God's Mission

We live between the Fall and the Consummation of all things. God is, in Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit, working to bring all things to redemption. His mission is sure and we can be certain He will accomplish it. He calls us to join Him. He calls us to minister the truth of the gospel through lives of love and words that bring the healing power of the gospel. He calls us to work for healing and justice and beauty. The idea that we think of something that sounds good and ask God for help is flawed - we are called to join God's mission, He is not called to join ours. Let us, through His word and the leading of the Spirit, see what God is doing around us and join Him.

Why Theology?

Today, it seems that theology provokes two opposite reactions in the Christian community.
Some have an overdeveloped truth reflex - seeking to do battle with anyone who disagrees with their theology on even the smallest point. For these, there are no smallest points, they are all hills to die on.
Some have an overdeveloped grace reflex - seeking only to follow Jesus and finding all theological disagreements to be distasteful distractions from this following.
What is needed is a healthy approach to theology that is guided by a respect for God's Word and is colored with humility, faith and awe. 'Truth Man' has the tendency to strain out gnats while swallowing camels. His truth can become self-serving and self-righteous - and it lacks grace. And, truth that lacks grace begins to be less true. Because grace is part of truth.
'Grace Man' wants to follow Jesus, at times without doing the theological work needed to know what following Jesus really means (according to Jesus). His grace can become a weak image of true grace, because truth is part of grace (the truth of God's plan, work, holiness and rule).
Theology is unavoidable - because, aware of it or not, we live out a theology every day - a theology for which we one day will give an accounting. Since we all have a theology, we probably should give some thought to which theology we are living out.

When God seems too close

Sometimes we say that God seems too far away. When we are looking for direction, when we are in need of divine intervention - we may cry out to God to come close. But, as we have been talking about over the last few weeks, even then I think we may want him to come close on our own terms. Bringing what we want, what we think we need - in the manner we want Him to. A very big trained helper, bringing help.
But, of course, God does not actually come close to us in the manner we prescribe, or even in the timing we request. Sometimes God hits us with a burning bush - something we weren' t looking for with a message we weren't seeking for a problem we weren't trying to solve. Asking us to leave something, go to someone, change this, give that up. Coming close on His agenda. Do we really want this? We know the right answer should be yes, but it does not always feel comfortable, or even comforting.
We are called to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength - and that means loving him when He comes too close for comfort - even learning to love that He comes too close for comfort. Even seeking His closeness on His terms, in His time, in His way - when we can be there, we are finally in a position to keep this first and greatest commandment.

Ears to Hear

The problem with Jesus' statement to us - 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear' - is that we are not always reliable judges on the matter. Most people think they have ears to hear, but I think that on our own - we tend to hear mostly what justifies us, reinforces what we already believe, and protects us.
The disciples did not understand the parables - and the truth is, we would not without help (Jesus helped us directly in some cases). Jesus said that part of why he taught in parables is to give a deeper truth to those who could hear it, but also to provide some concealment for those who were not going to hear anyway.
We need divine help to hear the divine message, any divine message - and if we don't think we need divine help, well, that probably is not a good sign.

Happily Ever After ...

And they lived Happily Ever After ...
The idea of Happily Ever After appeals to us partly because our hearts are wired by God for it. The problem comes when we set up the next milestone, acheivement or title as what will give us happily ever after. This is easy to see - and each of us can look back on times in our lives when we put too many happily ever after eggs in the basket of a job, promotion, possession ... etc.
What is more difficult to see is that many good things - love, family, healthy relationships can also appeal to our desire for Happily Ever After. While these things are good and right, they cannot give us Happily Ever After. For us, Happily Ever After comes with God in eternity future (Rev 21 - 22). Nothing else, however good, can give it to us.
In the first Narnian story "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", even after the two sons of Adam and the two daughters of Eve sit on the four thrones in the castle at Cair Paravel, it is not happily ever after - because Aslan does not live there. However wonderful, it is not the final Happily Ever After that we were wired for.
As a result, we experience loss and grief with the inevitable transitions of this life. We are called to love well, and the loss or parting of those we love can't be avoided, and we should not try. The only way to avoid it is to experience the loss of not loving well. And it really should not surprise us - because the permanance of Happily Ever After awaits us.

