The Lies I’ve Been S/Told

Posted on January 27, 2012 | 1 Comment
English: Logo from the Fox television program ...

There are certain lies that we’ve all been told and sold, that the right toothpaste will make you more confident because you’ll have a better smile, this brand’s clothes will put you a cut above the rest, etc. My concern is that there might be similar lies sold/told in the church.

If there are, they could be far more insidious and malevolent because they’re repeated by leaders and defended by scripture. There’s also the concern that we tell ourselves certain things because it’s easier to believe than the truth. The classic example is abuse victims. Sadly, it’s usually more difficult to convince them that the person who beats them will hurt them again than it is for them to believe that they can escape or that their life will go on without that person. They will often maintain relationships with an abusive partner even to the detriment of their children, their friends and themselves.

But the lie that they believe, that this person loves them and won’t hurt them again, is harder to face than the truth: That they have been violently hurt by the very person they love the most.

Jesus said that if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. (Jn. 8:32)

But sometimes we’re afraid that the truth will really be worse than the lie we believe.

And sometimes the truth is hard.

But sometimes (and it’s more likely) that the truth…

…will set you free.

 There’s more at stake here than just your opinion; anything you hold to be true about God is going to affect your relationship with God and what you tell others about him.

And if there are lies that are passed around as good Christian doctrine, then not only might it be freeing to know the truth, but it could be life changing.

The question is, are there any lies that you’ve been sold by the church?

And if there are, what are they?

And can you imagine your life freed from these lies?

Welcome to “The Lies I’ve Been S/Told.”

 

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Guilt Free Thanksgiving

Posted on December 15, 2011 | Leave a comment
English: Thanksgiving Dinner, Falmouth, Maine,...

Thanksgiving

(A little delayed, sorry.)

“I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving! Eat something unhealthy, ok?”

The look of shock on my student’s faces was priceless.

“Are you sure, Coach Brown?” arose from the murmur of surprise.

I smiled. “Yes. Enjoy yourselves.”

All of the discussion about eating healthy, the analysis assignments of watching what they ate, journal reflections and discussions of healthy food seemed to make them afraid of admitting that they ever ate anything remotely unhealthy. In fact, there was some level of guilt over very small indulgences.

And so here we were, right before Thanksgiving. I was worried they needed permission to enjoy themselves on Thanksgiving. More often then not, being healthy is not abstinence, but moderation.

There are things that require abstinence, sexual purity, for instance, but most of life requires moderation and thoughtfulness—the medium between wanton indulgence and complete denial.

I suspect that it’s easier to hold one end of the spectrum over the other and therefore many people leap from one end to the other, but I think the richness life is found in the tension in the middle. Unfortunately the safest place to be is on the extreme of complete denial and extreme guilt upon the slightest incurrence of infraction.

So my student worry that eating a cookie means they ate unhealthily that day.

And Christians worry that spending money on themselves once in awhile is sin.

I realize that we live in an over-indulgent culture, but I am concerned of the level to which people allow guilt to remain in their lives. If you have guilt over legitimate sin, ask forgiveness and be forgiven.

Guilt has no place in God’s kingdom. Freedom, forgiveness and joy are measures of God’s kingdom, not your level of asceticism or guilt.

I’ve had several conversations recently about beauty and a godly appreciation of beauty in which I shared my opinion on fashion. I don’t think it’s wrong to appreciate fashion. People put time, creativity and thought into designing things. That should be appreciated. I think it is ok to be concerned about how you look and even desire to dress fashionably, what’s not ok is the need to buy an entire new wardrobe every six months.

I also think it’s ok to go out to a fine restaurant and spend large amount of money of well plated, carefully thought-out creative meals, complete with chilled salad forks and fine place settings. We should appreciate such preparation and hard work. But we shouldn’t spend that kind of money on every meal.

But how can we take part in such activities while there are people in the world today literally starving?

Or for that matter how can we live in a nice house, drive nice cars or have such nice things while there are so many in the world who live in such dire circumstances? And not feel guilty?

