Eight Strings

The Beloved Community

2006-09-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

Charles Marsh's The Beloved Community is a literate study of the roots of the civil rights movement, and the seeds of a similar movement that brews today. The roots, Marsh recognizes, are the gospel as a socially transformative message of acceptance and equality, and the Cross as the sacrificial act of acceptance which rises above the culture of rejection and self-righteousness in all forms...

more later.

Bringing Up Young "No-merit"

2006-05-24T12:29:00.000-07:00

In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson describes a curious trend among Puritans in England during the seventeenth century:

Some Puritans maintained that the names of the great figures in the scriptures, all of which signify something-- Adam meant 'Red Earth,' Timothy 'Fear-God'-- should be translated. The Geneva Bible, which was an encyclopaedia of Calvinist thought...had a list of those meanings at the back and, in imitation of those signifying names, Puritans...had taken to naming their children after moral qualities. Ben Johnson included characters called Tribulation Wholesome, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy and Win-the-Fight Littlewit in the The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair...[anti-Puritan] Bancroft himself had written about the absurdity of calling your children "The Lord-is-Near, More-Trial, Reformation, Morefruit, Dust and many other such-like." These were not invented. Puritan children...laboured under the names of Eschew-evil, Lament, No-merit, Sorry-for-Sin, Learn-wisdom, Faint-not, Give-thanks and, the most popular, Sin-deny, which was landed on ten children baptised in the [Warbleton] parish between 1586 and 1596. One family...would have been introduced by their proud father as Much-mercy Hely, Increased Hely, Sin-deny Hely, Fear-not Hely and sweet little Constance Hely...Among William Brewster's own children...were Fear, Love, Patience and Wrestling Brewster.

Those silly Puritans...

C.S. Lewis's Reflection On "The Fair Beauty Of The Lord"

2006-05-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

[The ancient worshipper] had never heard of music, or festivity, or agriculture as things separate from religion...Life was one. If I had been there I should have seen the musicians and the girls with the tambourines; in addition, as another thing, I might or might not have (as we say) "felt" the presence of God. The ancient worshipper would have been aware of no such dulaism.

When the mind becomes capable of abstraction and analysis this old unity breaks up. And no sooner is it possible o distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is adanger of the rite becoming a substiute for, and a rival to, God Himself...There is a stage in a child's life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began "Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen". But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat...at some period in Judaism...a roughly parallel situation occurred. The unity falls apart; the sacrificial rites become distinguishable from the meeting with God...They may be valued as a sort of commercial transaction with a greedy God who somehow really wants or needs large quanities of carcasses...Worse still, they may be regarded as the only thing He wants, so that their punctual performance will satisfy Him without obedience to His demands for mercy, "judgement," and truth.

Is Lewis suggesting that at this point the prudent thing is to throw out the ritual, the sacramental "gateway" into meeting with God? Definitely not. Just that we regain the childlike unity of perception toward the imminent and the transcendant. And thus he nicely bridges a completely unnecessary gap between Catholicism and Protestantism.

C.S. Lewis's Reflection On The Afterlife

2006-05-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

One major distinction between Old Testament Israel and New Testament Christianity is of course, the issue of the afterlife. While the Jews had no notion of a life beyond the grave, a heaven or hell, thoughts of paradise to come are wedded inseparably to the acknowledgement of the Messiah. Why is this? C.S. Lewis makes a go at the question in Reflections on the Psalms:

I am concerned to try to understand the absence of such a belief, in the midst of inense religious feeling, over the earlier period. To some it may seem astonishing that God, having revealed so much of Himself to that people, should not have tought them this.
It does not now astonish me. For one thing there were nations close to the Jews whose religion was overwhelmingly concerned with the after life. In reading about ancient Egypt one gets the impression of a culture in which the main business of life was the attempt to secure the well-being of the dead. It looks as if God did not want the chosen people to follow that example.
It is surely, therefore, very possible that when God began to reveal Himself to men, to show them that He and nothing else is their true goal and the satisfaction of their needs, and that He has a claim upon them simply by being what He is, quite apart from anything He can bestow or deny, it may have been absolutely necessary that this revelation should not begin with any hint of future Beatitude or Perdition. These are not the right point to begin at. An effective belief in them, coming too soon, may even render almost impossible the development of (so to call it) the appetite for God; personal hopse and fears, too obviously exciting, have got in first. Later, when, after centuries of spiritual training, men have learned to desire and adore God, to pant after Him "as pants the hart", it is another matter. For then those who love God will desire not only to enjoy Him but "to enjoy Him forever", and will fear to lose Him. And it is by that door that a truly religious hope of Heaven and fear of Hell can enter; not as things of any independent or intrinsic weight. It is even arguable that the moment "Heaven" ceases to mean union with God and "Hell" to mean separation from Him, the belief in either is a mischievous superstition; for then we have, on the one hand, a merely "compensatory" belief(a "sequel" to life's sad story, in which everything will "come all right") and, on the other, a nightmare which drives men into asylums or makes them persecutors.

C.S. Lewis's Reflection On Psalmic Hatred

2006-05-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

In Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis eloquently takes on the challenge of some of Scripture's difficult passages-- the vitriolic resentment and cursing found in the Psalms. While one contemporary Christian interpretation states (and valuably) that such is the posture we are to take with our spiritual adversaries rather than human enemies, it remains that these often terrifying rants were spoken, by the original poets, against a very human enemy; the anguished cry was that Sheol would swallow up the wicked men, not demonic minions. Lewis addresses this with astonishing clarity(though my excerpt is piecemeal):

The examples which (in me at any rate) can hardly fail to produce a smile may occur most disquietingly in Psalms we love; 143, after proceeding for eleven verses in a strain that brings tears to the eyes, adds in the twelfth, almost like an afterthought "and of thy goodness slay mine enemies". Even more naively, almost childishly, 139, in the middle of its hymn of praise throws in (19) "Wilt thou not slay the wicked, O God?"--as if it were surprising that such a simple remedy for human ills had not occurred to the Almighty. Worst of all in "The Lord is my shepherd" (23), after the green pasture, the waters of comfort, the sure confidence in the valley of the shadow, we suddenly run across (5) "Thou shalt prepare a table for me against them that trouble me"--or , as Dr. Moffatt translates it, "Thou art my host, spreading a feast for me while my enemies look on." The poet's enjoyment of his present prosperity would not be complete unless those horrid Joneses (who used to look down their noses at him) were watching it all and hating it.

At the outset I felt sure, and I feel sure still, that we must not either try to explain them away or to yield for one moment to the idea that, because it comes in the Bible, all this vindictive hatred must somehow be good and pious. One might have expected that this would immediately, and usefully, have turned my attention to the same thing in my own heart. And that, of course is one very good use we can make of the maledictory Psalms...in the Psalmists' tendency to chew over and over the cud of some injury, to dwell in a kind of self-torture on every circumstance that aggravates it, most of us can recognize something we have met in ourselves. In fact, however, something else occured to me first. It seemed to me that, seeing in them hatred undisguised, I saw also the natural result of injuring a human being.

