“As a thinker and planner, the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts, she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!”
- “What is Man?”
On a recent trip to the Christian Book store for my book fix I spent some time cruising through the aisles looking at the latest and greatest products. I will be honest, I about lost my cookies. I like my cookies.
I have been learning to more and more allow my contemplative side take over when thinking through things. I am learning to trust my intuition and not be afraid of thinking through an issue or idea. Our culture does not value spiritual deep thinking and it has taken my 32 trips around the sun to start feeling comfortable when the questions start to come and my contrarian nature starts to act up. I am seeing it more as a gift from God then something to be loathed.
As I cruised through the products available, the 36 different Bibles, all with cool colors and titles specific to your need and desire and other such things I just could not and should not be without, I realized that we have turned Jesus into a consumer product. I guess this is nothing new, but we have co-opted the worldly way of doing things to the point that walking through a Christian book store is now something I am beginning to despise. Sure there are things that are good. I get my pastoral supplies, some of my books and other things that I can not get elsewhere there. But, overall it is now a Christian Wal-Mart.
In the business world in order to be profitable you find something there is a deep demand for, or, you go out and create a demand for your product. This becomes problematic when you are talking about the gospel. There is a deep demand for the gospel in the heart of man, but culture as a whole has been stuffing it full of idols and things that just do not make sense. Demographically speaking this means that there is a world of consumers out there, but they do not want the Christian goods..i.e. the message that Jesus saves. What is a Christian retailer to do then? Take one out of the playbook of his secular neighbor and start hawking all kinds of things that make us feel good for the moment, but in the long run interfere with our relationship with God and end up putting us in idolatry.
In Judges Chapters 6 to 8 we see the extraordinary life of a very ordinary citizen Gideon. God called him from the smallest tribe, the youngest in his family, to kick some serious butt. Gideon is credited not only with military victory, he created a cultural revolution. He paved the way for Israel to repent and return to it’s culture and it’s heritage. But it did not last long. “Gideon made a sacred ephod from the gold and put it in Ophrah, his hometown. But soon all the Israelites prostituted themselves by worshiping it, and it became a trap for Gideon and his family.” (Judges 8:27) (1) The best intended item, a sacred ephod, was quickly contravened by the enemy and Israel was soon in the idolatry that God hates so much. I am afraid that is what we are doing as Christians today, and we need to stop commodifying the gospel. I must stop commodifying the gospel. I am trying to start asking a few basic questions before I purchase an item.
1) What is the purpose of this item?
Despite the rave reviews, the words of so many Christians, the overwhelming support of 9 out of every 10 pastors, does this glorify man…or does it Glorify God? The very first question of the Westminster Catechism is “what is the chief and highest end of man?” And the fitting answer is to “Glorify God and enjoy him forever”. Will that little piece of jewelry, that must have Jesus bobble head really bring glory to God forever? No, it will be broken in months.
2) Who Designed this item? Why?
Most items you can guarantee were developed by nameless and faceless Chinese corporation in order to make prophet. But the interesting question to ask of anything is why?
Do you remember the WWJD Bracelets that were so immensely popular for so long? They were created by a youth group to wear to remind themselves What Would Jesus Do? To answer the why is to give you the answer. This product was intended to glorify God. It is a little different then nameless faceless. It turned into another fad, but it was well intended.
3) At What Cost?
This is the big one for me. Not the purely monetary cost, but overall cost. What will it cost me to put this bobble head on my dashboard? Who will it glorify? What will it cost me in the end? Will it bring someone closer to Jesus, or will it draw them away when they see me smoking and swearing in my car as I pass them speeding on to my next appointment? These are the “soft costs” to use a marketing statement, but in the life of a believer they are the “hard costs”
I will continue to expound on this more in later posts. I want to just begin to tickle your thinking with it though. We will explore this a little more through the excellent book Culture Making by Andy Crouch and take some of his ideas, as well as a few of my own, and start to work towards a Theology of stuff. How can we take what we own, what we use, what we consume, captive to the cause of Christ and seeing Him glorified?
