Odd Ideas

With all of the changes in our thinking over the past few years, our complete change in outlook toward life in general, and a new understanding of the Bible, of God, and of Christianity in general, we are sometimes left with our head spinning.

Sometimes, we are simply left wondering what do we really believe now?

Gary has a great post about this on the Communitas Collective site. Definitely worth reading!

I seem to have been busy again – or had nothing to say – or both!

Anyway, I just finished moving the site to a new server.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, but that’s nothing new!

Maybe I’ll even post some of my thoughts here when I get a chance.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Originally posted October 11th, 2008

I read this quote from Bono this morning…

“It is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable treatable disease and hunger, That’s mad, that is mad.”

“Bankruptcy is a serious business and we all know people who have lost their jobs, but this is moral bankruptcy.”

What more can I say – Bono, keep on telling it like it is!

Originally posted September 27th 2008

First of all… yes I’m still alive. Even though I haven’t posted in ages.

As we get settled in (whatever that means) to life here in Canada, it’s been busy with trying to find work, actually working, doing stuff with the kids, etc…

The whole “church thing” is still a frustration. No matter how we try, and how much we like the people at our church, we feel like we just “don’t fit”.

It seems that as our thinking continues to change after living for three years in Ukraine, working with orphans, and everything we have seen and experienced, the direction of our home church here is changing (or seems to be) in the opposite direction of ours. Maybe they aren’t changing but it just feels like that to us…

What is it that bugs us about church? One thing is the view of Evangelism.

I read a post today on a new blog called “Fallen off the Platform” that talks about the same concerns we have. Read it here.

In his post, the author says this:

“Where I’m from, the church will usually have a ’special’ night where you’re encouraged to bring along ANYONE you’ve ever clamped eyes on. Sometimes this’ll take the form of a ‘worship outreach’, or they’ll have a ’special speaker’ (y’know, the guy who’s life was a mess, who God made a huge success and he’s now a millionaire and tells all the right jokes with the perfect timing) or sometimes they’ll even have a film night or a drama production that depicts people dying and being faced with the reality of meeting the devil in hell or being welcomed into heaven and getting a big hug from the guy in a white robe with a stick on beard. (Who thought up this stuff? Can you hear them now…”That’s right…what a great idea…let’s scare folks into the Kingdom with eternal damnation, bad songs and sub-standard acting”) “

Well, it seems that our church has decided to do the same thing. In a few weeks, they are staging a production of “Heaven’s Gates & Hell’s Flames”. Personally, I’m not sure what to do with this. Seeing the big sign in front of the church makes me cringe! Yes, many people will likely come up and make a “decision”. They will decide to say a prayer so they can avoid hell. Is that the same as making a decision to follow Jesus for all of the good things He taught? Is that the same as making a decision to follow Jesus and sacrifice yourself for others?

Seems to me that these types of things simply help build a church full of Christians who are in it for what they can get (Heaven), and what they can avoid (Hell), instead of actually committing to living in the way Jesus did. That takes work, and sacrifice, and is more about what you can do for others than what you can get for yourself.

I’ve mentioned this before… I think Shane Claiborne was right when he said that following Jesus really messed up his life. Jesus does that to people!

But then again, it’s harder to fill up churches that way…

Originally posted August 16th, 2008

I used to think this was something that “really good Christians” did. I have different ideas now.

I was forwarded this e-mail “invitation” (or whatever it is) by a friend looking for my opinion. It was originally from a group of people looking for “Levitical Worshippers” (hey, I’ve got a worship theme going two posts in a row!).

Seems that they are into getting people to go to these all night prayer and worship events, having designated locations for constant worship, etc… Although it might not be for everybody, how can I (or anybody else) find fault in this?

I think their intentions are good, they want to “seek God”, but maybe they are missing the point. Just a little. Or maybe a bit more than a little.

The way the “invitation” is worded, it sounds like a very strong, and Biblical, reasoning for doing this. Kind of makes you think that the people who do this are some kind of “Super Christians”, somehow set apart to worship God. The modern Levites themselves!
The top of the e-mail quotes Leviticus 6:12 “The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously. It must not go out.”

Guess what? That IS what it says in Leviticus! But, I wonder, what does that have to do with prayer and worship in our context?

The “fire” in this scripture is a literal fire, that a specific group of people at a specific point in time were told to tend. Trying to take this verse and apply it to something else, with a different group of people at a different time in a different culture, and a different religion just doesn’t make sense! Anyway… back to the e-mail.

At that time Yahweh set apart the tribe of Levi
to carry the ark of the covenant of Yahweh
to stand before Yahweh to minister to him
and to bless in his name, to this day.
(Deut. 10:8)

This is the next biblical quote in the e-mail. Again, this is referring to the tribe of Levi… a specific tribe of Israel. The words “to this day” seem to me to refer to the time that the book of Deuteronomy was written. Interesting history, good to read and understand, but doesn’t necessarily apply to us, now, in Canada. What this has to do with Canadians (or whoever) going to all night prayer and worship in a non-Jewish culture is beyond me!
And – if it does apply to us (let’s give it the benefit of the doubt) – how do we “minister” to Yahweh (God)? What did Jesus say? “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.” Want to minister to God? Go minister to “the least of these”!

Standing in a room with a pile of other Christians and yelling, crying and screaming at God about stuff He already knows must be pretty insulting to God. At least the God I know.

These people need to get their heads out of the sand. This is the very reason we DON’T see a revival, because they are too busy hiding out in “Christian” gatherings, thinking that they are the chosen ones who will bring revival.

Jesus never told us to do that. Jesus said we are all equals. Nobody is more “chosen” than anybody else. Why do Christians waste their time on stuff that Jesus never bothered with?

Easy answer? Because if you create these clubs and gatherings of “super Christians”, you can pat each other on the back as to how good of a Christian you are, and wouldn’t it be nice if the world would just “get it”…

Going out and doing what Jesus told us to do is hard, and it isn’t fun, and you might have to actually develop friendships (real ones – not just “pretend friendships” so they will come to church), and the leaders of the churches won’t like you (just like the Pharisees didn’t like Jesus).

Real revival will start, one person at a time, when Christians get OUT of the church and their private clubs and start loving and helping people, and stop thinking that they are somehow better or “chosen” because they go to all night prayer meetings.

Ok… I think I feel better now!