Hitchhiker's Guide to the Meaning of Everything

life

2008-03-18T20:30:00.003-07:00

Life is ridiculous.

I know someone who was in a place he knew he shouldn't be, and a man with a mask and a gun ripped him off. But he knew the guy and called his name. Now the thief is running for his life from the people who owned what he stole, and this guy is in fear for his life because the thief knows he knows who he is.

And it's all nasty kids playing gangster with real guns and real hit men chasing other kids playing gangster.

The goalposts are gone, while we inflict pain and misery on one another. All we wanted was a little security, a little adventure, a little pleasure and a little love. When the goalposts are gone, the dream dies and is replaced with alternative dreams that trade the promise of thrills for the high risk of death, the hope of fulfillment for the certainty of misery, the prospect of riches and security for the inevitability of losing it all.

In the midst of all of this, we have to learn how to cope. Some problems are short-term, trivial things. Other problems repeat themselves or go on and on with no sunrise on the horizon.

I want to attempt something many other people have gone after - a key to the problem of evil. But not just any old generic problem of evil. I want to look at the problem that plagues us in the long term, whether it's the ever present reality of people who live to victimize other people, or the personal challenges of affliction and never-ending problems of life that offer no ready solutions. On the way, I'd like to tell some stories, probe some beliefs, make at least some attempt to find answers.

Maybe it's not worth the trouble, but I want to try.

The Seventh Thing that's Wrong

2007-06-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The seventh thing that's wrong:

Unbiblical preeminence of the pastor or elder's board that rules rather than serving.

Just at a time when servant leadership, once a theme in the Christian faith, is infiltrating the business world, the church continues to struggle with power politics. In fact, the CEO model from business is infiltrating the church, turning congregational government into executive leadership that sometimes leaves the average church member thinking that the pastor and elders board are just there to push them around. When that happens, it's a tragedy.

But I know pastors. A lot of them. And I have rarely met one who did not have a servant's heart and a sincere desire to minister to the flock rather than dominate it. Perception and reality are sometimes at odds, though, and those pastors who long to serve but are seen as ruling instead need to look at what they are doing and fix it.

Which leads me to ask church leaders: Are you leading because of the rush it gives you or because you are truly willing to sacrifice and serve? If your desire is to serve, is the congregation's perception of you the same as your desire?

The Sixth Thing that's Wrong

2007-05-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The sixth thing that's wrong:

Emphasis on old Covenant law, especially tithing, that breeds guilt.

Christianity is a faith based on liberty, yet its members have declared Jesus Christ to be Lord. That creates a unique tension. Can those who obey also be free? Some Christians assume that freedom in Christ is just a new version of living by the rules. Thus they serve up heavy doses of Israel's law, modified it somewhat to match the teaching of Jesus. They fail to understand that, for the Christian, the law is internalized. It's not a matter of obeying rules but actually of being new people whose desire is to find the pattern of life Jesus set out for them. Learning to be new people is not a matter of figuring out the rules and then obeying them. It's a matter of discovering that new life in Jesus means that our whole approach to life has changed, that we actually want to be like Jesus.

The tithing issue is a challenge to churches. The tithe in Israel's faith before Jesus was set within the rules, and it ensured at steady income to keep the temple and priesthood operating. If churches say that giving is no longer a rule, they risk not getting the income. So some of them drag out the tithe and make it a Christian rule, alienating those who reject the notion that going to church means you have to pay for the privilege. Christian giving isn't supposed to be anything like that. If you belong to Jesus, all you have belongs to him too. He's given it to you to use, so giving is nothing more than a grateful response to his goodness. Churches need not fear if they drop the tithing rule. Those who love Jesus and his work will give to it. Those who don't want to give should be able to worship for free. The tithe is not the price of admission.

Which leads me to ask the church: Have we forgotten liberty because we so much want our people to do the right thing? Have we introduced Christian rules as a substitute for Christian transformation?

The Fifth Thing that's Wrong

2007-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The fifth thing that's wrong:

Activities and ministries that replace our first love of Christ.

Churches are busy places, full of programs for this and activities for that generally have a rationale within their larger missions. But activity can easily become disconnected from the purpose for which they were created. Activities can substitute for spiritual growth and depth. Activities can be a real obstacle to contemplation that needs peace and calm.

More seriously, some churches measure their effectiveness by the extensiveness and variety of their programming. As long as everyone is busy and happy, the church is doing its job. Of course, these busy and happy church members are also immature in their faith.

Which leads me to ask the church: Is our main focus on carrying out the Great Commission - making disciples, baptising them and teaching them? Are we interested in genune spirituality or great programming?

The Fourth Thing that's Wrong

2007-05-23T07:04:00.001-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The fourth thing that's wrong:

Biblical illegitmacy of church membership that "divides the body of Christ."

Ah, the old church membership issue. It's easy to see why this one's a problem. Church membership makes me in and you out. Membership has its privileges. Here we have a system where it's not enough that you attend church. You have to join the church, if you qualify - evidence of conversion, good moral character, willingness to serve, and so on.

Isn't it enough simply to start attending a church and let it be known that you want to identify with the believers there? Can't we all just get along, without the need to sign up? All that official membership does is to tell certain attenders that they belong while others are on the outside.

