Faith Venture

I am reading an advance copy of a new book by Andy Stanley (@andystanley) called Not In It to Win It discussing how the evangelical Christian church has driven away half of its potential new members by choosing political sides.

I’ll not review the book here. That’ll come later. It is just that while reviewing my notes on the book last night, I saw this sentence which hit me where it hurts:

Are we willing to prioritize our faith over our politics?

In other words, what is our priority?

• Is it passing laws to force others to our point of view?
• Is it putting Jesus’ teachings into action?
• Is it loving one another as he loved us?
• Is it going into all the world and making disciples?

What, then, does our daily life and actions tell the world about our priorities?

Today is Good Friday. Even as a child, I took words pretty literally. How, I wondered after learning what happened on this day, could this be called “good.” What good comes from killing a man? By the way, I still can’t answer that question.

But the third day, the day we call Easter Sunday, remembers and celebrates the day that a small group of women (almost never heroes in ancient literature) discovered the empty grave, asked questions, and were told the guy in the grave walked out. It took several weeks for this event to sink in for Jesus’ followers.

Ryan Holliday has made a career and a good living writing on the Stoics. Some of the most influential of the Stoics lived at the time of Jesus. Later Christians were convinced Seneca was really one of them. The founders of the American republic avidly read the Stoics. I appreciate the Stoics.

We could take Jesus to be a Jewish version of the Stoics. Some people have. But the Stoics didn’t change the world like the followers of Jesus did. Why? Because Jesus did more than teach. He did more than die. He returned to life. This was verified enough that it changed his followers and eventually changed the world.

We must study Jesus teachings more closely than we have as a culture and society. We need to be like the man Jesus cited at the end of the Sermon on the Mount who learned the words of Jesus and put them into practice. But the reason we should do that is celebrated at this time every year—death and resurrection.

On this evening some 1,990 years ago, a group of guys (and maybe others, we don’t know for sure) gathered in Jerusalem in a large room probably provided by a rich guy for the annual ritual Passover meal.

Things seemed mostly the same as usual except for the strange teaching and comments from the Teacher.

They had experienced four days of being close to the center of the action as crowds of people listened to teaching and as their leader physically expressed anger at merchants ripping off pilgrims seeking animals for sacrifice at the Temple. They were sure the time was near when they would all be the religious/political leaders of Israel.

They got it wrong. Despite three years of teaching and a week of intense explanations, they still got it wrong.

Events of the following 24 hours completely destroyed their hopes and ambitions turning them into cowards hiding in fear.

This was the story of the Thursday and Friday of Jesus’ last week.

Jesus had taught that the time had come to turn the Roman world upside down. Instead of worship of power and authority of humans, the new age would worship God celebrating love, not power.

It took another 40 days for all this to finally sink in to the guys and gals who had followed Jesus for up to 3 years. But once they finally got it, they really did turn the Roman world upside down.

We need a resurgence of that attitude of love instead of power again in this era. That’s something to pray for as we head into the celebration of Easter.

I’ve been thinking about discipling and educating. Yesterday I thought about the difference between a discipling relationship with a master and a traditional education relationship with a teacher.

An adult lifetime of observing parents at sporting events (thanks to 30+ years of soccer officiating plus some baseball umpiring) not to mention music and academics witnessed the growth of helicopter parents who hover over their kids to protect them from the evils of working things out to the more recent snowplow parents who try to make the way smooth for their kids once again to protect them from the evils of working their way through problems—or even just working.

An attitude of expectation and encouragement forge an environment to allow youth and adults to challenge themselves, grow, and develop skills and talent.

This works in families, organizations, schools..

Expect the best in the student / employee and you’ll often be rewarded. Provide encouragement to all. People so much respect those who encourage others to be their best. People who constantly denigrate others are themselves held in low esteem by others.

Seth Godin asks pointed questions about the objective of education on his podcast released today. Why do we learn? How do we learn?

I was curious about many scientific things as a youth. By high school age and learned completely free of school, I learned about circuits, wave forms, antennas, circuits to send radio waves, circuits to receive them. I was deep into the thought processes of Einstein’s theories of relativity, space/time, gravity. And some of the math that explained all of the above.

Unfortunately, none of that helped me in school.

Concurrently, I was reading Freud, St. John of the Cross, and much else in those genres. These again helped very little in my journey through school.

Except maybe for that time I should have grabbed the initiative in a university philosophy and religion class. The Rev. Dr. Professor H was lecturing on a topic. I raised my hand. “Didn’t he actually mean…” and proceeded to explain the theory and logic of a topic. Dr. H thereupon asked if I wished to teach the class. I should have said yes. It would have been more entertaining.

I don’t think I am that abnormal. Most of us learn much outside of school.

I thought about training disciples. Do we put kids in Christian schools so that they learn to sit quietly in the pews and listen uncritically to the person speaking? So that they are obedient regurgitaters of whatever is poured in?

Or perhaps we should look at how Jesus did it.

• Give tips and stories to his students
• Show by example how to act with other people—friend and foe
• Show how to go off and pray
• Show how to heal and care for people
• Send them off to try for themselves then debrief them upon return

Discussion, teaching, do-it-yourself. Perhaps a good example for us to follow?

Words stating belief come out so easily. Perhaps within the context of the location or people around the words earn friends or stir up animosities depending upon the intent of the speaker.

Some people take others for what they say. My wife will say, “But she said that she believed …” or “But he said he’d do it…”

I am not one of those people. I’ll say, but it’s only words. It’s not like the song, “It’s only words, but words are all I have, to take your heart away.” (Which, by the way worries me about myself that I remembered the words to a BeeGees song.)

How often we see a politician, or preacher, or leader, or even friend act in a manner quite opposite of their words. How often have we ourselves found ourselves doing what what we said we would not. Or not doing what we said we would.

At the beginning of his last week, Jesus taught in the Temple courtyard where both common people and religious leaders were certain to hear. He told a story about two sons. One said he’d do what the Father asked, but he didn’t. The other said he would not, but he did do it.

Who was justified?

The one who does the will of the Father goes away justified. The one who only says he will but does not, well, he goes away without the blessing of the father.

We say of an athlete who fails to perform adequately that they “talk a good game.” How about you? How about me? Do we talk a good game? Or do we go out and play?

If you hurry to get to the future, you always get a punishment for it. For example, instant coffee.”

Alan Watts

We can’t wait for tomorrow or next week or next month to arrive. Things will be better.

The young man I hired who had just graduated from the university who asked if he would be in the running for company president the next year.

The person blind to the opportunity at hand to serve and grow due to living in a future yet to occur.

They lose the opportunity of the moment. This moment. All that we have is the moment. What TS Eliot called the still point of the turning world.

What is this very moment telling us?

Before the gatherings of Jesus-followers became rich and politically powerful after 340, before bishops controlled wealth and had the ear of kings, before the law sort of made all citizens members of the church, there was an active, thriving, although underground, church.

This church performed services unheard of in ancient times. When plagues rolled through Rome and the wealthy class fled to the mountains, the Christians came out from their hiding areas and nursed those who were ill disregarding their own health. When the cultural practice of leaving unwanted babies (usually because of being female) out for wild animals to kill, Christ followers took them in and nursed them.

Because of the witness and service of these early disciples hospitals were founded and schools were started. Women were held in higher esteem.

What if we were more like that today? Not rich. Not politically powerful. But leading through service. Attracting people by what we do, how we live.

What if…