Random (Spiritual) Thoughts

"THE QUESTION, YOU SEE, IS NOT TO PREPARE BUT TO LIVE IN A STATE OF ONGOING PREPAREDNESS SO THAT, WHEN SOMEONE WHO IS DROWNING IN THE WORLD COMES INTO YOUR WORLD, YOU ARE READY TO REACH OUT AND HELP"  -  Henri Nouwen


Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping because my brain just doesn't want to shut down.  Descarte said, "I think therefore I am."  If that is true, then my existence is strongly confirmed.  Here are some random thoughts about the spiritual life.  I hope you enjoy.  Maybe more important, I hope you think about them:


*It is easier to enjoy beauty than sense the holy.

*It is easier to taste delicious food that to taste God's goodness.

*It is easier to discipline the physcial body than to discipline our spirit and soul.

*It is easier to run head on into an accident than to run head on into God.

*It is easier to become distracted by the things of this earth than to allow heaven to invade us here on
  earth.

Just some thoughts for the day . . .

If Jesus is Alive, Why do we Act as if he Never Lived?

"THE HERMENEUTIC OF SUSPICION HAS BEEN SAFELY APPLIED TO THE HISTORY OF JESUS BUT NOT TO THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORIANS"  -  Tom Oden

Bart Ehrman has been celebrated by atheists for being a New Testament biblical scholar who ended up losing his faith.  Ehrman is a prolific writer who presents many challenges to Christians from the corruption of the New Testament manuscripts to presenting contradictions within the Bible.  Anyone whose been in or around the church knows that Christians often wound or shoot their own.  But now that Ehrman's new book, "Did Jesus Exist?" came out confirming that Jesus was really a historical flesh and blood person, the mythicist atheists are furious at him.  Ehrman is scorned, ridiculed, and mocked by some in the atheist community because he confirmed the historical Jesus rather than destroying him.  Since some of these atheist scholars speak about objectivity and nuetrality, one wonders why the scathing remarks aimed at Ehrman?

The sad truth is there is very little written by biblical scholars when it comes to those who believe that Jesus never really existed or lived?  Many Christian scholars simply ignore or don't even think the mythicists are worth responding to.  Probably the best scholarly work to date dealing with some of these issues is "The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliablility of the Synoptic Tradition" by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd.  An indepth analysis of mythicists arguments on the internet and detailed responses to them are given by James Patrick Holding and company in "Shattering the Christ Myth."  It might be surprising to some that there is a huge amount of books out there contending that Jesus never lived and he is a legend that follows other pagan myths to old hero legends.  Of course the mythicists love to make arguments from silence, present similarities without noting the differences, and often present other historical legends or myths that are later than the Jesus story rather than prior to it.

At the end of the day, however one wants to deal with the radical skepticism of the mythicists, the more troubling issue for me are the countless numerous Jesus followers today who say that Jesus is mystically real and alive yet live like he never existed at all.  For a growing number of people who have not even read the Bible, when people look at your life, what will it tell them of the Bible you have supposedly read and are supposed to be following?

God Helps Those Who Are Dying For Him

"God helps those who help themselves"  -  "No, it's NOT in the Bible!"

How much of our compassion or politics is based in the rule of people need to be good Americans and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?  To be a "good Christian" somehow gets translated into being a "good person."  The whole basis for God sending Jesus to our planet was because we cannot help or save ourselves.  The meaning of life starts with a death.  Faith and love on God's terms means we die to our own way of thinking, to our way of planning, dying to our past, dreams of our own making, that we die to self and attachment to this earth.  There are many things we hear about faith but faith is like dying!  The world doesn't need more good intentions but it needs a few more deaths.  Death to greed, death to pride, death to having to be in control and things always going our way.  I really believe there would be a lot more singing in this world if our lives were more dead to ourselves and more alive to Almighty God!

Is Our Love Scandalous?

"BE NOT ANGRY THAT YOU CANNOT MAKE OTHERS AS YOU WISH THEM TO BE, SINCE YOU CANNOT MAKE YOURSELF AS YOU WISH TO BE" -  from 'The Imitation of Christ'

Are you happy?  Do your words and actions show it?  Is our life filled with wonder and joy or cynicism and complaint?  Many of us are not happy because we are unforgiving and we are unforgiving because we think we are better than others.  When it comes to love, there are various degrees of it.  There are those who do not love because they feel superior to everyone else.  There are those who love that feels equal to everyone else.  And finally, there are those who love who glady take the lower place.  Where are you on the love scale?