I would tend to agree if it were not for a few problems that abandoning church membership would create:

1. We live in an era when we need to be careful of those who serve in our midst. Predators and pedophiles often target churches, looking for opportunities. Churches who simply let any volunteer teach a Sunday School class are opening the doors to being preyed upon.
2. Churches are legal societies (which is why you can get a tax refund for donating). As such, they need to follow the rules about decision making, ownership of property, and so on. Knowing who your members are is crucial to this responsibility.
3. Church membership is a way of identifying formally with a body of believers. We live in a fickle age, and churches really need to know who their loyal people are.

Which leads me to ask the church: Have we turned church membership into an exclusive club atmosphere? Do we treat our adherents differently from our members? Is church membership more important than broader fellowship?

The Third Thing that's Wrong

2007-05-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The third thing that's wrong:

Denominationism that divides Christianity and breeds exclusivism.

"My church is better than your church." I grew up in this kind of idiotic environment, though my home church was probably less guilty of this than some others of my era. Strange: We serve the same God for the same goal, and then we turn it into a competition. We use the same Bible but turn small differences in theology or worship style into an opportunity to look down on those who aren't just like us. True, some issues, some theological statements, are hills to die on. No one wants a believe-anything lowest common denominator. But we should be cooperating instead of forming into exclusive camps.

So why not get rid of denominations altogether? Let's face it - a "Christianity Today" style generic evangelicalism is rapidly taking the place of many of the distinctives that once defined us. This means that there is little to define us as different from one another.

Yet denominations, especially if they cooperate with each other, still have a role to play. Denominations give churches a chance to work together on projects, find relationships with one another, and receive the benefits of support and encouragement. If we destroy denominations completely, we lose the opportunity to bind smaller groups of churches together in vital relationship. When everyone is my close friend, then no one is.

Which leads me to ask the church: Have we optimized the potential of our denominational ties or are we continuing to breed exclusivism? Have we seen the power of cooperation or are we telling people like Ken that we would rather show how good we are than do God's work?

The Second Thing that's Wrong

2007-05-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The second thing that's wrong:

Intellectual theologizing that takes the place of spirituality.

Wow! That's a good one. I think it breeds itself in Bible college or seminary where the favorite passtime in the cafeteria for students is arguing the fine (or not so fine) points of theology. Some of these students, who will one day be pastors, assume that a solid theology is equivalent to a solid spirituality.

I remember a man who, while not a pastor, was an expert in one of the many theological systems. He could argue his case until the cows came home. But on Sunday morning, instead of listening to the sermon, he would sit in the middle of the congregation, theology book open on his lap, and he would read. When the service was over, he would go home, talking to no one unless some controversial issue of theology had come up.

Was he spiritual? It's not for me to judge. But he was certainly cold.

Yet there are some responses to this criticism:

1. Christians these days are more likely to err on the side of too little theology than an intellectualized for that takes the place of spirituality.
2. There are some pastors who still elevate the intellect over the heart, but they seem to be a dying breed in mainly very small congregations.

But all this leads me to ask the church - Are we still elevating what we believe so far over what we are supposed to become that our spiritual experience is cold? Do we, on the other hand, have a profound spiritual life but mask it behind our theological position so that others fail to see the life within?

The First Thing that's Wrong

2007-05-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). It gives 10 or more reasons, and I'd like to take them on. The first thing that's Wrong:

A narrow demand that believers worship in a certain way, believe in a certain way.

My response: He's right. Churches are firm believers in a slippery slope. You know how it goes, you start to slide, but the incline takes over, and before you know it you're at the bottom of the mountain, broken and dead. So churches figure out what they consider to be the true way to worship or believe (God's way?) and they stick to it. When their approach is challenged, they start thinking about the slope again, so their tendency is to make people toe the line.

Of course, there are several things wrong with the thinking in the previous paragraph:

1. Nobody can put all churches in the same basket. Some are more paranoid than others. Some aren't paranoid at all. For every bad experience with narrowness and control, there is some other church where people hang a lot looser.
2. The worship wars of the past are beginning to wane as contemporary styles begin to be embraced by young and old alike. True, it's not universally contemporary, but most Christians have found a style they like, in a church of their choice, so that no one is forcing them to worship in a certain way. Again, this isn't universal, but it's pretty common.
3. In the area of belief, I do think that our tendency to over-theologize does lock us into narrow systems (more on this in a later post). But we have to remember one thing - Because the Christian faith is based on what it believes to be a message from God (embodied in the Bible), churches will never be "everything goes" fellowships. Beyond all the arguments over theology and interpretation, there are certain bedrocks that must be there or we lose Christianity and replace it with something else.

Which leads me to ask the church - If we know who we are, why are we so fearful of flexibility in the things that matter less? Why do we try to force people into narrow moulds that simply drive them away? Why are we so based on rules, when Christ has made us free?

What's Wrong with Organized Christianity?

2007-05-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Ken Eckerty has posted a website entitled "Why I left the Organized Church" (http://www.savior-of-all.com/organized.html). He makes it clear that he hasn't left behind his evangelical faith, only the organized churchey part of it.