I think the important thing is awareness and participation in mending the brokenness of this world. Yes there are people in this world who need clean water, but that doesn’t mean you should never buy a five dollar drink at Starbuck’s.

And yes there are people without food in the world, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat more than you should on Thanksgiving.

And yes eating healthy means choosing not to eat fattening or processed food, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a slice of pie once in awhile.

So maybe we could gather around the Thanksgiving table this year and not take for granted our blessings, still over indulge ourselves with good food while maintaining concern for those less fortunate around the world… guilt free.

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Christian Idol

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 3 Comments
Former logo of American Idol from 2002 to 2008.

Image via Wikipedia

I attended a showing of the Bonhoefer documentary the other night at Denver Seminary.  I was struck again by the Christian world’s tendency to elevate people to god status. In the discussion afterward the director was talking about these wonderful, amazing people he met, Mother Teresa Jean Vanier and others and how amazing these people’s stories are.

I remembered my professor, Steve Hunt’s, comment on Francis of Assisi, “People quote him like scripture!”

My peeve is really with the celebration of certain individuals over that of everyone else in the church. Jesus in his instruction to the disciples said “And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.”* Why are we not supposed to call anyone father? Because we are all equals under God.

And so I sit there and fume at the elevation of certain individuals over others. Yes, they did amazing things, but they did the same thing we are all called to do: Use our God given gifts and talents to lift up, encourage and grow the kingdom of God.

And the mother who raises her children faithfully in the Lord and will not be remembered a hundred years later was just as successful as Billy Graham in her service and love of the Lord.

The student working really hard in school and struggling to pass classes who is never admired as the valedictorian who managed to balance a girlfriend, studies and team captian will be just as blessed before their Father in heaven.

And my farmer friend back in Vermont who works harder than anyone I know to take care of his family, he is just a great as the Mother Teresas, the Dietrich Bonhoefers and the C. S. Lewis’s of our times.

I think the worst part of all is what it communicates to you, the individual. Maybe you’ll never have the grades, the degrees with all the letters after your name or the brilliant books of theology and God’s grace, but you still have a part in God’s kingdom. You shouldn’t feel belittle by these greats, you should feel free to challenge, disagree with and not even like these famous people.  And just because millions or even thousands of people don’t know your name, that doesn’t mean you are any less significant.

____________________________

*Mt. 23:9, NIV

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Health and Wealth – God Focus

Posted on November 8, 2011 | 1 Comment
redemption

God of Redemption

A friend recently asked me about this series and confronted me that it sounded a little too much about me.  So I thought I should clarify what I was trying to do through this series.

I wanted to convey something of God’s love and character toward the individual.  My concern is that the church has done something a little too typical of conservative response to anything—that is to back away in the opposite direction so far that they lose the middle ground and some of the truth about God’s character and his relation to us. Yes, we shouldn’t preach a gospel message that proclaims that God will always give us good things or never allow anything bad to happen to us if we love and serve him enough, but we can’t lose sight of the God who desires good things for us.

And I want to share that message because I haven’t heard it from our pulpits.

I haven’t heard a message about God’s insane, out-of-control love for us in a way that’s beyond the cross. This asceticism and Gnosticism that is so prevalent in the church, denial of the appreciation of the good things in life, living richly and enjoying the physical, needs to be squashed before it does any more harm. To understand creation we should look at it as it was originally created, full of life, vibrancy and void of death. This idea that spirituality is all we need denies the true fullness of creation.

The moment we start celebrating sickness, suffering and discontent as godly we destroy the image of life we have been given in God. God created this world and the good things in it; grass, waterfalls and laughter.

When we twist things from unwelcome, unintended consequences into acceptable norms we destroy the truth of God. God never intended disease, death and evil, he intended life, and life to the full. But we get it backwards, looking at things that happen to us, such as sickness, accidents and pain and think that because God worked good out of them that he intended them for us and for his glory.

And then we do the unthinkable, we look at evil and declare it “good.” That rape, that divorce, that cancer, that car accident was so that I would learn to trust him better.

No.