Encountering Jesus

Wow, a good script and good acting are hard to find in Christian movies that typically don't have the budget or technology of hollywood movies.  But I was happily surprised in watching "The Encounter."  This movie is about several people traveling down the same road (life?) and the road is washed out ahead so they all go to a diner.  And who happens to be the cook serving everyone but Jesus.  Of course some of the people had some very hard "why?" questions for Jesus and the movie does a good job and pulls off the almost impossible in not only giving good answers to some of the toughest questions people have come up with in the past but giving answers that sound like "what would Jesus say" or doing it in such a way that does some kind of justice to Jesus.  Jesus is portrayed as a man full of grace and truth and he speaks the truth with love to these people as he asks for their loyality to him. 
Any how, check it out, I don't think you will be disappointed.

Shut Up and Sit Down!

"WHAT THEN REMAINS TO THE MAN FORMED IN GOD'S IMAGE? THERE REMAINS TO HIM A SOUL FULL OF GOD AND A BODY FULL OF SUFFERING"  -  John Tauler

People don't always know what to do with Paul's words to women.  One place in Corinthians the women are giving prophecies and another place they are told to shut up and sit down (1 Corinthians 11, 14).  But maybe these words should not just be applied just to women.  Maybe God is telling all of us to shut up and sit down, even men!  Maybe in the fast-paced busyness of life, God says to us like parents would to their children, "stop running," "slow down," "be still," and "stay where you are!"  Can we pause, look, and listen?  Isn't God speaking to us in every waking moment of our life and even in our moments of rest and sleep?  What appointments or work is more important than our time with God?

Does God Behave Badly?

AMERICAN VIOLENCE IS THE NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE EXPRESSION OF OUR CONFLICT BETWEEN OUR DECLARED PRINCIPLES AND OUR UTTER FAILURE TO LIVE BY THEM  -  Thomas Merton

David Lamb explores issues that many people have wondered about, even Christians.  Does God behave badly, especially in the Old Testament?  Is God angry, sexist, or racist?  And what was the deal about the Canaanites?  Yes we know about God giving Israel the promise land but did it have to at such of great cost of so many people dying?  Some people like to throw out words like genocide, mass murder, ethnic cleansing when it comes to some of the violence in the Bible.

When it comes to problems like polygamy, slavery, and war in the Bible, much of it comes under what Jesus said about divorce when he said, "It's because of the hardness of your hearts."  But several things we need to keep in mind when it came to warfare and the Cannanites, God showed great mercy and patience for a long time before judgment came upon these people.  The Canaanites were a wicked and brutal people and much of warfare in biblical days was quite brutal.  And even though it appears in the Bible that the whole Canaanite race was wiped out, this is simply not what happened.  The Canaanites keep showing up later in Israel's history and the Canaanite campaign was not so much of slaughter as it was of driving them out of the land.  Because Israel did not drive them all out, this lead Israel into their own apostasy and idolatry later which had terrible consequences for Israel.

Another biblical story that sounds terrible to modern ears is where God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son.  What loving parent would do such a monstrous act?  But we miss how important it is in hearing God's voice and following God in obedience.  Abraham thought that perhaps God might resurrect his son but he did not know.  He simply followed God in faith knowing that somehow God would provide and God did.  God provided a ram that was sacrificed instead of his son.

The Jewish reading of the story is God is not so bad because God is only testing Abraham.  But from a Christian perspective, the story goes further showing that God is willing to sacrifice himself for us all.  Some people after reading this story may question, "What kind of God could ask a father to sacrifice his own son?"  But Christians can respond with their own question, "What kind of God would sacrifice his own son to redeem sinful people?"

The Christ-Haunted Church

"DOES NOT OUR PREACHING CONTAIN TOO MUCH OF OUR OWN OPINIONS AND CONVICTIONS AND TOO LITTLE OF JESUS CHRIST?"  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When it comes to discipleship and Christians living a cross-shaped life for God, it is difficult to find such men and women.  Two Christians writing from very different contexts and coming at things very differently are Soren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Both of these men lived during times when everyone thought they were a Christian and very few were living it.  Both of these men wrote long treatises challenging Christians from every decade to be more like Christ in their every day habits.  Kierkegaard died almost unnoticed during his day and Bonhoeffer died as a war criminal by Adolf Hitler.