I suppose a proper supporter of much of organized Christianity could just tell Ken how wrong he is, but I think I need to take him seriously. Here are his main complaints about the organized church:

1. A narrow demand that believers worship in a certain way, believe in a certain way.
2. Intellectual theologizing that takes the place of spirituality.
3. Denominationism that divides Christianity and breeds exclusivism.
4. Biblical illegitmacy of church membership that "divides the body of Christ."
5. Activities and ministries that replace our first love of Christ.
6. Emphasis on old Covenant law, especially tithing, that breeds guilt.
7. Unbiblical preeminence of the pastor or elder's board that rules rather than serving.
8. Professional clergy who believe the church is their church.
9. Transformation of the church into a business with a business-like mentality.
10. Fine points of theology that separate believers from other believers.

Ken has not abandoned fellowship with other believers, but he is alienated from the organized forms of Christian fellowship. Is he right? Is he wrong?

I hope to comment on his ten points in succeeding posts. For now, think about it - Is Ken out to lunch or is his complaint legitimate?

McDonalds Canada and the Spirit of Christmas

2006-12-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

And lo, the Dercee from McDonalds Canada went forth to all of the restaurants it owned (though not to its franchises) that Christmas was banished from the land. No banners or trees or ribbons or Christmas music. Its restaurants were to be as bland as a November's day, with all hint of Christmas stiffled to death. Why, you might ask? Because Christmas is "too controversial."

Meanwhile in Toronto a provincial court judge has banned the Christmas tree from courthouse property. Not, mind you, because of that curious American misreading of its own constitution. Toronto, after all, is in Canada. No it was because Christmas trees are "too controversial."

Meanwhile people of many religions - Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists - laugh at us in amazed surprise. They were never against Christmas. In fact, they kind of liked it. Thus the indentity of the person or persons who declared Christmas "too controversial" remains a mystery. Apparently, in the interests of plurality and multiculturalism we've decided to create a monochrome society in which anything that would give spice to life is forbidden.

I've pretty much given up on saving Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus, because Silver Bells and Baby It's Cold Outside have knocked the stuffings out of Away in a Manger. But society needs to value Christmas for one thing - it seems to be the only time in the year when we reflect on who we are and who we need to be. It's the only doorway, narrow and confused, though it may be, to the true meaning of everything.

And for those who can see past the tinsel (if tinsel is allowed where you are), they may be able to discern dimly a baby in the manger who is the hope of us all.

Michael Richards and the Surprise Factor

2006-11-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) blew it. He admits it, and it's true. In response to heckling at a comedy club, he launched into a racist tyrade that included the "N" word, resulting in the club having to refund everyone's money, including what they paid for drinks. Since that time, Michael's been making the TV circuit, apologizing and offering restitution.

Everyone who knows him says he's a nice guy, absolutely not prone to this kind of thing. Michael says the same thing, telling the world how shocked and surprised he is that those words came out of his mouth. And I believe them. This was utterly out of character, a horrible glitch in an otherwise pretty good life.

Except that there may be another explanation, one that asks us to go down a road we resist exploring. Question: Who among us, even those of us who are gentle souls, has not at some point exploded in anger and said things we never dreamed we would say? Further question: Where did all that nasty stuff come from? The answer I would like to suggest is not an easy one to hear - It comes from the dark place that lurks in all of us. It comes from a true self, a more honest self than the personna we raise to the outside world.

An ancient person in an ancient book with ancient wisdom put it this way:

Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' " (Mark 7:14-15)

The famous novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustrated it perfectly. The two men were one man, except that a drug released Mr. Hyde (an evil and nasty character) from Dr. Jekyll's personna. The facade of the good doctor was torn away so that we could see the Hyde within.

The darkness is there. It shocks and surprises us when it emerges, but it shouldn't. The solution is what this blog is all about. It can't be found in self-help. The darkness needs to be cleansed by the blood of the very one who told us about it.

Living in Uncertain Times

2006-11-20T09:19:00.000-08:00

All of us are one second from disaster. Too gloomy? Probably. I've been thinking a lot about this lately as several challenges have all hit at once. There we are going along in the routine of our lives when along comes a stray bullet that puts us on the ground (I speak in metaphor).

The point is not to dwell on the gloom of this reality, but to know what to do with it. So we live precarious lives. We know that, or we should know that. Some of us spend our existence in fear - what if this happens? What if that happens? How would I survive if my significant other were taken away? What if I got cancer or a heart attack? In some ways it's a wonder all of us aren't curled up in a permanent fetal position, whimpering to ourselves.

The reality that makes the difference is the reality of God. He is the one certainty in our uncertainty, the one person in control when everything is out of control, the one calm voice in the midst of our cries of terror, the one hope when all we know is despair.

In the biblical Psalm 9, we read these words:

The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
Those who know your name will trust in you,
for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.

The key is knowing his name, which is an expression meaning, "having a love relationship with." To be related to God is to know we are never abandoned, never forsaken. But the path to God is one that goes through tribulation, through a recognition that we have been wrong, that we have failed him, and that he sent his own Son to carry our guilt on a cross filled with blood. The path to knowing him comes from kneeling before his risen Son and surrendering our lives to him.

He has never forsaken those who seek him.

