How to Be a Rich Christian (To Remind Myself)

I. Jesus said that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of god.  So if you can avoid it, do.

II. If you can’t avoid it, accept it. Don't buy the nonsense that we're "'middle class." It is the global economy that has made us rich, so it is by global standards that we must compare ourselves.

III. When you make your budget, do it with a picture of a poor child propped up next to your spreadsheet. Keep that picture in your wallet. Make every big, out-of-the-ordinary purchase after you look at her desperate eyes.

IV. Give, give, give. Understand that it's not your money. The Old Testament is full of reminders that all that is is God's. Jesus told one rich man to give everything he had, just to enter into Jesus' kingdom. The early Christians, who were ready to be martyred, gave all they had. We, too, should be known by our giving. Give far beyond the traditional 10 percent, and to multiple recipients. Offer to God even the money in your savings or retirement accounts. If you don't have cash, give your time, give your space, give your thoughts.

V. Know the names and stories of many poor people. Always be owed something. When someone you forgot you knew comes up and tells you they'll be paying back that money you forgot you lent, you're on to something. 

VI. Do not compare yourself to other rich people. Keep in mind that anyone who appeals to the "standard of living" is trying to assuage their own discontentment with riches, which runs directly against the teaching of Christ and Paul.

VII. Remember: In our country, rich and poor used to live together. Sometimes on neighboring farms, other times within the same small town, other times on the same plantation. It was impossible for the rich to forget the poor existed. Now, it requires significant effort for us to remember them. Living isolated from the poor, a man forgets what it's like have a hungry family next door, to his own peril.

VIII. Read yourself into the parables as villain, or the warned. Watch how Jesus describes the hearts of the rich. Don't beat yourself up, just be warned and live accordingly.

IX. Understand this: The human mind is fickle. We can only think about what's in front of us. If the poor are not in front of us regularly, we will forget about them. After we've forgotten about them, after years surrounded by so much wealth, we as a people will forget how loving our neighbors and loving the poor were often one and the same. Reverse this trend in your own life wherever you can.

X. Read books and stories written by the poor. Read about their lives. Pick up news magazines and watch documentaries.

XI. If a news source offers easy answers to poverty, doubt their motives. If a news story lets you feel smug or justified in your wealth, know that they are vying for your vote or your money.

XII. Remember that to suffer is to be human. Reject all thoughts that suggest that comforts produce the abatement of suffering. It is by comforting ourselves that we can most assuredly insulate ourselves from our need for God. Accepting discomfort is an act of trust, and enables us to walk in faith. Consider that in the Bible, our spiritual ancestors, elected by God to do his work, always suffered. In the Bible, we always suffered. Like it says in Hebrews,

(The people of faith)...were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while sill others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them."

XIII. See monetary gain as just as likely to harm one's soul as to help it, and beware un-Christian uses of the word, "blessing." The account of the blessings Isaac offered to Jacob and Esau show an understanding of "blessing" that is common throughout the Old Testament. To Jacob, "... May God give you of heaven's dew and of earth's richness - an abundance of grain and new wine. May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you..." And to Esau, "Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck." This passage is typical of the Old Testament's and America's usage of the word. Those who are blessed are the rich, and those who are not are poor. Material gain and moves towards wealth are blessings.

Jesus turns this idea on its head, by saying that in His Kingdom, the blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the poor, those who hunger now, those who weep now. These “blessed are the…”statements, are not instructions, but instruction. Jesus is not saying, "try to be poor in spirit, or hungry," or even calling the rich to serve the poor. He is teaching us about the way things are. He is teaching us that in the Kingdom of God, those who suffer are in fact, blessed. He is showing us that sufferers are already close to His heart in ways we who are rich do not know. In the Beatitudes and elsewhere He is telling the Jewish people that they missed the boat on what blessing is all about. We who are rich Christians have mostly missed it, too. Know that the fulfillment of the simple wish, "God bless you," may require the loss of much that you hold dear.

