Jonestown, 30 years later

Here's a link from boingboing about Jonestown and related stuff. I was in college when this happened. I think it's important, and something everyone should be informed about. We mustn't blindly follow anyone, and there were clues aplenty that Jim Jones was up to no good.

More about this later. Do any of you remember any of this stuff?

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Yancey at CT on Diagnostics for Congregations

Philip Yancey (Wikipedia article) has an interesting article on Christianity Today called "Denominational Diagnostics." I wouldn't have called it that, because it doesn't seem to have too much to do with denominations. He talks about being able to sense the "aliveness" of the congregation within a very short amount of time, based on 1) talk going on in the foyer, 2) presence of laughter, and 3) what activities and issues were highlighted on the bulletin board.

Read the entire article. What Yancey says he found at the heart of his quick impressions were three things.

1. Diversity - I think he was getting at the idea that diversity showed tolerance of personal differences and the absence of any one group dominating everything. I bet everyone's been in a congregation where actions and attitudes were highly restricted so as not to upset the "alpha" group. When that's not happening, it's a good sign.
2. Unity - We could easily get into centered vs. bound sets here, a fun topic to be sure. Unity could simply be strongarm tactics - "be like I tell you to be or you're not welcome here." But that would go against the diversity point above. Unity shouldn't be based on blind conformity, but on a cherished common ground, hopefully in the case of churches - Christ.
3. Mission - Is the church obviously trying to make disciples, and are they doing so in some positive, uplifting way that includes large doses of love?
   

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Fitch on Psalm 37

David Fitch put up a good post yesterday. He's at it again, outlining right-thinking for churches and their leaders.

Here, he's talking about when times get tough. Belt-tightening, all that kind of stuff. The pressure is on to keep cash flow going. You've got to pay the bills, or as he puts it here, you've got to get pragmatic. And this is in the context of a missional church, where you're already straining credulity, you're already pushing the envelope. Let's face it, you are not doing things just like the successful church down the block.

He says there are three things about missional churches that ought to help.

• They tend to keep building expenses minimal
• They tend to utilize multiple bi-vocational pastors that can weather difficult economic times
• They tend to live more communally, achieving economies of scale

Then he quotes Psalm 37:1-6 (TM), recommending it for - get this - spiritual formation! This is potent stuff, radical even, a true humility right in the normal practice of a front-line pastor.

I really like David Fitch.

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Alan Hirsch on Planting the Gospel

Alan Hirsch has a fine post based on a quote by Dr. D.T. Niles of Sri Lanka. Hirsch suggests that we replace the term church planting with gospel planting. Here is Dr. Niles' quote:

The Gospel is like a seed, and you have to sow it. When you sow the seed of the Gospel in Israel, a plant that can be called Jewish Christianity grows. When you sow it in Rome, a plant of Roman Christianity grows. You sow the Gospel in Great Britain and you get British Christianity. The seed of the Gospel is later brought to America, and a plant grows of American Christianity. Now, when missionaries come to our lands they brought not only the seed of the Gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flower pot included! So, what we have to do is to break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the Gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our own version of Christianity grow.

I think this is quite powerful, and I would suggest that cultural soil is fractal in that this principle of soil applies not just to the largish entity thought of as a culture, but it applies equally as well to each successively smaller sub-culture, right down to the individual level.

I particularly like how Dr. Niles talked about breaking the flowerpot. A lot of rejection we see in evangelism is not an out and out rejection of Jesus, it's a rejection of our flowerpot, the container in which we bring the gospel. A lot of situations where people do not go forward with Jesus are simply flowerpot problems.

Like it or not, we add a lot to the gospel when we share it. We do this without realizing it; it's unintentional, but real nonetheless. I think Hirschy is encouraging us to plant the gospel as cleanly as possible, enabling the hearer to really accept it, embed it into their lives.

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contamination video

This is a really great video over at small ritual.

grace - contamination 1 from steve collins on Vimeo.

What do you think?

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Radical Humility 2

Let's look in Philippians 2, verses 5-8 (TM).

• "Let this mind be in you..." This is an invitation to a kind of incarnation, this mind "... which was also in Christ Jesus..." It's also a doorway into His humility.
• "...Who, being in the form of God..." This echoes:
•  Paul's words in Hebrews 1:3 (TM) where he calls Jesus "the express image" of God.
• John's words in John 1:1 (TM) where it says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
• Jesus' words concerning Himself in John 14:9 (TM) where He tells Philip something like, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father."
  