The Story of Us Continued

2006-10-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'd walked into the sandwich shop early in the evening, and it was deserted except for the lady behind the counter, who was on the phone. "DNA test?" she was saying, "Who's going to have to pay for that?" She said something else about "paternity" and "Social Services." Then she saw me and ended the phone call.

We've been going through some struggles of her own in our extended family, so I got to talking with her. Her son, while a drug addict, had taken up with a woman who was also an addict, then had broken up with her. She called him to say that she had been pregnant but had gotten an abortion. Then, a few weeks ago, she called from the hospital to say that the baby was now born, and she'd named this woman's son as the father. He, in recovery, has serious doubts that he is the father, but the Social Services department believes the woman and wants him to take responsibility. The woman I was talking too is 67, and can't take on raising a child at her age, but she wants to find a better home for this baby.

You can see how messy it all is, how impossible to unravel without someone suffering. I'm baffled. How can we keep telling ourselves that we're all right, that we just need a little more education, or a little more therapy, or a little more whatever, and we'll come up smelling like roses?

The biggest reckoning we need is with ourselves. We're not all right. Sure, we can point to a story like this one as just an example of the sad fact that some people are messed up. But the story is repeated too many times with too many permutations, and the result is always human suffering. We need to wake up to a new reality - that we're not all right, and we need a Redeemer to rescue us from ourselves.

The Roots of Hate

2006-09-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

Hatred is big in the news these days. They hate us, we hate them, we hate each other. It has to make us wonder why, if we humans are as wonderful as we tell ourselves we are, we seem to want to devour each other with only the slightest provocation.

Hate, I think, is rooted in what we know about ourselves, though we'd never tell anyone - that we are flawed, that there's something desperately wrong with us. Like chickens with their pecking order, we have to maintain the fiction that we are all right by identifying those who are less all right. If I can steep myself in disdain and rejection of those around me, then I can tell myself that, comparatively speaking, I'm close to perfect. Kimveer Gill, the killer at Dawson College in Montreal, hated everyone, it seems. He practically lived on the Internet, feeding his impression that the whole world was locked in some evil conspiracy against him. One can only imagine the personal demons he was fighting, but his rampage of shooting was surely his last attempt to make himself feel right.

This, of course, is a pretty superficial explanation. If we were to go deeper with it, we'd have to ask what it is that is wrong about us, what it is that turns our own inadequacy into hatred. We'd have to look at the way we dehumanize our opponents to justify hating them, how we convince ourselves that they deserve nothing from us, how we come to believe that anything we do against them is justified.

The picture that emerges is pretty dark. We could argue, I suppose, that only a few people are afflicted like this, but the seeds of it are in all of us. There is an answer to it, buried deep in the pages of the Bible, but first we would need to admit that all of us share the roots of hatred. In that admission we can find the pathway out. If you want to find it for yourself, read my posts starting July 3, 2005.

Kimveer Gill and the Limits of Responsibility

2006-09-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

When Kimveer Gill shot up Dawson College in Montreal this week, killing one 18 year old woman, putting two others at death's door, and wounding a total of 19 before shooting himself fatally, he was carrying a lot of baggage. Whatever dark energy was driving him, it drew him into Goth culture, the buying of big guns, the playing of morbid video games (what idiot was allowed to write a game based on the Columbine Massacre let alone be allowed to market it?) and endless paranoid searching of the Internet looking for material to feed his anger at the world.

Meanwhile, about 200 miles east of where I live, a young man justified shooting and killing three people after a party on the grounds that he was so intoxicated that he could not be held responsible for what he did. He was convicted of murder, but his lawyer is appealing.

You think I am now going to launch into a rant about responsibility, insisting that all of us must bear our own burden for what we do, instead of blaming someone or something else. But, as enticing and potentially true as that might be, I'm not ready to go completely down that road. You see, none of us are truly free. We may set a course for ourselves, but we're always influenced by who we are, our past experiences, our loves, our hates. The idea of total freedom of choice is some illusion of some dreamer, not the reality of our daily lives.

Was Kimveer Gill free when he shot up the students of Dawson College? Not by a long shot. He was a driven man, hounded by his hatred of the world, ensnared by the games he played and the mythologies they created. So was he not responsible?

This is where it gets complicated. Suppose that, for arguments' sake, I were to convince you that you are a total slave of your heredity, your past, the things that drive you. Now let me ask you if there was ever a time in your life when you felt tempted to do or say something really bad, and you knew you could resist it and do the right thing...but you did the bad thing anyway. You could argue that you thought you were free to choose good over bad, but you weren't. Yet you know you're not a zombie, that somewhere there is a glimmer of some element of control over your actions, otherwise all of us would always give into whatever served our own interests.

We human beings continue to help others when it does not bring us personal benefit. We continue to be concerned for victims of disasters thousands of miles away. We continue to make at least some good choices that are not nearly as pleasurable as the choices we might have made.

Kimveer Gill was a driven man, but he did not have to go to Dawson College with three guns and start shooting. For that choice, he is responsible.

Do We Need to Ask Why?

2006-09-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a 25 year old man dressed in black trenchcoat and tall boots, and sporting no less than three illegal firearms, walked into Dawson College in Montreal and started shooting right in front of police officers who were already there. In the process he killed one woman and wounded 19 before police finally ended his life. This event brought to the minds of most Montrealers a similar situation in 1989 in which 14 women student engineers were killed by a woman-hating assailant.

