cairns

We had a nice soaking rain this evening.  Just enough at our house to revive the lawn.

Further into the city where my daughter lives it was more of a problem.  The pavement is above the drains so that they sit down in a hole at the side of the street and clog easily.  My daughter messaged that her husband was at work and she was in the basement bailing water hoping “they” cleared the street drains soon.  Knowing full well that the only “they” is “us,” I took off with a pump for her basement and a heavy rake.  (The rest may sound like bragging about everyday events if I don’t tell you I had selfish motives.  I didn’t want my pregnant daughter bailing dirty water; I didn’t want her things ruined; I didn’t want my granddaughter worried or playing in dirty water; I didn’t want to pay for new things either! Confession done.)

Neighbors a block from her house were trying to stop all traffic from going into the water, but didn’t seem to have much idea what else to do except wait for “the fire department to set up some saw horses or something.”  Got the pump to my daughter and waded down to the corner of her street.  There was one man already there with the drains freed up some.  So, I helped him get all four opened and headed down to the first group of people and started opening their drains.  Had a nice conversation with a young couple standing out watching the water and lamenting the soaking of the decorating they had just done in their downstairs.  The lights honestly seemed to go on as she turned to him and said, “We could do that next time!”  Got them going and went a block the other way to help folks there already working to clear their debris.

Soon the streets were clearing and I headed back toward my wonderful 96 Toyota pickup (water was too deep to reach my daughter’s house without it!) to head home.  Got stopped by a guy begging for a jump.  With obvious alcohol breath he told me he never even saw the water and now his car wouldn’t restart.  He was asking in a way that made it clear he expected to be rebuffed.  I told him it was OK, I would help him as much as I could; said good night to my daughter and headed back his way.  Of course his problem was water not a dead battery, but we tried until he was convinced he had to wait for it to dry out.  Helped him get his car out of the way and locked and gave him a ride home.

On the way he started telling me about how hard things are, working trying to make it, finally got this car on payments, then this.  He asked me, “So, why do these things happen to me?”

There was a time when I might have moralized about drinking and driving and how accidentally baptizing your car is one of the least horrific results a person might expect.  There was a time when I would have felt compelled to tell him about Jesus.  Tonight, I realized he just needed to know that good exists.  So, I simply reminded him that’s why we help each other when we are not the one with the problem.  He affirmed that he believed and practiced that too and that it was important to take care of each other, but still offered to pay me the couple of dollars he had.

I have friends who are experts at having convincing conversations with people about faith in almost every situation.  Tonight, I knew talking about Jesus would ruin the community of people just helping other people.  I wouldn’t be one of the several people helping each other the best they knew how.  I would be some guy taking advantage of misfortune to sell my beliefs.  That wasn’t what any of us needed.  We needed to just be neighbors.  This fellow just needed affirmation that good does happen when we remember to look out for each other.  That was enough, and his handshake when he left was of far more value than his dollars or a notch on my conversions gun!

We shared a little kingdom time in the rain, and it was good.

peace

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“It is just the same with the so-called criminals living in our midst.  To bring these people under the sway of Christianity there is only one means, that is, the Christian social ideal, which can only be realized among them by true Christian teaching and supported by a true example of Christian life.  And to preach this Christian truth and to support it by Christian example we set up among them prisons, guillotines, gallows, [electric chairs & IV drugs] preparations for murder; we diffuse among the common herd idolatrous superstitions to stupefy them; we sell them spirits, tobacco and opium [the list has only grown] to brutalize them;…we make a display of senseless luxury in the midst of suffering poverty; we destroy the possibility of anything like a Christian public opinion, and studiously try to suppress what Christian public opinion is existing [and defend it as separation of church and state?].  And then, after having ourselves assiduously corrupted men, we shut them up like wild beasts in places from which they cannot escape, and where they become still more brutalized, or else we kill them.  And these very men whom we have corrupted and brutalized by every means, we bring forward as proof that one cannot deal with criminals except by brute force.” (p. 199)

