I do (not) judge them

Then Jesus cried out, “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.” John 12:44-50

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. – Phillipians 2:5-7

I recently passed the 8th anniversary of my decision to follow Christ. I had developed over the course of the first twenty-one years of my life a belief that most people were evil. Much of this came from negative experiences. I thought anyone I got close to would eventually hurt me so I wanted nothing to do with anyone. 

Imagine my excitement when I finally met some people that seemed nice and were invited by them to their church. While I didn’t know anything about christianity, I decided to go check it out. At first all my experiences with the people their were positive. Obviously, with my prior state of mind still intact, it lead me to believe that christians were good people and everyone else still sucked. However, over the course of the next couple years I figured out that people are people. I also started reading the bible and realizing that God was asking me to love everyone, even my enemies. I had created many enemies in my own mind.

It wasn’t too long however until I had found a new object of my judgement. Christians. I had decided that most “other” christians were too judgmental and not doing the right things. Only In the last few months have I discovered what this attitude has done to my soul. I think we judge people because it redirects the negative views we have of ourselves onto them. 

I would like to be like Christ, who though being God, decided to leave judgement in his father’s hands. How much more then, should I, not being God, leave judgement into God’s hands.  I think sometimes we fall into the wrong mindset. We believe because we know a God who claims to be the truth, that we ourselves know what is right and wrong in every situation. But maybe what is more important than being right is treating people the right way. 

By focusing on everyone else’s faults we often ignore our own. At the same time, we give people the impression that Christ is judging them.  

Maybe it’s time we let go of our desire to be right so that we the kind of people that save the world, not judge it. Maybe it’s time we let go of our desire to be right so that we can be the church, not judge it.

May God give us the grace. 

 

Quote of the Day

“An obsession merely with doing all God commands may be the very thing that rules out being the kind of person God calls us to be”

Dallas Willard – Hearing God

Rhythms = Transformation

In my post yesterday called “killing our(self),” I meant to include a caveat that by saying good deeds should flow naturally out of who we are, in no way was I attempting to say that those who desire and make an effort to do good deeds should feel guilty or that they are going about it the wrong way. There are two reasons I feel this way. 

The first has to do with motivation. As Dallas Willard’s stresses, and I agree, the intent of the sermon on the mount is to cut to the heart and character of the person, not the action. Being so, Jesus explains that harboring anger is what leads to murder. Looking at someone lustfully is what leads to adultery. When Jesus says, it’s better to gouge out your eye than sin, he is not endorsing this activity. On the contrary, he is pointing out the folly in this thinking. This is because a blind person could still have a wicked heart.

“The deeper question always concerns who you are, not what you did do or can do,” says Willard. “What would you do if you could. Eliminating body parts won’t change that.”

I have observed this logic amongst men in the church. They put filters on their computers so they won’t look at porn. One time, I heard someone answer the question of “what does it means for a christian to avoid lust?”, by saying, “get tivo”. While these actions have pure motives and might work for a short time, I wonder if we are perpetuating the lie that the flesh is stronger than the spirit? The overarching reality of God’s kingdom is that, we are not stuck hiding from our sin or ourself. Change is possible.

Just as Jesus views sinful actions arriving from ones heart, so to does he warn doing our “alms deeds” from the wrong spirit. “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men.”

Here he is describing what it looks like when he says “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”

In this understanding then, Jesus is not condemning those who out of the right motive desire to do good or in the right spirit pass on what they are learning. Far from it. He is however pointing out the tremendous idea that it is possible for us to do good without needing to reflect on it. That in the reality of his kingdom it is possible to shed our concern with ourself.  At the same time this is possible, he also says “it is better to give than receive.” He expects us to feel the affects of entering into his kingdom. 