Inevitably the questions come - Could it have been prevented? How can we make sure it never happens again? And always the question Why?

Call me jaded, but events like this, as horrifying as they are, really shouldn't be surprising. To the Why question, we can assume that the poor assailant had a rough childhood or lacked friends or got caught up in the Goth culture or was a sociopath who just wanted to shoot some people once in his life. No doubt we'll find out more about him as time goes on.

But we're missing the real answer to the Why question: We, all of us, are cut off from the One who made us. We've opted for independence and we've become something different from the plan God originally had for us. For some in our midst, the road of independence takes a darker turn, and whatever life experiences that person has had are translated into an urge to kill. But it's a continuum. On the other end is a person who gets cut off in traffic and for a brief second wants to drive his car into the bad driver who needs to be taught a lesson. On the other end are most of you and I, struggling to make it in an often hostile world and not being our best selves.

Given the right circumstances, many of us could have been that gunman. If that doesn't frighten you back to God, probably nothing else would.

Who Rules Who?

2006-09-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

I spend most of my working days in front of a computer, working with databases, creating animated tutorials, teaching research through live demonstration, developing a library collection, and checking the inevitable e-mail. It's only when the system goes down or the power goes off that I notice how dependent I am on all my electronic tools.

Something has fundamentally changed in the past couple of decades. Our rushing technological revolution has made last week's gadget obsolete and next week's gadget so amazing it takes your breath away. The sheer human ability to advance the frontiers puts me in awe. The things we can do with information management, engineering, medicine, and so on, have made us almost god-like.

But the one thing we're not doing much of is thinking through what it means to link our lives with the new technologies. No, I'm not talking about the fact that we're tied to our e-mail and our cell phones and our 24/7 virtual lives. I'm referring to a more spiritual implication - that we are finding in our technology a God substitute that can guarantee us entertainment, fulfillment, maybe even a chance to live far beyond the current lifespan. We are conquering disease, enhancing our pleasures, and wallowing in our accomplishments.

But are we free?

That's at least one of the questions we should be asking.

The other is this: If we've found a new god, what have we done with the one we used to serve?

Challenging Times

2006-08-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

We are in the midst of the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006, and it's all I can do to turn on the news and hear the latest tale of woe. These are real people who are suffering and dying, most of them having no connection to the ideologies that have created this conflict. I could take sides, I suppose; we're all prone to taking sides because then we have our explanation - one side is right and the other is wrong, one is good and the other is evil.

But my reading of the Bible tells me that none of us are exempt from evil. Far deeper than Israel's determination to maintain its integrity as a nation or those who argue that Israel has disenfranchised them, we have the darker forces of power and intimidation and revenge and cruelty done with some kind of mistaken notion that the end justifies the means. No one is exempt.

A friend of mine who knows about such things believes that the tensions in the Middle East can never be resolved. They go too deep and have existed over too long a period of time. So, can nothing be done? Initiatives for a cease-fire are good, because no one is rational when children are dying. Maybe the sides can be brought into a forum where they can talk through the issues. But these are bandaids on cancer. They don't cure the disease, which is simple human depravity, something we all share.

The solution isn't simple, but it can work. Back in the early 1970s, the Biafran War of Nigeria killed thousands. Children starved and died. It was a war born of long-standing animosities and it only ended when it absolutely had to. There was a Christian denomination right in the midst of this horror - the Qua Iboe Church of Nigeria. Its members were on both sides of the conflict, and when the war was over they called a conference to determine if anything could be recovered of the unity this group of churches had once shared. When they met, there was no need for lengthy negotiation. They determined that there was no disunity, because they were one in Jesus Christ, no matter what horrors had sought to disrupt them. They embraced as brothers and sisters.

We have a unity as human beings in that we are all the creation of God. We have a unity in that we have all rejected God's plan for us and fallen into a misbegotten independence that is at the heart of all evil, all conflict. And the only answer to the turmoil that is modern life is for each of us to embrace the forgiveness won for us by Jesus Christ on the cross and to receive the risen Jesus as our Lord and Master. In that reality lies our only hope.

But Don't Party

2006-06-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

"And who would patch an old garment with unshrunk cloth? For the new patch shrinks and pulls away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger hole than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine needs new wineskins." (Mark 2:21-22)

Jesus must have seen the need to remind us of something we'd rather keep in the background. That’s why he provided a couple of illustrations showing that his Kingdom doesn’t fit the thought patterns we’ve grown up with. It's not a tame Kingdom, and its priorities are nothing like our own.
No one, he said, takes a new piece of cloth, never shrunken in the wash, and makes it into a patch for an old garment. If you want to take the new and tack it onto the old, you'll have a struggle on your hands. The new cloth will shrink and suddenly be too small for the hole it's trying to fill. A few torn stitches later, and your patch will be off
Nor, he went on, do you pour new wine into an old leather wineskin. The very character of new wine is to put great stress on the container that holds it. That old wineskin will burst like a child's balloon, and both skin and wine will be lost. New wine belongs in a new wineskin.
The faith Jesus brought with him isn’t an add-on, isn’t something to be funneled into the container of life we already have. Why not? Simply because the Kingdom contradicts all our notions, all our beliefs, all our personal idols. The Kingdom is bold and new and aggressive and determined to turn our world on its head.
Cravings for money and power and the fulfillment of every desire are the instincts we live by, but the Kingdom sees them all as the rubbish of pitiful rebels living in failure. Our world tells us that nothing is more important than our selves, but the Kingdom reminds us that focusing on our selves is what got us into this trouble in the first place. Society tells us that all human beings have to be free, but Jesus announces that if we want to be his friends we must do what he says. In following his orders lies our true freedom.
So rejoice. Dance and sing, because the Master who was taken from them has come back to us.
But don't party.

