Synagogue and the Church?

"THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH WENT OUT FROM THE RESURRECTION SIDE AS THE CHURCH OF THE LAMB WHO HAD BEEN SLAIN BUT IS FOREVER TRIUMPHANTLY ALIVE; BUT THE JEWISH CHURCH WENT OUT FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE CROSS INTO HISTORY AS THE CHURCH OF THE SCAPEGOAT, CAST OUT AND SCATTERED OVER THE EARTH UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE CRUCIFIED JESUS"  -  Thomas F. Torrance

If we are honest, there are many contemporary theologians that really do not help the church but there are a few who do shine like stars in the night.  By contemporary, I mean more recently dead in the last century.  Giants like Karl Barth, John H. Yoder, Lesslie Newbigin, and Thomas Torrance.  Torrance is one of those brilliant church historians and theologians that has flown under the rader for many.  Here is a quote from his brilliant work, "The Mediation of Christ":

"How can we Christians claim to proclaim atoning reconciliation through the cross of Christ when we contradict it by refusing to be reconciled with one another . . . and bear witness to Jews about Jesus Christ as the mediator of reconciliation with God? . . . Only when the deepest schism of all is healed in the body of the one people of God . . . it will take root in all the peoples and nations of mankind . . . God has been making it clear to us in our day, as perhaps never before since the first century, that Israel retains in the purpose of God's grace an essential role in the mediation of reconciliation, and that the Christian church will not be able to fulfill its own mission in proclaiming that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, except in so far as it is incorporated with Israel in the one mission of God's love for all his creatures.  That is what the fullness of the mediation of reconciliation in Jesus Christ means" (p.46).

Retro-Christianity

"STAND BY THE ROADS, AND LOOK, AND ASK FOR THE ANCIENT PATHS, WHERE THE GOOD WAY IS; AND WALK IN IT, AND FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS" - Jeremiah 6:16

Christianity is heading all over the place and going in many directions.  People struggle today as much with "which church?" as well as "which Bible?"  Churches more often compete with each other in today's consumer market and Christian bookstores which are going the way of the dinosaur display the many versions of the Bible like picking a Bible is like what kind of dress are you going to wear or what kind of deordorant are you going to put on?

There are some Christian groups that earnestly desire a better way of doing church today or if you prefer, can we get back to the ancient way of the early christians?  Reform and restoration movements abound and even these groups it seems may have started in the Spirit but have ended up in the flesh.  So what is a Christian to do in all the chaos and confusion?  Michael Svigel, a Protestant church history teacher tries to skillfully and carefully point people back to the ancient markers and ancient practices of the early church and patristic church fathers while appreciating all of church history throughout the ages.

Although I applaud Svigel's suggestion and directions especially for Evangelicals and the Evangelical church today, there are some glaring problems or nagging questions in all this?  Did the Reformation have to happen and visible separation and disunity where God wants us all to stay put?  And should we not listen and learn from the two most ancient church traditions, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox?  Are there not some insights and pitfalls they could teach us in mining the riches of the ancient church traditions? 

There also seems to be an underlying individualism in studying church history and discipleship.  Private study is important but is that all there is to discipleship and history?  What about the corporate dimensions of study from examing Scripture with orthodox Jews to the Eastern Orthodox?  What about living out the Christian life in monastaries, Almish counter-cultural communities, or long group retreats designed to sharpen spiritual thinking and spiritual living in a secular age?  Maybe some of these ideas sound too radical but one still needs to raise the question to Evangelicals?  Are you willing to get so radical in your faith so as to get outside your comfort zones, your preferences, your respectable ways of doing Christianity?  Now that's the question and the rub!

Alien Apocalypse

"IF WE CAN'T PROTECT THE EARTH, WE WILL $%&# AVENGE IT!" -  Tony Stark

I am a hard-core sci-fi fan so I loved watching the long-awaited "Avengers" movie with superheroes fighting the bad guys as well as the movie "Battleship."  Both of these movies had good stories, lots of humor, and both were about aliens trying to destroy or annihilate mankind.  Sci-fi fans who like big action scenes, great special effects, and aliens from another world won't be disappointed.