[In Pagan literature], I can find...lasciviousness, much brutal insensibility, cold cruelties taken for granted, but not this fury or luxury of hatred...One's first impression is that the Jews were much more vindictive and vitriolic than the Pagans...the absence of anger, especially that sort of anger which we call indignation, can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom. And the presence of indignation may be a good one. Even when that indignation passes into bitter personal vindictiveness, it may still be a good symptom, though bad in itself.

If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously. For if we look at their railings we find they are usually angry not simply because these things have been done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, and hateful to God as well as the victim...The Jews sinned in this matter worse than Pagans not because they were further from God but because they were nearer to Him...In that way the relentlessness of the Psalmists is far nearer to one side of the truth than many modern attitudes which can be mistaken, by those who hold them, for Christian charity.

I love the final jab, in nearly the last sentence of the chapter, intimating that the taken-for-granted Christian demeanor of calm temperance is very often a mask for the refusal to admit that anything is wrong.

Philip Yancey's time with leprosy specialist Dr. Paul Brand supplements this entire theme nicely. He writes in Soul Survivor:

I was writing the book Where Is God When It Hurts; he invited me to consider an alternative world without pain. He insisted on pain's great value, holding up as proof the terrible results of leprosy-- damaged faces, blindness, and loss of fingers, toes, and limbs-- all of which occur as side-effects of painlessness. As a young doctor in India, Brand had made the groundbreaking medical discovery that leprosy does its damage merely by destroying nerve endings. People who lose pain sensation then damage themselves by such simple actions as gripping a splintered rake or wearing tight shoes. Pressure sores form, infection sets in, and no pain signals alert them to tend to the wounded area..."I thank God for pain," Brand declared with the utmost sincerity. "I cannot think of a greater gift I could give my leprosy patients." He went on to describe the intricacies of the pain system that protects the human body..."Most people view pain as an enemy. Yet, as my leprosy patients prove, it forces us to pay attention to threats against our bodies...Virtually every response of our bodies that we view with irritation or disgust-- blister, callus, swelling, fever, sneeze, cough, vomiting, and especially pain-- demonstrates a reflex toward health."

As I listened to Brand, I realized that I had been approaching God like a sick patient- as if the Creator were running a complaint desk. I anguished over the tragedies, diseases, and injustices, all the while ignoring the many good things surrounding me in the world. Like the psalmists, could I learn to praise and lament at the same time, with neither intonation drowning out the other?...As the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote, "The cardinal issue, Why does the God of justice and compassion permit evil to persist? is bound up with the problem of how man should aid God so that his justice and compassion prevail."

2006-04-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

It strikes me that every time I've had a wild supernatural experience, a great time of worship, or just that Spirit-induced joy of being with other in the Lord, it has come at a time where my awareness of God's love for me, independent of my actions or merits, has been high.

In other words, I'm able to respond to his love.

Of course God's love isn't dependent on my response. But I am unable to receive a package when my hands are full-- to paraphrase C.S. Lewis. The verse in 1 John, "we love because he first loved us," becomes much more practical and in-focus when I understand this. God's pursuit of me is that soil out of which my love springs. The "worship was great today" compliment is put into perspective-- God found a way in, through our narcissism and disquieted hyper-activity. We let our guard down. We left a chink in the armor. We decided that we needed to simply receive instead of give to earn. I guess that's one reason why it's so much easier to meet God when we're at the end of our rope.

The lesson? Maybe "live like you're at the end of your rope?" How do I depend on God utterly, without neglecting my responsibility? Without being totally inactive, and never leaving my bed until God "gives me a word," how do I do only what I see the Father doing?

Right now, my answer is "live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness." Meditate on and receive God's unqualified love, throughout the day. When my heart starts racing, or my face stars burning because of a memory of something in the past, I will remember that God is not scolding me for it, and that my likeableness to him is 100% undiminished.

Only three minutes left and The Man's gonna kick me off this computer: so long...

Accepted Tenderness, cont'd

2006-03-30T12:17:00.000-08:00

Having finished The Wisdom of Tenderness in all of 2 days, I am compelled to continued excavating its gold mine by plagiarizing the daylights out of it on my blog, until you no longer even have to read the book...

"The notion of unmerited mercy is quaint but unintelligible to most of us, since it has no prototype in our human experience. The dramatic surprise that comes in the stories of the searching shepherd, the searching woman, and the searching father[Luke 15] is that being found by a searching God is more important than anything we do." Consistent with this notion of the initiative of God, followed by a response of joyful worship on our part, Manning has put things in their correct order for Christians to see. The tearful ecstasy of charismatic worship, the well-ordered processional entry of high liturgy, the tossing of our tithe into the offering plate, the Biblical devotion of a believer in solitude, the reading of Psalms of praise, even the confession of a Christian hunted by his sin, all are second in line to the thunderous pursuit of God, out of heaven and into a sin-scarred world, to win back his beloved. God likes us. And so we run back to him.

Central to our answer to this pursuit is spiritual poverty. "When we deny our spiritual poverty, danger lurks...The spiritually poor--like the economically poor--experience genuine gratitude and appreciate the slightest gift. Ironically, the more we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become. The more we realize that everything is gift, the more the tenor of our life becomes humble, joyful thanksgiving."

"Times of worship can no longer be evaluated by the felt effects they produce in us; the quality of the eucharistic meal can't be measured by the number of chairs at the table, the nature of the appetizers, or the tangible, visible results on a diner's psyche. The poor are bewildered that mercy has even bothered to show up, nonplussed that God and man at table are sat down."

In contrast, "The rich in spirit are often as downcast, guilt-ridden, anxious, and dissatisfied as their unbelieving neighbors, while the poor cry, 'It is right to give God thanks and praise!...how do we get from the poverty of spiritual wealth to the wealth of spiritual poverty?...attention to the attentiveness of Jesus." Living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. The knowledge that God likes you, as well as loves you.

Why blog, when you can let Brennan Manning do it for you? By the way, please read this book. After all it will only take you 2 days!

Accepted Tenderness

2006-03-30T12:14:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of off the subject of "Is God Listening" now, but this blogging is kind of all flowing together as one piece, so I'll keep picking up where I left off, until I have no more to say.

