Faith Venture

Jesus radically included women in his group of disciples. (See yesterday’s post with four examples.)

Paul intentionally went out to include all manner of different peoples into the movement.

Phillip witnessed to a black man.

Yet, after 2,000 years of Christianity, we still have trouble treating every human as a child created by God.

Oh, yes, bad people exist.

But everywhere you look around the entire globe people of the “home” group hate, discriminate against, and even kill other people because they don’t look the same as us, use the same language as us, eat the same foods as us, have a different gender.

We keep wishing we could just make them disappear. Or pass a law that declares them as non-people.

Yet Jesus said that loving our neighbor means helping whoever we come across, even if they are from a sub-group we were taught to hate from our earliest years. Everyone is a child of God, whom he loves.

When you hear or read the word “God”, what comes to mind?

A picture? An emotion? A picture and an emotion?

Andy Stanley is currently teaching to those who have left church or a relationship with God because the “God” they were taught and are living with is the “God of the No Testament.”

Maybe I like the series because he brings together things I’ve pondered and written about for years.

My favorite is what I call the “vending machine” god. You drop in a couple of prayers and god dispenses whatever button you pushed. Want a healing? Done. Want a new relationship? Ka-ching. Win the lottery? (Only one from among millions who prayed to this god was answered in the ultra mega billions lottery last night according to news I saw this morning.)

He also talks about “boyfriend (or girlfriend) god.” God who is always around you. Those of us who have lived the life know that sometimes God seems distant and removed.

Or “guild god”. He (and his followers who taught you) make you feel guilty about everything you do.

Maybe you are still affected by one or more of these false gods.

Maybe practicing the disciplines of study, prayer, meditation, worship we all come to acknowledge the one true creator God.

That was always my question. Or phrased differently, how do you know that?

By the end of my second year of college, I finally learned the “game”. It is the other four of Rudyard Kipling’s six honest serving men–what, who, when, and where.

They said they were encouraging thinking. They really wanted memorization.

My grades significantly improved.

Pursuing why is a career.

Why did they say that? Why did they choose that story in their narrative? Why do we care?

Or as the famous philosophy exam had it–question: why; answer: why not?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it makes us more fully human.

I stand at the beginning of the trail staring down the mile-long stretch that starts the run. I just don’t feel like running that opening mile. My heart just isn’t in it today. That’s the phrase we use.

I blow the whistle for the kickoff. The next hour is devoted to chasing soccer players around the pitch. Even for 12-year-olds I’m running the equivalent of a 5K. Didn’t even notice it. My heart was in it.

The middle of the Sermon on the Mount contains some of Jesus’s teachings on the heart. It is the attitude with which we give. The attitude with which we pray. The attitude with which we serve.

God looks at the condition of our hearts. He sees whether our heart is in it or not.

It is better for us, and better for the world around us, if our heart is in it.

Tony Robbins told a story about a friend who owns a gym.

He sees people join the gym. They get dressed and show up many times each week. They stand amongst the equipment. They take selfies of themselves and the equipment. They leave.

These people never use the equipment. They just have a need to show their followers on social media that they were there.

You mean that we can’t just look at the exercise machine and become fit????

A guy at my gym told me yesterday about a couple who invited their pastor for dinner. Following a nice dinner and conversation, the pastor left. As the couple finished cleaning, the woman noticed that a spoon was missing from the pastor’s place setting. “Did he take the spoon?” they wondered.

About a year later, they invited the pastor for another dinner. During dinner, the wife quietly noted that they were missing a spoon from last year’s dinner. “You didn’t happen to take it with you?” she asked.

He smiled. “While you and your husband were busy in the kitchen, I placed the spoon in your Bible,” he said.

We have many great books. We have meditation apps for our smart phones. We have prayer guides. We have myriad opportunities to serve.

But we must actually do the work.

Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher. He probed into the depths of his motivations. He was a Stoic. He was also Emperor of Rome.

He also had a flaw that almost cost him his life. He was too trusting.

His first response was to trust people. He assumed that they had the same goodness and kindness as he. Yet, he was constantly betrayed. He wife, his brother, his son, his general.

My first response is to trust when I meet people. Maybe within certain contexts I would be wary, but in general that is I. And…this tendency to believe people good has led me astray on occasion or cost me money or emotional grief.

I also know people whose first response to others is distrust. They are cynical and distrustful people. I have observed them.

I’d rather be me. Maybe with a better dose of realism. Because many people are like the second type.

We are under the authority of someone or something.

We may think we are not–especially the devout libertarians among us.

But we serve something or someone. We may think it is ourselves. But…

We can choose, or we can just drift according to the whim of our emotions or the influence of our peer group.

The Kingdom of God is near us, Jesus said.

Some people stumbled thinking Jesus to be the regent king of a geo located kingdom–say, Judea.

Jesus really seemed to be saying something like, The kingdom is here just not equally distributed. (Apologies to William Gibson.)

We can choose to live under the the authority or dominion of God. In other words living according to God’s will, trying to live up to the wisdom teaching of Jesus.

Or, we can choose to drift along at the whim of our emotions. Or choose some other leader–Jesus suggested the other alternative as money, or stuff, wealth. And certainly we publicize and worship (often from afar) wealth.

Living under the authority of God, we do those acts of kindness and grace I’ve been discussing. We reap the fruit of the spirit–love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Can you hold two opposing ideas in your mind simultaneously?

That is called a paradox.

Yesterday I pondered Jesus’ teaching about doing your good works in secret.

He also said that we should let our lights shine like a city on a hill through our good works.

Which did he mean?

Well, both.

That is the paradox.

Except when it isn’t.

What is in common? Attitude.

Do we do good works just out of kindness as an extension of who we are?

Do we do good works in order to gain praise?

Who you are speaks more loudly than what you say.

Companies pay large amounts of money to consultants to help them define a vision statement that describes the company and its mission.

We also as individuals can have a vision that describes what we wish to be.

Jesus gave us an idea for such a vision for our lives. In his sermon on the mount he stated, “Strive first for the dominion of God.” In other words, we would be wise to choose to live in such a way as to be pleasing to God.

Just prior to this, he told three little stories contrasting people who do things with great publicity.

There are those who do good deeds only when there is a great deal of publicity at stake, or they give money in such a way that their publicists can get it recorded in important media, or they pray with many and beautiful words just where there are many people to notice.

For these, Jesus says they already have their reward.

Then there those who quietly do acts of kindness and generosity as a matter of course. When they pray, they do it quietly in private.

These people God will richly reward.