A personal blog
Church is a community where all the distraught can be comforted with the sure hope of the Gospel.
Nevertheless the comforting and confident path we walk is inevitably uncomfortable as we experience real suffering for the sake of Christ.
Live the life of the church, in other words, to be comforted, but don’t expect to be made comfortable.
It’s encouraging to see there are gestures in America toward a renewed humility in the so-called “prophetic” movement.
This idolotrous, nationalist strain of the charismatic world is essentially the same thing as what we see corrupting evangelicalism.
Both claim divine revelation in their effort to legitimize a “power-and-profit by whatever means necessary” mentality.
For charismatics, it’s a supposedly direct “word” asserted with unjustified confidence and unfounded authority; for evangelicals it’s a conveniently malleable set of “biblical principles.”
Both are false teachings with soul-poisoning consequences, because both are divorced from Jesus as the Supreme Revelation of God in the Gospels.
Both demand a very different kind of life than our Lord taught us to live, namely a life enslaved to fear instead of liberated, quiet confidence.
One of my profound regrets as a pastor and just as a Christian brother is not clearly and boldly doing constant ground work to address these destructive trends much earlier in the communities I am a part of.
I knew they were problems “out there”; I simply (and naively) didn’t imagine they would take root (or had already become embedded) among people I know and love.
I pray for grace and wisdom, true prophetic insight and evangelical zeal to follow the Spirit of the Lord and witness faithfully to the fullness of God in Christ, given for the world.
If Jesus gives us the Spirit of the Law in the Sermon on the Mount, then the Spirit of the Law is revealed as non-violent.
If the Spirit of the Law is non-violent, the heart of God is non-violent.
If the heart of God is non-violent, this changes everything for me:
My experience is that once you see the non-violent heart of God in Christ, you can’t unsee it.
Christ alone reveals to us the fullness of the heart of God. The more I look on him–incarnating, teaching, healing, dying, rising, ruling, and loving non-violently in it all–the more compelling the vision becomes.
And the vision just gets more compelling.
Yesterday, I found out that Richard Donner, the director of Superman (1978) and The Goonies has died. I don’t know much about him, except his connection to some the biggest blockbusters of my adolescent years.
Superman was no doubt the first real superhero movie I ever saw, and I Ioved everything about it as a kid. The incredible John Williams score, the now-iconic Christopher Reeve performance, the–for the time–incredible special effects…there’s just so much to love.
I’m sure that film is the reason I love comic books and comic book movies to this day, and I have no doubt it contributed to my love of music (I used to go around humming the Superman tune all the time) and movies in general.
I’m not a massive Goonies fan but I have fond memories of watching it with best friends and imagining that we too might have it in us to invent gadgets, follow clues, and live lives of adventure.
I’m really thankful for Donner’s lasting contribution to some of my favorite and most enduring memories…they still have an impact.
As those of us in the U.S. prepare for 4th of July festivities, I want to recognize the main things I am grateful for as an American: Unprecedented freedom of religion, broad cultural support–at least in principle–for transcendent human rights, and some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world.
At the same time I recognize my country has often fallen tragically–even horrifically–short of its ideals, and in fact was founded on and remains committed to certain concepts, assumptions, and practices that are fundamentally incompatible with my faith.
It is important for me to rember that no matter how influenced the United States has been or will be by Christianity, my country is not my savior, my hope, or my church, and could never be.
I am thankful to be a “resident alien” in the USA. And I pray for grace to be a good citizen and serve my fellow Americans so they will know the goodness of God in Christ.
But my allegiance–and the foundational focus of my energy and attention–can only ever be to Christ alone and his people in every nation.
Like many my age and younger, I went through a fairly severe period of deconstructing my faith, trying to make sense of what we read in the teachings of Jesus in light of my day-to-day experiences in places claiming to be expressions of his church.
Let me tell you my deconstruction was catalyzed by both intellectual and relational challenges, but neither slam-dunk arguments nor platitudes initiated a reconstruction.
Instead, it was faith working in love through a few of God’s people.
Instead of simply throwing their hands up in despair, they encouraged (not guilted) me not to give up (I wanted to), faithfully walking with me, even as I grumbled and protested.
Instead of deconstructing my deconstruction, they treated me like family.
Instead of arguing with my reasons for despair, they actively showed me a reason to hope by their example.
Instead of picking apart my faulty doctrine, they simply, patiently, gently witnessed to the character of God in Christ.
Instead of asking me to get it together, they invited and included me in the liturgical and social life of the church.
Room was given for doubt, for questions, for frustration, for grief, for healing, for exploration.
The main thing was that I always knew I was loved–and that love was from God–but it was made visible and tangible by his people.