What I've been talking about, I will try to sum up in short: That true grace, not only in doctrine or definition, rolls over the spirit like floodwaters over a piece of dry ground, convicting the heart and mind that God's gifts and his love belong simply to those he chooses based on his nature as Giver and Lover, and not to those who prove their spirituality and right-thinking. God's Grace is here (Repent, believe, for the Kingdom of God is at hand...), it's powerful(bringing sight to the blind, setting the captives free, good news to the poor...), and the Church changes the world when they walk in it, demonstrating in their response of worship, and manifesting it in their acts of mercy and lifestyles of grace. The "siamese twin" of worship is mercy, justice, and faithfulness[Matt 23:23]. Correct worship(or doctrine, or orthodoxy) is a product of transformation, and not something that is worked up or contrived at its expense.

Brennan Manning, in The Wisdom of Tenderness, says not a few things that heavily jive(yeah, man) with this theme(116 pages and 1 day into the book). Manning's premise is that our need as Christians is not to do better, love better, adhere better, or worship better, but to "wholeheartedly trust that God likes me(not loves me, because...God loves by necessity of his nature.)" Manning suggests that "Jesus experienced in the depth of his human soul how much his Father liked him...[that] the Man who was like us in all things but ungratefulness discover[ed] his own truth in the light of the loving gaze that rested upon him."

This liked-ness(which insists on unconditionality in a way that 'love' does not, at least in our perception of the word) deserves the most attention of anything in the New Testament, Manning would have us believe. Because it is from this position, that of "receiver" that His mercy(termed "given tenderness") is allowed to roll over us. The imperative then is to "live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness." From this initiative, our own righteousness springs. To accept that you are loved by God is more important than to love God.

Not to receive(respond to) the unconditional love of the Father is to live in fear...crippling fear that one will not be accepted by his/her peers, him/herself, and finally God. It is to hopelessly and endlessly scrub one's actions, beliefs, and worship toward the end of approval and acceptance by others, rather than to genuinely respond to the Famous One's overtures of love. How then, do I deal with this fearful and sin-scarred state, which has and continues to characterize me? Well, having ruthlessly taken stock of myself in terms of sinful motives and desires as well as actions, I am to "be gentle with myself, as the Master is, humbly acknowledg[ing] that the Word hasn't taken sovereign possession of my life, accept my own need for further conversion, quickly repent, ask forgiveness, waste no time in self-recrimination, and smile at my own frailty."

It is in a post 9-11 world of this fear that the Church can stand out like a sore thumb among the dictates of fame, position, and wealth: "In the face of fear and uncertainty, the faithful remnant-- anawim in Hebrew, "ragamuffins" in the vernacular--remain agents of hope in what theologian Oscar Cullman calls the 'isness of the shall be.' The twinkle in their eye suggests that they possess a higher vision." The vision of accepted tenderness for themselves and others, even--especially--in the place of sin's devastation.

Is God Listening, part whatever

2006-03-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

I was in a church once that had a banner displayed in front that succinctly defined worhsip for all in the congregation. "Worship is our response to God's extravagant grace," it boldly read. I think this is accurate. I think that all worship, offering, and sacrifice that we bring on Sunday morning(or otherwise) is a response, and where there is a response there has been an initiation. For a worshipper, or worshipping church, to respond to God means that God's initiating role has been seen, and acknowledged or received.

God's initiative is found deep within every (re)action of Israel or the early church. It burns at Creation- the desire to pursue someone capable of receiving his unquenchable love. It sprints forward in Genesis 3 when God, seeing his beloved fall from perfection, makes obvious his intent to pursue lost mankind. Instead of "smokin' 'em and starting over," as one pastor insists he would do if he had been in charge, God plows ahead with history in hot pursuit of his wayward ones despite the ravaging effects of sin, because the "present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed" in his people[Rom 8:18]. It is to this reckless act of love, proven finally on the cross, that offering and worship respond.

As my old church was inclined to teach, "God's service to us" is what brought us together on Sunday morning. The implication is that our service to him was simply the result, the overflow. To have truly received the grace that God offered in his cross-death is to, responsively, boil over with praise, adoration, thanksgiving, and sacrifice. The grace with which God has covered his people can't help but manifest in the life of the church in terms of mercy, justice, and forgiveness. If these things are absent, continually and in spite of Biblical correction, can the "service" of the church really be said to be worship? Doesn't this absence indicate that the church has not truly received the grace, given to make them holy in God's sight, that has been lavished upon them? Theologian Don Williams acknowledges that the evangelical church considers the the Bible "inerrant," and the "word of God." His question in response is "is it functioning that way in the life of the church?"

As the lady who inquired about my church(mentioned in part 2) demonstrated, the questions we seem to be asking in our evangelical churches are "Are we orthodox?" "Do we teach correct doctrine?" "Do we preach scripture?" "Is our liturgy sound?" This unfortunately is an easy way out. 'Yes' answers to these are not standalone requirements. If this was all the Church is called to, reformation and revival would depend on us, not the Holy Spirit. More prudent questions for a church-seeker like this woman might be "is this church demonstrating the abundant life that Christ promised?" "Is this church full of Biblical Joy and Liberation from sin?" "Is the mercy and grace of God manifested in the everyday life of this church?" Because a 'yes' answer to these latter questions will mean that the other criteria have fallen into line as result.

Jesus' accusation in Matthew 23:23, that the Pharisees have tithed their spices without practicing justice, mercy, and faithfulness, is of course completed thus: "You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." None of this has been a call to stop tithing, sacrificing, or worshipping God in the name of first correcting our motives. As Grace insists, the motive and the internal affairs of the heart do not disqualify someone from service in God's Kingdom. Should we return European Jews to the concentration camps because the allied forces' motive in World War II was not necessarily to free them? The Biblical witness answers that with stories of God's Kingdom work faithfully performed by murderers and losers such as Moses, David, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul, Solomon, and Samson. King Saul, though despicable and selfish, was used by God to set into action God's sovereign will.

Is God Listening? part 3

2006-03-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

Jesus' words in Matthew echo Amos' harshness: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. In other words, your worship is a joke. You have refused to show mercy to your brothers, instead you have heaped guilt and condemnation on those who have not lived up to all the minutiae of hair-splitting legalism. You have insisted that obedience to Sabbath law is more important than the joy and peace borne of Sabbath rest. And now you come to me and presume to "offer" me a tithe of your earnings. But your failure to hear the heartbeat of the Law-- righteousness only by faith in Me-- proves to me where your motives truly lie! You have insisted that righteousness means meeting a performance standard rather than emptying your hands of religious duty so that you can receive the grace offered for your inability to meet that very standard. A grace that is the only path to my righteousness; your law of Moses only condemns you.