Dance and Sing

2006-06-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

Why don't you...

All of us know people who love to challenge our lifestyle with questions like, "Why don't you..." or advice like "Most people do it this way..."

There were those who did the same with Jesus:

John's disciples and the Pharisees sometimes fasted. One day some people came to Jesus and asked, "Why do John's disciples and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?"

Jesus replied, "Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. They can't fast while they are with the groom. But someday he will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. And who would patch an old garment with unshrunk cloth? For the new patch shrinks and pulls away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger hole than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine needs new wineskins." (Mark 2:18-22)

For Jesus, the question, “Why don’t you fast?” wasn’t some innocent thing born out of curiosity. He saw the naked motives shining through it. Sure, these were ordinary citizens who raised the question, but no doubt they‘d been set up by the religious leaders of the day. These leaders, if you could call them that, were intent on keeping up their popularity with the people, jealous of Jesus' ability to draw a crowd, eager to destroy his reputation.

But Jesus took it patiently, because they‘d failed to understand that he hadn't come to be clone of every other Jewish rabbi.

"Why," some people asked, “don’t your disciples fast?" Fasting was a Jewish ritual reserved for special circumstances, but it had become a big deal in Jesus' time. In some of the other Gospels it’s clear that certain religious figures used it as a way to get sympathy, support, power. It‘s easy to announce that you’re fasting and then make yourself up to look like you’re really suffering. "Look how much this great holy man suffers for his faith!" the people would murmur, their faces filled with awe.

For Jesus, such games flew in the face of everything his Kingdom stood for. He and his followers needed no holier-than-thou demonstrations to win fans and influence people. In his Kingdom, the whole idea of drawing attention to get perks was out.

True, John's followers did fast because they had not yet seen the Messiah’s salvation and because John had been stolen from them. But Jesus insisted that his own followers had their Master with them, so there was no need for long faces. He was a bridegroom calling the world to celebrate his joy. Why would anyone want to fast at a wedding?

With Jesus on earth there was a cause for festivities to begin. Maybe not the kind of silly drunken episode that might come to some peoples’ minds, but true joy kept in check by the grim reality that in Jesus' kingdom challenge and suffering were never far away. So what if his brand of pleasure was would always be mixed with pain? Better to have him with them and face tribulation than go to a thousand parties and dance until dawn. That’s why this was no time for fasting.

Yet - warning here - there would come a time when Jesus would be snatched from them violently, and the sense of absolute loss would drive them to fast. How typical of Jesus to point this out, because he was always realistic.

In this world, the Kingdom is at war with darkness. In the darkness is murder and hatred and oppression of children and war and rape and abuse of every kind. The world is full of it, and the Kingdom hates the darkness along with Satan who orchestrates it. We can’t be doing the work of the Kingdom, fighting the evil prince of this age, with a wine glass in one hand and an appetizer in the other. Rejoice, yes. But we can never for a moment forget the battle.

Like Real People (2)

2006-06-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

Jesus understood lepers too. We read:

A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. "If you want to, you can make me well again," he said.

Moved with pity, Jesus touched him. "I want to," he said. "Be healed!" Instantly the leprosy disappeared--the man was healed. Then Jesus sent him on his way and told him sternly, "Go right over to the priest and let him examine you. Don't talk to anyone along the way. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy, so everyone will have proof of your healing."

But as the man went on his way, he spread the news, telling everyone what had happened to him. As a result, such crowds soon surrounded Jesus that he couldn't enter a town anywhere publicly. He had to stay out in the secluded places, and people from everywhere came to him there. (Mark 1:40-45)

We’re not sure what sort of "leprosy" the man of Mark 1:40 had. There were several skin diseases all classified under the same label. It hardly matters, though, because this man's problem was less the disease than the rejection that came with it. He'd been banished by law from human society, from home, family, friends, even places of worship. The Jewish rabbis of the time considered people like this to be the living dead and believed that any miraculous cure of them was a "resurrection."

How this leper got through security and entered the town is anyone's guess, but suddenly there he was, loathsome in appearance, on his knees before the Messiah-King, begging for healing. You have to admire his courage, because he was not supposed to be there, and he knew it. The one thing that drove him was recognition that no one but Jesus could heal him. The Master was his only hope of ever finding his way back to life again. There wasn't much for him to lose, even if he got a beating for his audacity.

Jesus was moved, but with what? Here the ancient manuscripts disagree. Some read that he was angered, others that he had compassion. It seems so obvious that the Master would have compassion that one wonders why we would even consider another option. But the scholars ask us what would cause a scribe seeing a manuscript with the word "compassion" in it to change it to "anger." They argue that “anger” was probably in the original.