So here is the little exercise I am doing.  I am reading Kierkegaard's "Training in Christianity" along side Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship."  Both offer visions of what it means to be counter-cultural Christians and both offer critiques of a church that has subcumbed to religious pride and congratulating itself while the world burns around it.  Where this little exercise will lead I do not know.  All I know is I must follow it wherever it leads just like I follow Christ but never know where that is taking me like the wind that blows wherever it wills.

Does God Hate Amputees?

"YOU HAVE TO GET THROUGH THE UGLY PLACES TO FIND THE BEAUTIFUL ONES"  -  Rob English

Someone asked Dinesh D'Souza during a discussion by an angry atheist, "What does God have against amputees?"  Why doesn't God heal amputees?  The man asking was not missing any limbs and seemed to have a certain glee about asking the question.  Obviously it's questions like these that atheists like to throw at Christians to trip them up.

Of course in responding to the question, someone might also ask, "If a missing limb is evidence that God hates someone, is a beating heart and well-functioning body evidence that God loves them?"  If evil and suffering are evidences against God, shouldn't goodness and blessings count as evidence for God?

If God is the Creator then all of life is a gift.  If some people have more in life than others or live longer, is that a legitimate cause to complain against the Creator?  If God is more generous to someone else, does that take away the life we now posses?  The truth is, after people recover from injuries, their life and sense of happiness is usually like most other people.  We may demand miracles like for missing limbs to grow back but isn't life itself the great miracle?  To still be captured by God's grace, to be filled with awe and child-like wonder, to fear and be full of a sense of God's presence, now that is a beautiful life.  Jesus taught it would be better to go without some body limb and know God for eternity than to spend eternity apart from God with one's body fully in place.

A Hundred Year Rainbow

"EACH OF US HAS AT LEAST ONCE EXPERIENCED THE MOMENTOUS REALITY OF GOD
 . . . TO SOME PEOPLE THEY ARE LIKE SHOOTING STARS, PASSING AND UNREMEMBERED.  IN OTHERS THEY KINDLE A LIGHT THAT IS NEVER QUENCHED"
 -  Abraham Heschel

People like to talk about hundred year storms.  But one hardly hears of other sights that comes along every hundred years or so.  But what about a hundred year rainbow?  Beautiful, frightening, a rare interuption of the normal order of things.  Every once in a while man is given a glimpse into the heavenly and an encounter with 'the Holy.' 

The rainbow is a reminder that God will never flood the world again.  Whether that is the first rainbow that happened in the history of the world in the early chapters of Genesis or whether God stamps the rainbow with new meaning for his promises towards humankind, the rainbow still takes our breaths away when we see them today.  God is still with us.  Man is not alone. In the stillness of holy moments, may we pray, "Lord speak to us in the silence and give us eyes to see beyond what is seen.  Lord, please give us a new heart so that we can understand."

On Becoming a Mystical Christian

Rob English tries to recapture the term "mystical Christian" as a positive step or move towards a deeper spirituality in his "On Becoming a Mystical Christian (2012).  When it comes to seeking God, are we seeking God on His terms or ours?  Do we want God to be  like us or are we allowing God to shape us into more like Him?  Do we really want God or the blessings God gives?  These are some of the questions and issues English raises in his book.

For many people in the church today, churches may be respectable and teach good things but too many of them are simply comatose.  English proposes that one of the problems that many people in the church have is they really don't want "intimacy with God."  They do not want Jesus to get too close.  Would you agree or disagree?

Crimes of Nature

"THERE IS ENOUGH LIGHT FOR THOSE WHO DESIRE TO SEE, AND ENOUGH DARKNESS FOR THOSE WITH A CONTRARY DISPOSITION"  -  Pascal in his "Pensees and Other Writings"

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes seem to wipe out and destory the just with the unjust.  If natural disasters are "acts of God" then what is God doing?  God's goodness and fairness are often questioned when it seems like bad things happen to good people or just simply bad things happen at all. Most people would agree, "We live on a dangerous planet."  For those with a contrary disposition, say if there is a God, "God owes us an apology."

I have waited a while to write on this topic because Henryville Indiana is practically in my backyard.  In the midst of the pain and suffering and deaths by killer tornadoes, the surrounding communities are still swirling in a whirlwind of trying to rebuild and restore that which was destroyed.  Some Christian theologians and bloggers wrote during the first week while people were still burying their dead things like "God's judgment" and "God did it" for whatever reason they believed.