We serve a God of redemption who loves to work good out of the worst incidents. That’s the awesome news of the gospel; that God continues to work for healing in and through his world.

The promise of the prophets to Israel was never of just spiritual healing, but it was a physical healing, protection, peace and lavish blessings of food, drink and bounty.

And we celebrate suffering and pray “God break me.”

God, heal us. Heal our world. Bring peace. Bring your perfect healing and bountiful harvest.

It’s funny. What does Jesus tell us about prayer? He says things like “ask and it will be given to you.” That should communicate the truth of a loving father who spoils his children, but we rush into to add things like “ask what’s in his will,” “don’t be selfish in your requests.” But Jesus just said, “Ask.”

That seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? Just ask? As if God would grant all of our requests because he loves us. How silly! How Foolish!

But maybe, just maybe we dismiss that a little too quickly.

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The Story Behind my Health and Wealth Gospel

Posted on November 1, 2011 | 1 Comment
Grass

The smell of fresh cut grass.

I’m concerned of our understanding of God and as such, our understanding of what it means to be God’s people.  As I’ve hinted at before in these previous articles it seems like Christians have a tendency often to think that suffering and discomfort are good or even superior to comfort, joy and happiness.

We see this is church all the time.  What if people only came to church because it gave them joy, fulfillment and happiness to come to church instead attending of out of morbid obligation?  What if it was completely ok to miss church on Sunday to enjoy the richness of life by staying in a warm bed on a cool morning?

And we talk about suffering as if it is the complete, full, or “best” obedience to God.  We joke, “My mother-in-law is staying with us for a week, I guess we all have to carry my cross….”

And then we have turned the command to pick up our cross and following Jesus into equating a life of obedience is a life of suffering.  It’s not a life of suffering.

It’s the sign of ultimate obedience to God.

Obedience, that if we had followed it originally in the Garden, would have led to generations of peace and joy filled people walking and talking in the cool of the Garden with the God of the Universe who created a perfect and safe environment for his creatures.  It is only because of that disobedience, that obedience to God led to carrying a cross.  Otherwise, obedience to God wouldn’t have ever known suffering.  There has to be something profound in that the perfect God created perfect creation which, through human disobedience, entered into suffering, while God entering into suffering and out of perfect obedience (which led to great suffering) could result in life abundantly.

One of my professors in college (Dr. Marvin Wilson) once shared with us a Jewish adage that we will one day have to give account to the Lord not only for the bad things we have done but of the good things in this life that we could have enjoyed but chose not to.

What if obedience was enjoying life to its fullest?

Jesus came in the sarx, the flesh.  In that is an affirmation of the goodness of God’s creation.  He didn’t stay outside of it, but came into it to rescue and redeem it. I love this quote about what that means:

“At the center of the Christian faith is a joyous, buoyant affirmation of human life and love and earth and soil and food and laughter and kids and skin and music and friends and mountains and lakes and the intoxicating smell of fresh cut grass and going to the beach and singing your favorite song with the windows down on a warm summer night and watching your friend walk down the aisle and listening to a small child laugh so hard their face turns red and that wrestling with the epic, existential question ‘How does Chipotle make their rice taste so good?’”*

Mmmm…. That’ll preach….  Life, and life to the full.  Like Jesus came to give us. (Jn. 10:10).

__________________

*Rob Bell in a sermon on 1 John 4:1-6.

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Health and Wealth Gospel – Desiring Happiness Not Pain

Posted on October 28, 2011 | 1 Comment
Santa Claus with a little girl

Maybe we should think of ourselves as children in Santa's lap.

Maybe we need to celebrate the people who have almost perfect lives.  Those people who grew up in a loving household, didn’t have any trouble paying for college, got jobs straight out of school, got married and lived a mostly worry free life.

All I know is that somehow in the process of hearing so many testimonies of terrible experiences and tortured struggles with God, I’ve come to equate great faithfulness with great pain.  I remember the story of the man in my church who lost his leg, I remember the testimony of struggling finances of the missionaries and the underpaid preachers (of whom for some reason I want to be).  “Carry your cross!” we’re told over and over again from the pulpit and the godly leaders.