And again from the mouth of Jesus, the admonition comes that worship, church service, religious duty, obedience to the letter of the law are secondary. The Mosaic Law' heartbeat of Grace is not found in stricture and obligation, which render the Law arbitrary. There is a higher purpose to Leviticus. Jesus illustrates it perfectly: Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift(Matt 5:23-24). Philip Yancey explains it this way: "So urgent is the need for forgiveness that it takes precedence over 'religious' duties...by denying forgiveness to others, we are in effect determining them unworthy of God's forgiveness, and thus so are we." God does not desire our corporate worship, our liturgy, our emotional displays of devotion, our adherence to "orderly worship," our hymns and our WOW worship songs. He desires mercy. There is a current underneath worship, underneath Sunday's service, and underneath proper doctrine, orthodoxy, theology, and statements of faith. This undercurrent legitimizes anything the Church presumes to do, or declare, or preach. It's absence renders all of our doings and believings a spiritualized song and dance. This undercurrent is the ferocious Grace of God, received freely, and manifesting powerfully in the Church's mercy and compassion upon the weak, justice for the poor and downtrodden, forgiveness and welcome to the sinners. Anything less is the fakery and the worship-ish farce of a religious club.

I echo the question asked by David Ruis in The Worship God Is Seeking. What would it be like, if in the middle of our worship service someone shouted "Hold it...stop the music! Stop the hand-waving. Hold that offering plate. Put away the Nicene Creed and the tenets of orthodoxy. Cancel the sermon. The Church not yet attended to mercy and justice. We have not forgiven our brothers and sisters as we have been forgiven. Our righteousness is not rooted in God's grace alone, and therefore is no righteousness at all."

The Good News echoes loud and clear above such exaltation of externals. Jesus parades the message noisily throughout the New Testament:
I have seen your failure. I know that your worship is faulty. I know that your tithes are made in the wrong spirit. I know you have not forgiven as you have been forgiven. I see the emptiness of your liturgy.I know that your obedience to the law is ungrateful and rooted in obligation, not love. I know you can't put down the bottle. I see that you are as unfaithful as Gomer was to Hosea, both to me and to your spouses. Come to me and I will give you rest, because I do not demand perfection. I have not expected a cleaned-up prodigal. I forgive the emptiness of your worship. I forgive your obsession with externals in church and life. And I forgive your unforgiveness.

Only in the magnificent Grace of God does such saving power originate. And thus the Gospel, the power to save, shuts the mouth of Satan and all who would accuse us of failing to worship God correctly.

Is God Listening? part 2

2006-03-21T14:09:00.000-08:00

A minor encounter I witnessed should illustrate my question. Following church one Sunday, as we all talked and ate muffins, a woman entered and asked what denomination we belonged to. When the answer wasn't familiar to her, she asked "Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and died for our sins?" Receiving a 'yes' she declined the offer of more information; this was apparently enough information to recommend the church to a friend.

I may be assuming a lot here. This lady may have been in a hurry. Or she may have believed a clearer picture could be had when she actually attended a service. But it's not the first time I've heard "church searching" advice given to those who are in between churches; radio preachers seem especially fond of running down their list of requirements for a "good church." It goes something like the Nicene Creed. If a list of doctrinal standards are met, the church gets the recommendation of the preacher. Orthodoxy is measured by what is found in the handbook or "statement of faith."

But I have been a member of at least one church where the Nicene Creed was recited weekly, and there was no possibility of finding a crack in its orthodoxy. Proper doctrine was dispensed from the pulpit. Yet the freedom for which Christ set that church free was nowhere to be found, even as members and leaders strove dutifully to adhere to Biblically prescribed structure, doctrine, and teaching. Things consequently degenerated into spiritual chaos disguised by external order, hatred disguised by a verbose lip-service to the virtue of love, and graceless behavior that was legitimized by the loud and frequent quotation of Ephesians 2:8 . Is orthodoxy merely a written statement? Or maybe a better question is, is orthodoxy the best indicator, or any indicator, of whether a church is serving God and others?

A peculiar thing happens in the Old Testament. God has spent a tremendous amount of time and effort, written entire books on the Law, and disciplined his people severely, all to establish a system of sacrifice and worship so that a people ravaged by sin can come to a holy and perfect God. He has given the priesthood is given so that people may come near, a kind of filter to ensure that Israel's sins are atoned for before they approach or petition the I AM. And then, with one simple phrase he seems to throw it all on the pile: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.(Hosea 6:6) Holy God has heard heard the cries of the poor and the weak, and those cries, for the time being, have rendered the worship of the Israelites null and void. God will not hear the praise nor accept the burnt offerings of those who have mistreated the poor and withheld justice from the weak. David Ruis asks provocatively of our worship (particularly relevant in the prosperous Church of the western world) "Is God listening?" Forget whether the teens are listening, forget whether the culture is listening, forget whether this or that demographic can relate to our particular idiom of liturgy. Is God listening?

Is this a valid question? Amos seemed to think so, and had strong words for those in Israel who, faithfully and in the prescribed manner, were tithing and sacrificing according to Levitical law. The problem? Justice and mercy were nowhere to be found. I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5:21-24)

Ruis says of this verse in The Worship God Is Seeking:

"Even though the choicest of fellowship offerings were brought before Him, something was missing. What was to be a fragrant offering before heaven had become something much less, a sacrifice He could not receive. Our acts of worship divorced from a lifestyle of mercy and justice create the same effect. The liturgy must stop. The music must be quieted. (I haven't seen a Christian bumper sticker made of those verses yet!) God cannot receive the worship of His people until 'justice roll[s] on like a river, [and] righteousness like a never-failing stream'...It is my conviction that we must again regain the fusion of worship and justice. A prudent question for us today would be, is God even listening? 'Away with the noise of your songs' is the last thing that the worshipping church wants to hear from heaven, but do we have courage to listen if that is what God is telling us?"

Is God Listening?

2006-03-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

Of the United States, Historian Garry Wills notes that the first nation to separate the Christian Church from the government produced possibly the most deeply Christian nation in history. Within this most Christian of nations, I live in its most Christian region, the South, evidenced by the fact that I pass no fewer than 12 churches and one Christian bookstore on my 6-minute drive to work every morning. 4 Baptist, 1 Presbyterian, 1 Methodist, 2 Catholic, 2 Pentecostal, a Salvation Army, and a non-denominational worship center all stand within a two mile stretch of road. Nowhere it seems is Christian faith, practice, and tradition more alive than in the American South.

In his historical study of revivals, John White finds that there is no revivial without abuse, manipulation, and conflict. Yet he believes that these are not sufficient reasons to condemn genuine revival and renewal, or the signs, wonders, and powerful manifestations of God's Spirit that accompany them. Likewise, in this most Christian of nations, and this most Christian of regions, I witness a bloody trail of casualties left by the Church's abuse, manipulation, and condemnation. The anti-Gospel nature of much that is preached and taught causes one to wonder if "evangelical" churches are reading the same Bible that proclaims the good news to the poor and sets the captives free. (One Baptist preacher last year righteously declared from the pulpit that "if anyone in this room voted for John Kerry, they should leave right now," resulting in his removal from the position and the eruption of devastating conflict in the church.) But contrary to the vehement criticisms of Church opponents, also numbering legion in "progressive" Asheville and often former churchgoers themsevles, this isn't properly addressed by mere reactionarism and counter-condemnation. A maxim used by Graham Cooke to address those who would abandon the prophetic realm is also true for church MIA's: the answer to misuse of a tool is not disuse, but proper use. The correction, of course, can't come from outside of the Church. It must come from within...