XIV. Trust the Lord.  Jesus never told the rich to solve poverty. He did warn us again and again what will happen to our souls when we ignore it and wrap our lives around ourselves. Your job is to be faithful to Him. If He asks you to sell all you have and give it to the poor, trust that He loves you and don't worry about the consequences. If you take any of these steps outside of a relationship of trust in God, you will have done something good, but not as a Christian. Do whatever good you do with Christ, and find His peace as just one of the fruits.

A message from Paco Amador

If we are to believe Google images, the guy in the picture is named Paco Amador. So is my pastor. The Paco Amador who is my pastor preached an excellent message last Sunday about keeping the Sabbath holy. Give it a listen, here.  

N.T. Wright talks about reading the bible

My friend Tony posted a link to this video on his blog. It's so good and intriguing and instructive that I'm just plain stealing it. He wont care.

In Deed

Today's Chicago Tribune highlights Christians who have lost family members to murder, and who oppose the death penalty. One said:

"Easter is always such a reminder that violence and death are not the last word," she said. "They don't have power over us. Love and the love of God is the most powerful force on Earth and are eternal. This year as never before, I'm seeing that I not only need to love Nancy and Richard and the baby, I need to love the person who took their lives, love them the way God loves them. That's so brand new to me and makes me see so many things differently. … I feel a stone has been rolled away from my heart."

You can read her's and others' stories here.

Rob Bell's new book

The bad part about Rob Bell is that he's so dang cool. He dresses trendy and makes cool videos and cool Christians everywhere know him to be cool.

The good part about Rob Bell is that he raises really good questions, he's an excellent teacher and that he reads a lot of N.T. Wright, who isn't so trendy.

He wrote a new book called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. This is a link to a video in which his cool self talks over cool music and cool video footage about some really important age old questions. If you want to explore some of these questions without feeling like a geek, this may be a good book for you.

The Sadness of Christmas

As a kid, I looked forward to Christmas with the best of 'em. 3 huge gift receivings awaited me each year, and I would be getting most everything I wished for, plus some pleasant surprises, too. In my mind, Christmas was the time to get set. All my problems, from acne to holey underwear, from boredom to nerdy clothes were on their way out the door. Satisfaction was just around the corner. Jesus had come, Santa was coming, and life would be better.

Looking back on those days, I recognize a recurring theme of sadness that crept to my heart in opening gifts. I would realize as I stacked the final presents onto my impressive mound that I was not, in fact satisfied. Even with my super-cool new Reebok windsuit, my Kirby Puckett rookie card (pictured), my silk shirt and my Steven Curtis Chapman CDs, I was still Brian. I would haul my wares happily to my room, admire them Gollum-like, and then feel the sadness come on.

As I got older I came to understand the sadness as greed's melody. So I reacted by trying to forget my own presents. I'd try not to think about what I might get, or to focus on others' happiness. As I failed in this effort, the sadness would come again, but with guilt as its dissonant accompanist. In opening presents, I found a limit to the fulfillment I longed for on Christmas day, and this in itself left an emptiness.

But it wasn't just the giving times that left a hollow. It was the fun with grandparents and cousins that I longed for all year that had to come to an end. It was the last game of bumper pool or Carroms. It was the race to see which cousin would get the last of Grandma Stipp's chocolate covered peanut-butter cracker sandwiches, or my Grandma Flint sneaking me a  few coconut and cream cheese snowballs for the ride home. As joyous and peaceful as these days were, they came to an end. And I remember feeling something more than sadness that comes when things don't go one's way. It was grief that seemed to always come with Christmas's end.

I think I know why.

As an adult, by celebrating the week's before Christmas during Advent, I have come to understand that Christmas day is only one part of the holiday. The whole Advent season celebrates the day of His first coming, but also points to Christ's return as the time when the world will finally be judged and put to rights; the time when my own greed would be gone, when the surrounding of profound love and safety would not end. We look forward during this time to Chirst's second advent, which means looking past today, dreaming of a new reality. He will come again, but He has not yet.