• "...did not consider it robbery to be equal with God..." This is a really difficult translation. I don't think the NKJ does it justice. NIV says, "...did not consider equality with God something to be grasped..." which seems much more clear. This seems (to me) to reveal so much about the Lord's humility:
  • "...equality with God..." - This is Jesus. Equal. With. God.
  • "...did not consider..." - Jesus had a choice, an opinion. There's no hubris in Him. 
  • "...something to be grasped..." - For one thing, Jesus could step out of and back into these privileges at will. In Matthew 4:6 (TM), we see through Satan's quote of Psalm 91:11, 12 (TM) that this is true. Through this sober self-assessment (TM), the Lord saw Himself as He truly is and acted confidently based on that.
• "...became obedient to the point of death..." - Here we see this extreme form of humility resulting in an absolute form of obedience. No wonder that Jesus labels obedience the truest mark of love (TM).

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Quick Look: Psalm 146

Let's take a quick look at Psalm 146 (TM).

• "...Do not put your trust in princes..." This is not in contradiction to the radical humility of Psalm 141 (TM) where it says, "...Let the righteous strike me..." and indicates God's person, the righteous, acting on God's behalf - the trust is really in God, resulting in our submission to God's correction through even imperfect man. Here in Psalm 146 it simply says not to put your trust in princes, meaning don't put your trust in any man, even those at the top of the food chain.
• "...on that very day their plans come to nothing..." This is why you can't put your trust in them: they won't necessarily be around to put their plans into action or make their stated intentions reality.
• "...Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob..." This is in contrast to princes.
• "...the Maker of heaven and earth..." This emphasizes the scope of His power, infinite, and the length of His days, without beginning or end.
• "...the Lord, who remains faithful forever..." Here's a killer reason for putting your trust in God: His faithfulness, His loyalty. Power alone isn't sufficient criteria. The very powerful might be completely indifferent to you, or worse, might be bent on your destruction, but the Lord has pledged Himself to us, and His word is true.
• "...Who executes justice for the oppressed..." I love this justice stuff, and so apparently does God. It's what defines the good guys versus the bad guys, even though we now know that there aren't necessarily any strictly good guys other than the Lord, but this is the criteria for trying to be part of the good guys' team: 1) identification with the oppressed - we've all been there, even if we're only oppressed by our own foolishness, and 2) an interest in basic decency and fairness, a desire to treat people well and live in community with them.
• "...The LORD sets prisoners free..." Notice how similar this language is to Isaiah 61 (TM), which is the passage Jesus read from in Luke 4 (TM) when announcing the beginning of His ministry. All this is named here as appropriate reasons for trusting the Lord instead of man and it has to do with His stated purpose for being on earth. I think that's a slam dunk. It's convincing; it's compelling. Folks go for self-help or personal growth all the time, with a fraction of these prospects.
• "...the LORD gives sight to the blind..." Talk about personal growth. I need this. I'm so blind to all kinds of things - the truth about myself being at the top of the list. The Lord is worth of your trust because He shows you how things really are.
• "...the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down..." Do you feel beaten or bruised or just really, really tired? He lifts you up if you allow it. This is a picture of restoration. Has the weight of whatever it is you've been carrying gotten just too heavy? The Lord lifts you up. "Come to me," says Jesus (TM). "Cast all your cares on Him," Peter tells us (TM).
• "...the LORD loves the righteous..." The Lord loves those who join Him. He loves everyone else, too, I believe, it's just that this is how you allow His work in your life. You join up.

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Radical Humility

Brenton Brown has a song called "Humble King." In it he says, "You are the God of the wounded / The friend of the weak / You wash the feet of the weary / Embrace the ones in need / Oh I want to be like You, Jesus / To have this heart in me / You are the God of the humble / You are the humble King."

In an earlier post, I was talking about the radical humility that occurs when we tell the Lord we will accept correction, not only from the Lord Himself, but even from His people, the righteous. This is all the more remakable for the knowledge that these people will be hypocrites, failures, people coming up short personally in the very same areas in which they are giving advice. In essence, people just like us.