Secondly, I think we have trouble understanding process. As does Peter Rollins, when he says that religious communities influenced by modernity have “tended to emphasize the idea and ‘being’ and ‘destination’: one becomes a christian, joins a church and is saved.” We have exchanged the idea of becoming for became. Instead of viewing ourselves in progress, we give ourselves a pass or fail. Transformation is a process. The image the bible uses to describe our change is fruit. Fruit grows over time. 

I to am guilty of this viewpoint myself. It is built into my language. What I should have said in my previous post was “may we be(come) the kind of people who naturally do what is right (I have now changed this)”

As Jesus said “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 

For only in desiring to be changed and holding to his teaching before it becomes natural to do so, do we get to the point where we no longer need effort in doing what is right. It is not instintainous but a process. I’m sure my wife will attest that the things that at first felt like work, now have become natural.

This is much like the idea of rhythm. For we do not wake up one day and master an instrument. Only after practicing and failing, do we no longer need to be so focused on not messing up. One day, playing that song is natural. So to, one day doing what is right can become our nature. My church ascribes to the following rhythms. By integrating the practice of beautifying, listening, eating, studying and sending into our daily lives, we are then by these practices and the help of God’s spirit transformed. So it’s not working yourself in a frenzy trying to be different, but by changing the basic rhythm’s you live by that you are changed. 

Just like the rhythm of a song becomes natural to you, so too if you get in a rhythm of doing good, when change occurs in your life, your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing.  

The most important rhythm one needs to introduce to their life to begin changing is the Rhythm of Transformation. The Rhythm of Transformation is knowing God. To embrace him is to know love itself. This is the love that transforms.

So we can conclude that only by desiring to be changed can we find that change is possible, and only by saying yes to that desire can we be transformed. 

emergen(t)cy

Recently, I’ve been engaged in two seperate conversations that ended with a similar statement. In the first conversation, a coworker was speaking about a nearby town which is known to be full of churching going christians. “It’s very christian,” he said. “The kind of christians where they’re right and you’re wrong, and if you disagree with them you are not welcome.”

The second conversation arose between to of my co-workers, one of whom is the daughter of missionaries. She commented on how she grew up bored in church. “So, I take it your not much of a church person,” said the other. “I’m not either. I’ve been to a few churches up here and they all have the same book and they all say the same thing, ‘I’m right and you’re wrong‘.”

Now I acknowledge that the people making these statements are bringing their backgrounds and experiences into their experiences with these christians. I also acknowledge that they may have misinterpreted the christians they came in contact with.  But for that to dismiss their comments is to easy of a justification for me. 

This is too common a reason why people don’t engage in our church communities. Even individuals still sincerely attempting to follow God have left our communities for this very reason. How did we get to the point where Christians are perceived as self-righteous?

Often in response to this views of christians you will hear the following – “people just don’t love the truth” or “Jesus said, as the world hated me, so they will hate you.” Even if these statements are true, Is that the goal!?

Are we satisfied with people’s perceptions of christians? How does that affect peoples decisions to follow Christ? How does it affect their view of him?

How can we articulate to a culture that is becoming ever sick of our jargon that he is nothing like what we have made him out to be? 

May God give us the grace to not misuse his name. May we be clothed in humility and may all people be reconciled to God. 

Exodus. 20.7 You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 

Quote of the Day

“The things of god knoweth no man but the spirit of God, only to an equal could god communicate the mystery of the godhead, and to think of god as having an equal is to fall into intellectual absurdity”

A.W. Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy

Heresy

I will be posting items that are laden with my own thinking under the category of heresy. I do this for three reasons. First, I elect to not refer to someone else’s ideas or thoughts as heresy. Second, I want to make it perfectly clear here that I do not claim to have all the right answers. And finally, lately I’ve noticed that many people that inspire me are called heretics, so I must be one also. Rob Bell is accused of not beating people over the head with the cross. Brennan Manning is referred to as a universalist. Shane Claiborne is referred to as one of the emergent “wolves in sheeps clothing” and Donald Miller is more concerned with “feelings” than “the truth.” 