Isn't there still mystrey to our Christian faith today?  What special knowledge or revelation have people been given to know that God is in every detail (rather than the Devil) and God was "directly" responsible for those tornadoes?  I believe it is certainly possible to say "God did it" but how do we know in this particular instance that this was the direct hand of God?  Does not Satan take a part in the destruction of this world like sending a great wind to destroy Job's family in the Book of Job?  Has not God put into motion ways to sustain life on this planet that the earth's plates must move and therefore terrible storms and natural disasters at times do happen.

I believe at least it would be more responsible and compassionate to withhold judgement on such things than to blame every disaster on God or blame the victims of disasters like somehow they had it coming.  And does not the Bible teach us that bad things do happen to (seemingly) good people and there is not a one to one correlation between sin and suffering. 

In the gospel of John, there is a man born blind and people ask Jesus if he is blind because of his parents sin or his own sin and Jesus says neither (chapter 9).  Maybe the better question we need to ask is how well do we see or are our spiritual eyes blind?  Jesus has a way of turning our questions onto ourselves or taking our eyes off of others and rightly putting them onto ourselves.  Jesus gives two tragedies in Luke 13:1-5 when people ask the "why?" questions and turns it on them and practically says, "if you don't repent, you likewise will perish" (or something bad could happen to you also).

In a world that lays the blame card down so quickly, that wants to take up righteous causes for others while not living righteous lives themselves, God's Word calls us to humility, to repentance, to reflection, to loving and serving others, and not to just come up with nice tidy answers for difficult situations that various people face.  Maybe when we do these things, we will actually see the face of God?

A Vision for the Church

A fellow minister of another church asked me about helping him present a vision for the congregation he served in.  We talked and shared a little but later, I was reading Psalm 90 and 91 and thought, "Here is a powerful vision of the church."  If the church is supposed to represent the God-life and God is present in His church, then here are some things these Psalms teach that can be applied to the church.

Psalm 90
1.  The church is permanent (v.2)
2.  The church is a forgiving community (vv.7-8)
3.  The church has meaning (every day counts) (v.12)
4.  The church is filled with Joy (v.14)
5.  The church is where God is at work (v.17)
6.  The church is Jesus hands and feet for ministry (v.17)

Psalm 91
1.  The church is a refuge and safe place (vv.1-2)
2.  The church is a place of deliverance (vv.3-4)
3.  The church moves us from fear to faith (vv.5-8)
4.  The church is kept by the power of God (vv.9-13)
5.  The church is a community of love (v.14)
6.  The church is a house of prayer (v.15)
7.  The church shows God's salvation to others (v.16)

Taste and See that the Lord is Good

"THE GOSPEL IS NOT A TRUTH AMONG OTHER TRUTHS.  RATHER, IT SETS A QUESTION-MARK AGAINST ALL TRUTHS"  -  Karl Barth

The cross of Christ questions all my answers.  It shakes me from my comfortable lifestyle.  It offends my sensibilities and challenges my need to be right.  We think we are in charge but it only takes a small crises out of our control to show we are only fooling ourselves.

The cross of Christ disturbs our shallowness and comforts our brokeness.  The whole Christian life is one of death, burial, and resurrection.  Death to selfishness and burial of our respectability and resurrection of God's power in our weaknesses. 

What shall I say of the woman who was given a death sentence this month by the medical community only to run face long into the Lion of Judah who healed her of her disease. 

What shall I say of my friend who told me this week his marriage was over and all I could do was point him to the cross and tell him, "If his marriage is saved, it will only be through brokeness, humility, vulnerability, and God's healing love."

What shall I say of those who are locked up in prison who Today have discovered a freedom in Christ that gives them hope for tommorow.  One woman during the communion celebration interupted the service so that she could confess her sins and give her life to Christ.  Seven others like her followed suit and said they wanted to follow Christ in baptism and experience a resurrected life for God.

I am amazed and dumbfounded.  What more can I say?

The Strange World of Funerals

"I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST AND IT IS NO LONGER I WHO LIVE, BUT IT IS CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME" (Galatians 2:20)

I went to a funeral this week.  Some people cried and others nodded their heads.  Here was a man who lived well for God and died well at 93.  Here was a man whose life was marked by Christ.  The world loves professionals, expertise, style, and image.  But there was a man whose strength was found in weakness and who embraced his brokeness as he celebrated his life in Christ.  Funerals have a way of haunting us as we live each day closer than the next to the grave.  Here is the question that haunts me: "If I spend most of my time trying to please others and avoiding loss, how will I ever gain the way of Christ?"