Tag Archives: Christianity

Lessons in Christianity – Forgiveness

14 Thursday Sep 2017

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Lesson #1 – Forgiveness is not easy.  If you some how make it into something easy, then you aren’t doing it right.  This is true for both giving forgiveness and receiving forgiveness.  Why is it that we humans have such a difficult time with forgiveness?  Instead we would rather be smug and think we are right rather than receive or give forgiveness to someone else.  Yet forgiveness is a kind of like taking the weight off of your shoulders.

Lesson #1.2 – We receive forgiveness from God.  There is nothing you can do to earn this.  This means we can be grateful for the forgiveness we receive.  This allows us to then go and forgive others.

Lesson #1.3 – The world is desperate for forgiveness.  The other option is something we witness already – egotism, digging in, name calling and belittling, attacking, etc.  There’s plenty of that going on in the world.  We see how well that works – it doesn’t.  It’s time to move on past that to forgiveness.

Lessons in Christianity – Love

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

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I thought it might be helpful to offer a quick lesson in Christianity.  We can call it Christianity 101.

But I’m realistic about this too.  Unfortunately, the people who should read these lessons probably won’t ever see them.  So for all you who are doing the best you can to live out the Christian calling – maybe you’ll find this as an encouragement.

Lesson #1 – Love.

This is really simple.  Love is pretty much the basis here.  I’m not talking about gushy romantic love.  I’m talking about love that knows no limits.  This is the love God has for us and empowers us to go and love others – even our enemies.  Yes, you heard that right, even our enemies.  We are called to love our enemies.  Not bomb them, kill them, insult them, swear at them, hit them, attack them, etc.  Nope, just love them.

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Saying that love is what’s it about is easy.  Actually living that out is not easy at all.  Why?  Because of the last part – loving our enemies.  It’s a great idea in theory, but then God gets all in our face and actually calls on us to do it.  Whaaaaa????  So what does this mean in a practical sense?  Well, it means we love those who would and have hurt us.  We love those that would want to kill us.  Hello, ISIS comes to mind here.  Maybe the North Koreans.  All of sudden this whole love your enemy thing gets really difficult.

How do you love someone who wants nothing more than to see you die?  I don’t know to be perfectly honest.  I do know this much – prayer for our enemies is a good place to start.  Prayer that puts our enemies in God’s hands, that asks that our enemies would experience peace and love and grace and mercy.  What comes after that?  That’s when we listen to what God is calling us to be and do.  I know this much – love doesn’t have room for killing.

Lesson #1.3

If your version of Christianity tells you that it’s ok to not love someone because they believe something different from you – well, then you aren’t grasping this whole love thing.  Time to reboot and start over.

Explaining Christianity

29 Tuesday Aug 2017

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How would you explain Christianity to someone who has no familiarity with Christianity, or God, or religion?

It’s a question I pondered yesterday.  It’s a question I was asked about last evening.

I’ve never actually come across someone who didn’t have some kind of concept of God – even if they didn’t believe in God.  Even Atheists have some kind of belief about God – albeit what I think is a wrong view.

But I wonder how the conversation would go with someone who has no concept of God.  Is it even possible to have no concept whatsoever of God?  I suppose it is.

We’re more likely to have interactions with people who are atheist or agnostic than we are to have interactions with people who have no concept of God at all.

How would you begin to talk about faith, or God?  It’s not an easy question to deal with, but it’s one that I think is worth talking about.  The importance of this is that it forces us to move from the theoretical to the practical.  How do you talk about God with someone who has never heard about God?  Where would you start?

I think I’d start by asking such a person some questions to get an understanding of their worldview and beliefs.  I’d want to know a bit about their history and personality.  Once I got to know them, then I could speak in their language – or closer to their language.  I might be able to relate theological ideas to something they were familiar with.

The biggest thing would be to treat the person like a person – to show respect for them and to listen.  And not to try to sell God to the person.  I would want to see if there was an interest that existed.  You can’t force people into a conversation about something they don’t want to talk about.  But you can go far in a conversation with someone who is open to talking.  That comes through trust and an attitude of openness and respect.

If all I care about is being right, then I’m pretty sure I can win an argument but lose the relationship.  And I’m also pretty sure that if the relationship is lost, that person will not be open to hearing anything I have to say.  And then what was the point?  One can be right, but if you are right and alone, does it matter?

So how would you/do you talk about God with someone who has no concept of God?