I can’t wrap my mind around it.  What happened to the joy of the Lord being his people’s strength (Neh. 8:10)?  We listen to the woman tell her story about how she never wanted to marry a pastor (I mean, really, who wants to be a pastor’s wife?) or the person who didn’t want to live to the city who was called to the exact place he didn’t want to go.

Then, in this demented and twisted way, we construe that if we share our desires with God—or our fears—that the good will be taken from us to teach us perseverance and the bad will be given to us to be overcome by his strength.  And we’re supposed to endure suffering with great joy (Hebrews 10:34).

Soon, instead of sharing our desires (or even admitting our desires to God), we hide them, burry them under the good things of the kingdom that we know are godly pursuits.  We submit to trying to live God’s kingdom first, and delight ourselves in God alone and don’t worry about our desires because we’ve heard the preacher say that God should be more than enough.

I worry about the future of the church.  I think, “What the heck kind of sadistic people has the church become?” We’ve settled into some kind of morbid Christian fatalism that not only “rejoices in suffering,” but even tends to opt for the way of suffering because it somehow seems “the way of the God.”  Seriously?

When our earthly fathers become better fathers than our Father in heaven, we have a problem.

When our dating relationships, marriages and friendships are portrayed as more joyful than our relationship with God, then we don’t understand who our God is.

What if instead of instead of fearing to admit our desires, or fearing that they may not be “godly enough,” we boldly went to our father like a child writing to Santa Claus and poured out our wildest imaginations to him?  What if we asked the Creator of the Universe for a pony, a new bicycle or a wife?

I fear that some will tell me that God has bigger desires for us than our happiness.  But I can’t imagine God desires our unhappiness—ever.

In fact, Jesus tells us to ask.  “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

“How much more….” I did a greek word study on the word there, and it means, “more.”  “How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”  (Mt. 7)

It’s so hard to imagine, isn’t it?  I like this quote from brother Andrew, “We don’t believe God will do what we ask because we don’t really understand who he is or the principles that guide our relationship with him.”

What if God is like a father who over spends his budget for Christmas presents just so he can see the joy on his son or daughter’s face on Christmas morning when they got everything they asked for.

Maybe he desires to give us more than we could ever ask or imagine.

And we’re too afraid to ask.

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Reviving the Health and Wealth Gospel

Posted on October 25, 2011 | Leave a comment
Waterpark Of America 2009

Image by stevejb68 via Flickr

I remember when I was little, maybe twelve, my dad took me to a water park, just the two of us.  It was a bit of a drive, a few hours out of town, and once we arrived we did everything I wanted to do for the day.  He let me play games, we did the rides I wanted to do, got the food I wanted, it was awesome.  We returned home and my step mother made some comment about my dad being a “yes man.”  I was confused and she said bitterly that if I ask him for anything he’d give it to me.  Apparently that was bad.  Her down-talking my dad made me feel as if he was doing something wrong.

I often wonder what it would be like if we had an accurate vision of who God is and what he is like. I imagine his love to be like that of a father who wants to take his son out to a water park and spend all kinds of money on him to do whatever he wants for the day to show him how much he loves him. So few people today have ever had a father who did anything like that for them.

That’s my problem with the critics of the supposed evil “Health and Wealth Gospel.”  In efforts to be true to the gospel—that God doesn’t give us everything we want and is only interested in greater things than our happiness—they throw out that image of a God who does uncontrollably lavish his son with gifts.  They dismiss the Father who blindly—maybe even insanely—spends too much money on his daughter to buy her dresses, jewelry and takes her out to the most expensive restaurant in town to make her feel like the princess she truly is.

Those same critics only bring up the prodigal son in safe, controlled contexts.  And then they loose the whole point of the parable by calling the son the prodigal.  The “prodigal” in the story is the Father who senselessly gives his son more than he deserves.  This father gives of his wealth with reckless abandon, and then when his son does return, instead of asking for a payback plan or demanding an apology he does the same idiotic thing he did before; ludicrously pouring out blessings and love on his son.

