Archive for the ‘Faith’ Category

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True Worship

August 30, 2013

My wife and I were discussing church doctrines last night over dinner. Well, not in depth. But someone asked her about the doctrine of a certain denomination of Christian church. She was at a bit of a loss to explain it.

I thought a little, and the many variations of denominations flashed through my mind. Mention Baptist–but there are more than 57 varieties of Baptist. There are at least three variations of Lutheran of which I’m aware–and two Presbyterian. The Disciples of Christ broke away from the American Baptists a long time ago because someone thought the Bible taught to have communion every week.

It struck me how each of these took a bunch of verses from the Bible, seemingly at random, and strung them together into a doctrine. To me, many of those are misreadings often caused by lifting verses out of context or not understanding the reference.

Then I thought (sometimes maybe I do too much of that) about how these denominations and the people in them fight all the time. People get mad and leave, only to go to another denomination and begin the process again.

Then I returned to my study of Isaiah 58.

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,

and oppress all your workers.

Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

and to strike with a wicked fist.

How often that’s what we do today! And not just Christians. Check out the other two religions that grew from Abraham’s worship of the one true God–Judaism and Islam. We all gather to serve our own interests. We seem to gather to quarrel and fight.

That’s not what God said in the Old Testament 2,800 years ago. That’s not what Jesus taught 2,000 years  ago. Again from Isaiah 58,

Is such the fast I choose,

a day to humble oneself?

And,

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

Humble means to think of others before yourself. And think of God first. Leaders, take the lesson. All of us, let’s remember the source of life. “You shall love the Lord your God…, and your neighbor as yourself.”

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Why don’t you hear us, O God?

August 28, 2013

Why don’t you hear us, O God?

A teacher was speaking. I made a hurried note, because I was driving across rural northern Indiana at the time. “Read Isaiah 58” was all I noted.

So I returned home late last week, opened to Isaiah 58 in the Kindle app on my iPad and began reading. What a great passage. A preacher could easily develop a sermon series from this passage.

I’m going to contemplate this for a while. So, pull out that old Bible and read it to prepare for a few meditations.

Isaiah, speaking God’s words to his people, answers the question I began with. But, to start at the beginning…

“Shout out, do not hold back!

Lift up your voice like a trumpet!

Announce to my people their rebellion,

to the house of Jacob their sins.”

This is God talking to Isaiah. He’s encouraging his prophet to speak. In fact, not just to speak, but to do so dramatically. What is it he is to speak? It’s about how the people have stopped doing the Lord’s will–what the Lord wants.

Before we condemn those people of 2,800 years ago when Isaiah preached, we can think of ourselves.

“Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers” (if you followed “Car Talk” on National Public Radio) talk of the famous “dope slap.” That’s when you’re acting like a dope or said something stupid and somebody (maybe even yourself) slaps you on the side of the face. You dope.

That’s a little crude, but it’s what Isaiah is doing to the people of his nation. He’s saying something like, “Wake up people. You think you are so good, but you’re not. Oh, and here’s why.”

Probably all of us need one of those “dope slaps” every once in a while. Usually just when we think we’re so smart, or so good, or so wise, or so beautiful.

Has someone tried to give you a verbal dope slap recently? Did it wake you up? Or did it miss the mark?

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To Let The Oppressed Go Free

August 26, 2013

Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking out for freedom.“Is this not the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”

I’m studying Isaiah 58 right now. These are the words of the Lord spoken through his prophet. (That’s what prophets do, you know.)

This week is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr., caught up in the Spirit, deviated somewhat from his prepared text and spoke about his dream. A dream where people were judged on character, not on skin color.

I was only a kid, living in a small village where everyone was either of German or Irish descent (read “white”)–well, except for one “hillbilly” family that moved in, and they were white. I never knew a black person until I was in college.

But for some reason, I was haunted by images of Ku Klux Klan cross burnings and murders. I can still remember nightmares that there was a local branch (don’t think there ever was–we didn’t have black people, but we did have a secret society of which my dad was a member called the Masons). I feared that they found out that I was pro civil rights and surrounded our house.