God's Call

God's call on our lives seems harder to figure out than it actually is. God calls us to follow Jesus, to walk humbly, to have mercy, to love people, to be conformed to the image of His Son. Along the way, we will get married or not, move to this place or that, have this job or that, spend our time on hobbies, service, learning, relationships and work. We often focus on the part of God's call that is very specific to our temporal, immediate reality (the what, the when, the how) - when who it is that He calls us to be is eternal and will transcend all of these other things that so occupy us.
I'm not suggesting that these other things are not important, that we should sell everything and become a monk or a nun (necessarily), but that in focusing on what is difficult to discern, we exclude what God calls us to that is plain - and that puts all of the other pieces of our lives in His proper perspective.

Thinking about Culture

Ideas have consequences - I don't think we realize this fully. What we sometimes miss are the ideas expressed through our popular culture - ideas that are normally expressed indirectly through story, visual presentation or song. They become, as C.S. Lewis said, not an argument, but an assumption that influences us to have this viewpoint or that on this controversy or that, sometimes without realizing that there is even a controversy present.
Whether it is breaking free from the control, manipulation and artificiality of an absolute God like figure as the road to true authenticity (as portrayed in The Truman Show), or the idea that the only reality we have is the reality we create as we write our own story (as in Stranger than Fiction), or in a thousand different other ways - we too often ingest ideas without contemplation - without thinking. And that is bound to have consequences for our hearts.

Culture Shock - Part 2

How can we, seeking to follow Christ, have a positive relationship with the prevailing culture, which is not interested in following Christ - and may discourage, disparage or oppose it? It may seem like a new question, but it isn't. Christians of all ages, from Greco-Roman culture, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightment and Modernity and into the current trend toward Postmodernity - have had to grapple with how to follow well within a culture that does not share Christian assumptions or conclusions.

First, I think we need to see culture not as a bad thing, as the enemy (and condemn it) - or as unequivically good (and consume it) - or as irrelevent (and be complacent about it). But, rather, we need to see culture as a good thing, but fallen - something that, like our heart, needs redemption. The picture used on Sunday of a castle ruin - which might be, in some sense, beautiful - but where you could really only see glimpses of the former beauty of the castle - the beauty it once had and was originally meant to have - is one possible way to look at culture (and perhaps all other things needing redemption).

With this in mind, two possible postures toward culture to consider are the posture of cultivation and the posture of creativity. The cultivator first understands that there is good in culture - that we are all made in God's image and reflect it one way or another - well or poorly - and is able to find the good and bring it out, like a gardener encouraging the flowers and removing the rocks and weeds. The creator imitates God in creating what is good, beautiful and true. Either way, we cannot really interact well with culture unless we work to understand ourselves, our fellow men and women and God's truth expressed in creation and in his Word.

(Thanks to Andy Crouch and the Christian Vision Project for helping to categorize our thinking)

Culture Shock - Part 1

What is your posture toward culture?

Many in the church have the posture of condemnation that we talked about on Sunday. Culture is bad - culture is to be withdrawn from, criticized, and causes us to be fearful and uneasy. There is a legitimate desire by some with this posture to be not drawn into, not conformed to the culture of the day. But this desire overpowers and culture becomes a bad thing, and those who are conversant with the culture are often judged.

Also, many in the church have the posture of consumption - the opposite of condemnation. All of culture is experienced indiscriminately. Every movie, every song, every book is uncritically experienced - usually without a lot of reflection on the worldviews or messages contained. It is like eating fast food, we go to a movie and say afterward "I liked it" or not - and on to the next cultural experience. Culture is thought to be indiscrimately good - just a matter of taste - and we cannot intelligently interact with it while we are just consumers.

The third posture we talked about is related closely to the second - the posture of complacency. Those who don't have a strong direction aren't actively pursuing their calling, tend to be complacent about most things, culture included. It is only a movie, only a song ... not much matters - and the impact of culture (and other elements of life) are not closely examined.

All of the above are, in my opinion, misguided postures to take toward culture - next week we'll toss around a couple of more positive ones. In the meantime, we should think about what it means to be "transformed" and not "conformed". Whatever else it may mean, I believe it means that we have to think - to examine - to reflect on culture and our world. Without this, we are bound to be complacent consumers, without much to say to a culture that needs to hear a clear voice.