“All we can know is what we who make up mankind ought to do, and not to do, to bring about the coming of the kingdom of God.  And that we all know.  And we need only each begin to do what we ought to do, we need only each live with all the light that is in us, to bring about at once the promised kingdom of God to which every man’s heart is yearning.” (p. 212)

“All these material reforms may be realized, but the position of humanity will not be improved.  But only let each man, according to his powers, at once realize in his life the truth he knows, or at least cease to support the falsehoods he is supporting in the place of the truth, and at once in the year 1893, we should see such reforms as we do not dare to hope for within a century — the emancipation of men and the reign of truth upon earth.” (p. 261)

Tolstoy, The kingdom of God is within you, (1893)

What if we really did what Jesus told us to do instead of wearing little WWJD bracelets to the mall?  Would we still be building prisons faster than schools?  Would we still be trying to eliminate all “evil doers” with drones and hypodermic needles?  He makes me wonder.

peace

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Tolstoy rejected the miracles as medieval superstition at best, and contrivances of those who came to power to justify their authority at worst.  He rejected the church as having become both intertwined with the state and another institution for the domination of the people.  He rejected all claims that a servant of Christ was called upon to be a loyal servant of any other current state or power other than God’s Kingdom.

Yet, he took the words of Christ seriously.  He considered every call of Christ for men to live in the new Kingdom now as a valid claim upon our lives.  He believed that Christ’s commands to love our enemies and turn the other cheek were real and binding calls upon the believer to stop participating in acts of violence, or supporting  others who carry out those acts in the name of either God or state.  He believed that Jesus meant what he said and that the coming of the Kingdom as a visible force on earth waited only for those who would finally do what Christ called us all to do.

It reminds me of the Screwtape letters of C.S. Lewis.  How much of heaven have we wasted arguing about every part of Christianity other than what it should look like to live out the teachings of Christ?  How easily has the enemy distracted us from considering what a life sold out in love of God and ALL our fellow creatures should look like?  Why do we quibble about the finest distinctions between expressions of the church, and fail to really consider what Christ said and what the life He called us to is?  Could it be that we have been duped?  Could it be that the enemy is laughing as we drive off to church and then out to eat while the world starves and our nations kill each other?

peace

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There is church down the street which my wife and I have been talking about visiting.  But, when I got home from China I found out they have posted a sign that says “If 10% is good enough for God, it should be good enough for the IRS.”

Now I could so easily go on a side track of how political church signs should be under US law, and whether current interpretations of US law are correct or incorrect anyway.  But, those are trivialities compared to the incorrect teaching of Jesus’ call.

Jesus never said 10% was enough for God or Caesar!  All of our money is issued by and returns to the government.  Jesus looked at the coin with Caesar’s face on it and said, ‘If its his, give it back!”  We are not supposed to be clinging to the government or its money for hope.

Jesus never said send me a check for 10% and keep living how ever you please.  Jesus said, “leave it all behind and follow me…gouge out your eye if it causes you to sin (great blog Sully)…take up your cross and follow me…hate your family for my sake…give both cheeks…I am giving my body to be broken for you, do likewise…”  Jesus calls for us to surrender ALL.  (Another side note: maybe we need to still sing some of those old Biblical hymns instead of syrupy seeker love songs!)  Ten percent is an Old Testament reference to the amount of grain and farm products given over for the feasts and care of the people (not the treasuries of the church).  Jesus never said it was the standard of living in the Kingdom.  Jesus told His followers it was time to give 100 percent and place their lives, cares, hopes, and futures totally in Him.

The Good News is that giving it all to Jesus will leave you standing resurrected in the Kingdom that begins now and extends through eternity.  Depending on the government (no matter which party wins), science, your job, ‘the pursuit of happiness’, food, drink or warehouses will leave you poor and dead.

