The Divine Commodity

I just finished Skye Jethani's book The Divine Commodity and found it to be both fresh and convicting in diagnosing much of the state of contemporary Christianity. One of the main characters in his book is the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. Jethani does an excellent job telling the story of the modern church through the works and life van Gogh. Here are a few excerpts from the book that really struck me.

On the church's idolatrous focus of creating a consumer experience:

"Ministries that focus on manufacturing spiritual experiences, despite their laudable intentions, may actually be retarding spiritual growth by making people experience dependent. Like caged animals, consumer Christians lose the ability to do what they were designed by God to do—have a vibrant, self-generating relationship with Christ. Instead, they become dependent upon their zookeeper-pastors for life nourishment. This captive/captor relationship is unlikely to change as long as both the church member and leader are satisfied with the arrangement. But is this what the Christian life is supposed to be?" -pg. 79

On the church's tendancy to practice a form of divination where we try to control God and get him to do our bidding:

"The exchange of an unpredictable God for controllable principles is also common within the church. Our insistence on an institutional and programmatic faith is a savvy new form of divination. Invariably, churches that experience significant numerical growth will publish books outlining their methodology and create conferences so other leaders can reproduce such success in their in their own churches. The assumption is that with the right curriculum, the right principles, and the right programs God’s Spirit will act to produce the outcomes we desire. This plug-and-play approach to the Christian life makes God a cosmic vending machine, and it assumes his Spirit resides within well-produced organizations and systems rather than people." -pg 97

A call to live out the Gospel in the midst of our daily obedience, hospitality and authenticity:

"Our homes are to be hospitals—refuges of healing radiating the light of heaven. And our dinner tables are to be operating tables—the place where broken souls are made whole again. In our churches people should find rest from their battle for acceptance and release from the lie that they are nothing more than the goods they possess. When we lower our defenses, when we remove our facades and our peepholes, and we begin to be truly present with one another—then the healing power of the gospel can begin it’s work." pg-154

Eugene Peterson: Wisdom for Church Planters

I just stumbled upon some letters that Eugene Peterson has been hand writing to a church planter and pastor on J.R. Briggs blog. These letters are full of wisdom to those in occupational ministry. Here is a quote that struck me:

"The killing frost in too much new church development is forming programs that will attract people or serve their perceived 'needs,' getting them 'involved.' The overriding need they have is worship and that is the one thing that is lowest on their 'needs' list. Insist on it: keep it simple – learn to know every last one of them relationally. And call them to worship – and not entertainment worship, but a community at worship."

(Click here to read more)

Anemic Christianity

In the story of the rich, young ruler we see a man who is not so far off from the way many of us who call ourselves Christians live our lives today. When he comes up to Jesus the young man refers to him as "good teacher". Jesus immediately challenges the man on this point. Why? It was because Jesus knew that this man underestimated what makes someone "Good". His standard was set too low.

The crazy thing is that I see the same exact thing happening in church life today. I recently saw a list of accountability questions that some local churches have been using in their men's accountability groups. Here are the 13 questions (disguised as ten) that these accountability groups are asking themselves.

1)Have you fulfilled your personal goals for prayer, Scripture reading and Bible memorization this week?
1a)Have you been faithful in Bible reading? What has the Lord shown you in the Bible this week? 1b)Have you been faithful in prayer? What have you been praying about this week?1c)Have you been faithful in Scripture verse memorization this week? What verse(s) have you been working on?
2)Have you exposed yourself to any explicit material (e.g., TV / movies / Internet / magazines / books), or taken any illegal drugs, or engaged in occult activities this week?
3)Are you aware of any unconfessed sin(s) in your life?
4)Have you been completely above reproach in all your financial dealings this week?
5)Have you been a good steward of all of the resources God has given you (e.g., money, time, talent)?
6) Is there anyone you need to forgive?
7)Have you been involved in the sins of gossip, or demonstrated critical spirit or jealousy?
8)Have you been with a woman this week in such a way that was inappropriate or could have looked to others that you were using poor judgment?
9)Have you stood for Christ in the marketplace in which you work?
10)Have you taken every opportunity to share Christ with your unsaved family, friends, and coworkers?