I believe there is a grief and longing native to this Holiday and even to our religion.  All is not celebration and praising. While the greed, the guilt and the loneliness that little boys and girls will feel this weekend will someday be wiped away, while the beautiful vision cast for us in Revelation 21, when he finally crushes once and for the forces that leave us empty is to come, it has not yet. And for that we have only to look forward. 

So when the sadness comes these days, I urge you to take it in stride. Look beyond the day to the future God has promised.

The Christmas Wars

I like this article's perspective on "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays." It says that pressuring people who don't believe in Christ to use His name may be at the very heart of what it means to take the Lord's name in vain. Yet another suggestion from Evangelicals for Social Action's E-pistle.

N.T. Wright, on hell, my thoughts

I just wrote a long response to the N.T. Wright excerpt. Then I re-read his excerpt and found that I had pretty much written the same things as him, but not as well.

So very briefly, I really liked his tone on hell, "I am well aware that I have now wandered into territory that no one can claim to have mapped." And his suggestion that sin does more than separate us from God but threatens our very humanity was a new idea to me, and I think he's wright. (sorry)

Also, If you were too lazy to read the original post, or if you dig British accents, here he is saying many of the same things.

N.T. Wright, on hell: The Excerpt

Part 1 gives some context for this rather long excerpt from N.T. Wright about hell and final judgment. I hope you'll take the time to read it and give it some thought. 


God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end. This doctrine, like that of resurrection itself, is held firmly in place by the belief in God as creator, on the one side, and the belief in his goodness, on the other. And that setting right must necessarily involve elimination of all that distorts God's good and lovely creation and in particular of all that defaces his image-bearing human creatures. Not to put too fine a point upon it, there will be no barbed wire in he kingdom of God...

For "barbed wire," of course, read whichever catalog of awfulnesses you prefer: genocide, nuclear bombs, child prostitution, the arrogance of empire, the comodification of souls, the idolization of race. The New Testament has several such categories, functioning as red flashing lights to warn against going down a road that leads straight to a fenceless cliff. And in the analysis offered by early Christians from Paul onward, such patterns of behavior have three things to be said about them.

First, they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshiping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the telltale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God...Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic in the life and chosen behavior of an individual, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization.

This is at the heart of the way in which I believe we can today restate the doctrine of final judgment. I find it quite impossible, reading the New Testament on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, to suppose that there will be no ultimate condemnation, no final loss, no human beings to whom, as C.S. Lewis put it, God will eventually say, "Thy will be done." I wish it were otherwise, but on cannot forever whistle "There's a wideness in God's mercy" in the darkness of Hiroshima, of Auschwitz, of the murder of children and the careless greed that enslaves millions with debts not their own. Humankind cannot, alas bear very much reality, and the massive denial of reality by the cheap and cheerful universalism of Western liberalism has a lot to answer for.

But if there is indeed final condemnation for those who, by their idolatry, dehumanize themselves and drag others down with them, the account I have suggested of how this works in practice provides a somewhat different picture from those normally imagined.

The traditional view is that those who spurn God's salvation, who refuse to turn from idolatry and wickedness, are held forever in conscious torment. Sometimes this is sharpened up by overenthusiastic preachers and teachers who claim o know precisely which sorts of behavior are bound to lead to hell and which, though reprehensible, are still forgivable. But the traditional picture is clear: such human beings will continue to be, in some sense, human beings, and they will be punished in an endless time.

This account in then opposed by the universalists. Sometimes they suggest...that God will be merciful even to the utterly abhorrent, to mass murderers and child rapists. Sometimes they modify this: God will continue, after death, to offer all people the chance of repentance until they finally give in to the offer of his love.