Later while I was in college, I endured much teasing about my civil rights stance (I still lived in town and drove 40 miles each way to college to save money since I was now mostly paying my own way). I remember driving through Mississippi to Louisiana in 1970 when I entered graduate school at LSU. Had an equal rights decal on my car. Arrived and then had the thought, what if my car had stopped in the piney woods? Still, I’m white. Not as bad as if I were not.

Progress toward freedom

There has been a lot of progress over the last 50 years. Like all human social change, there were cycles of success and cycles of regress. Many things are better for people of different colors, ethnicities, even gender. Many people have been set free. The leadership of Christians was an example to me that maybe the Christian church wasn’t all bad.

But we still have far to go.

Jesus understood. As have many spiritual people throughout human history. That passage from Isaiah is probably 2,800 years old. Yet, until we all change our hearts and begin to truly worship the one God, then we will not have the justice God demanded so long ago.

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Passionate Pursuit

August 20, 2013

A young relative is in love. How do I know? He writes with great passion about his beloved. He thinks about her constantly. Her well-being is on his mind.

Jesus said, “Whoever will come after me, must deny himself…”

The phrase come after in the social context of the time usually refers to a romantic passion. The phrase must have been one of those that Jesus was famous for–using words in new ways to point to a relationship with God and totally confusing his audience to the point of making them think about what he said.

What have been the passions of your life? Remember pursuing a boy/girl or woman/man? Can you recapture that passion in your mind? Better yet, maybe you still have it. I wrote last week about what happens when that feeling dissipates.

Let’s think about this in terms of denying yourself. If you are pursuing someone so passionately, you don’t care so much about yourself (if you are, then you’d better check your emotional maturity index). You deny yourself such that your beloved is honored.

Paul tried valiantly, if confusingly, to describe this in his description of marriage–a picture of mutually denying yourself in order to honor your spouse. It seems confusing to read it. Paul would have been better served in getting his point across by telling a story about a husband and wife and how they act toward each other.

The world would have been spared much grief had translators understood denying oneself and become a servant (some translations slave) of Jesus. Perhaps a story rather than intellectual discourse would have helped. Nineteenth Century philosophers hated that word slave and the picture of Christians as sheep and wrote philosophies that ended up enslaving millions and murdering hundreds of thousands or maybe also millions.

How about a story about loving Jesus so much that your every thought is about him. All you want in life is to serve God passionately. You’re a servant. But an empowered servant, because the more passionately you love God, the more you will deny your own will to serve him and conversely the more God will make you stronger and stronger. They forgot that last part in the Nineteenth Century.

We need to remember it. The more passionately we follow Jesus, the more we try to please, honor and serve Him. But, Jesus then gives us great power.

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Forming Community

August 5, 2013

We were at a hotel in suburban Chicago. 17 students, 5 instructors/observers/evaluators, a few other observers. I devoted last weekend to improving my skills as a soccer referee instructor. It was intense. We gave three presentations before a small group. At each presentation were one or two top instructors who gave us advice but were also grading us. Our peers gave us feedback on our presentations. We tried to apply new techniques immediately.

There were three small groups. Friday night was learning. Up early Saturday, we started the round of presentations at 8. Had lunch time (maybe 2.5 hours) to prepare second presentation. Back at 2 pm for the second presentation cycle. Third presentation was Sunday morning. Really intense.

An interesting thing happens in that environment. Our small group of 6 almost immediately formed a little community. We were rooting for each other. Helping each other.

Reflecting on the experience this morning during my quiet meditation time, I wondered if the early Christian communities were something like this–although not passionate about a sport, they were passionate about a new way of life. They met in small groups. They taught each other. They “rooted” for each other. They helped each other–even financially for those who lost everything to follow this new Master called Jesus.

Then I started to think about the churches we attend today. How much is only attendance? How much is like a group where we all help each other out? Where, instead of gossiping about who’s doing what to whom, we reach out to each other?