Repentance and "Cultural Drek"

2006-01-30T15:13:00.000-08:00

Brennan Manning in Abba's Child gives us my favorite quotation concerning politics and Christianity:

"The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of their core identity as Abba’s Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity.

"Abba’s children seek a third option, guided first of all by God’s Word. All religious and political systems, Right as much as Left, are the work of human beings. Abba’s children will not sell out to conservatives or liberals. They cling to their freedom in Christ to live the gospel –uncontaminated by cultural drek, political debris, and the fancy footwork of bullying religion."

While I personally find myself making friends with many flaming liberal idealists, they frustrate me at the same time that they edify me, for exactly the reasons one of my commenters described- their cliche and oversimplification consistently fail to address the real issue. I wouldn't for a minute join their political camp. But while the Church is God's tool for bringing the Kingdom on earth, that did not stop God from transferring his anointing from Jews to gentiles and heathens under the New Covenant. A Church that continues en masse on the path of materialism and condemnation wouldn't surprise me if it ended up not being the Church anymore("Did we not prophesy in your name?...). Granola-eating pantheists, on the other hand, who consistently entertain principles of death to self, might just wake up one day to find themselves the heirs of the Kingdom as they breathe the words "Jesus is Lord."

I have called these people non-conformists. It is true in one sense and untrue in another. Like all human beings, they have fallen into pride and applied human solution after human solution to a spiritual problem. But subjective though my point of view is, in my experience the extreme political left has not bought the "cultural drek" that is regularly hawked by the entertainment industry, institutionalized religion, and American self-sufficiency. What they have done incorrectly is addressed (ad nauseum) in Christian and conservative circles, and it's for that reason that I don't feel the need to address it here.

I don't believe that attacking a culture of greed, which I'm prone to doing, is to attack the rich, or to elevate a life of simplicity over other lifestyles. I will never criticize the rich for being rich. Phariseeism knows no social class. But are Christians in this country elevating poverty to an idol? Not to my knowledge. My aim in Moving Out of Suburbia was to list corporate changes that could be made by American Christians to address sin issues that seem more pervasive here than anywhere else in the world, many related to wealth. I don't expect Christians to cease ownership of property. I do expect Christians to measure their lifestyles against the Biblical standard (not the American standard), and humbly ask for God to change them however he will. People who do this will eventually find themselves living heavenward and not retirement-ward.

When I say "you're not spiritual...rich...[or] talented," I'm once again preaching one side of a coin. The prodigious instrumentalist or singer is of course worthy of thanks and praise for his/her gift. Taking a "don't thank me, thank God" attitude is indeed drivel. Ascetism and self-denial for its own sake are neither humble nor spiritual. But in a culture that says "personal worth is not intrinsic to humanness, it's achieved and merited through works," I don't really seeing many people with an asceticism problem. Instead I'm seeing a self-indulgent culture(and Church) that think they own it all and they earned it all. My problem is not that people get credit for acting prudently, or nurturing skill, or accumulating wealth by honest means. But I do have a problem when Christians forsake the following "order of operations":

#1. Admit you are poor, sick, and in need.
#2. Admit there is nothing you can do to change this.
#3. God, by grace, bestows upon you forgiveness, salvation, and all that I have both material and immaterial.
#4. Now I am rich, spiritual, talented. I was blind, but now I see. But not until I've wept at the foot of the cross over the shackles of sin and the poverty of spirit that afflict me.

What we have in many of our churches is a cheap grace and a cheap Pentecost. This cheap grace places step #4 before step #1, even rejecting #1 and #2 altogether. This is in fact no grace at all, because this kind of self-reliance is equal to God-refusal. Lip service to grace tumbles from our mouths at the same time that we scramble to earn our worth in the Kingdom by walking in the gifts, studying the Bible more, and conspicuously "not sinning." My nearly offensive statement that "if you think you earned anything, I guess God's grace is not for you" is meant to speak to the works-orientation that, in many of our minds, qualifies us for citizenship in the Kingdom. Our intrinsic value rests in God's love for us, and this precludes us from deriving fundmental value from anything else in Creation. When we perceive that our righteousness depends on personal merit or actions, we have "already received our reward in full." God does not save people who don't want to be saved. Likewise, he does not bestow the righteousness born of his own holy nature upon those who have sought righteousness elsewhere. These are "the proud" that God opposes in Proverbs 3:34.

The cost of discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer found out in a very literal way, is your life. The nature of God's bountiful grace and provision is that a certain response is required of me. It's a response of humility and repentance. It's a response that is not required only at the moment of salvation, but every moment from then until my time on earth ends.

Happiness Suppressants

2006-01-25T11:51:00.000-08:00

To continue in the anti-materialism vein that I've been blogging in:

Heard it on the radio this morning that a "happiness poll" was conducted to find out which country in the world had the happiest people. This poll was done by the World Values Survey, and inter-university study, and was reported on by CNN.

The results for the #1 happiest nation in the world??? .........Nigeria. That's right, Nigeria, Africa. Also high on the list were Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Mexico and El Salvador.

And the wealthiest nation in the world's history? Well the United States comes in at #16. Great Britain at #24. I guess that's not bad, considering there were 60 nations polled. But consider also that the happiness rating in the U.S. and Europe, according to this study, has not increased since 1945. Another poll finds Bangladesh at #1 on the list and the U.S. at a depressing(and depressed) #46. According to WVS, there is a direct inverse corellation between a people's desire for material possessions and their nation's happiness. The poll concluded this desire to be a "happiness suppressant."

Didn't Jesus call a spade a spade thousands of years ago? And ever since then, haven't Christians in Europe and America done their best to pretend that Jesus meant something else by "deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me?" Do we really have to look far to find the cause of powerless, faithless, service-less, give-me Christianity?

My advice: burn everything you own in a pile in the front yard...

2006-01-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

Mike Marshall and Chris Thile

2006-01-14T21:07:00.000-08:00

Jan. 13; Diana Wortham Theater, Asheville, NC; Mike Marshall and Chris Thile

An evening with these two is like drinking from a firehose. Better yet, like watching the Hoover Dam give way and the Colorado River come roaring through to destroy everything in its path.