Battle of the sexes – church edition

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in Church, Theology

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Every so often I come across articles like this that argue that the church is becoming feminized!   Oh the horror!  We need to make it more masculine is the refrain.

Here’s the problem with this – it becomes a battle of the sexes.  It becomes focused on the differences between the sexes and ends up being a no-win argument in which people get ticked off and start pointing fingers at one another for why the church is in decline.

I just don’t see how this helps.

Is Christianity, at it core, masculine or feminine?  My radical answer is both and neither.

Where do I draw this from?  There are lots of places I could point to in the bible.  There’s Jesus describing God like a mothering hen.  There’s Paul talking about putting on the armor of God.  The list goes on and on.

But here’s the verse that matters for this discussion as far as I’m concerned.  It’s Paul’s letter to the Galatians (3:28) in which he writes: “In Christ there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Christianity is radical in the sense that it isn’t about moving a religion towards one sex or the other.  Rather, it’s about a radical inclusiveness that has no problems with both sexes as they are.  Christianity sees the sexes as a part of our deeper identity – God’s children.  That’s our primary identity.  That’s who we are.

Radical Christians

17 Thursday Aug 2017

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I saw several articles people posted on Facebook over the last couple of weeks that caught my attention – and not in a good way.  I made a note for myself to revisit the articles after I had a chance to let them settle in a bit.

One article I saw was from someone who was saying that radical Muslims get off the hook, but radical Christians are persecuted.  That we are more afraid to sit with a radical Christian than we are with a radical Muslim.  That’s a bit simplistic, but that was the essence of the argument from the person who posted it.  I’m guessing the author of these words thought he was a victim because of his beliefs.

He claimed that “a so-called radical Christian is likely to refuse to bake a dessert for a gay wedding. A radical Muslim is likely to shoot up a gay club or throw gays off of roofs.”

(This was commentary on social media so I can’t point you to a specific web address for this).

There is a problem in definitions though, among other things.  A Christian who refuses to bake a dessert for a gay wedding isn’t a radical.  They may fit into several other categories and labels, but radical isn’t one of them.  As far as I know, there hasn’t been a cake maker who has gone and killed people because they were so upset about backing a cake for someone they didn’t like.  There isn’t a comparison of this with someone who shoots people and destroys lives – regardless of their religion.

Secondly, this is dismissive of real radical Christians – the people who have no problem driving a car into a crown and killing a woman in Charlottesville, VA recently for example.  These groups exist and yes, they are just as bad as any radical Muslim, or radical Hindu, or radical anything.  (Check out a simple list of radical Christian groups here)  These groups are real and are dangerous and have nothing to do with what Christianity is about but still steal the label for themselves.  While that statement might not sound controversial – substitute Muslim for Christian and I wonder how it changes for some people.

Then again, I’m not sure what baking a cake has to do with Christianity either, but that’s besides the point.

I don’t understand this quest to become victims that has captured so many people’s attention and conduct.  Everyone wants to be a victim.  Especially from people who really aren’t victims at all.  “They’re tearing down my statue of Robert E Lee – we’re a victim of historical theft.”  BS.

A cake baker who doesn’t bake a cake isn’t a victim.  It’s just someone who makes a bad business decision based on a bad interpretation of Scripture.  In one sense, they are a victim I guess – A victim of bad scriptural interpretation.

But here’s the point.  What is a radical Christian?  Here’s a radical answer to the question – someone who actually lives out what Jesus taught.  No, not the Old Testament laws that can be taken out of context and used as a bludgeon.  How about this instead – A radical Christian is someone who lives out the Sermon on the Mount.  (Read it – it’s in Matthew 5-7).  A radical Christian is someone whose loyalty is to the kingdom of God first and foremost and in advancing God’s kingdom through radical inclusiveness and love.  A radical Christian is someone who seeks to be a peacemaker in the midst of violence.  A radical Christian is someone who practices forgiveness.  A radical Christian is someone who doesn’t wait for someone else to change and do the right thing, they start.  A radical Christian gives voice to the voiceless.  A radical Christian feeds the hungry, clothes those who need clothing, houses the homeless, visits prisoners and the sick, and cares for orphans and widows.

A radical Christian in this sense isn’t really radical at all.  They are just living out what they claim to believe.  Yet, this way of living and believing is radical – it is far different from the radicalness we see around us.  It is a radicalness that is polar opposite to the radicalness that believes in fighting and might makes right and control and separation and violence and fear and hatred.