This takes some kind of nerve, some kind of desperation, or, most likely, a little of both. Desperation, because we must be desperate to not isolate ourselves, not cocoon, not withdraw to lick our wounds in private. That's the first instinct for so many of us when trouble comes or when we've failed. We're embarrassed. We retreat.

Nerve, because not only are we not retreating, but going public - not just going public, but submitting to the kind (or not so kind) words of the very ones from whom we wanted to hide. It takes some kind of nerve, and some kind of desperation, to stay a course like that.

Paul instructs us to admonish one another in both Romans 15:14 (TM) and Colossians 3:16 (TM), and that requires this kind of humility. I like the fact that love covers a host of sins (TM), because that's what is needed for this to work. We have to be a community of humility in order to receive this kind of input from each other.

Required In Both Directions

Radical humility is required for the one giving the correction as well. Jesus warns us against hypocrisy when He tells us to remove the log (TM) from our own eye in order to deal with the speck in our brother's eye. I think it's noteworthy that He doesn't say just stick to your own eye and leave your brother's eye out of it. That's what generally happens when we manage not to meddle. We say, "it's none of my business." Jesus, however, calls us into community and instructs us on humility.

Blue Parakeet: Chap 3 - 5 Shortcuts

Chapter 3 is really good! Scot outlines five shortcuts that we typically take in reading the Bible. Before I give them, here's a kind of structure for all five.

Overview/Generalization

• we see God in some exclusive way or system - the emphasis is shifted, changed
• our relationship with God is determined by this system
• this leads us to hide something and lie to cover it
• the better way is to be non-exclusive, i.e. get over our need to have everything explained

Okay, now on to the details...

Shortcut 1: morsels of law

• sees God as cranky, impatient, judgemental - the emphasis is on His righteousness
• our relationship with God becomes dependent on our being good
• this leads us to hide our behavior and lie about it
• the better way is found in the writer of Psalm 119 - the law leads him to deeply love the Lawgiver

Shortcut 2: morsels of blessings

• takes a lot of those blessings out of context - sees God as a doting grandmother
• our relationship with God becomes diagnosed by "are we being blessed?"
• this leads us to hide our circumstances and lie about them
• the better way is to read the entire story, seeing the ups and downs

Shortcut 3: inkblots

• sees God as we see ourselves - emphasis becomes justifying our story
• our relationship with God is defined by tweaking the facts
• this leads us to hide non-supporting facts and lie about their existence
• the better way is to admit that I can't explain the mysterious

Shortcut 4: mapping God's mind

• sees God as finite, understandable - the emphasis becomes categorization
• our relationship with God is defined by how smart we are
• this leads us to hide our doubts and lie about our certainties
• the better way is to admit that we don't know

Shortcut 5: maestros

• sees God from a chosen POV - emphasis is on code words more than relationship
• our relationship with God is defined by our personal, particular Biblical view
• this leads us to hid parts of scripture and lie about their significance
• the better way is to take it all in without ignoring things that don't fit - of course to do that, you have to admit that your favored way of viewing things is unable to explain everything

More about each of these later.

Quick Look: Psalm 141:1-5

Let's look quickly at the first five verses (TM) of this excellent psalm.

• "LORD, I cry out to You; make haste to me!..." - Sometimes we have to reach a broken-type place in our experience to allow ourselves to cry out to God for help. There's something within that wants to remain in denial many times, and a cry this child-like isn't conducive to denial. In those times of denial, our control seems so fragile, so on -the-brink, that we dare not give voice to the request within us. But things are so much better for us when we do!
• "...Let my prayer be set before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice..." - This is so humble, and so down to earth. I like this aspect of prayer, this laying down of all my cards, and I'm grateful for the Lord's willingness to accept it. We can humbly ask for our prayer to somehow be more acceptable than it really is, and in the Lord's economy, that has an effect. I think that somehow it makes us more mindful of the attitude of our heart, and calls us back to the listening side of prayer as we form the request "Let my prayer..." It calls us to consider, like the Philippian jailer (TM) "...what must I do..."
• "...Set a guard..." - Maybe it starts to dawn on us that we are unable to do this stuff alone. Maybe we start to call on the Lord to do some things for us, stuff that He wants us to do. "Set a guard over my mouth" puts the onus onto the Lord, and done correctly, we trust Him to help us in our problem areas. Maybe we start to get a notion of what it means to abide, to be and stay attached to the Vine (TM).
• "...Let the righteous strike me..." - Now we're talking radical humility. It's one thing to be humbled before the Lord in private, but here the psalmist actually says that correction from other people will be welcome. And I think that "the righteous" here simply refers to those belonging to Jesus. It's His righteousness, not theirs, so the humility in this passage is the welcoming of correction from imperfect but forgiven humans. That's what is radical about this humility. It calls us to bite back on sharp retorts and "what about your problems?" and all those kinds of protective things we do to save face. I think I'll post about this more in the next day or so.

