Good Shirt
Brant has a new twist on the "God Said It, I Believe It" T-shirt theology...
See it HERE
I like his version better than the usual.
On Prosperity…
In the well known passage in Mark 12, Jesus says this:
"I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on."
Obviously Jesus was admiring the attitude and faith of the poor widow. Why then do so many Christians spend their whole lives trying to attain the status of the wealthy?
Is it not "good enough" to live up to the ideals that Jesus valued?
Sunglasses
This past Sunday at church, they had invited a guest speaker to come in. Usually, the pastor is very careful about who he lets on the stage to speak. Overall, in the type of large church that this is, it might not be a bad policy. That being the case, however, I'm not sure how this "guest speaker" managed to get up there... or maybe I can.
Within a few minutes of his getting up there and starting to speak, I simply wanted to leave. I just couldn't, because I was the sound guy!
So much of what he said "sounded good", but was just off enough to make my skin crawl. The speaker was Brian Klemmer, apparently a well known motivational, "positive thinker" type of speaker that charges people lots of money for going to his seminars.
The one thing I did like from his speech was his analogy of how most people are "born with sunglasses on", and live their lives while never taking them off. As a result, no matter what you say to them, they can never see things for what they are - they just simply don't know any better. The only way to change people's thinking is to get them to take off the sunglasses.
This made sense to me, as it seems that for many years I was wearing those sunglasses. They were the sunglasses of Christianity. Not only were they tinted, but they were also distorted. A few years ago, some of the everyday things in life made them fall off - and that certainly caused some confusion!
Ever since then, nothing seems the same. And once you have removed cheap, distorted sunglasses, there is no way you can go back to wearing them.
The problem is that with Brian Klemmer it seems that he hasn't actually removed his sunglasses. Instead he has either replaced them with a different tint, or simply rubbed and cleaned the old ones so much that they are now scratched as well. All of his training seminars simply try to make your sunglasses match the ones he is wearing.
House of God?
I was at the "dedication" of a large new facility for a local church this past weekend.
Part of the service - the official "dedication" part - involved the members of the church staff reciting various promises on the stage, each one followed by the audience repeating something about "dedicating this house of God".
All I could think of was the words of Stephen in Acts 7.
God does not live in houses made by men.
Guess I'm still cynical.
Old posts…
I've re-posted some of my old posts here... May add a few more.
The links to some of the other blogs mentioned in my posts will be "repaired" as time permits.
If nothing else, it will provide some "history" for some hopelessly bored individual who might happen to be reading this blog.
Feel free to comment if you want.
Hopefully this time the spammer/hackers will stay away.
Here we go again…
This blog had been neglected for a while. I was just too busy, and really had nothing to say beyond what I had already said.
When I finally got around to thinking of something to post a few weeks ago, I logged on only to find that the database was all messed up.
All of the comments were gone. Not that I had many, but the few I did have were good (I thought so anyway).
Can't even remember what I was going to post a few weeks ago now...
Anyway - I decided to just re-install Wordpress, and upgrade while I was at it. I was using an old version anyway (maybe that's why it messed up - who knows!).
I may get around to re-posting some of my old posts. I think they will help to explain some of the new ones once I get around to that!
Rainer
Failing While We Succeed
I read an interesting, and thought provoking, post on Jeff’s blog “Losing My Religion”. Jeff mentions a recent CNN article that discusses how America is “becoming less Christian”.
Please go read Jeff’s post about how our methods of “doing church” seem to having the “unintended effect of polarizing outsiders away from us instead of drawing them in. What we thought would increase our effectiveness and influence may actually be having the opposite effect.”
As I read Jeff’s blog post, I realized that I had seen this for myself while we were missionaries in Ukraine, and I have also had concerns of similar unintended effects (on a smaller scale) as a result of evangelism efforts here in Canada.
While in Ukraine, I saw many churches that had experienced explosive growth during the 90’s, and still heard stories of great “revivals” happening in parts of the country. As a Christian, who can be critical of that? That’s what I thought before I lived there for a while.
After a few months of living there, we got to know a number of people who were no longer part of the “big church” culture there, but who were living their lives to try to model the way of Jesus to the youth in their community. They were facing an uphill battle because, in their words, “many of these kids have already been to a local church, have repented, have said their prayers, and have been rejected by the churches”. The kids were equating God, and Jesus, with their experiences at the church. Now, they wanted nothing to do with God.
Yet, the churches keep thinking they are having success, as their numbers keep growing. But how many people are turning away because of those same “evangelistic” efforts? In my observation, the numbers of those turning away (either immediately or after negative experiences at church) are much higher than most people realize.
I think Jeff’s comment “Sounds almost as if we’ve been cutting down trees in an attempt to save the forest…” is very accurate.
As I posted a while ago, our local church here in Canada staged a production of “Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames”… Go back and read my thoughts at the time if you want, but my concerns over that event are similar (not to mention my concern over the theology of the whole thing). Yes, there really are people who do change their lives for the better as a result of that production. I can’t deny that. What begins to concern me is the number of people who make “emotional” decisions after the production, but nothing really changes.
An even greater concern is the effect on people who see the production and decide that “if this is what God is really like, I want no part of it”. And they walk away from God, directly as a result of our well meaning but misdirected efforts at evangelism.
“Sounds almost as if we’ve been cutting down trees in an attempt to save the forest.”
Yes Jeff, we sure seem to be doing that…
Did God Really Say?
A "re-post" of what I posted Feb 22 2009
Just thinking “out loud” here… Why is it that so many Christians have been “trained” not to ask questions? That somehow, asking questions automatically is the start of our slide down a slippery slope?
