Life has been crazy busy. For one thing, our upcoming Ultimate Compassion Conference has added a lot of things on a lot of plates at Woodland Hills Church the last few weeks. I’ve also been absolutely obsessed with writing Jesus Versus Jehovah. When I get into a “zone” of writing and reflection like this, I find it hard to think about much else. I also don’t sleep much. Anyway, the book is coming along great (the first draft of 12 of the planned 14 chapters are now done).

On top of this, I just spent the weekend participating in the Why Everything Must Change conference in Toronto.  This was a marvelous conference stressing the need for followers of Jesus (and others) to wake up and respond to the massive suffering caused by injustice around the world. I felt honored to be a part of this and came in contact with some amazing people engaged in some marvelous ministries that confront injustice.

During and after this conference I had a wonderful time hanging out with Paul Young, author of The Shack. Paul is a wonderful, humble and insightful human being who really knows Abba’s heart and has a remarkable ability to communicate it in fresh ways. (If you haven’t read The Shack, I strongly encourage you to do so).

I also spent some time with Bruxy Cavey, Teaching Pastor of The Meeting House in Toronto and author of The End of Religion. I love this guy! It’s SO refreshing to meet a pastor of a megachurch (I’m told The Meeting House is second largest church in Canada) who is so humble and who obviously doesn’t give a crap about opinion polls. Bruxy also totally gets the outrageous loving heart of Abba, the centrality of non-violence for Jesus-followers and the utterly anti-religious nature of the Kingdom. Do you know how incredibly rare it is to find pastors who hold and teach these convictions — especially pastors of large churches? To say I felt a kinship with this brother is a massive understatement.

Finally, I also had a chance to wine and dine a bit with Baxter Kruger whose theological work I’ve long admired. His Jesus and the Undoing of Adam is a great little work that (among other things) brilliantly articulates the view (which I share) that the Incarnation was not God’s “Plan’s B”: it was rather the focal point of creation from the start. This has massive and marvelous theological implications. Anyway, my evening with this wild man from Mississippi, together with a host of fun-loving and slightly renegade Canadian pastors and theologians, is not one I will soon forget.

Later,

Greg

Just want to let you know about a conference that will be held at Woodland Hills Church on poverty and the call of God to do something about it.  It’s entitled Ultimate Compassion and it begins Friday evening, Oct. 30th and runs through Saturday, Oct. 31st.

Here’s why we’re hosting this conference: An increasing number of American Christians are waking up to how central this issue is to God, as reflected by its pervasive emphasis throughout Scripture.  Praise God for this!  Unfortunately, the majority of western believers who live above the poverty line don’t really understand poverty and thus don’t know what they can do to address it.  In fact, as  Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert demonstrate in their butt-kick’n book When Helping Hurts (Moody, 2009), more often than not Christians do more harm than good in their sincere attempts to help. We need to understand the complexities of poverty.

This Conference is meant to not only inspire activism, but to also provide practical knowledge on how to effectively minister to the poor.  I will join Efrem Smith, Jin Kim and Sandra Unger as keynote speakers and we will offer two breakout sessions during which people can attend a workshop of their choice.

For more information, visit www.UltimateCompassion.com. Hope to see you there!

Some of you probably have encountered the recent painting, “One Nation Under God.” Artistically speaking, it’s an excellent work. Theologically speaking, it incarnates, in the most graphic form imaginable, the sin of nationalistic idolatry. It’s sort of an artist’s rendition of The Patriot’s Bible which I reviewed on this blog some time ago. You can see the painting here. As you scroll over each character in the painting a commentary by the artist on why they were included pops up. I’d like to offer a few comments on several characters in this painting.

At the center of the painting, of course, is a very European looking Jesus holding the American Constitution. This document, the author claims is “[I]nspired of God and created by God fearing, patriotic Americans.” One might think that this outrageous modification of the traditional view that the Bible alone is the inspired Word of God would be enough for Christians to lose interest in this work, but I suspect it won’t. It’s not clear why this artist believes the Constitution is divinely inspired, though I suspect it’s the same reason other patriotic people throughout history have thought their foundational documents and causes were divinely inspired. This is simply the way nationalistic idolatry works. People just know that God (or the gods) is on our side and against our enemies. It’s obvious, right? Nothing in history has caused more bloodshed than this arrogant and unfounded assumption. Nor, I submit, is anything more contrary to the Kingdom Jesus brought than this assumption.

Moving on, an F-16 pilot is honored to be in the presence of Jesus. The artist comments that this fighter represents all those pilots who have given their lives to preserve freedom. The people these pilots have slaughtered with their bombs and bullets are unfortunately not present. This too is typical of idolatrous nationalism: it gives divine sanction to our spilling of blood while ignoring, if not demonizing, those whose blood we have spilled.

Thomas Jefferson stands close to Jesus, of course, which is a little odd since he is famous for insisting on the separation of church and state and for cutting out all of the miraculous elements of the New Testament. He found the doctrine of the Incarnation to be especially revolting. Something similar must be said of the inclusion of Thomas Payne. He is honored to be in the presence of the pro-American Jesus because he was a Founding Father, wrote pamphlets fueling the American Revolution,  and was an Abolitionist. The artist does not mention that Payne also wrote pamphlets and books vigorously attacking Christianity and all religion. As an Enlightenment Deist, he and other Founding Fathers objected to any belief in supernatural occurrences, such as the virgin birth or the resurrection. I can’t imagine Payne or Jefferson being too happy about being co-opted as cheerleaders for the pro-American Jesus.