I recently heard someone tell a personal story of struggle. Someone from the congregation approached and said, “You know, you can’t really participate anymore in this church because you are struggling.” What a terrible, heartless thing to say. Better would be, “I hear that you are hurting. What can I do to help you? And, by the way, you are always welcome here in our small group as we all struggle to live the way Jesus taught.”

What are you doing to promote community?

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My Security Lies in Jesus

July 22, 2013

I’m still thinking about fears, worries. Although I try to capture a personal theme from the mascot of Mad magazine (I have not read it for years, but it was one of my favorites as an adolescent), Alfred E. Neuman, who said, “What!? Me worry?”

As an aside, we think American politics are bad now–good ol’ Alfred garnered several votes for President in 1968.

It is oh, so, predictable that race is part of the discussion of the whole Zimmerman affair. Conservatives seem to try to downplay race. Liberals seem to play it up. I keep returning to the words of Martin Luther King and wish we could move beyond race.

Unfortunately, we cannot. I think that this is not only an American problem.

Race remains an underlying tension. Many black men have told me about hearing car door locks being activated as they cross the street. I recently heard about a conversation at a gathering of “respectable, white, Christian” ladies where they quite frankly ascribed bad qualities to black people as an entity all the while disclaiming “I am not a racist.” Sorry, they are.

For black people, then, the issue becomes personal. Many have experienced the slights and innuendos. For most of us “white” people, the issue is theoretical. I wish it would go away, but it lingers.

Fear for your life had to be prevalent in Jesus’ time. He took as subjects for his stories things that people would readily understand. When he told the story of the Good Samaritan, there did not seem to be a reaction about the violence of the robbers. They all traveled from city to city in groups for protection. At the end of the Gospels, we learn that Peter carried a sword. Nothing is made of that simple fact–only in his use of it. I guess they needed some protection at times.

Jesus taught us that security really comes through Him and life in the Spirit.

For some reason in all our discussions in public life and private devotions, we keep losing our focus on the real source of life and security. Paul writing in Galatians further told us that if we are free in Jesus’ grace, why slip back into the old life of rules and worry.

Indeed.

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Worry is a form of useless fear

July 19, 2013

Had a conversation yesterday that send my mind on a time trip remembering my mother. She was a worrier. I think she worried herself to death.

The guy who “styled” my hair back in the 70s told me, “I’m a worrier. All of us German immigrants are. It’s part of the genes.”

Worry is the fear of what might happen.

Most things that might happen, never do. Some things that happen, you have no control over. Rationally, there is little reason for worry.

But most of us do.

This goes along with yesterday’s meditation on fear.

We fear so many things. We worry about much.

Jesus said, why worry?

I was a child of my mother. But I changed. I seldom worry now. Just like I’ve conquered about 98% of my fearfulness.

How?

  • Deliberately choose something else to think about
  • Start to work on a project
  • If in the middle of the night, either set imagination on another topic–or–get up and read the Bible, a good novel, your Mandarin Chinese lesson
  • Work though the one think among your worries that you can control and develop a project list of tasks to cover it.

Viktor Frankl, psychologist, developer of Logotherapy, survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, discovered it for himself, “The ultimate freedom is the freedom to choose my attitude in the face of uncertain circumstances.”

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How Shall You Live, In Fear or In Peace

July 18, 2013

I’ve been a little under the weather this week, with the net result a night in the hospital for some observations. Going well, but this all gave me some time to ponder some current events in the US.

A man in our small group Tuesday responded to a question about how shall we live with, “In peace.”

That comment was a perfect complement to my thinking about the Zimmerman case specifically and a more general problem in this country. For my many international readers (you may know this better than I, in fact) the Zimmerman case which was just concluded involved a private citizen on a neighborhood watch patrol who brought a weapon along for company. He saw a hooded figure and shot said hooded figure, who later died. I think those are the basic facts.

I cannot comment on motives, whether race was a factor, what the confrontation really was, who started it, and all the rest. I don’t read those news stories–which are pretty much all speculative anyway.

I can imagine fear playing the main supporting role in the drama, though. I have talked to many people (and seen the Facebook posts, among other things) who have weapons for “protection.” And I talk with and observe many more.

The common theme is fear. There are varying degrees, but that is the core.