Unreal. With notes as dense and numerous as raindrops in a monsoon, these two virtuosos tore through every genre of music imaginable-- on instruments that are smaller than a 45 rpm record. As on their first collaborative recording, Into the Cauldron, Brazilian Choro followed pop, Bach followed traditional Bulgarian music(Carpathian Mtn. Breakdown??), which then thundered into breakneck bluegrass. I started sweating just watching them.

The duo will release their second collaboration this month- Live Duets. "Mandolin duos are sweeping the nation," Thile mused ironically during the set. Years ago, the two started playing together out of mutual admiration, and the results have been phenomenal. I guess you could expect nothing less from, well, two phenomenons of the mandolin.

20-something Thile's well-known genre bending newgrass group Nickel Creek has won a grammy and sold well over a million albums since the release of their self-titled debut. Marshall is a seasoned veteran and pioneered the acoustic music genre with groups like Psychograss, The Duo(with Darol Anger) and collaborations with Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Stephane Grappelli, David Grisman, and a host of other legendary musicians. Together the two have the synergy of sparring martial artists, the tension of two birds of prey battling it out in the sky, the spirit of a herd of wild horses. And they know how to laugh at themselves. Chris cracks jokes as he swings the mic away, only to have it spin on its boom stand and hit him in the back of the head. Mike, describing the mandocello(mandolin's large counterpart of the 'cello), explains that it originated in ancient times when giant mandolins ruled the earth. This is no humorless black-tie affair in which high art is made a little bit lower by the stoicism of the artists. But the music is at least as good. Here, you are as likely to hear John Coltrane's licks as Earl Scruggs'. And all while bouncing up and down uncontrollably, wild facial contortions complementing furiously passionate and hysterically fast flatpicking. And it's the only show I know of where the set will end with a Bulgarian fiddle tune in "the people's time signature of 25/16."

After the show, I linger to see if the duo will make an appearance in the lobby. I am now the proud owner of a signed copy of Into the Cauldron. And I have exchanged a few words with the Michaelangelos of Mandolin.

January is Mandolin Month

2006-01-06T15:49:00.000-08:00

Or so I read somewhere!
And fittingly, a new must have CD comes out this month for me:

Live Duets by Mike Marshall and Chris Thile

It's on Sugar Hill Records, and the track list is as follows:

Shoulda Seen it Comin'
Byron's
Carpathian Mt. Breakdown
I'd Go Back if I Could
The Only Way Out
Hualalai
J.S. Bach Dm Gigue (from solo Violin Partita #2)
Joy Ride in a Toy Car/Hey Ho
'Til Dawn
Sedi Donka
Tanja

These two are possibly the two best mandolin players in the Solar System, and their first collaboration- Into the Cauldron- featuring nothin' but mando's, blew my mind with its genre-spanning creativity, virtuosity, composition, and humor. Listen online!

Hollywood's Trap

2005-12-30T09:25:00.000-08:00

I finally saw the Narnia movie, and like everyone else, pretty much loved it. Here are some observations I had:

As "the McCready" bears down on them, the children flee towards the room with the wardrobe inside. Which of course leads them, including the disbelieving Peter and Susan, into Narnia.

One parallel I noticed(as the story is so full of allegory it's almost daunting), which I didn't notice on reading the books, is how the pursuit of Mrs. McCready is in response to the children's transgression- the breaking of an old stained glass window during a cricket game. This pursuit leads them providentially to the wardrobe and into Narnia, which becomes their safe haven from their accuser, the elderly housekeeper. Their entrance into the magical world (Kingdom of God) is made possible by the admission wrongdoing, and saves them from judgement.

The second thing that hit me was the connection between the scene in the movie and the very release of a movie like Narnia from a culture like Hollywood. God relentlessly points all people toward his Kingdom, initiated in his Son, wherever they are and in whatever sinful state they're in. A debauched culture of star-worship and morality-marketing, even Hollywood itself cannot escape being providentially herded towards its own Narnia, the Kingdom of God in Christ. I remember reading a statement by Peter Jackson that he had no intention of exploring or making statements about the spiritual facets of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But to make the movie with any fidelity to the books is to invoke the nature of good and evil as Tolkien saw them- from a Biblical perspective.

Whether in Lewis' allegory or Tolkien's "applicability," the cash cow of Hollywood is backed into the corner by its own rules(profit and glitz) and is forced to raise up such Kingdom-type heroes as Sam Gamgee and Lucy Pevensie. Without jumping on the bandwagon of "these movies are a victory for Christian culture in America," I do see God at work, especially considering the vehemence of some who hate the movies for these very reasons.

Let me also note that however derisively I speak about Hollywood, I am one of the biggest consumers of their products!

The Image of Christ

2005-12-23T20:38:00.001-08:00

Flyawaynet at This Walk writes a very helpful illustration about a pattern in the "reproduction" of Christians. His question is pretty much: Are we doing what Jesus would do or what Christians would do? WWJD or WWCD?

"...as every builder knows, if you're going to cut out more than one mold of a thing then you have to start with the original each time. If you base your cuts off the 2nd one made, and the cuts of the 4th one off the 3rd one made, and so on and so on, by the time you're done with your cuts, you'll be able to notice a difference between your original and your final product. Imagine if you would, if that is what was done by Christians just since 1600. How many generations of Christians have come through since then with the differences between Christians and Christ slowly growing larger and larger."

Or for another illustration-- If you take a simple phrase in English, then translate it into Japanese, then back to English, you will probably have a completely different meaning from the original phrase, because no translation is a truly literal translation. If we are made in the image of Christ, it does no good to desire the image of another Christian, or more likely, some fairy-tale ideal of what Christians looks like. These are a giant step down from what God created us to look like.

I will come clean with an example, concerning this blog. Back in October, I wrote a post called Trick or Django, in which I pictured one little girl in her Halloween costume- gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. But then, knowing that Christians were going to frequent my blog, I second-guessed myself, wondering if I should even mention Halloween without vociferously condemning it, given the stance of many Christians on the holiday.

What a ridiculous train of thought, based solely on my desire to gain approval. Not to do right. Not to deal with the Halloween issue. To win the acceptance of others...which is indicative of my attitude towards God; an attitude that is flatly contradicted by Ephesians 2:8-9. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

On another note- How often do we really want to ask the WWJD question, knowing what the answer might be? Saying to the religious leaders "You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?" Weeping compassionately for the lost? Dying in ignominy?

No, I don't think I want to know what Jesus would do.

"Break these chains, but break them slowly" -Burlap to Cashmere

2005-12-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

Do things Christians aren't supposed to do

Addendum

2005-12-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Given the nature of the posting I've been doing lately, I feel like I should assure my readers that I'm not some hyper-negative Christian who sits around thinking up virulent attacks on the Church. I know there are millions of people who have genuine intentions about gift-giving, serving the homeless, etc. And I hope it was clear that my solution is not to stop doing these things.