The former slave Fredrick Douglas is also present, which is a bit ironic, especially in light of the thoroughly European Jesus he’s revering. Douglas famously proclaimed that the Christianity of white America has nothing in common with the Christianity of Jesus. I think he would vigorously join Jefferson and Payne in protesting their inclusion in this idolatrous painting. Also ironic is the inclusion of John Adams, since it was he who wrote in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” It’s hard to imagine him applauding the intense fusion of church and state in this painting.

Another famous Founding Father who is given the honor of being present with the Constitution-holding Jesus is James Madison. He seems to have been a decent enough fellow, unless you happened to be one of his slaves who tried to get free (many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves). He is reported to have nailed one rebellious slave to a barn yard door by his ear, despite signing a Constitution that declared all men to be created equal!

I was a little surprised to find the folk hero Davy Crockett included in this painting. But it must suggest that Jesus was highly invested in keeping Texas part of the Union rather than going to Mexico, to the point of affirming Crockett’s valiant killing of Mexicans to keep this from happening.

A particular interesting character surrounding Jesus is a civil war soldier who is crying. The artist explains that his tears are because the civil war was the only war in which “American fought against American, and brother against brother.” Apparently the many other wars we have fought were not between “brothers,” which is why no tears need be shed over them — even if those we are fighting are fellow Christians. Close by we find an American Revolution Soldier who is said to represent those “brave men who fought against all odds in defeating Britain in the Revolutionary War.” The British, of course, were Christians. In fact, they felt a divine obligation to keep Americans under the authority of the King because the Bible says all authority is given by God and Christians are to submit to the authorities they are under (Rom. 13:1-7). But we killed more of them than they us, and since this artist apparently is happy about this, our Revolutionary soldier gets honored next to Jesus while British soldiers are excluded. One of the most demonic aspects of idolatrous nationalism is that it tends to give people within one’s nation more value than those outside it, especially if those outside are in conflict with one’s own nation. Jesus died to tear down just these sorts of stupid, violence-tending walls (Eph. 2:13-14).

There are many other loathsome aspects of this idolatrous work that could be mentioned, especially regarding the people present in “Satan’s corner” (on the lower right corner), but enough has been said. The bottom line is that someday, people from every tribe and every nation will gather around Jesus (Rev. 7:9-10) and I assure you he won’t be holding a particular nation’s Constitution! The chief business of the church is to model this beautiful unity-amidst-diversity in the present. We are to manifest a Kingdom in which there is no male or female, Jew or Greek, rich or poor, American or British, and in which there is no violence.

This painting is a perfect illustration of the sort of primitive tribalism and diabolic nationalism that keeps Christians from doing this. It must, I believe, be renounced in the strongest possible terms.

If you’re interested in viewing an inspiring painting of the true Jesus and the true Kingdom, go here

Greg

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while. I’ve been deluged with “stuff.”

I want to thank all of you who were able to contribute to Tobi Olatoye’s education at YWAM. And I want to thank all of you who are supporting her in prayer. We raised over $3,000 to help this wonderful young lady! We haven’t yet covered all her expenses, however, so if you’d like to consider helping and want more information about this, check out my previous blog.

I had an interesting time with the Lord Saturday morning that I’d like to share. As I typically do, I was spending the first part of the day laying in bed, remaining aware of, and surrendered to, God’s loving presence while paying attention to feelings inside of me. I felt this familiar “ache” in my soul that I’ve written about before. As I remained aware of God’s presence and explored what this ache was about, I suddenly found myself in a very vivid imaginative scene.

I was standing at the banks of a beautiful, wide, calmly flowing river. All around me and on the other side of the river were large trees reflecting the morning sun with a magnificent array of fall colors. I was also aware that Jesus was behind me, though it didn’t feel appropriate to turn and look at him.

Suddenly, all the things that are dear to me began to appear in front of me, one by one. I intuitively knew I was supposed to load each one on a raft and send it down the ever-flowing river, watching as it floated away and disappeared around a bend down stream. Just as one thing disappeared, another would appear and I would repeat the process. I can’t communicate how each of these things were represented in my imagination, but I ended up saying “goodbye” to all my possessions, all the activities that I love, all my accomplishments, all my most precious memories, and even all the qualities that make me the individual that I am. I felt the ache in my soul rise slightly as each thing was carried out of sight around the bend.

Then all the people who are dear to me began to appear before me, one by one, and I knew I had to release each one of them to the river as well. This was more difficult. They never spoke a word, but each had the calm look of resigned wisdom and a bittersweet smile that communicated compassion toward me. It was as though each person was saying; “Thank you for the life we’ve shared, but you need to let me go for now.” I knew they were right, though I felt the ache intensify as we embraced and then waved goodbye as the calm stream took them away from me. I wept as I watched each of my children and then my wife Shelley disappear around the bend, waving goodbye till the very end.

Then I was all alone. I stood for several moments staring at the quietly flowing stream and the beauty of my autumn surroundings. Despite feeling profoundly alone and empty, I felt a strange sense of harmony between the ache in my soul and the beauty of the river. It was as if my soul ache and the river were two sides of the same coin. And I knew I needed to embrace both. When I did, I felt like the ache as well as the river were my friends.

I then slowly turned around and saw Jesus, sitting on a tree stump with a tender smile and a look of serene wisdom. He nodded his head slightly and I teared up as I said, “You are enough. And I will trust you.”

I am more acutely aware than ever that the river never stops flowing, not even for a second. It eventually carries away everything and everyone we love. Yet, if we keep growing in our capacity to have Jesus as our sole source of life, we can trust that in the end, love will lose nothing — including the valuable lessons the ache in our soul is trying to teach us. Clinging to Christ alone while remaining aware of the relentless river that carries all things away allows us to cherish the people and things we love moment-by-moment.

I encourage you to embrace the ache; embrace the river; embrace life and all that you love,  moment by moment. And most importantly, embrace Christ.

Greg