We were made By Him, we live Through Him, we are to live 100 percent For Him, giving all glory To Him, because only God is worthy.  In return we are 100% heirs and children of God.  Ten percent!?  Give me a break, and give God and the IRS whatever they ask of you.  Our hope is based “on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.”  Or does anybody still come close to believing that anymore?  Have we all become the dwarfs of Narnia?  Or do we still have the guts to walk through that stable door?

peace,

Greg

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“Sometimes I think there is really only one Christian denomination in America: American Civil Religion — a consumerist, militarist, therapeutic, colonial, nationalist chaplaincy that baptizes and blesses whatever the richest and most powerful nation on the planet wants to do.”

Brian McLaren in The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.

The next sentence begins, “But then I hear a voice like Shane’s…”

We better hope he is wrong in the first sentence and I am just starting Shane’s book to see what different voice he raises.  But, if he is correct in the first sentence, where does that leave the American church when its master is neither the wealthiest nor the most powerful on earth? The data is already in.  That day is fast approaching.

We can keep our heads in the sand.  But then the only side of Christianity the world will see is the one today’s popular TV and radio hosts already display so brazenly.

I’m going to see what Shane has to say, then go back and read Tolstoy.  Bought both with a gift card from one of my young students today.  And, I am going to visit the nation best poised to overtake us.  Meanwhile, I will be contemplating whether the church will ever join those of us looking for our way back to The Way.

peace

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Still thinking about all these issues of leadership, another thought from the Old Testament narrative strikes me.  Very rarely did the people hear the words of God from the king in the palace.  Far more often the voice of God came from those strange prophetic voices arriving from the wilderness.  Maybe God does more direct talking to people from the fringe than from power no matter who wins?

By the time of the New Testament, Jesus seems to have little interest in the political leaders of the day.  Preceded by the last of the wilderness wild-men prophets, He calls us directly to the Kingdom of God rather than men.  Looks to me like he is far more interested in the fishermen, mothers, lepers, widows, possessed, adulterers, and children than any of those who sat in positions of power.  Theirs is the Kingdom.  Our task  is to reach upward to God and outward to His people.  Perhaps that is how we render unto God what is God’s while we do our duty and vote as best we can, then pray for whoever wins in order to render unto Caesar?

peace

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The preacher’s final message of 2007 was on a traditional roll.  It was a two point sermon on our redemption and adoption.  There were heart tugging videos on the big screens and strong supporting music.  But, I got sidetracked by the word “heirs.”

He kept talking about how we as adopted children of God are joint heirs.  And he was obviously talking future tense.  We have this wonderful promise of heaven when we die…And I found myself thinking past tense and a different death.

Basically, the whole idea of heirs put me to thinking about when the inheritance is given.  Isn’t it when the benefactor dies?  What kind of heir gets the goodies when the heir dies?  That is a nonsensical image! 

So when does God die?  In the 1900’s announced by Time magazine?  Did we inherit anything then?  Did the Christ with whom we are said to be “joint heirs” recieve His inheritance then?  I don’t think so.

The only gospel answer to the question is that Christ, fully God as well as fully man, died on Golgotha.  I do not know of any other time when God dies in the past narrative or future prophesies.  If God indeed died on Good Friday, then it makes linguistic sense if the will was read on Easter!  So it raises the question of whether we have evidence that the inheritance has already been given. 

If we focus on the concept of “joint heirs,” that question is easier to answer because the theology of the resurrection very clearly claims that Christ received His reward and has — past tense — been exalted above all others.  Ephesians 2:6 adds us to the equation as already seated on the throne as well in Christ.

So I am left contemplating the issue and its questions.  The only way this whole “heirs” language makes sense to me is if the inheritance is given when the benefactor dies, and that was 2000 years ago. 

I am still contemplating the helplessness of the Christmas Babe and the Crucified Man and I am drawn into this new arena.  How do I live differently tomorrow if I truly believe that I am a joint heir for Everything and the account is already full?

peace

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