Sacred Sexuality

The question Chad addressed today was "Why is sex sacred?" He gave a few good answers that I really appreciated. One of the ideas that he touched on briefly was that we are not "just mammals" (quoting Eminem, I think) - that we don' t have to blindly follow our sexual impulses. I want to expand on that a little bit - because I think there is something profound there - about us and about our sexuality.
Sex has a spiritual and moral dimension that transcends mere biology. Morally, of course, sex outside of marriage breaks God's command - but there is a deeper reason why this is so. Those of us who follow Christ are identified as His bride more than a few times. We are the bride of Christ - and we await the arrival of the Bridegroom - when we will be eternally united with Him. We are all, men and women, collectively and individually, feminine with respect to Christ. One of the reasons sex is sacred is that it is a figure, a picture, for the eternal joining of Christ to His bride. This spiritual and moral dimension is integral to sex. God could have figured out some other way to propogate the race. Instead, He made us, men and women, in His image, to bring Him glory in every part of our lives - including our sexuality. That is why sex outside of a lifelong commitment is so out of place. It runs counter to what sex essentially is.
So, we can't have sex without strings ... because we are not just mammals, because sex is bound up with who we are spiritually and morally, who God is, and what His plan is for us.

Easter

Easter is about life from death. Most of us are aware that we celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the dead on Easter. But I am not sure that we think of our own selves - death to life. Colossians 2:13-15 speaks of us in terms of life from death - being brought to life spiritually from the dead. I think we often miss this - we think of a decision, a renewal, a change, a commitment - when we become Christians. We don't often think of ourselves as spiritually dead people who needed to be brought to life. I think it was Ravi Zacharius who said that "Jesus did not come to make bad men good, but to make dead men live."
Becoming a Christian is not like reading a good self-help book, it isn't a medicine that helps me feel better - but a change in identity, from death to life.

Second Panel Discussion

What I liked about the discussion of Genesis 24 on this week's panel as it relates to finding the right person - is that neither Isaac nor Rebekah were "looking" for the right person when God brought them together. Instead, they were becoming the right person for their future partner, and God brought them together at the right time.
The discussion of whether God has "one perfect chosen" person for everybody I thought was very good as well. I think younger people often like to think so, because it makes that relationship seem safer ahead of time. The problem, most people don't have the certainty from the Lord that this or that person is the "one." So making a commitment is always a matter of faith in God, in yourself, and in the other person. The idea that there is one person may be used as a shield to keep everyone away, or as a magnet to keep hanging on to a relationship that is not working. It seems healthier to me to keep the idea of the one person for me in the background, while I work on being the right person for my future spouse and trust God to lead me to a person I can commit to.
Of course, being married, I can testify that once you do commit to another, the question of who is the"one" becomes irrelevant. I have committed to this person, and, if was unsure about God's will before, I at least know what it is now.
The question of finding the right one leads to how much input we give to others - parents especially. I guess it depends on what kind of relationship you have with them - but if not your parent, it is important to get some honest outside input into your relationships, because we do not always see things (especially ourselves) clearly.

The panel discussion was very thought provoking for me. I was interested to see how God worked in the lives of the very different histories represented on the panel. I am looking forward to getting everyone's reactions.
For those who thought the courtship discussion was a little out there, how do you know what is appropriate for physical contact in a relationship? How do you decide? Do you talk about it? How soon? As I said, I am looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks.

Welcome to everybody who could make it to small group last night. Nancy and I really enjoyed you and the time together that we had.

We talked about what the ideal looks like for an intimate, permanent relationship between a man and a woman - submission, love, self sacrifice, 2 becoming 1 and unconditional commitment. I especially wanted to underline the subject of becoming a person who is, by God's grace, prepared to be in such a relationship - and trusting God to bring that relationship to us in the right time.

I hope to see everyone at Mosaic on Sunday for the panel discussion. By the way, I was thinking of some possible questions ...

• Can having high expectations and requirements for a potential mate ever turn into a self-protective wall that eventually rules out everybody?
• What are some practical things to look for early in a dating relationship - both in me and in the person I am dating?
• Should I listen to what my friends, parents or others say about the person I am in a relationship with? Why or why not?
• Are women really from Venus?

Anybody have any others?