A middle way is offered by the so-called conditionalists. They propose "conditional immortality": those who persistently refuse God's love and his way of life in the present world will simply cease to exit. Immortality, such theories point out, is not (despite the popularity of Platonist!) an innate human characteristic; it is something that, as Paul says, only God possesses by right and hence is a gift that God can choose to bestow or withhold. According to this theory, then, God will dimply not confer immortality on those who in this life continue impenitently to worship idols and thereby to destroy their own humanness. This view is therefore sometimes known as annihilationaism; such people will cease to exist. That word, however, is perhaps too strong, suggesting that such people are actively destroyed rather than merely failing to receive a gift that had been held out to them and that they had consistently rejected.

Over against these three option, I propose a view that combines what seem to me the strong points of the first and third. The greatest objection to the traditional view in recent times - and the last two hundred years have seen massive swing toward universalism in the Western churches, at least the so-called mainstream ones - has come from the deep revulsion many feel at the idea of the torture chamber in the middle of the castle of delights, the concentration camp in the middle of the beautiful countryside, the idea that among the delights of the blessed we should include the contemplation of the torments of the wicked. However much we tell ourselves that God must condemn evil if he is a good God and that those who love God must endorse that condemnation, as soon as these pictures present themselves to our minds, we turn away in disgust. The conditionalist avoids this at the apparent cost of belittling those scriptural passages that appear to speak unambiguously of a continuing state for those who reject the worship of the true God and the way of humanness, which follows from it.

Using that analysis, though, presents us with the following possibility, which I believe does justice both to the key text and to the realities of human life of which, after a century of horror mostly dreamed up by human beings, we are not all too well aware. When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship: what's more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditor, debtors, partners, or customers rather than human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sexual objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many otehr forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they tough. My suggestion is that it is possible for human beings so to continue down this road, so to refuse all whispering of good news, all glimmers of the true light, all prompting to turn and go the other way, all signposts to the love of God, that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God's good world, in which the flickering flame of goodness had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity. There is no concentration camp in the beautiful countryside, no torture chamber int eh palace of delight. Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite in themselves or others the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal.

I am well aware that I have now wandered into territory that no one can claim to have mapped. Jesus, Christians believe, has been to hell and back but to say that is to stand gaping into the darkness, not to write a travel brochure for future visitors. The lat thing I wants is for anyone to suppose that I (or anyone else) know very much about all this. Nor do I want anyone to suppose I enjoy speculating in this manner. But I find myself driven, by the New Testament and the sober realities of this world, to this kind of a resolution to one of the darkest theological mysteries. I should be glad to be proved wrong  but not at the cost of the foundational claims that this world is the good creation of the one true God and that he will at the end bring about that judgment at which the whole of creation will rejoice.

N.T. Wright, on hell: A Preface

I finished Surprised by Hope. It took me reading a simpler N.T. Wright book, several starts and stops, and 2 1/2 years, but I got through, and it was worth it.

I want to offer a long excerpt that he wrote about hell, but in doing so I'll be cutting out the most important part of the book to share what was to me the most interesting. I read an interview where he said he almost wrote the book without this hell section, but so many people wanted to read his thoughts on the matter that he decided to include them. Before I get to the excerpt, let me share what the rest of the book's about.

Wright starts by showing all the ways that the myriad Christian churches are  confused about what happens after death, and that much of this confusion can be cleared up with some good understandings of history and early Christian thought. He explains the same point he made more thoroughly in Simply Christian: that the Bible's first readers understood heaven not as a place apart from earth, but as the place God's realm intersects with us. He devotes a whole chapter to the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection; explaining that the earliest Christians' hope was never to be in a heaven that was removed from this world, but to be raised with Christ after death, in an earth renewed. He delves into how early believers and non-believers both would have understood the first Easter, and applies sound thinking to the problems that some skeptics have with believing in His resurrection.