Immediately upon reading this list it made me cringe. I cringed not because I want to see men living licentious and immoral lives, but because if this is the standard by which we measure our righteousness then it falls way too short. I began drafting a new set of questions. Here are some of the ones that came to my mind immediately along with my explanations for why I added them.

1) Have you not only fulfilled your times of prayer, but have you allowed the scriptures to wash over you as you meditate on them and light your path with each step you take?

Why is it that we are so easily satisfied by jumping through a few , so called, spiritual activities. Reading X number of Bible chapters each day is worthless if we don't approach the scripture with a heart of humility and a desire to hear the spirit speak to us. Merely checking off a reading list is worthless if it does not take root in our hearts. So, are we reading to fulfill an obligation or are we seeking the scripture because we are hungry for the Words of life.

2) Have you prayed without cessation during this week or have you merely put in a few minutes here and there?

15 minutes a day? Half an hour a day? An hour a day? Why do we set the bar so low and then pat ourselves on the back when we do so little and yet we are called to pray continually.

3)Have you allowed anything or any person in your life to have a higher allegiance within your heart than the Lord God Almighty?
4) Have you misrepresented Christ in anyway during the week through either action or inaction or words spoken or left unspoken?

If we call ourselves Christian (or a follower of Christ) then everything we do or say represents him whether we like it or not. Knowing that should make us very humble and quick to admit the ways that misrepresent him in our lives each day.

5) Have you kept the Sabbath holy by keeping it both as a day for your own rest and by causing no others to work on that day?

One of the big 10, but somehow we seem to disregard it in our day.

6) Have you had any violent thoughts, been exposed to any explicitly violent material (violent sporting events, fighting championships, first person shooter games, movies, television shows, etc...) or even had thoughts of hate towards any individual, people group, sports team or political party?

American culture is hyper-sensitive and protective of our children when it comes to sexually explicit material (which is a healthy thing) and at the same time we turn a blind eye towards violence. I was first made aware of this when I lived in Europe and movies that would be considered PG-13 by American standards, were rated R by Spanish standards due to their violent content. In the church it almost seems like violence is not an issue at all. Maybe we need to rethink violence and the place it has within the heart of God.

7) Have you been exposed to any sexually explicit material, or even had a lustful thought about another person this week?

Whether we have been exposed to explicit material or not, if we lust after another person we are guilty of adultery.

8) Have you consumed anything whether legal or illegal that has in any way damaged or polluted your body during this week?

Does God care if we are harming and killing ourselves with legal substances or gorging ourselves on fried (but legal) delicacies??

9) Have you coveted anything that belongs to someone else? (House, jewelry, car, shirt, tennis shoes, computer, phone, video game, food, meal, job, etc...)

C’mon, tell the truth.

So here's is the next problem. Even though I went through the list and made it more strict by ten-fold it is still not enough to produce righteousness in someone's heart. Phillip Yancey does a great job addressing this very issue in his book The Jesus I Never Knew. His excerpt begins with the words of Jesus as he speaks to a crowd:

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.... For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

That last statement surely made the crowd sit up and take notice. Pharisees and teachers of the law competed with one another in strictness. They had atomized God's law into 613 rules- 248 commands and 365 prohibitions- and bolstered these rules with 1,521 emendations. To avoid breaking the third commandment, "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord," they refused to pronounce God's name at all. To avoid sexual temptation they had a practice of lowering their heads and not even looking at women (the most scrupulous of these were known as "bleeding Pharisees" because of frequent collisions with walls and other obstacles). To avoid defiling the Sabbath they outlawed thirty-nine activities that might be construed as "work". How could an ordinary person's righteousness ever surpass that of such professional holy men?