That kind of radicalness is becoming more prevalent and easier.

It’s much more radical to pray for someone – even someone who is our enemy – than it is to shout that person down or cause harm to them.  Causing harm to someone else isn’t radical – it’s just plain evil.

Maybe we need a new name for these type of Christians – ones who aren’t really radical at all.

 

Solving “problems”

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

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How do we solve problems?  It depends on what the problem is.  How do you solve the problem of some homeless guys who the church is helping?  How do you solve the problem of people learning to hate other people because of skin color, or nationality, or language, or sexuality, or…?  How do you solve the problem of North Korea?  How do you solve the problem of drugs?  How do you solve the problem of ______?

I don’t think there is an easy answer.  That’s because all of these “problems” involve people and people are messy.  They aren’t black and white.  They aren’t either us vs. them.

There are people who try to classify the world this way.  But the problem with this way of thinking is that people themselves become the problem – another thing to be fixed, another box to be checked off.  People lose their humanity that way.  When people lose their humanity then it becomes acceptable to dehumanize others in terms of words, physical violence, killing, and extremists belief systems.  When we dehumanize people – we no longer see people as people – but rather as things.

How do we change this?  You can’t force others to change for one thing.  We can only model a different way to live.  One change is identifying names and using people’s names.  It might seem small and pointless, but we know that a person’s name is the most important word they know.  Further, when a name is attached to a person, they are no longer seen as the problem, but in a problem situation.

It’s really difficult to judge someone when you know them by name and you have met them face to face and you see their humanity.  Not impossible obviously, but a lot harder.

The crappy part about this is actually doing it.  As much as I just want to give the one finger salute to the white supremacists and yell at them and call them evil to their face (boy, wouldn’t that feel good and I get to feel all self-righteous), that is not modeling a better way to live.  It’s dehumanizing someone who I frankly abhor and makes no sense to me.

For those of us that are Christians, Jesus calls us to live differently.  It’s not easy, by any means.  I’m not saying that I’m going to go and make a friend with a white supremacist just so I can better understand him.  I’m not inviting a white supremacist over for dinner either.  But I am a bit more aware of how I respond to white supremacy.  First, by not adopting the tactics, language, or attitude of extremists.  Jesus calls us to live differently.  Sometimes that really sucks.  Sometimes I’d rather just let my real feelings rip out and let someone have it.  Sometimes I’d rather dehumanize because it would be easier, feel better, and show my obvious opposition.  But opposition to evil doesn’t mean we adopt evil ways.  We change the message and show a different way of living – an alternative way of living.  A better way of living.  And we pray for those who are blinded by fear and hatred because that’s about the only thing I know how to do right now.

Freedom

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Politics, Theology

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Today is July 4th.  Here in the US we celebrate our Independence Day.  A day devoted to the idea of freedom.

But there seems to be a problem.

We, in the US are having a problem with a common understanding of what freedom is.  How do we define it, as a nation?  Depending on who you talk with, you’ll get a different definition.  Without a common understanding of some fundamental things that our country was founded on, we shouldn’t be surprised that we have some troubles in our nation.

It is disconcerting that there are different understandings of the idea of freedom.  Does this bother anyone else?  How is a nation supposed move forward and function properly and serve its people when we have two major political parties, and groups within those parties, who all have different understandings of what freedom means.  And that’s not counting those unaffiliated with either political party who see the parties as an obstruction to freedom with their very existence and who they promote for leadership.

So what is freedom?  On July 4th we think about political freedom.  But there are other freedoms – freedoms that have nothing to do with politics.  That’s because politics isn’t the end-all, be-all of life.

In religion we talk about freedom too.  It’s freedom from sin and death.  Martin Luther wrote about the freedom of a Christian – free to serve our neighbors.

Today we celebrate freedom, but what kind of freedom are we celebrating?

What is Christianity?

17 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Church, Politics, Society

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Is Christianity the culture?  Is Christianity tied to what it means to be American?  Is it counter cultural?  What does that even mean?

Christianity came about because of Jesus, who lived in the first part of the first century CE (or AD if you prefer).  He lived in Palestine, which was under Roman jurisdiction – actually it was under the rule of a client kingdom.  This may sound like a technicality, but it’s important.  It was an independent kingdom that paid tribute to Rome and did what it could to keep itself in Rome’s good graces.  This of course would end after Jesus’ death.  The Zealots (political extremists who didn’t like any dealings with Rome) were often causing problems for the ruling party and eventually created a rebellion that ended when the Temple in Jerusalem was leveled by Rome.