But my writing here is no more a laudable act of piety over the birth of Christ than is the stuff I've been trying to expose. So here's the real deal, Mary's song:

My soul exalts the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave;
For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.
For the Mighty One has done great things for me;
And holy is His name.
And His mercy is upon generation after generation
Toward those who fear Him.
He has done mighty deeds with his arm;
He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones,
And has exalted those who were humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
And sent away the rich emptyhanded.
He has given help to Israel His servant,
In remembrance of His mercy,
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and his offspring forever.

The Containment of Christmas, part 4

2005-12-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

If Christ is our battle chief, typified by Joshua, and leading us into the spiritual war, then attack we must. But enemies are easily identified when they are outside us. Since we Christians find it so easy to fire burning arrows at Ramadan, Kwanzaa, and pagan Solstice celebrations, then we will no doubt welcome the offensive the Son of God has launched on the battleground within, setting fire to the citadel containing the things we most love this time of year: our soapbox reclamation of the holidays. Our fakery of goodwill and mock concern for the homeless. Our smirking declarations that “tis better to give than to receive,” or that "this overemphasis on spending is really ruining the true meaning of the holiday." And everything else that, when boiled down, amounts to a scrambling effort to earn a seat beside the manger. There are two options for the Christian. Get real with God and abandon this body of death, or be consumed along with it in the Refiner’s fire. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. It is after, never before, you have lost everything to the Babe, in whose very nature is the Cross, that your giving will be truly sacrificial, your smiles and well-wishing will truly be empathetic, your Christmas pontifications will culminate in your bending the knee in worship of the infant Lord.

The problem, as we all suspected, was never with the trappings of Christmas. Or commercialization and overspending. Or campy songs on the radio. Or the disappearance of Christian symbols from public property. The problem was, is, and always will be with our deceitful and wicked hearts. Do not divide His church into two groups- the real Christians, and those who are posing. With Walt Kelly’s Pogo, our most honest statement is “We have met the enemy, and he is US.” The Christmas poseur resides in every Christian. He must be witnessed, acknowledged, and then dragged screaming into the Presence of Emmanuel, where he will be swallowed in the Majesty of the Other.

As the Child grew to a boy, and the boy to a man, we were astounded more than we thought possible. We were brought low. We were humbled, or we walked away. And whenever we thought we could outwardly pretend humility but give inward props to ourselves as one of the "good Christians," we ended up stewing in resentment of God, the rest his flock, and the world. If you want to celebrate Christmas this year, then it will cost you your life. If you have not lost your life to the Child, than you will not celebrate, only posture and pretend. No one who clings to the old way of denial, self-sufficiency, and personal dignity has placed their soul on the altar for sacrifice, thus entering into true Christmas celebration.

Those who have sold everything and bought the field with the buried treasure, those who have fallen helplessly and worshiped, undone by an Infant, are the ones to whom celebration is given. It is to them that the Christmas spirit belongs. They, the honest ones, have found nowhere else to go. No great army to protect them, no towering fortress walls for refuge, no hosts of angels soaring forth to do battle. Only a baby, giggling and bawling. And it is before Him that all of our attempts to “find Christmas” fall lifeless to the ground, and we are set free. "Listen!" says Guerric of Igny. "He is crying. Is this the one who thunders in the heaven making the angels lower their wings?" Without Him, we will turn every Christmas into a dogmatized song and dance, every gift into a self-satisfied bid for others’ or God’s approval, caricaturize every sacred rite and observance into meaningless exercise, and sing every glorious carol of praise in flat, passionless voices. And His Kingdom will have no end. With him, we will be raised above Satan’s onslaught to watch the Son of Man cast the enemy into the void forever, and the ensuing triumph will dwarf what the shepherds experienced that night in Bethlehem. Fall on your knees.

The Containment of Christmas, part 3

2005-12-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

Our adoration for the Christ Child should be boundless, uncontainable. And if anything proves this adoration, it’s certainly not frenzied clinging to gift-giving traditions, or faithfully attending midnight mass. More likely, it begins with the embarrassment of admitting that I'm so incapable, the porcelain Child on my mantelpiece would 33 years later throw it all away for me, a spiritual fieldmouse. But the mad rush for security that describes most of our lives, especially during high holidays, makes it easy to forget that self-insufficiency is inseperable from wild adoration. So if the revealed glory of God provokes people to this state of sacrificial worship, then to which people is the glory of God revealed?

The shepherds, historians tell us, were not an admirable bunch. Given to stealing because of their poverty, they were spit upon and ignored by respectable Jews. For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. It is to these vagabonds that a host of angels appeared, singing praises and adoration of the Most High, and announcing His birth. The stunned awe they must have felt might never be matched this side of Christ’s return. It is to them and no others that angels of God descend and sing praises of Emmanuel.

It is to Mary, assumedly a teenage girl, common and with no office, that the Son of God is born. Hail favored one! The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. The glory of God shines forth to Mary, not even a woman yet. As an unmarried female she was property of her father, having no legal rights, and no public voice. Why lies He in such mean estate / where ox and ass are feeding? It is because his mother, chosen of God to bear His Son, is of so little account by the cultural standard that she can’t even find a suitable place to give birth. It is to her and no other that the Lord of Hosts descends to be born.

Why then was it to nobodies that Almighty God chose to reveal Himself to? The Biblical list could go on: Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Jeremiah, Rahab, David. Nobodies, failures, and criminals. Is this some kind of joke? Does God not really care as much as we thought, that he entrusts the fate of His people into rabble such as this? Because surely stewardship of His revelation would be better off in the hands of a high priest, some prophet, or the contemporary equivalent of the Pope or Billy Graham. The answer is what God has always known: that anyone of true spiritual account got that way by becoming nothing-- by folding their hand and shoving all their chips across the table. And four chapters after the angels herald His coming, it becomes apparent, to our chagrin, that God does not rescind this principle. For the now grown Lord is preaching some nonsense about the Kingdom of God belonging to the poor. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. The beatitude is not only a comfort to the downtrodden. It is a challenge to the rich, the religious, and the self-reliant: get humble or get humiliated.

It's a convenient time of year for secular offendedness at Christianity to clash with the pop-Christianity assertion that our national and cultural roots are in Christian tradition. The average opinion from the Church on this matter has the quality of a puerile whine, on par with how these same opinions describe the political Left. The (forgotten) responsibility for a spiritually mature perspective, free from backbiting and self-righteousness, rests with the Transformed, not with the lost. We expected nothing less from the secular world. In fact, their standoffishness is eerily Biblical. The Gospel threw the Pharisees and Greek intellectuals into an uproar. This, they perceived, was outright foolishness and an attack on their personal sovereignty. Even Herod saw what Christians apparently do not. Prophecy told of a King over all kings, and this inevitable usurpation struck fear into him. So afraid he was, that he murdered all the male infants in Bethlehem in an effort to preserve himself. We are not so honest. We pretend that there is no threat, that Jesus has not come to finally and completely unseat us from our throne, and crush every vestige of our power. We would rather that he came to support the Church's goal to be the hegemonic voice in the public square, or at least pose cutely with children and animals. And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. This kind of Christmas should be more than offensive. It should force every last onlooker to an inner decision: either throw themselves in weakness at the feet of Jesus or, with the rich young ruler, turn their backs and leave.

