papa [i.e. “the Father”] is as much submitted to me as I am to him, or Sarayu [i.e. “the Holy Spirit”] to me or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”
“How can that be? Why would the God of the universe want to be submitted to me?”
“Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship. I don’t want slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.” (pp. 145-146)

The concept of sharing life is Young’s central picture of what it means to have achieved godliness. It is a vision in which there is no authority but rather a simple being being one with everyone else. This conception bears far more similarity to the Hindu idea of Atman or the Buddhist idea of Nirvana than it does to the Christian notions of our submission to God as bride, servant, and child. Gone apparently is the Lord Jesus before whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess. Gone apparently is the King seated upon the throne of David judging the nations with equity. It is certainly a comforting truth to know that God lowers Himself to be of service to us, but the assertion that the Father is submitted to the Son is nowhere found in Scripture. Likewise, to contend that God is submitted to me in the same way that Jesus is submitted to the Father is to empty the terms "submission" and "authority" of any meaning.

Next week, I will treat the most significant problem I have with The Shack, namely its insufficient portrayal of the nature of the ministry and work of Jesus on behalf of sinful people.