I have had several conversations with people over the past couple of weeks about what it means to follow Jesus, about what Jesus asked us to really do, and about some of the things that Christians seem to be obsessed about that Jesus didn’t even mention.
One conversation was on-line, on a message board where people were discussing “the afterlife”. I dropped in to read what people had written, and found that a young man from our church was supporting the “Christian” viewpoint on the board. So were a number of other people.
The disturbing thing to me was that there was an atheist on there who came across as sounding far more coherent and logical than many of the others, including his valid criticisms of Christianity. He was simply posting some true comments about the history of the Bible, and about some of the terrible things done in the name of Christianity through history, and how Christianity (including the beliefs) have dramatically changed over time. So what do we believe now? What really is true, and what isn’t? It was a good question.
The Christians were simply re-iterating (over and over) the same lines of belief, saying a prayer, going to church, all to avoid hell and end up in Heaven. Numerous scripture references were posted out of context to support their arguments.
I posted a few scriptures (see my earlier post about this) to show what Jesus actually said about who was “in” and who was “out”. I also commented that, as followers of Jesus, it wasn’t our job to decide who was a Christian and who wasn’t (since many on the board were trying to define that…).
The reply from one of the Christians? They used the same line I have heard many times before… a reference to Genesis 3:1…
Their response was “Does the line “Did God really say?” seem familiar?”
Somehow, this line is used to instill fear in Christians, because it is inferred that if you ever question a commonly held “Christian” belief, if you ever ask the question “Did God really say?”, you are now following the path of the serpent.
As a Christian, we never want to follow the path of the serpent. Or the path of Satan as it is then modified to mean (although Genesis doesn’t actually say the serpent was Satan).
So, we are always taught never to ask the question “Did God really say?”.
My response on the board? Yes, it does seem familiar. And yes, I am asking the question “Did God really say?” because I want to know that what I am doing, or believing, is something that God, or Jesus, really did say, and not just something invented by church or religion.
Another of my conversations was with a person from the church we have been attending. He stopped by to talk about other things, and somehow the conversation drifted towards some of the popular “evangelistic” messages and tools used in many churches, and how it just wasn’t working. This person already had reservations about the effectiveness of these methods (the typical “scare them out of hell so they want to go to heaven” methods), so I just added a bit of “fuel to the fire” by asking a few questions about what it was that Jesus really taught - about Hell, about following Jesus, about the “rapture” - and suggested he take another close look at the Bible.
He did admit that, for the past couple of years, he has “felt uncomfortable” with the current church situation, but also knew that simply going to a different church wouldn’t fix anything. He mentioned that, in some way, it felt like he was simply “putting in time” at the church until he could figure out what he needed to do.
He also mentioned that he knew a number of other people, at other churches, going through the same thing. Why?
These people want to follow Jesus. They are “still there” at the church. The problem is that they know their questions will not be deemed appropriate, and instead of actually addressing the questions, they will be told that they are wrong, that they need to “flee the enemy”, that they need to conform to the beliefs of the church.
They are not allowed to ask the question “Did God really say?” They don’t want to be associated with serpents.
Asking the question, “Did God really say?” is not really the problem.
The problem is when we know what God said and don’t listen!
We’ve managed to get it backwards - again.
“Christian” Movies
Originally posted February 09th, 2009
Ok, I just have to “vent” a bit here.
I am sick and tired of hearing about the “Fireproof” movie already.
I haven’t seen the movie, nor do I want to. Just the fact that it has Kirk Cameron playing in it is enough to scare me away. His version of Christianity scares me.
From what I have heard, it is a movie about a firefighter (Cameron) and his wife. Their marriage is struggling, he is into internet porn, etc…. Then his father gives him a book and he starts to work on saving his marriage. According to the oft-repeated ads I hear on the radio here, “God gives him a new love for his wife”. That’s good. Where did the old one go?
Being the cynical person I am, I wonder what the movie makers would have done if the main character would have gone through all of this stuff - praying, following God, doing everything he was supposed to, but she rejected him anyway? In real life, that’s often what happens. Then what?
I hear on the radio ads about how many people were “impacted” by the movie, how the movie “blessed” somebody. The movies were shown in churches around here, and my guess is that most of the viewers were Christians. Yet they keep talking about it as if it was some great tool for evangelism.
Then again, the divorce rates for Christians are as high (or higher) than any other demographic, so maybe it’s not a bad thing. Hope it helped somebody!
I’m just sick of the ads!
Anybody reading this see the movie? What did you think?
On Being Like Jesus…
Originally posted February 06th, 2009
There’s a lot of talk in churches about how we’re “supposed to be like Jesus”, how that is our goal as followers of Jesus. I wonder how many people actually think about what that really means? John Smulo posted about this a couple of years ago, and re-posted it again today.
It’s a great, thought provoking post so I’m copying it here (but make sure you go to his site to look around as well).
Be Like Jesus (from John Smulo)
1. Get baptized by the craziest guy in town.
2. Say and do things that are guaranteed to make religious people want to kill you. Repeat again, and again, and again, and again, and again and don’t stop unless forced.
3. Do amazing things for people and ask them to not tell anyone.
4. Hang out with the most despised, marginalized, looked down upon, and shunned people you can find.
5. When possible, forgive and restore people, even if they betrayed you.
6. Live in a way that provokes gossip.
7. Win the most grace competition.
8. Keep the party going.
9. Serve people (note: nose plugs may be required).
10. If you’re sad cry.
11. Empower people to do the extraordinary.
12. Act like a rock star in a hotel temple.
13. Radically simplify theology.
14.Break human-made religious laws. Repeat consistently.
15.Prioritize the most important over the important.
16. Let women with questionable backgrounds pay your bills.
John, thanks for the great post…