What inspires me about these people is that they lay down their traditions for the sake of love. Peter Rollins refers to this at the “prejudice of love”. Another one of my heroes also laid down his traditions for the sake of love.

When consistently confronted by the Pharisees (the religious leaders of his day) with the law, Jesus refused to act in a non-loving manner for the sake of tradition. On one occasion, when it says the Pharisees were looking to accuse Jesus, there was a man before him with a shriveled hand. Now this happened on the sabbath, and healing or doing any work on the sabbath was unlawful. Jesus chose to heal the man and announced to them “what is lawful on the sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill.” 

Another time, there was a man who had been blind from birth. Jesus took some mud and gave him sight. When the Pharisees saw the man and heard what happened, instead of celebrating with him they told him “this man (that healed you) is not from God, he does not keep a sabbath.  

Yet another time, Jesus was in the synagogue teaching a group when the Pharisees threw a women caught in adultery in front of him. They questioned him stating that “In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” Rather, than affirming that tradition he answered, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 

He even says in the sermon on the mount “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.” At the very place of sacrament, love and reconcilation are more important than religious tradition.

My pastor Matt recently said on the subject that “God gave away his God-ness for the God-less.” This is the most radical expression of Jesus putting on love as the ultimate form of orthodoxy and being the measure by which we are called to make decisions. This idea is found in Phillipians 2 –  ”Jesus, being the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing.”

May we all be reminded that the most orthodox view we can hold is that we are to love God and each other. 

Killing our(self)

 “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:1-4)

In the Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard explains what it looks like to possess the type of “Kingdom Heart” Jesus speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount. “To succeed in keeping the law we must aim at something other and something more,” says Willard. “One must aim to become the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. The apple tree naturally produces apples because of it’s inner nature (143).

He later expounds on this saying “We must never forget that Jesus points beyond action to the source of the action in character. This is the general principle that governs all he says. The kind of people who have been so transformed by their daily walk with God that good deeds naturally flow from their character are precisely the kind of people whose left hand would not know what their right hand was doing — as, for example when driving one’s own car or speaking one’s native language. What they do, they do naturally, often automatically, simply because of what they are pervasively and internally (192).”

Peter Rollins furthers this discussion in  ”How (not) to speak of God.” 

“The love that arises from God is a love that loves anonymously, a love that acts without self-centered reflections, that gives without thought. Our lives should be full of acts of love of this kind, and yet, by definition, they will be invisible to us. As Meiser Eckhart once said:

When one can do the works of virtue without preparing, by willing to do them, and bring to completion some great and righteous matter without giving it a thought – when the deed of virtue seems to happen by itself, simply because one loved goodness and for not other reason, then one is perfectly virtuous and not before. 

Rollins continues “….. what is important  for Eckhart is not to think correctly, or to work hard, buter rather to engage in the type of concrete ego-death by which the divine is invited to enter the place which we have laid down. The hope is that in doing so, love will flow from us.” 

He adds “…to be a Christian is to be born of love, transformed by love and committed to transforming the world with love. This is not somehow done by working ourselves up and trying to find the right way of thinking and acting, but rather in letting go and opening up the transformative power of God. In so doing, we will not merely sit around describing God to the world, but rather, we will become the iconic spaces in which God is made manifest in the world (75).”

When we feel down that our “good works” aren’t good enough for God,  when we feel that we don’t have the energy or ability to love, may we be reminded that we need not try to muster up love from within ourselves. The love we have to offer the world arises from the spirit that indwells us as we lay down our life and offer it to God and to the world. May we all be(come) the kind of people who naturally do what is right. 

I have written a second part to this post, it can be found here.

In’n'Out

Often in Christian circles the question arises of who is and who is not going to heaven. While I believe this question should only be left to God, I do have thoughts on the subject. At our best, we pray that a God who went to such great lengths as to put on our skin and allow our systems and sinfulness to kill him for our own salvation would not allow our failing witness and humanity’s injured mindsets and distorted views of him be what keeps anyone from him eternally.  At the same time, we acknowledge humanity’s broken state, its failing history and the tremendous grace he has shown humanity in his sacrifice. 