This psalm points out something incredible: when we ask God to modify our prayer, it inevitably leads to modifying us. Hmm, mercy in action.

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Blue Parakeet: Chapter 2, Part 3

In the last post, I opined that the middle road between too much tradition and not enough was part of the big idea of part two. Well, guess what he comes out and says in part three?

Oh, yeah.

We read this: "Reading the Bible with the Tradition gives us guidance but it also gives us freedom to differ with Tradition." Pretty middle of the roadish to me, but I will say once again, maneuvering a middle path between two extremes is both difficult and worthwhile.

Here's my take on what this third way expresses: we read the Bible with one eye on the way it's traditionally been read. Which tradition? Well, tradition in this instance can include more than one interpretation. I don't know if Scot believes that, but practically speaking, this is what you and I are going to see and deal with, not knowing in a scholarly way just how close our little "t" tradition fits with the big "T" Tradition to which he refers. In addition to that, many Christians have different views competing for the title of "Tradition." Some people go to more than one church. Some read books by leaders outside of their local church's purview, or watch sermons on TV.

I guess that, for most of us, "Tradition" will have to refer to what is understood to be traditional within my denomination or local church or Christian authority. Look at it in this light first, and you need to have a darn good reason for departing from this understanding.

The Role of the Holy Spirit in Bible Reading

Now, what about the Holy Spirit? It's always been my understanding that we read scripture with the help of the Spirit. That's what has to happen on an individual basis. Of course, once we start discussing what truth the Spirit has lead us into (John 16:13) (TM), then we will start to find differences and have disagreements. Let's not let this be the end of the story as is so often the case, but rather the beginning of a long and fruitful dialog in which each party learns of and decides to remove planks and specks from their own eyes, moving together into a better understanding of the Lord, and a closer walk with Him.

Next, we get into Chapter 3.

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Quick Look: Psalm 106:1-4

Let's go quickly through the first 4 verses of Psalm 106 (TM).

• 
  "...my heart is steadfast..." - I take this to be a pledge, and sort of like the single eye that I've posted about before. I think it's worth thinking about here.


• I tell the Lord that I'm bringing my focus to bear on Him


• It might even be true. I certainly better believe it to be true, but honestly, sometimes we don't get it done.
• It's an entirely good thing to make these confessions of intent to the Lord.


• "...I will sing and give praise..." - more intentions - this is goal setting on a spiritual level...
• When you are at this level of tenderness toward God, these kinds of declarations are entirely normal
• I think this speaks toward our being made 1) in His image, and 2) with an urge to return to Him, that ignites really only (TM) when the Holy Spirit is calling us...
• "...even with my glory..." - this is a curious turn of phrase - NIV says "...with all my soul..."
• "...Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn..." - I take this as more joyful exuberance
• It's hyperbole, and that's okay. God can handle it.
• It shows that certain willingness that demonstrates the fact that walls are down, and we are radically open to the Lord.
• "...I will praise You, O LORD, among the peoples. And I will sing praises to You among the nations..." - here we're not ashamed (TM) of the Lord, or of sharing about what He's done for me...
• "...For Your mercy is great above the heavens, and Your truth reaches to the clouds..." - both the mercy and the truth of the Lord are all encompassing

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Blue Parakeet: Chapter 2, Part 2

I'm blogging through Scot McKnight's brand new The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. All these posts start with Blue Parakeet: I hope you'll join me.  Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed!