When it comes to Christian ethics, we have moved in the movies from 'kill or be killed' to 'exterminate or be exterminated' so what are Christians to do?  Is the basic premise of survival of the fittest?  The strongest or most technologically advanced wins in the end?  Not only are we not sure how to think about Islam or Jihadists but what are we to think about the troubling paasages in the Bible that tells God's people to utterly destroy another race and show them no pity?

American Christians think vengeance is more our perogative today than God's.  If someone starts a fight, we will finish it!  Someone messes with our country, we will mess with you back ten times worse!  How any of this is supposed to be following the Jesus of Scripture much less the martyred lived of the earliest Christians is beyond me.  Some Christians are so intimidated by angry atheists that they either want to ignore the troubling texts in the Bible or perform their own kind of "textual cleansing."  Or worse, Christians want to blame the worst parts of the Bible on the Jewish race while they give themselves a pass. 

We tend to forget that the Older Testament of the Bible is the Bible that Jesus read and preached.  Nor was the message simply one of God's people was to exercise God's wrath on others so that they could receive a manifest destiny.  It was more a message of "If we do not recognize God's will in time, we may be next in line for God's wrath and removal."  Even Peter spoke in the newer testament that judgment starts with God's house (God's people).  Something Christians should not take lightly or casually today.

Are Zombies Among Us?

"Wake UP O' Sleeper, Wake UP"  -  The Bible

We all love to watch a good old scary movie.  Our culture today especially seesm fascinated with the undead or zombies.  Are zombies like angels, among us unawares?  Unfortunately, there are many in the church who have either spiritually fallen asleep or act like the walking dead rather than the spiritually powerful alive!

Here are some ways to spot zombies who happen to travel in groups, so don't be surprised if they show up at some church service near you.  Zombies are stiff and take themselves too seriously.  Zombies walk in crowds because they have an uncontrollable desire to be accepted by others.  Zombies feed off the living and try to suck the life out of others.

This is a wake-up call:  Jesus doesn't want spiritual zombies, he wants a bride (the church).  God the Father doesn't want zombies, a Father simply wants children.  The Holy Spirit doesn't want zombies, the Spirit of God wants us to walk in its light and power, not in our own deadness and powerlessness.
Don't be a part of the walking dead but join God's powerful army of life everlasting!

Is the Bible a Rubik's Cube?

"DOES GOD PLAY DICE WITH THE WORLD?"  -  Albert Einstein

If many of you are like me, you tried the rubik's cube and without much success.  The goal was to get all the six different colors all on each side of the cube.  If you were able to get one side of the cube with the right colors but no farther, you matched as far as I ever got.  Some people want to approach the Bible like a Rubik's cube.  It's like a large jigsaw puzzle or mathematical code that simply needs to be decifered and figured out.

Two Christian movies that take a kind of rubik's cube approach to the Bible and think they have unlocked its secret code are "The Omega Code" and "The Genesis Code."  The Omega Code basically put the first five books of the Bible into a computer and came up with an elaborate way to predict future events, or so they say.  The Genesis Code is a new movie aimed at young adults who may be struggling with resolving the tension between science and the Bibe.  Evolution says the world or universe started 16 billion years ago and the Bible says God created everything in six days.  They take higher mathmatical calculations, Einsteinian physics and try to suggest that science now proves the Bible.  How?  God's perspective in six days was actually from our perspective in time and space, billions of years.