I'm inclined to go with "anger," not just because the commentators tend to agree with me (or me with them) that the manuscript evidence supports it, but because it makes sense. This was a disease no one deserved, no matter how far from God they'd traveled. It removed them from everything that made them human - acceptance, a future, relationships, the integrity of their own bodies. It counseled them just to go off and die because they were as good as dead anyway.

If we have even an inkling that a disease like this was the Devil's work, we should have no trouble grasping the fact that the Holy Son of God, who came to earth to save us, was angry. There's no contradiction with compassion here. The two emotions are sides of the same coin. One merges into the other. Unless he'd been angry at the monstrosity of a human condition that allowed the plight of this leper to happen, Jesus could not have expressed the compassion that shone through his actions.

He reached out his hand and did the unthinkable, the impossible. He touched this wretched creature, a touch that burned with deep fury at all the forces of darkness, but was as gentle as the kiss of child. He put is own bare hand on the leprous man, skin to skin, absolute purity to utter corruption. The deed automatically made Jesus ceremonially unclean, himself now a reject too, at risk to catch the disease himself. Was there a hint here of the corruption he would one day bear for all of us?

For the leper the big question was whether or not Jesus was inclined to help him. "I am willing," The Master said. "Be clean." Then what we'd expect happened - the leper was instantly cured, the purity of the Messiah passing to the unclean one.

This leper today would have been described as a man with attitude. Not only had he broken all the rules by approaching Jesus in the first place, but now he ignored Jesus' instructions to get the healing recognized by priest and even the Master's very strict admonition that he tell nobody what had happened to him. Instead, there's every reason to assume that he by-passed the priest and started preaching the gospel far and wide, proclaiming the good news of the prophet with the healing touch.

Jesus had not protected himself from personal revulsion, ceremonial defilement nor the risk of acquiring a deadly disease. But he did try to shield his ministry by having those he healed keep a lid on their experience so as not to attract the wrong kind of attention. Scholars call this the "Messianic Secret," and write endless numbers of books on the topic. Yet there's nothing very complicated in the way Mark presents it - the Master sought to keep the news of his spectacular healings quiet, but the more he did so, the more his audacious patients blurted the news to the world.

Was it just the reality of healing that turned such formerly sick and depressed people into bold evangelists? Or was it the fact that Jesus, King though he may have been, was not afraid to touch them, to recognize something everyone else had forgotten - that they too were created in the image of God?

He made them believe again that they were real human beings.

Like Real People (1)

2006-06-08T20:55:00.000-07:00

I still remember the first time I walked among them in the humble day area of the hospital. Everywhere my eyes turned, I saw a new horror - a hand with no fingers, a foot with no toes, a face ravaged and torn as if attacked by a fierce animal. This leprosy ward in the midst of tropical Africa was one of the last places I'd ever imagined I'd visit, or would ever want to.

My wife, Rosemary, had been looking for a way to reach out while I was working at a nearby college, and she'd found it there - teaching leprosy patients and their children how to draw and paint. As she worked with them, many of these people produced amazing works of art out of the ugliness of their tragic lives. Bold colors, happy scenes. I wondered how any them could even imagine beauty.

Yet they were really just ordinary people in spite of their strange disease, which left them rejected and feared, just like the lepers in the Bible. Their families had abandoned them; their friends considered them as good as dead. Even the nurses wouldn’t touch them unless they had to, and then with gloves on so that skin wouldn’t touch skin.

One of the patients came to my wife a few weeks after she started teaching. He hesitated, then said, "I want you to know that we like you." He paused. "You make us feel like we're real people."

Even now it brings tears to my eyes to imagine these poor souls, who once had all the hopes and dreams of the rest of us, doomed to a future of losing their bodies, forsaken, denied even the comfort of a human touch. To be treated like a real person is something we expect, something we even demand. But for these people it was a totally unexpected blessing to have someone walk among them without gloves or mask and teach them about beauty without shrinking back from their ugliness.

Mild Master

2006-05-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

Those of us who follow him have made our Christ too pretty, our Master too mild. We've turned our faith into a theme park with rides that only pretend to be scary and lots of sweet snacks to tide us over until dinner. The King we’ve created in our minds comes to us like a smiling figure on a parade float, grinning, waving, doing nothing to fight off our personal demons.

But a king like that is alien to the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark. As soon as his coronation was over, the Great King climbed down into the pit of hell for us to fight the monstrous dragon and beat him at his own game, and then, short years later, to suffer and die in unimaginable agony. He knew nothing about a theme park, nothing about sweet snacks. He had none of the comforts due to the mightiest Ruler who ever lived.

What does that say about us? What do we want from our lives? - All the comforts due to children of the heavenly King, all the freedom from pain that God just plain owes us because we threw our lot in with him? I hope not. Jesus didn’t call us to a sweet life of comfort any more than he sought it for himself. He called us into the desert to face off against the tempter.

An untested life is a boring life. A life without turmoil and challenge and battles to fight isn’t meaningful. It’s just safe.

In the battle, a child of the Kingdom first begins to understand life.