Here is a decent summation of what he has to say on life immediately after death:
"My proposition is that the traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage postmortem journey...represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story we tell about God's ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed if we leave it out altogether as some have done quite explicitly, we don't just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the reason for working. Instead of talking vaguely about heaven and then trying to fit the language of resurrection into that we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection and reorganize our language about heaven around that. What is more...when we do this we discover an excellent foundation, not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety (that belongs more with the traditional and misleading language about heaven), but for lively and creative Christian work within the present world. (p. 148)

So all of that is the point of the book.

But there's this really interesting part on hell, and that's why I'm writing this post. Why, I wonder, does hell so intrigue me?

I think because I long from deep inside me for judgment against the forces of evil that now reign in this world. And the evils of the world must surely not get off scotch free. Also, I think the way hell is "used," in the evangelical circles I tread must be wrong. Used, I mean like bait to get someone to say a sinner's prayer. Or used with certainty, like the speaker knows who's going and who's not.

This passage by N.T. Wright on hell is the best I've read on the subject. I think it gets to the heart of what the language in the Bible about judgment is all about. It  has a ring that I find congruent with the scripture. I'll finish typing out the rather long excerpt and I'll post it soon. I recommend printing it out, reading it with others, wrestling with it until it sinks in deep.

A night of Reconciliation

Last week Beth and I drove to Elgin to witness our friends' reaffirmation of their  marriage vows. These friends had had some marital problems that will most likely in the end be the saving of their marriage.

About a year ago, the husband confessed that he had a sex addiction. He decided to deal with the issue the right way, or a least a right way.  He sought and found healing by going to a church-led group similar to SAA. And he went through a 9 month program called Redeemed Lives, started by a man (Mario Bergner) who came out of a homosexual lifestyle. He lives on the east coast now, but has ministry that deals with healing in sexual brokenness. The program incorporates Scripture, small groups, healing prayer, solid psychological teaching (family origins, maladaptive tendencies, etc.) He also spoke with a friend about his addiction and the process of reconciling his marriage every day for about two months. The couple separated for several months, too. The last year has been full of sadness and loneliness; a long painful journey for them both. It's also been full of relying upon God and their community of believers for strength and wisdom.

That night we who were witnesses celebrated their courage to not hide their problems or hide from them. It was a deeply joyous occasion devoid of pretenses. No one there thought the couple had it all together. Personally, the all-too-familiar pull to put on a public image other than my real self simply stopped its pulling.  Their vulnerability made us all more vulnerable; more real; more human.

I'm sharing this story as a model of Christian discipleship. We should expect that following Jesus will include one stretching, faith-building and humbling step after another. By facing their problems head-on and relying upon the help of Christ and the church, our friends have put themselves on the journey of reconciliation and marital health.

The night of reconciliation stood in opposition to the the powerful notion that Christianity involves an arrival; a being set; having our house in order. Our faith does involve working towards holiness, but my experience tells me that when we think we've arrived we haven't. Working towards holiness is always an undressing, and there is no Christianity without that undressing. My prayer for our friends is that they don't understand this last year as an unseemly anomaly in their Cristian journeys or in their marriage, but as the pattern to be expected until death do them part.

MY MESS Part 2, A Boon on the Road

One of the things that has been hardest about these first 6 weeks of school is their juxtaposition with the last 4 years. I have been used to success. I haven't had a behavioral problem that really worried me for a long time. Experiencing failure at work, even temporary failure as I hope this is, is foreign to me. Last year I worked towards the prestigious National Board Certification and all my co-workers were sure I would achieve. My school's reading coach told me I was one of the best teachers she'd ever seen, and she made sure I knew she was serious. The compliments rained in. And now, at a new school, failures are bountiful.

So last Wednesday morning I took some time to pray about school. That's when the notion began that I should pray for salvation. Right after I did, as I was brushing my teeth, a Sara Groves song lyric popped into my head, "I pray for an idea, and a way I cannot see."

The lyric's song is "The Long Defeat," and I believe God has given it to me to pray during this season of my life. It is my prayer for salvation.