Christianity rose up in the midst of this.  It continued to grow, thanks to people like Paul, who spread the message far and wide throughout the Roman empire.  It grew large enough that it caught the attention of the Roman rulers who eventually persecuted Christians – they needed a scapegoat when things got bad and a minority religion was a perfect fit for this.  (Yes, I’m simplifying things greatly here.)

Because of this, along with the radical teachings of inclusivity, overturning honor and shame in society, monotheism, and more, Christianity was counter cultural.  A huge difference, and cause of great pain, for Christians was loyalty to the reign of God, rather than the reign of Caesar.

It was only later with Constantine that Christianity became a state religion, and then the official religion of the state.  He used it for his own purposes and power.  And it became a part of the state and what it meant to be Roman.  And as a result, criticism of the empire changed.  You can’t be criticizing openly the very people who are building you basilicas now, can you?

Yet here we are almost two thousand years later and an ocean and sea apart from the origins of Christianity.  A great deal has happened since that time.  If we are guilty of anything, it is thinking that we fit into the early story of Christianity – as if anyone around at the time of Jesus knew there would be a USA – let alone a land across the ocean, outside the known world.  The world was believed to be flat back then remember?

Is Christianity counter cultural?  It has been.  It has also been the basis for the culture, or so we like to think this way.

Is Christianity American?  Nope.  We can’t lay claim to it solely.  Besides, which version of Christianity are we talking about anyway?  What does it mean to be an American Christian?  Where do our loyalties lie?

When we look at the American landscape we see a wide variety of Christians which mean there is no one answer to these questions.  And maybe that’s the point and a good thing.  Uniformity is a nice idea, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said “Follow Me.”  I don’t think he meant that to mean “do as I tell you to do like a bunch of robots.”  I think it means variety and context.  And it will change over time and with location and different people.

Christianity might be counter cultural.  Or it might be totally consumed by culture.  Or, just maybe, it will be both depending where and when we are talking.

A long time ago in Armenia…

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

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The next stop in the tour of the world through the Cathedral of Learning was the Armenian room.

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Not only do you feel like you’ve just stepped into a different culture with this room, but you also feel like you have stepped back in time too. And with good reason.  Armenia is an old civilization.  It boasts of having one of the earliest Christian civilizations – which means there was already a well established civilization chugging along before that.

To give some perspective on age, here’s a picture of the Armenian alphabet from the 5th century.

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And here’s a brief history of the country by way of important Armenian figures from history.

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Lesson for the church.  Ok, so maybe this is more a lesson for North American Christianity.  Or to be more specific – American Christianity.  Christianity existed before our nation did and will still exist afterwards.  That means we should live in humility.  History didn’t start when we were born and it won’t end when we die.  The Church has thrived in many locations and under many circumstances – many of which were unfavorable to the church.  And we sit around and whine about a few less people sitting in the pews.  Let’s get serious for a moment shall we – what’s really important about our faith?  That’s what will carry on to the next generation.

It’s amazing what you can do with Swiss Army knife

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

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The next stop on the tour of the Cathedral of Learning was the Swiss room.

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I wonder if these carvings were done with a Swiss Army knife, while eating some wonderful Swiss chocolate?  Beautiful aren’t they?

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One of the neat things about this room are the city crests that are on the backs of all the chairs.

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And what Swiss room wouldn’t be complete without a tribute to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

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He’s the man who could arguably get credit for much modern ways of thinking in the West.  He was a philosopher, writer, and composer.  Love him or hate him, as many of his contemporaries did (both loved and hated his ideas), he was not afraid to share his thoughts and ideas.  He painted pictures of the ideal world through his words – many still having an effect on our world today.

Lesson for the church: We can learn from Rousseau – paint a picture of the ideal.  And we don’t even have to create it either – we’ve been given it in the image of the kingdom of God.  We should be bold in proclaiming it, regardless of the criticism.  Complaint and opposition have their place and are important.  Yet, they shouldn’t be the only words that we speak.  Ultimately, Christianity isn’t a protest movement – it is something much more.  It’s a reordering of the world.  Let’s proclaim that and let the chips fall where they will.