In this second part, Scot talks about reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther. Both put the Bible into the hands of ordinary people, but they also put catechisms and commentaries into their hands. Scot tells us their aim was to summarize and give an overview of the faith so that the people might not dive off into a lot of needless error. I was relieved when Scot got around to saying that we could reduce tradition down to the non-negotiables such as the Apostles' Creed and go from there. It put me in mind of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. This is good, because we don't want to go back to the bad old days when every denomination thought every other denomination was going to hell. If post-modernism does anything for us, surely it's to protect us from that kind of hubris.

What you want is the smallest possible set of non-negotiables because, given that we are looking "through a glass darkly" (TM), that's how you avoid excluding people from fellowship in error which may satisfy us, but hardly satisfies the purpose of the Bible. And maybe that's key to a couple of the most basic realizations we can have: 1) relationship trumps being "right," and 2) the Bible is without error, but we frequently find ourselves and the way we read the Bible (by this I mean our interpretation) in error. Jesus said that the Spirit would lead us "into all truth" (TM), but He didn't say it would happen by today (or even this side of the grave). So chill a bit.

Scot's making a powerful argument here for middle ground, for not going against the core of our 2000 year old community, and for not fabricating rigid requirements beyond that core. It takes discipline to stay in the middle and not give in to either extreme: too much tradition or not enough.

Next, the third way of reading from Chapter 2.

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Quick Look: Psalm 103:11-14

A quick look at Psalm 103:11-14 (TM):

• "...as the heavens are above the earth..." - way up there - one of those BIG type of comparisons
• "...so great is His mercy... - ginormous mercy - this is exactly the kind of mercy we need
• "...toward those who fear Him..." - who regard Him correctly, who are in awe of Him - there's a place in us that has to be willing to be a sheep and therefore enter the privilege of recognizing His voice, a place in us that has to be willing to be awed in order to experience this greatness, and as I've discussed before, it takes grace just to have the opportunity to be awed (think Moses and the burning bush) (TM)
• "...as far as the east is from the west..." - in parallel to the heavens above the earth statement before - another gigantic comparison
• "...so far has he removed our transgressions from us..." - this makes me think of 1) forgiveness, 2) the beginning of sanctification, though we find it all to easy to return to our wrongdoing (TM)
• "...as a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear Him..." - a picture of our adoption
• "...for He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust." - this is what the haters forget about - God is not surprised when we goof up, when we fail to deserve (TM) what He has for us
  

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Commitment to What Matters

This is why I like David Fitch. Think of it... We're getting too many people around here - let's plant a couple of churches! Let's do away with one Sunday morning service per month, kicking it out into home groups, and - oh yeah - we'll let those offerings go 100% toward outreach in those neighborhoods! Etc...

This is the kind of thing I find really appealing, where the mission is more important than the institution. That sounds pretty simple, but I'm thinking it's in shorter supply than we like admitting.

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Blue Parakeet: Chapter 2 Begins

Chapter two is a little more complicated. It starts off with the story of the blue parakeet, and I'll be honest, at first I wasn't too sure about that bird. We'll see. He goes on to talk about three ways of reading the Bible, the first of which is reading to retrieve, or "reading the Bible to retrieve biblical ideas and practices for today." This seems very natural and straightforward. For instance, we see in the Bible "Thou shalt not kill," and so we retrieve that forward and live by it. Other things are not quite as clear.

Scot makes reference to Paul's intention to be all things to all people, as being a strategy of "constant adaptation." That word adaptation is crucial. It says that somehow we take the meat of biblical ideas and embody them in 21st century practice.

The point being made here is that New Testament practices don't take place in a vacuum, but in their own local context. It's tricky business to move a biblical idea or principle from one context to another without disturbing either the idea or the context. Maybe something like that is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke about wineskins. (TM) The new wine of whatever the Spirit is doing in us through a particular passage can't be restricted by the context of an old wineskin, unsuited to fresh fermentation.

Scot says, "...if we read the Bible properly, we will see that God never asked one generation to step back in time and live the way it had done before." That's a mouthful, and a little troubling as well.

It's difficult for your average person to see a call back to biblical values as not being a call back to those same behaviors, practices, and attitudes. You see that in songs like "Give Me That Old-Time Religion." You see it in Samuel rebuking Saul's disobedience (TM). So I think Scot should have explained this in a little more detail, or a little more clearly. This would lead some people to raise an eyebrow, or worse, to wonder about just where Scot was going with this.