I have joined the long defeat
that falling set in motion
all my strength and energy
are raindrops in the ocean

so conditioned for the win
to share in victor's stories
but in the place of ambition's den
I've heard of other glories

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I can't just fight when I think I'll win
that's the end of all belief
and nothing has provoked it more
than a possible defeat

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

We walk a while we sit and rest
we lay it on the altar
I won't pretend to know what's next
but what I have I've offered

I pray for a vision
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I pray for inspiration
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

MY MESS, Part 1: A Cry for Salvation

I have normally stuck with blogging about overarching principles: society, or God, or some political issue. It's the stuff my mind gravitates towards, and it interests me, and I could spend more time than I should writing about it. But I'm sort of consumed these days with what are for me some major challenges at work, and I think it's time after spending most of my posts weighing in on the world's problems that I share my own.

I'm having a hard school year.

For the last four years, at my previous school, teaching 4th and 5th graders to read took most of my time and energy. I taught about 10 kids to read each year, which was deeply gratifying, life changing, and really fun work.

The group of sixth graders I have this year is overwhelming. I've spent hours designing and implementing behavioral plans that aren't producing any noticeable result. I have a boy who calls me names and refuses or resists doing his work, or anything appropriate, all day. Today he showed up to school at 11:30 without a book bag and acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Everyone at the school knows his family and tells me he'll just get worse as the years go on. I have a girl who within the first six weeks has spread the rumor that she herself is pregnant, slapped and pushed two other girls, and come to school with hickies (sp? I've never needed to spell that til now!) She got suspended today, so I have a one week reprieve. I have another boy who is full of potential but doesn't like to work. He just mopes around the room as slowly as you can imagine, and starts looking for his materials right when everyone else is finishing. I have another boy with impulsivity issues; he shouts out whatever comes to mind. I don't know how well you remember sixth grade, but the things that run through a sixth grader's mind should not be shouted.

Yesterday things boiled to a head. I lost control of my own classroom. I could not teach and did not know how to respond to how the kids were acting. This is my 7th full school year as a teacher and it felt like my first week. I have no answers.

I've been praying for salvation. You know how David constantly asks for or thanks God for His salvation throughout the Psalms? Well that's what I'm asking for. I don't know if God will save me from this situation, or if He'll bring me an idea that will save me from it's messiness. I don't know if He will save me by strengthening me to endure or if He will save my students from their hellish lives. I do believe that it is He who saves, and I know that I have no idea how to go forward.

And that's where I am

Coming soon: MY MESS, Part 2: A Boon on the Road

7 posts in 7 days

I've dropped blogging since my Leeli was born and I started a new job (two days later). Leeli's great and the job is squeezing me. My friend told me that if you squeeze a tube of toothpaste, toothpaste comes out, and when a Christian gets squeezed, Christ better come out. I liked that. Christ hasn't come out, though, but that I need Him has.

So I have 4 blog posts that are half done, and a couple more that are floating around in my head. As a way to kick start this SOB, I'm gonna commit to you, my faithful reader(s), to post these posts, however edited and coherent, one-a-day, for the next week. This may mean not going back to delete possibly offensive swear-word abbreviations; it may mean publishing thoughts offensive to everyone I love; it may end up an offense to the written word. But there's no going back, friend(s). This here, is my commitment to you(s).

Ever feel like skipping church?

One time looking through my dad's bookshelf, a book caught my eye because it was prefaced by C.S. Lewis. The book was "A Faith of our Own," a collection of essays by an English theologian named Austin Farrer. I promptly stole the book. One essay in particular has stuck with me over the years. It's called, "Sabbath and Sunday," and I've never heard the points it makes anywhere else. I think they are important points for everyday, non-pastor type Christians like me. Important enough that I summarize them here for your benefit. (I'd recommend you buy the book, but it's not easy to come by.)