The problem with all these kinds of views are none of them take seriously the way Scripture is written much less that most Christians throughout history would have no idea what these secret codes are until modern man later came along to solve these riddles or puzzles.  The best way to understand the Bible is to read it rather than trying to get some math wizard or computer expert to find some secret code waiting to be unlocked within the Scriptures.  If there is a secret code that unlocks Scripture, then the Bible already reveals that mystery which is the Messiah Jesus Christ.  Shalom!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the State Capital

CHRISTIANS HAVE SO EMBRACED PARTICIPATION IN THE 'EARTHLY CITY' THAT THEY HAVE LOST THEIR PASSPORT TO THE 'CITY OF GOD'  -  James K. A. Smith

I have a passport to leave the United States which I have not used.  My daughter went to Haiti this year on a mission trip but I am prayerfully waiting for the day to use my passport and minister and serve others in another country.  I remember growing up in the church as a boy being taught that "Christians can be so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good."  What I have seen in my later part of life that Christians are so earthly minded that they are no heavenly good."

Here are some questions for contemporary Christians to explore:

1.  How do the politics of Jesus differ from our worldly politics?
2.  How does Christ's call to discipleship touch our politics?
3.  How can the church both transform the system we live in while transforming the heart?
4.  Which empire are we serving, God's or our country?
5.  Which are more important to us?  Principles like democracy, justice, and freedom or embodied worship, the cross, and suffering discipleship?

Does God Read Derrida?

WHO IS DECONSTRUCTING THE DECONSTRUCTIONISTS?  -  Millard Erickson

It is no secret that the church in North America is in decline and in trouble.  There are many diagnosis's to the problem but one that the church has been flirting with for a few decades is a more postmodern Christianity.  Modernity had it strengths and weaknesses but the world the church finds itself in is so different that modern or older versions of doing church simply won't work.  Newer models like missional or emergent or postmodern are the new teachers for our day.

For people who can take the strengths and leave the weaknesses of postmodernity and make their faith better, then more power to you.  For those who want to posit postmodern against modern and make this another place for the church to split over, the church does not need one more division among the many divisions that already exist.

One of the amazing things is how Christians can hitch their wagons to almost anything new or faddish all in the name of being progressive or newer is better.  I certainly believe Christians can learn something from their critics but what happens when the critics become Christians tutors unawares?  Most of the leading postmodern philosophers like Derrida, Focault, and Lytard were all French Jewish atheists.  Should the church be charting its future course from one of radical skepticism?  And is there anything left saving or contructing after all the radical deconstructing is finished if it ever is?  Is it possible that the way forward for the church is for it first to understand it's past, where it's been, and who it has become?  Rather than Christians trying to deconstruct God or Jesus or the church, maybe its time God start deconstucting us?

How to Read the Bible

WHEN PEOPLE CEASE TO BELIEVE IN THE CHURCH, THEY WILL SOON CEASE TO BELIEVE IN THE CHURCH'S BOOK  -  Carl Braaten

The prophets in the Old-er Testament spoke not about a famine in the land of food but a famine in the land of God's Word.  The Bible in America is often used to justify people's own bias and agendas than it does to surrender oneself to an untamed God.  The divisions and contradictions are legion.  For example, many Pastors in America refuse to participate in perfroming a wedding for gays but have no problem marrying people who have one or both been married multiple times.  It's like we listen to a select group of scriptures in the Bible while we ignore the rest.  And how do others read the Bible from other cultures or from other countries?  Not only does the church need to recover from private interpretation and Bible study disconnected from the corporate church, but what about reading the Bible in a global context?  Let me give two examples of reading the Bible in new ways that shatter our tidy little scriptural boxes.

In First Corinthians, the Eleventh chapter, Paul sepeaks about men worshipping with their heads uncovered and women worshipping with their heads covered.  How this works in one's culture is where issues of honor, shame, holiness, and faithfulness connect.  Jewish men for example wear a small cap when they worship.  We need to be reminded that Jewish worship is the very context where the Bible originated and came to us all.  Can it be Jewish men wearing a head covering shows their commitment to God's covenant and honors the one true God contra all false Gods?  Is this not the problem of women who did not care about wearing a head covering during worship in their society of their day?

Another example, a man from Brazil was talking to me about the prohibition of eating pork.  He told me that by this ban, God was teaching his people today that they should eat pork.  This certainly caught my attention and here is what he basically told me.  God's concern is for life and health.  Eating pork in biblical days was unehalthy and dangerous so God ordered a ban on pork.  Today my people are starving and because of technology, we can keep our children from starving.  This is why God is telling us to eat pork today.