That's the reaction of your more conservative readers, while those of a more progressive bent might sniff a little at Scot's statement, "...if we read the Bible properly..." They will think Scot is saying he has the one true way of reading scripture when I don't believe that's his point at all. I'm sure this will be developed further as we get into the book, that God speaks in each generation in the ways of that particular generation. His truth is universal, but He speaks locally.

This is getting fun. Next, the second way of reading...

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Quick Look: Psalm 86:11

Quickly, Psalm 86:11 (TM) in four parts:

• Teach me Your way
  
• I will walk in Your truth
• Unite my heart
• to fear Your name

Teach me Your way

• I'm open to what You want to teach me, Lord
• You might use multiple sources - scripture, prayer, people, circumstance

I will walk in Your truth

• this phrase supplies the why of the teaching
• it's like "Teach me Your way so that I can walk in Your truth"
• I think it also shows a willingness and an intention to do that

Unite my heart

• NIV says "...Give me an undivided heart..."
• the undivided heart, like the single eye of the KJV Mt 6:22, gives us a crucial ability, as seen in...

To fear Your name

• ... the ability to correctly regard the Lord
• fear - awe, proper respect
• look at what this did for Isaiah in Is 6 (TM) - it pulled things into sharp focus
• this is the result of grace, not really achievable on our own, and it puts our heads and hearts into a place able to have the relationship desired by the Lord
  

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Blue Parakeet: One More Thing About Chapter One

In the next to last paragraph of chapter one, having related several examples of a different person seeing a given scripture differently, Scot says this:

By such personal encounters we are driven to think aloud about what we believe, we are driven to think more carefully about what we think, we are driven back to the Bible and how we read it...

That quote really disturbed me, and here's why: way too often, maybe it's even the default, but it would be really hard for most of us to characterize an encounter with someone carrying a significantly different idea or viewpoint as personal, in fact, the person disappears completely, and we found ourselves dealing only with the idea.

This is the opposite of what we talked about earlier today. I think Jesus prefers us to engage with people, not shadow-box with ideas. What do you think?

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Blue Parakeet: How, Then?

Continuing in chapter one, Scot gets to a really meaty question: "How, then, are we to live out the Bible today?"

He ties it into relationships, and I think that's crucial. It's a lot easier to be mean, to be a hater, to solo off into some weird doctrinal smackdown of somebody else (somebody Jesus, by the way, died for) when you're not with them.

It's a lot simpler to love being right all the time when you don't have to deal with the carnage your ideology causes in someone else's life. It's a whole lot more fun to think that the answers you've arrived at are obvious.

Scot reminds us that this isn't very often the case. He tells the story of one his students asking a difficult question, and it's easy to see that Scot cares about the student more than he cares about having a snappy comeback, or winning an argument. I like the way he says, "I'm open!"

Next, chapter two.

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Exodus

Today, Scot McKnight has a post about Rob Bell's newest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians. Worth reading, as always, and it sparked some thoughts in me, as well.

The first thing that really caught my eye was Scot's discussion of Exodus - God's liberation of the oppressed. I think this is a very natural way of looking at the Bible's message. It's found in the concerns of the Social Gospel, in James 2:15-16 (TM), in the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:35 (TM) and Luke 3:11 (TM) - just all over the place.

Here's how it strikes me: oppression occurs in your place, and you cry out to God. After some amount of time, when He finds it appropriate, He comes and takes you to the promised land.

• The promised land might be somewhere else, or it might somehow be right here.
• He might vanquish whatever is oppressing you, like Jesus did for the Gadarene man (TM), possessed by a legion of demons.
• He might reveal something of Himself that changes everything, like it did for the woman at the well (TM).
• He might do an Exodus (TM) on you.
  

Doesn't this strike you like a Shane Claiborne thing? You know, seek out the oppressed and then try to help them. There are multiple instances of Black Moses.

I mean, doesn't this remind you of presence ministry (TM)? We seek out the oppressed, offer them relief, and invoke the presence of Jesus. This is very cool.

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Scot McKnight's Blue Parakeet: It Arrived!

I got it in the mail yesterday. I started reading it.

It's very readable, and I suspect that readability, in and of itself, might be a key point for potential readers of Scot's book. Here's the deal: I'm not a scholar, and while all of Scot's work (that I've seen) is readable, I've always found his blog, Jesus Creed, to be the most readable. This book is readable like his blog, and that's a good thing, a very good thing.