Farrer writes,"When Christ died and rose on the first day of the week, he made a revolution of all things, and among others, of our attitude to time. Before Christ we used to keep the seventh day, but Christ rose on the first and now we keep that...The Jew saw himself giving the seventh day to God, we see ourselves giving the first, and there is all the difference in the world between the two. The Jewish system seems very sensible. Do not indulge yourself, do the slogging first; fulfill your practical duties, get your work out of the way, and clear a block of time for God."

He explains that the Jewish thinking held that once one's house was in order, one could approach his maker. This, he says, is a religion of merits; Pharisaism. "No one's house ever is in order, that is the trouble, and so the time for appearing before God never arrives. If you were an ancient Jew you were at least forcibly stopped putting your house in order, and dragged into the divine presence by the dawning Sabbath. But if you are a modern Christian living that bad old Jewish principle, there isn't even Sabbath, and the day when you have caught up with your conscience and are fit to appear before God's altar never arrives at all."

This is one reason some Christians find it hard to go to church. Their conscience condemns them, and they misunderstand that approaching the Lord has to do with proclaiming a clean conscience, instead of receiving from Him.

"But what are we to do about the yawning gulf which opens between this Christhood of ours and our actual performance - between our laziness, selfishness, uncleanness, and triviality and the painful absurdity of our prayers? This gulf which yawns between what Christ has made us and what we make of ourselves?...What else but the very thing Christ's disciples did from the first: early in the morning on the first day of the week reassemble the whole body of Christ in our community - not a member lacking - when the sun has risen, and have the resurrection over again. In that moment, dead to the past and trusting him for the future, bathed in his blood and strong by his victory, united by his person, loved and forgiven by his Father - in that moment at least we are what he has made us; the gap is closed.

Here, another reason Christians don't want to go to church (or communicate, as Farrer calls it). We don't see the importance of remembering, celebrating and drawing from the resurrection with "not a member lacking" as the early believers did. And we don't understand that something really important happens to us at church - the gap being closed.

So some of us don't want to go because our conscience condemns us. Others stay home because we don't understand the importance of celebrating and drawing from the resurrection weekly. But others skip because of our feelings: either we feel like doing something else, or have real, emotional pain that repels us from "communicating." In most of life, getting in touch with our feelings is a healthy thing. But in regards to going to church on Sunday, discussing our feelings related to church shows that we've missed the point of church.

"What do you think St. Peter or St. Paul would have said if you had told them that you feared always to communicate, lest it should go stale on you? They would not have known what on earth you were talking about. It would have been all you could do to bring them to conceive the possibility of such emotional frivolity, such reckless individualism in a Christian man. What, is the body of Christ to lack a member because you are not feeling soulful? Don't you know that Christ wants you there, that he has died to give you what you there receive, at what is the weekly resurrection of the body of Christ?

More thoughts from Simply Christian (which I always type "simply christina")

Sometimes a barrel of truth can run off of you like water off a ducks back, like it could have stayed in the barrel, and you would have been fine either way. Sometimes a drop of truth can change your life.

“At the heart of the Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them.”

-N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

This idea has become one of those hugely-important drops of truth for me. Last summer I underwent a period of intense doubt. My self-talk sounded like this: If we are longing for Him to come again, what good did His first coming do for us now? I need something more than heaven and hell. What is the evidence of His salvation now? How do I know that my experiences with God have not been self-fulfilling products of my longings?

A good friend helped me through this doubt, and I clung to one thing that came up in our conversations. He explained that He has known many Christians, with lives full of compelling morality and care for others on one hand and with radiant inner beauty, peace and humility on the other. He explained that he had known very many non-Christians who lived admirable moral lives, but there were very few who along with this morality were characterized by inner beauty, peace and humility. The idea struck me as something new that I hadn’t considered, something that seems true, and something that points to the gospel as true; as a proof in the pudding.

So just last week I came across this same idea from N.T. Wright, which confirms to me the truth of what I’ve been suspecting for almost a year now. The idea responds to my doubt as follows:

If we are longing for Him to come again, what good did His first coming do for us now?