Worthy To Be Feared

2006-05-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

Jesus, at the beginning of his earthly ministry, needed to defeat humanity's greatest enemy. That's why Mark’s account of his baptism is followed by Jesus entering into temptation in the wilderness:

Immediately the Holy Spirit compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness. He was there for forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. (Mark 1:12-13)

The baptism and the temptation are inseparable, and it’s no mistake that the Spirit compelled Jesus into the desert to be tempted by Satan.

We should have seen the clues even before the baptism. We should have known it would come to this, because Mark told us that Jesus traveled from Nazareth to Jordan to be baptized by John. Nazareth. A town so obscure that it's never mentioned in any part of the Old Testament, never referred to even by the famous Jewish historian of the first century, Josephus. It doesn't come up in the multi-volume Jewish Talmud. A nothing town, a zero. That's where Jesus came from. That's the place the Father chose to have him raised.

Should we have expected that, when his Father made him king, he would suddenly find himself in a magnificent palace with servants to attend to his every wish? Should we have expected that he’d be surrounded by toys and banquets and the 3 Ws (wine, women, etc)?
There was nothing like that. Instead he was driven into the desert where wild animals lurked and angels looked after him, though likely only after he'd completed his forty days of suffering. He went hungry, his body slowly feeding on itself until the pounds dropped off him and the bones started showing.

Then the devil taunted him – Why don’t you turn these stones into loaves of bread? Why don’t you jump off the temple and prove who you are? Worship me, and I’ll give you everything. But Jesus resisted him, teeth gritted, body screaming at him. He resisted until the Devil walked away, confused and defeated.

What did he accomplish there in the desert alone for 40 days and nights? Just everything that was important for the mission he’d come to accomplish. Let's try a comparison: In the Old Testament, Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the law of God. He stayed forty days, the same amount of time that Jesus was tempted in the desert. While he was there, his people abandoned the very God who had brought them out of Egypt and worshipped a golden calf in his place. Moses was so upset by all this that he smashed the law tablets he’d been given and had to go back to God for replacements.

Jesus had his own exodus to lead, out of a land of slavery and into the land of promise. He, like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, was tempted in the desert for forty days and forty nights. If, during that awful time, he’d slipped, even for a moment, and had given in to the traps that Satan had laid for him, his exodus would have crumbled to dust and merged with the desert sand he walked on.

This was no fancy prince flaunting his power. This was a King on trial, with the destiny of the whole world resting on the verdict. Ever since humanity had given in to the Satanic call to walk away from God, we’d left a trail of misery and failure that made us a disgrace to the skin we live in. Jesus had to be the first man since Adam to be tempted and not give in.
Jesus had to confront Satan on his own turf and win. He had to defy all the powers of darkness that sought to bring him down, or nothing would come of his kingship.

The Kingdom, you see, is not some creation of Disney, where the prince comes bounding in to save the day and the glass slipper always fits. It's an epic full of blood and pain and humiliation on the way to a victory that can’t be won any other way. Before the King could wage his war, he had to be tested in every part of his being - physical, psychological, spiritual. He had to prove to his greatest enemy that he was an champion worthy of battle, worthy to be feared.

Into the Jaws of Hell

2006-05-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

The good news about Jesus, according to the Gospel of Mark, starts in the water with Jesus being baptized by John. Baptized? The word spells controversy. Do we dip, pour or dunk? Is a sprinkling OK? Even given that we get it right, what in the world does baptism mean?

Strangely, for Mark, questions like these held no interest. The baptism of Jesus told the world only one thing - that the greatest king who ever lived was being crowned. Forget that it was the Jordan River or that it happened under the reign of Tiberius Caesar or that the circumstances there in the desert were about as far from royal protocol as you could imagine. This was the greatest coronation ever.

Here’s what Mark had to say about it:

One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and he was baptized by John in the Jordan River. And when Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven saying, "You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you."

Immediately the Holy Spirit compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness. He was there for forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. (Mark 1:9-13)

Mark tells us that as soon as Jesus came up out of the water the Holy Spirit of God descended on him and the voice of the Father declared Jesus to be his beloved Son. Did others see it? Hear it? None of the Gospel writers give us a clue. It's not important that we know every detail, because Jesus both saw and heard it. Later he was to describe the event as his anointing, like that of the kings of old, only more so, because this was the anointing of the eternal Son.

What did it mean? First, that Jesus was recognized for who he was after being unknown for twenty-seven years or more – God in human flesh. His baptism didn't turn him into God, because he already was that. But now his Father could reveal who he was, say it flat out.

Second, his baptism sent him straight into the jaws of hell. It put him into conflict with the worst evil forces that could be found anywhere. There's a big contradiction here. Jesus had just been crowned, crowned like no king ever before – with a voice from Heaven. He'd just been declared very Son of the eternal Father, thus himself God along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. How could the same scenario throw him into battle with the powers of evil?

The answer is that his Kingdom is like nothing else on earth. The kings of this world wallow in their power. They flaunt their authority and use it and take every advantage to buy or steal the best that life has to offer. But when Ruler of the eternal Kingdom, Jesus, comes to do fierce and painful battle with the forces of darkness, he is wounded by them, killed by them, because this is the only way to triumph over them