It starts right off with Scot's account of the prayer at camp that changed everything. I think these kinds of stories are great; I think that almost every Christian has one (or several) of them; I think they need to be hauled out, dusted off and shared.

Just the process of thinking through what your story or stories might be is a beneficial exercise. It got me thinking about my trip to church camp the summer following my seventh grade year. We were given a slender booklet called "Your Quiet Time," or something like that. I remember it had a glossy white cover, center-stapled, and a green leaf motif imprinted on the front. I was fascinated with it. We were sent out on our own to work through part of it that first day. I remember winding up down the hill close to the tennis courts and swimming pool, sitting under a tree. I remember reading about the "ACTS" form of prayer: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

That entire week was huge for me, and did a lot to define who I would become, and what kinds of values I would hold dear. Scot does this in chapter one, detailing his sudden transformation into voracious Bible reader and student.

Then the fun started.

He jumps right into the notion that we all pick and choose from what we read in the Bible. This is a divisive topic, but Scot handles it the way he handles everything on his blog: fairly and equitably. This ability to handle divisive topics in a friendly, considerate way is one of the great strengths of Scot's ministry, and it's in evidence here.

People want to believe that they are the good guy, they wear the white hat, they are the ones with reason and intellect and all right thinking on their side! Therefore doing the right thing is like falling off a log - easy, easy, easy. "Hogwash!" says Scot, and an honest scan of my own personal history leads me to agree with him. We are "Biblical" on a few select points, and "not-so-Biblical" on others, and our tribes tend to convene at least part of the time around how we draw these categories.

If you are a cranky person, you won't find this very palatable. But I believe this book can help. More on chapter one tomorrow.

Quick Look: Psalm 71

Let's dip into this one (TM) and see what crops up.

• "In You, O LORD, I put my trust..." Tells right where the trust is going - it's in the Lord Himself
• "...Let me never be put to shame." Now we get the "what" of the trust. What am I trusting the Lord for? For everything, really - to save me from humiliation, and that makes it so personal. The shame that means something to me might be entirely different from what could cause shame for you. But we trust the Lord to keep us free of that.
• "Deliver me..." Start with the end in sight. I'm in trouble. I'm desperate. What is it that I need? I need to be delivered.
• "...in Your righteousness..." Well, we knew it wasn't going to be our righteousness to pull us out of the jam. It's the Lord's righteousness that is strong enough and real enough to give aid to us.
• "...and cause me to escape..." Again, the goal is clearly kept in sight. I'm in trouble, and I need to escape it! I don't think we fool God by beating around the bush, nor do we sneak one in on Him and trick Him into somehow helping us...
• "Incline Your ear to me, and save me." We all want to be heard. (TM)
• "Be my strong refuge..." This is key, because of what it says about my perception of the Lord's role in my life. I'm asking Him to be my refuge, implying that 1) I'll go to Him, seeking Him out of my own volition, and 2) I can stay there and ride out any storm.
• "...to which I may resort continually..." No time for shame or embarrassment here - just put the Lord on your speed dial and keep Him there - use that contact. It's what He wants, anyway.
• "...You have given the commandment to save me..." This clinches it: it is the Lord's stated will to save me, to help me, to rescue me, regardless of where I fall on the good-life or wise-choices meter.
  

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Quick Look: Psalm 46

Let's take a quick look at the first three verses (TM) of Psalm 46 (TM).

• Refuge - The place to go when the chips are down... It's the place of safety, our first choice.
• Strength - The engine for coping with anything that comes our way... The Lord is the primary resource on which we should draw.
• Very present - This is so cool... The NIV says "ever present," but I love the word "very" being there in the NKJV for emphasis, as in "is He there?"  "Oh, He's very there." The Lord is always present with us, even when it feels like He's not.
• Help - God is able to help us in the here and now - I can offer the usual caveats here: help is not always what you wanted , not always what you hoped for, but God's help is in your best interest.
• In trouble - This is when the chips are down, when the going gets rough, when we feel overwhelmed.
• Therefore - Here comes the conclusion, based on all the preceding information...
• We will not fear - This is probably an ideal, the outcome that we shoot for, the reality we've been promised, but find difficult to achieve. Still, in the face of our difficulties, we owe it to ourselves to strive for this, to remind ourselves that because of all these things - God is our refuge - God is our strength - He is here in the midst of our crisis - we are not left with fear as our only option. There is a path out of the crush of this flood of adrenaline, this pervasive cloud of anxiety.
  