Honestly, as I have tried to convey in my previous article, if we’re going to err on the side of caution, the side we should at least consider erring on may be the side of preaching a gospel that can be accused of being a “Health and Wealth Gospel.”  What if instead of viewing God as a tyrant or oppressor, the popular culture believed God was overzealously loving, generous and desiring to bless us—even with physical blessings?  Yes God has bigger plans for us than our own happiness and giving us everything we want, but when do ever hear that image of the extravagantly loving Father as who God might actually be?

Maybe if people actually heard that God loves them, does desire the end of physical suffering and rich blessings for all his children, then maybe more people would be interested in coming to church and learning more about our God.  Maybe then they’d have a chance of going deeper in their faith rather than stumbling over our sterile and balanced Gospel, the “Good News of Jesus Christ.”  My experience has been that most people, Christian and Non-christian alike don’t actually believe that God is a loving Father who wishes to bless them beyond their wildest imaginations because for too long we have sacrificed some truly profound aspects of the Gospel by trying to stay away from anything that smacks of a “Health and Wealth Gospel.”

We should preach Christ crucified, not as the epitome of suffering, but as the epitome of love lavished out on the world, a love that would be given by God at all costs.

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I Want to Preach the Health and Wealth Gospel

Posted on October 12, 2011 | 1 Comment
Money

If I’m ever the pastor of a church, I’ve decided I’m going to preach a health and wealth gospel.

In fact, I’m going to do a whole sermon series called “The Health and Wealth Gospel.”

Probably all the Christians will leave and the unchurched people will come, which would be perfect because that’s who needs to come to church anyway.  My critics—pretty much everyone in evangelical Christianity—will be locking and loading on me, adjusting their scopes and sighting in their cross hairs on this out-of-control liberal pastor that clearly has no idea that God would never want us to be healthy or wealthy.

Hopefully, (with any luck) they’d be able to criticize me out of the evangelical world before I did any real damage—like convincing people that God actually does care about their well being.  My conservative brethren would preach sermons, write blogs and hold Bible studies in opposition to the blasphemy I was preaching from the pulpit.  They’d claim that I was only preaching what people want to hear, not what people should hear.

The mere fact that people were interested and coming to listen to me would be the greatest evidence against me of my extreme apostasy.  If I was preaching the real Gospel, people wouldn’t want to hear it (they would say) because the real Gospel is “hard to swallow.”  It demands obedience, sacrifice and possibly suffering.  The real gospel is more complicated then simply some watered-down message about God’s profound love for the whole world and his desire for peace.

I would be sent to the gallows with my other liberal preaching brethren like Rick Warren, Joel Olsteen… and Jesus.  All of those stupid people who preached on how much God loves the whole world and were criticized by the true religious authorities of the day.  You can’t heal on the Sabbath!  You can’t preach God’s love to sinners!  Narrow is the path, and difficult the road to eternal life!  Few find it!  We must not risk preaching God’s love too much, we must guard it carefully and always be sure to mix it with his wrath and judgment lest God appear to be some cosmic softy for people who continually mess up and sin!

For far too long now God’s love has been preached!  So much so that it almost seems like to the wider culture that he’s a gentle God who cares for the down-trodden and broken hearted!

Wait, what?  The media portrays God as a tyrant?  You say most people believe God is some kind of over-bearing rule enforcer?  The popular conception of God is that he is a despot who wants to ruin our lives?  Well, at least we haven’t risked preaching a “health and wealth gospel” of only God’s love and desire to bless us.  Really we’ve won, because this way the culture has a more accurate view of who God is; a very balanced God who doesn’t wish to overwhelm us with his love despite our failings.  A God who doesn’t dream of overflowing us with blessings.

Thankfully we haven’t made that mistake of telling people that’s who God really is.

Welcome to the new “Health and Wealth Gospel.”