The Containment of Christmas, part 2

2005-12-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

Dishonest people don't have to admit that the Christmas story is the beginning of their undoing. They don't have to admit that at the Lord's banquet, they bring absolutely nothing to the table. And they don't have to admit that all their effort in the desperate struggle to live correctly lands them nowhere but Sheol. "They're telling me that we celebrate the biggest retail holiday of the year because millenia ago, a baby was found in a stable? By people of no account, maybe even outright delinquents? I'm supposed to get sentimental over that? This is supposed to be some sort of narrow way? I mean, my 3,000 Christmas lights and my liberal giving each year at this time must count for something in heaven, right?"

The gravity and magnitude of what happened on the first Christmas is at best, missed entirely by the containment mentality, at worst, wilfully traded for appropriately seasonal stimulation. Here is the Christmas greeting that is tied to the gift of the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes: "You have failed, and you are lost. You have wasted everything that I ever gave you, and you have turned your lives and your world into hopeless cesspool of sin. So to liberate you from the destruction you have brought upon yourselves, I who love you, and who am holy and unchanging, have come. I am Emmanuel, and I am your only hope." Everything containment stands for is shaking and screaming "For God's sake, let's make this convenient, because if I have to face this kind of reality, I'm going to fall apart! A $500+ price tag on a gift of state-of-the-art electronics I can handle. But not a baby before whom I am helpless and undone." And the government will be on his shoulders. "Not the revelation that I will never ever be good enough, and so Someone-- poor, vulnerable, and sleeping in a barn-- has to be good enough for me."

And so we Christians are found pouting in the corner like children, refusing to admit. To confess. To fall apart. Jesus' birth is an event at which the only proper response is enamored, abandoned shouts of praise and thanksgiving and befuddled, wordless breakdown into a puddle of our own snot and tears. That's why we forget, sanitize. That's why we contain. Our minds stutter as our lips sing the timeless 'O Holy Night.' Fall on your knees? I'd rather not. Shepherds quake at the sight? That was their job. I however will stand firm. And as long as the wise men remain captive in a carol, I can pontificate about how these spiritual giants left home and country to find the Desire of Nations without ever evaluating my suburban condominium lifestyle, conveniently located next to a Target and a Wendy's.

This event is groundsplitting. It is far too dangerous to turn loose its full ramifications. This will back-fire, causing me, with my 'Jesus is the reason for the season' mantra, to break down and confess that I'm too weak to even stand up without the hand of God lifting me. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And when the day ends, the most disturbing realization we have is not that Christmas paraphernalia and jargon has been cleansed from public view and hearing by "liberals," "PC people," and "heathens." It's that the very people to whom the Son was given would rather sweep Him under the carpet of Christmas piety than admit they are helpless before a Child. Contain this through commercialization. Through spiritulized complaining about commercialization. Through political cynicism about the "war on Christmas." And through contrived happiness (that just so happens to begin at dawn on the Friday after Thanksgiving) which falls miles short of spiritual joy. Joe non-churchgoer responds: "You want me to be excited about Jesus, and this is how you prove it?" Our kids run away from church and God at age 18, and we wonder why?

The Containment of Christmas, part 1

2005-12-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

Weeks ago I read Luke's account of the Christmas story, and as the word of God will, it jumped off the page at me. It's a story so well-known, that's it's easily taken for granted and over-romanticized. And while each Christmas many unbelievers forget the Person at the center, an equal fallacy is raised when believers sanitize and "contain" the event.

Among scholars, Luke's gospel is symbolized by the figure of a man. Character, humanity, flesh and blood-- these are the attributes of Christ that Luke sought to portray most strongly. Contrast this with Matthew's version, whose symbol is a lion and whose aim is to convince a Jewish audience of Christ's Messiah-ship. Or Mark, denoted by a bull, symbol of power, service, work. Luke is trying to tell us that the long-awaited King is nothing that we expected; not a conqueror, and not some invulnerable spirit-essence. He is man; he was born, and he died. He suffered and he exulted. He knew joy and sorrow. As a baby he screamed, nursed, and needed constant attention. This is, born of Luke's narrative, one of the striking aspects of all Christmas imagery, from medieval artwork to Wal-mart nativity scenes. The Infinite clothed in the finite. Or in the words of Augustine, "The Heavens cannot contain him; a woman carried him in her bosom." But so far as we are from the first Christmas, Christ is now less human and more giant or fairy-tale to his followers. The telling is stale, and the story is old. Centuries of sin-sickness have crept up on our traditions and observances, finally engulfing true celebration with whitewashed sadness and anger. Perhaps that's why the culture, close on the Church's heels, has collapsed the earth-shaking reality of the Holy Night into an abonimable "slogan-in-decor." We have contained it in something that will allow us to stand tall and declare that we are Christians and this is our Season. Our aim has been to reduce the birth event of Jesus to a neat package that we can easily gift-wrap, and then by scribbling our names on the paper, own for all time.

Un-contained. What's really happening here? Honesty dictates that we confront the passionlessness with which many of us experience Christmas. When front-yard nativities and lifeless pageants cease to stimulate our "sap" glands, and when traditions and well-wishing bring a comfort so fleeting that we have to lie to ourselves to hold on to it, we are left with nothing but wads of torn, used wrapping paper and brightly colored ribbons that end up in the trash. Debt lasts longer than the intangible Christmas spirit, pseudo-spirituality crumbles as always, and December 26th feels more and more like a hangover. Has Christmas just failed to do its work this year, or was it always a load of flighty emotionalistic kitsch? Have we just been fooling ourselves for the kids' sake all this time? "Yes honey, Santa is real." "We just have to watch Rudolph this year." "Dammit, don't put that decoration there!" "I hate shopping, and I hate this @$#% holiday!"

The reason we forget, contain, and sanitize is that we are dishonest. And we are dishonest because to be honest is to have the crushing weight of the Rock fall upon the beloved agendas of our flesh. For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given. "The Savior, the Messiah, the Redeemer of God's chosen people has come...to peasants? To a teenage girl and a working class layman? To a bunch of dirty shepherds? The prophesied Christ is later found ducking out of the country incognito to escape the authorities? Are you kidding? How is that spiritual? What does that make me?"