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Phariseeism

There's a post at NextReformation entitled "colonizing" in which Len says this:

One of the results of the death of Christendom and the collapse of modernity is the exposure of the pious, all-knowing attitude on the part of those of us with power. We had all the right answers, and all the right methods, and we had God in our collective pockets. If everyone around us would just get with our program.. they too could be happy and successful in western terms, and have services in mega-churches.

Isn't that a spot-on definition of Phariseeism?

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Peter and the Pre-Conceived Notion, Part I

In Acts 10, we find Peter in Joppa, fresh from raising Dorcas from the dead at the end of chapter 9. Peter is completely satisfied that Christianity is a Jewish experience, and why not? He’s having tremendous success in his ministry, the Lord is blessing, things are going really well.

Does being satisfied equal complacency? It might, if you hold your mouth just right. The Wiktionary defines satisfaction as “the fulfillment of a need or desire.” It defines complacent as “… uncritically satisfied,” which I find very interesting.

Uncritical can mean indulgent in that you don’t apply proper standards. In this case, it would mean that you got satisfied too easily. Let’s look at an example.

In Luke 12, Jesus is telling a story about a man with great success. This person has more harvest than he can handle, and he makes plans to tear down his old storehouses, and build bigger ones in their place. Then he figures he’ll retire and live a life of luxury, having acquired all that he could possibly need.

“Fool!” says God, “Tonight your soul will be required of you. Who’s going to get all this stuff you’re so proud of?”

This story is sandwiched between a person in the crowd asking Jesus to arbitrate an inheritance dispute and Jesus devaluing earthly goods. “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”

One specific implication is that our assessment of any situation can be incomplete. The rich man felt that he had everything covered. On paper he certainly did. You total up the cost of your needs in one column, and total your assets in another. Do total assets cover the total cost of needs?

Jesus seems to be saying that we too often don’t account for our real needs very well.

Consider the spendthrift, a person that wastes money. If you pinned them down and asked them about their spending, they would probably tell you that the expenditures were for needs, and actually not frivolous at all. You, being the more practical type of person, see straightaway that they are fooling themselves.

Jesus is immensely more practical than we are, and He’s many times telling us that we’re fooling ourselves even when we think we’re being very objective.

Proverbs 1:32 says that “… the complacency of fools will destroy them.” Substituting our Wiktionary definition of complacency we get, “… the uncritical satisfaction of fools will destroy them.”

Being too satisfied will destroy us.

Shtick

Shtick: (from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary) an attention-getting or theatrical routine, gimmick, or talent.

Lots of shows use shtick. A great case in point was the opening season of NBC's Crossing Jordan, starring Jill Hennessy. Here's how it worked. Our intrepid coroner, Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, played by Hennessy, would invariably hit some totally baffling set of clues in her case. Things simply didn't make sense, couldn't make sense, would not make any sense whatsoever, totally unsolvable, headed for Lilly Rush's troupe over at Cold Case twenty years in the future, except that even they, even then, wouldn't be able to solve it. Yada yada yada. Total dead end.

But then comes the shtick. Jordan decides to role play the crime! Brilliant! Jordan and one of her cronies begin to relive the events, and, and... it's like they begin to channel stuff from the scene of the crime! They are literally flooded with insights, and in no time at all the previously unsolvable is completely worked out and solved, arrest warrants soon to be served, everyone wiser and full of job satisfaction, except for the bad taste left in your mouth from proximity to heinous crime, a screwed up personal life, and working in a morgue.

Once the show was on a while, they quit role playing every week. I think they call this a show finding it's stride. Anyway, they dropped that part of the shtick and went on to become whatever the show is now. But for a while, the shtick was de rigeur.

We do that in church as well. When we say, "you have to do it this way," but this way is arbitrary, then you're fooling around with shtick. Moses was fooling around with shtick when he took up the stick and hit the rock for the second time, even though God said to speak to the rock this time around. Water gushed forth; the shtick is powerful, but for the wrong reasons.

Let us be wary of shtick.