The Jesus I Never Knew, Pages 131-132

So, where does this leave us? Should we just throw in the towel and stop trying? No, but we must be cautious not to fall into the fallacy of the Pharisees by dealing with external behavioral changes and neglecting issues of the heart. Ultimately, that was what Jesus was most concerned about and he left us with some simple guidelines. If we want to have accountability questions then we need have only two. In these two questions, God will reveal how far we are from his heart in every area of our lives through these questions all of our sin and folly will be exposed.

These two questions are simple to remember, but they are not easy to fulfill. Let us be deliberate and prayerful as we think of the implications of these two questions in each of our lives. In the areas where we fall short let us confess our sins to God and ask him to change our hearts.

1) Do I love the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength?
2) Do I love my neighbor as myself?

What does the Future Hold?

Kevin Kelly has been the executive editor of Wired. This is a talk that he gave at the Q conference on the next 1,000 years of Christianity. Below is a talk he gave at TED talks about the next 5,000 days of the internet. Both, are insightful and I think that they go well together.

Will the Real J.C. Please Stand Up?

I was recently reading about Thomas Jefferson in the book American Jesus. Shortly after becoming President of the United States, Jefferson ordered two copies of the Bible. He went through them in the evening with a razor blade in hand and cut out the sections that he believed accurately portrayed who Jesus was and the rest he tossed to the ground. He really liked Jesus' moral teachings so he kept all of those, but he felt that the miracles were probably added to the texts at a later time by swindlers and charlatans, so like any good editor he removed those. When he finished he had a much smaller book that he considered the true essence of Christianity.

When I first read that account I was utterly appalled. Then, I spent a little more time thinking about Jefferson and I came to the realization those of us who claim to be Christians are guilty of doing the same thing. Granted, most of us would not have the audacity to actually take our Bible and cut it up into pieces (with the exception of the Jesus Seminar). However, in a more subtle way we do have a tendency to pick and choose what scriptures we will allow into our lives and what scripture we will really take stock in. In a sense, we do edit the scripture as we read through certain passages and justify why they are impossible or don't apply to us and instead of wrestling with them we allow them to fall to the cutting room floor.

We, like Jefferson, tend to cut and mold our Bible to fit into our worldview, our political beliefs, and our lifestyle choices. It is way easier to dress Jesus up like us than it is for us to dress up like him, so without realizing it we allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking Jesus is just like us.

In reality we are called to do the opposite. A true follower of Christ allows the Bible to go through their life, and like a razor blade cut away all of the parts that do not conform to the life of Christ. You see, Jefferson had it wrong and often so do we. He tried to shape his Bible instead of letting the Bible shape him.

You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
"He did not make me"?
Can the pot say of the potter,
"He knows nothing"?
-Isaiah 29

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller explores the reckless abandon with which God loves this world. He shows how this story, which is traditionally referred to as The Prodigal Son, is not really told for the sake of the younger son. Instead the story is told with the elder brother in mind as the main audience. He demonstrates that the sins of the elder son are as much an affront to the Father as those of the younger son. The only difference is that at the end of the story the younger son is participating in the banquet, but the elder remains outside and we are not told his response.

We are not told the ending because it is up to us to decide how this story ends. This story picks up a concept that I originally read about in CS Lewis. It is the idea that those most in danger of eternal separation from God are those of us who think we have it all together. We think that it is merely by doing enough religious activities or refraining from licentiousness that we will enter the banquet. Without realizing it we sit on throne of our own hearts as our on savior, which is the most precarious way to live. I'll leave you with a few quotes that I found powerful:

"The bad son enters the father's feast but the good son will not. The lover of prostitutes is saved, but the man of moral rectitude is still lost." (pg. 34)

"The people who confess they aren't particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God, because the prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it. The people who think they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God." (pg. 45-46)

"Everyone knows that the Christian gospel calls us away from the licentiousness of younger brotherness, but few realize that it also condemns moralistic elder brotherness." (pg. 67)

The Prodigal God comes out later this week and is definitely worth the read. I especially recommend it to those who have grown up in the church or who have been hurt by church people.