Jesus saves us now and changes our lives now, not just for some future destination. He takes the good we try to do and makes it better than we could hope. At the same time, He makes us to be more moral. All the while, He gives us peace and humility as we travel our paths following Him.

What is the evidence of His salvation now?

a. The peace He has put in me. I might be able to do some of the same good things I can do as a non-Christian, but I could never provide myself with peace and humility. My efforts to manage life on my own, without God have been laughable.

b. The change He makes in other people’s lives now. Not just the change in right behavior I see when someone “gits religin,” but the change that happens on the inside of converted people that shines out and that they couldn’t hide if they wanted to. The friend of mine who came to Christ and heard the birds sing for the first time since he was a boy; the lady at our church who just two years ago looked like the embodiment of depression and whose face and hugs now light up our little congregation.

How do I know that my experiences with God have not been self-fulfilling products of my longings?

I suppose “knowing” in the objective sense is not an option for me, here. I must take the evidence in front of me, including my experiences with God and either believe or not believe. When I try hard to look at Christianity objectively, as if I had nothing to do with it, Christ being God seems far-fetched. But when I look at the world around me and the daily miracles that are popping out like buds on a tree, I find this world itself to be just as far-fetched. The types of miracles, gifts and mercies I have found to be the heart of creation, run parallel to those found in the Bible, and I do believe they come from the same Source.

I’m getting off the subject. The subject is this idea that Christians are on a better path, a path that ultimately makes them better people than they would have been if they were not Christians. The subject is also that this idea holds tremendous import for my doubt. It suggests that Christianity is more than just a defensible “rival conception of God,” but is actually true. For me, it is something like proof.

The thoughts going on in my head right now sound something like this:

Is it true that the path of following Christ takes our good works and begins to play behind them an accompaniment of humility, peace and joy? Is it true that doing these same good works, but on a different path, leads one to pride, self-conceit and despair?

I invite your input.

Safe Families

Here is a link to an article and video about Safe Families. They are an organization we have worked with to take care of babies in need. They are making the world more of what it was intended to be.

Brian McLaren

I will forever be indebted to the book, A New King of Christian, by Brian McLaren. Though I haven't read anything by him in the last 5 years, his books gave me a framework for understanding world history that I still draw from. Here are some of his thoughts.



So what do you think?

Amy Stipp = my hero

My sister Amy shared with me this week that a colleague of hers came to her to gripe about some work situation or other. Amy’s response to this colleague has jolted me. She said, “Can I pray for you?” The co-worker said “yes.” They prayed together and went their separate ways.

Amy explained to me that she realized as she listened to her friend talk, that she did not have any hope or wisdom to offer her. All she had was Christ, and so she shared him the best she knew how.

Also, she said, if the lady was offended and didn’t want to keep coming to her to complain, that would be ok, too.

I was struck by this story on a couple levels.

Amy understands that the starting point to accepting to gospel is our nothingness. In her journey as a Christian she has not fallen into the trap of becoming wise. I know Amy had thoughts she could have shared with her friend; she wasn’t using prayer as a cop-out. She knew, though, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and that her own thoughts really could not do much long term good for her friend.

I also am inspired by Amy’s story to share God in ways like my sister did. Amy did not discuss theology, or where this lady had attended church in the past, or her conceptions about Christians, or try to build a friendship that could hopefully one day lead to evangelism. She very simply went straight to the Source. I get the feeling she’s letting God deal with the other details.

Finally, I see in my sister’s faith an answer to the question, “what difference does it make whether or not we are the People of God?” I see this answer, too, when I read the Old Testament or in my Friday morning men’s group. We as God’s People are not primarily people who agree on politics, music and entertainment. We are not always a group that is comfortable with one another. We are not always exceptionally good. An important way of defining who we are, though, is in our posture. We are a people who look to God. We are a people who know our wisest wisdom will run us around in circles. We bow. We hope.

Thanks, Amy, for these reminders.