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I Don’t Believe – Room for Doubt

Posted on September 29, 2011 | Leave a comment
BRICKS

So, if you’ve been following the blog recently you’ll have noticed that I’ve done a series of post’s under the “I Don’t Believe” title.  There were all inspired out of the idea that it’s often too had to admit that we have doubts about things of faith that we’d be willing to share in church.  Probably the biggest doubt we’re afraid to share is doubt itself.  Who would want to admit that sometimes they  struggle with belief?  If that’s you, this post is for you:

What’s the opposite of Faith?  Doubt?  Unbelief?  The disciples were often criticized for their lack of faith.  Therefore we should strive to have the perfect faith, right?

Maybe the perfect faith actually includes doubt instead of avoiding doubt.

See avoiding doubt means avoiding questioning, and avoiding questioning doesn’t imply to me great faith.  I think of other religions and cults that require absolute unwavering and unquestioning allegiance to their leaders and their god, but that’s not great faith in my mind, that’s simply great insecurity.

Rob Bell discusses faith as a brick wall.  For some if you pull just even one brick out of that wall to examine it a little closer the whole wall comes tumbling down.  It seems to me that a great faith would have room and security to remove a brick or two to look at them.  Maybe even decide that one or two may not be needed.

A friend in high school posed that faith in fact requires some doubt, because by definition something void of doubt is a fact.  It’s a certain truth.  Faith, on the other hand, by definition has at least some doubt.  It may be very little doubt, but at least the presence of some doubt.

If there is no room for doubt in your faith then any doubt, any removal of any brick even for just a moment will collapse your entire wall.

If you’re a Mormon and you allow room to start questioning Joseph Smith then it would be quite likely that your faith would crumble, but the Mormon church doesn’t allow questioning.

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith.  In fact, great faith has room for a lot of doubt.  What if we were to think of “Oh ye of little faith,” being said of those of us who refuse to have room for doubt?

Faith may not be the absence of doubts, but the ability to trust despite our doubts.

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I Don’t Believe – Called Home

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 6 Comments
Cabo Home

Isn't God here with us just as much as we would be with him if we were in heaven?

I’ll admit I’m guilty of saying stupid things.  Even saying stupid things about God, but one thing I hear people say too often around extremely difficult circumstances is that God “called so-and-so home.”

Do we realize what this says about God?

Sure, this is a sweet euphemism for old ladies who died in their sleep and cancer sufferers in the hospital, but please don’t say this about car accident victims and children killed in unfortunate circumstances.

I was speaking at a summer camp this past year when tragedy struck struck the camp and a little 12 year old girl was killed in a mountain biking accident.  It was an awful freak accident.  Everybody had done exactly what they were supposed to do.  She was wearing a helmet, help arrived unbelievably quickly, and there was nothing anyone could have done.

And so I sat with the kids who’s group the girl was in when they told her group that she had died.  And then with the whole camp as the terrible news was shared.

And then I heard that stupid, stupid phrase, “She was called home.”

What does that imply anyway?  That God wanted her to be with him in heaven?  Was he not here with her on earth already?  That she needed to be “home” instead of with her family?  That it was better for her to die at age 12 and this is what God wanted all along?

Seriously?

If that’s your God, your God scares me.

Maybe, just maybe, what happened was a terrible accident that God was not happy about either.  Maybe God’s just as upset as we are.  Maybe that doesn’t fit your theology.  But we seriously need to think about the implications of what we’re saying about God.  If you’re comfortable saying that God called someone home because they were in a terrible accident then you need to come to grips with what you believe about God–that he might inflict violent circumstances on his loved ones to have them “in heaven with him.”  I have a hard time fitting that with my understanding of a loving father.  A dictator, a control freak, a tyrant, an oppressor, sure, but of a God who talks about leaving the 99 to find the one lost sheep, who sees his lost son from a long way off, has compassion and runs to hold his son in his arms, that God doesn’t seem like the God who would “call someone home” through violent circumstances.

We need to be careful with what we communicate through our catch phrases because we serve a God who loves us more than we can ever affectively communicate.  I don’t think we could ever possibly emphasize his profound love enough to the point that we come close to the truth about how much he loves us.

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