How To Pray

"HELP ME, O GOD, TO PUT OFF ALL PRETENSES AND TO FIND MY TRUE SELF"

Yesterday was the National Day of Prayer.  This is a particular day of the year that people of faith pray for their country, leaders, churches, communties, families and children.  Any time people gather to pray is good versus the opposite of people not going to God in prayer.  After saying that, I wish there was more honesty, more humility, less of us and more of God in our prayers.  Here are some guidelines I wish more of us would follow when it comes to prayer.

1.  Ask God to teach you how to pray like Jesus's disciples asked him to teach these faithful Jews who knew a style of prayer but saw something in Jesus' prayer life that they wanted and needed.

2.  Read the Psalms and Paul's prayers in his letters to see how prayers were started, what was there content, and how did they en?.  Pray the scriptures.  Pray the Lord's prayer.  Pray in the Spirit.

3.  Listen to God to hear from heaven and pray God's thoughts and heart when you pray.

4.  Go and see if there is a place to enter into ministry, sacrifice, and service for others in your prayers.

Meditations on the Will

Since my boys were born in 2004, I have been journal writing on a continual basis.  I first decided to write to them spiritual writings or whatever I felt was important to communicate with them.  Since then it has developed more than I had anticipated.  I am extremely busy with life, working full time and parenting so I have a somewhat regimented writing system where I write at certain times.  In the last few weeks, it has arisen within me the desire or understanding that I need to put these writings together in a "book" format, although as will be clear, these are more like a series of devotional/meditative writings than anything else.  The organization is completely spontaneous.  First I just dated everything.  At some point I began to label entries by topic.  What will eventually follow is probably, at this point, is probably at least 100 entries.  One of the writings began as an article, but that even is consistent with everything else.  Suffice to say, I have much more meditation in me that is  undeveloped, but hopefully with time I will be able to "complete" this development.  The title of my writing is "Meditations on the Will."  I hope to be able to post an entry a couple of times a week.

Wishful Thinking

DOUBTS ARE THE ANTS IN THE PANTS OF FAITH.  THEY KEEP IT AWAKE AND MOVING  -  Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner is a poet, a scholar, and a theologian.  He writes and says things in ways that rings true in our hearts and our uttermost being.  Here are some excerpts from his "Wishful Thinking" that should stir our imaginations for God and challenge us to a higher way of seeing and doing:


1.  When it comes to prayer, "Even if God does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself.  And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for?"

2.  "We condemn in others the wrong we don't want to face in ourselves."

3.  "We think of eternal life, if we think of it at all, as what happens when life ends.  We would do better to think of it as what happens when life begins."

4.  And here are words of Buechner that are so mysterious, so sweet, so powerful, I lose my breath at the reality of what he says as God's spirit is like a fire in my bosom or belly.  Buechner writes,

"When our faith is the strongest, we believe with our hearts as well as with our heads, but only at a few rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed by light."

Unless one has been engulfed by light and has experienced 'the Holy,' one will have no idea on earth what Buechner is talking about since only those who have been touched by heaven like this can truly know what it means to be embraced by the fire of God.

Everyday Mystics

MYSTICS BELIEVE THAT HEAVEN IS MORE REAL AND SOLID THAN EARTH

Most of us rarely come across someone who speaks or acts like a mystic.  Someone whose very presence smells like Christ and whose very nature reminds you that there really still are saints today.  Someone who was often misunderstood and lived during the 14th century was Meister Eckhart.  We need everyday mystics today.  Listen to Eckhart's words and wisdom for today:

"A man who has been well off for many years, loses it all.  He ought then to reflect wisely and thank God for his misfortune and loss, for only then will he realize how well-off he was before.  He ought to thank God for the well-being he enjoyed for so many years . . . If then, it is true that all that is any good for comfort is lent to man to care for it, what complaint has he when God wants to take it back?  Let him rather thank God that he lent it so long."  -  Meister Eckhart