I understand fear–at least on some levels. Have you ever felt as if you are being attacked or threatened? Not only physically, but maybe your job or your position or something? It has been years for me, but I remember. And I remember that I responded with anger. And the anger escalated.  I’ve observed it on the soccer pitch, as well.

We can Jesus is the antidote. But that is too easy. What is it about Jesus that brings the antidote. It is “the peace that passeth all understanding.” You can live with-God daily in peace–or you can live a shriveled life in fear. What’s your choice?

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It Takes Both Grace and Truth

May 17, 2013

The father welcomed his son back into the family and threw a big party to celebrate the occasion in the story of the man with two sons. That’s grace. God welcoming us into the family. Loving us. Watching for us to appear over the rise on our way back home.

But that doesn’t mean that actions don’t have consequences. Paul asked if we have grace and forgiveness of our sins, does that mean that we should sin more so that we can get more grace? He answered himself, No.

Life doesn’t work that way. Sin–being away from the Father–has consequences. In this story, the son lost all his inheritance. He has nothing more coming. He will have to go back to work and start to earn a living. His life got so bad that he was living with pigs.

We see this in people today–maybe not living with pigs, but maybe living like pigs. When I grew up, that was the expression. Pigs lived in muck and ate almost anything. It was not the way we were meant to live.

That our actions have consequences is Truth. As much as the adolescent in us wishes we are entirely free to live in any way we wish, life doesn’t work out that way. The totally self-absorbed lifestyle that knows no boundaries is not a life of freedom. You actually become a slave to emotional fulfillment. It’s a life that hurts others and then eventually yourself.

But…

If you come to your senses and return to God, then God is there. Still loving you. Ready to take us back.

We who are living with-God are there as guides to help people find their way back. Those who were lost, are now found. Then we all rejoice.

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Lost and Found

May 15, 2013

Do you ever think deeply about “lost” people? The church of which I’m a member has as one mission to “find the lost”.

Jesus was at a dinner party one evening. He had just invited Levi (Matthew) to leave his job as a tax collector for the Roman government and join his group of disciples. In fact, Matthew went on to become one of the inner circle of 12 and then to write about his experiences.

At the party were a bunch of Pharisees. These were the people who thought they had already earned God’s grace through their good works (meaning obeying laws and rituals, not meaning helping people).

Also at the party were a number of “tax collectors and sinners.” Notice in the Gospels that these are always two groups. Matthew was not just a sinner, but a special kind of sinner–a tax collector.

Now these two groups of people did not like each other. In fact, they probably rarely ever socialized together. Read the Gospel of John and see how much John didn’t like the Pharisees! Anyway, imagine the grumbling of the “righteous” about Jesus’ associating with the not-so-righteous.

So Jesus, recognizing the tension, tells three stories. They are all about the celebration when something that is lost is found.

The third story is the story of the man and two sons. The man (God) loves his two sons. But they are very different. The elder son (Pharisees) always does the right thing. He’s always there. The younger son (Sinners and Tax Collectors–or, in reality, us) doesn’t do what’s right. In fact, he expresses the wish that his father were dead so that he could collect his inheritance and quit working.

You know the story. He gets his wish, goes away, spends everything, lives with the pigs (really revolting to a Jew), and finally comes home intending to just be a servant.

At this point, probably both groups at the dinner party were with Jesus. They recognized the elder/younger distinction. And that the elder inherits first. And that the younger son who was so offensive is going to get his just retribution (we’d say today thrown into Hell).

But…

The man throws a big party, restores the son to his place in the family and consoles the elder son who feels the lack of “justice.”

But the man said, your brother, who was lost, is now found.

Lost means not with the family. The kid wasn’t just wandering around in the wilderness with no sense of direction–physically. Only metaphorically. He was lost not being in the family. Found is returning to the family.

Just so with us and our fellow humans. God loves each and every one of us. He wants us to be in the family. He’ll celebrate every individual who returns to the family. So should we.

On of our tasks in life is to be, not like the elder brother pointing our finger in condemnation of others, but like a guide helping people return to the family.

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