My picture of heaven is that it is the place where God’s will is done. My understanding is that in and through Jesus, God created and sustains all things on heaven and earth and He is in the process of one day reconciling the two.  On that day heaven will crash into the earth, forming a (re)newed heaven and earth. 

In this picture, everything that is good (love, mercy, forgiveness, joy, laughter, hope, etc) and every thing that we aspire to and enjoy are found, founded and upheld in God.

At the same time, in no sense does God completely withdraw Himself from those on earth who haven’t come to faith in Him. As Jesus says, God allows His sun to rise on good and evil and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. What is important here is not that we determine who is evil and who is good, or that we judge who is righteous and who is not.  What is important is that God blesses everyone.

The images of sun and rain may have provoked thoughts of provision from the gods. At that time, people were living under the assumptions that if they pleased the gods through their actions, blessing would be sent down on their crop. Jesus presents the more radical idea that God’s love and provision reaches everyone. At least for present, everyone is experiencing God’s loving attempts to re-enter into relationship with them. 

Thus, in the gospel, we are invited to enter God’s kingdom, become his disciple and friend, orient our will around His and enter into the life of heaven now, though only in part.  It also appears the flipside of this is true; people can be living and entering into the lifestyle of hell now, but not fully. 

It appears to me that God does not force himself upon anyone.  He did not in the garden, does not on earth and I believe he will not in heaven either, not in the way we understand forcing. In this idea, hell is not a place God sends bad people to be flogged and tortured.  Hell is the absence of God, the absence of everything good, reserved for those who reject Him.

Imagine now if everything good was no longer attainable.

In this understanding, I do not follow God out of fear of losing what is good, any more than I love my wife out of fear of her leaving me. On the contrary, I follow God because I desire Him, His kingdom, and His goodness.  I follow God because I’m attracted to His way of life. I follow because forgiveness is greater than bitterness. Because mercy is greater than revenge. Because hope is better than cynicism. Because love is greater than hate. Because desire is greater than fear. Maybe a better question than who is going to hell is, who would really want to?

 

Quote of the Day

“A friend is someone who knows everything about you and still loves you”

St. Augustine

How (not) to speak of God

 

Much of the early content I’ll be exploring in future posts comes from “How (not) to speak of God” by Peter Rollins. I was introduced to this book from my church, Mosaic, and have been reading and re-reading it for the past week and a half. The book itself can in the same sentence makes me cringe (due to things my church tradition has taught me to believe) and make my heart burn (due to the the fact his observations cut to the heart of Jesus mission and message) at the same time. 

Rollins explores such ideas as a/theism, believing in the right way, and the prejudice of love. I could not do justice to these ideas here, so if you are curious, read the book. He effectively uses parables to express ideas. He explains how God is concealed in revelation, and how doubt is central to faith. The most profound aspect of this book is its ability to show that two seemingly opposite things can coexist and work in tension with each other. This kind of thinking is more eastern than western, more Hebrew than Greek. 

If I have any critcism of this book, it is that at times he makes it seem as though none of our efforts to understand God will every help us reach any conclusions. While that isn’t his ultimate point,  I will say that I’ve found a careful study of the original background of the text can have incredible implications for how we read it. While history/background in and of itself can be subjective, I still think studying the context of the scriptures is critical. I also found the second section of this book to be a little strange. It is comprised of 10 service descriptions from his community. I can’t say I resonated with many of these services. I like his ideas a lot, maybe just not the way he is going about fleshing them out in services.  I’m not saying they are wrong, or that there is only one way to do a service, I’m Just saying they didn’t impact me the way his ideas did. 

That being said, I highly recommend this book to anyone with an open mind who desires to be transformed into a more loving person. Much of it is brilliant and very thought provoking.