(1)Tyndale House Publishers: Holy Bible : New Living Translation. 2nd ed. Wheaton, Ill. : Tyndale House Publishers, 2004, S. Jdg 8:27
The God Who Knows 4 Words
Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me.”
Come
Dance.
“And when the hour had come He reclined at the table and the apostles with Him.”
Luke 22:14 (NIV)
At church last night I got asked, with about 1 minutes notice, to do the communion welcome and prayer. I love when I am called upon last minute because God in all his creativity and glory can show through me so much more then if I prepared for hours. I can go into the theology and history and why all night, after all I am a preacher. But when it is last minute it is messy, unprepared and all in all quite beautiful.
When I pulled up the scripture in the pew bible in front of me and went to the common text we use I saw in the NIV that he reclined (emphasis mine) at the table. All other common translations have him as sitting at the table, coming to the table etcetera. None of them take the time to share his physical posturing while he was at the table.I was intrigued and I ended up sharing it with the congregation.
In an informal setting it was not uncommon for men to sit at a table to eat in a reclined position, usually on one side. If it was a more formal setting or a setting where women were allowed then he would be in a more formal position. Sitting upright like what I am doing now, and likely you who are reading this are. The point in all of this is that Jesus was relaxed. All I can say is “why?” At this point in the narrative Jesus was about to be betrayed by Judas, about to be shackled and taken to Caiaphas and humiliated and treated so poorly that I physically become ill to contemplate it fully.
The take away I have from this is that when we take communion or we administer any sacraments we need to take ourselves and our mission seriously…ALWAYS seriously. But, when we have done the soul searching, when we know we are in God’s will for our life, when we are in a position where all the hard work has been done for the moment we need to just rest. I don’t know about you, but when I take communion and I spend those few minutes before taking them searching my soul for sins and errors and I do not hear anything specific or direct I begin to question if I am listening. I think I am and I think God is saying to just rest and receive the sacraments with all grace, humility, and love. More sins will show themselves soon enough and they will be dealt with in their time.
So I think that the equation for taking the Lord’s supper should look something more like this:
RELAX which will lead to REST which will put us on the position to
RECEIVE.
At the outset this seems so simple and so natural. Put yourself in a perplexing position away from a church circumstance and enter into the workplace. You have a deadline, a large project, people not carrying their weight, others carrying to much and there is NO grace in the deadline. You are panicked and have no idea what to do. So what do you do? You sweat it out, get overwhelmed and so mentally torn up that you are of no use to yourself or to anyone. The leadership you should be showing is destroyed. Now, take 2. You are stressed, the boss is not available and you do not know what to do. You step away, go to lunch, relax and call in some outside support. A work mentor, someone who has done your job before, or someone who you can trust. You get back, they diagnose the problem, and then lead you to the solution. Which scenario is the better of the two? In scenario number two the person in the perplexing position decided to relax (take a break), rest (lunch break with a mentor) and then you receive (the assistance in diagnosing the issue).
If Jesus can enter into the most trying time of His earthly ministry reclining at the table with some trusted knuckle heads called the Apostles who in the next portion of the narrative still don’t get it and ask Him the all important question “Lord, in your kingdom to come, who is going to be the greatest, the most beloved, the most revered of us all? (new revised Carl version) They, despite 3 years walking the Earth with Jesus, still did not get the paradigm shift. I know that our Bible is a little sanitized at points, but can you imagine being Jesus in this scenario? No longer reclining He probably was standing up looking down on them and saying YOU KNUCKLEHEADS… I LOVE YOU SOOO MUCH… BUT WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU MEAN??
As I enter into my days I am going to do my diligence to pray, to listen, to learn from the master and lover of my soul. I can do no better by any other then to do those things diligently, and boy do I slack at them sometimes…O.K., most the time. But when I have done these things and I am still in a position needing wisdom, grace and guidance I will do well to remember to Relax, to Rest, and then to Receive the Wisdom of the Ages coming down from the Father of all Life spoken gently into my life via the Holy Spirit…
Yeah, I can dig it.
~Selah~
“…if anything was true of Jesus, he could see people –not just look at them. We need to be able to see beyond the obvious and the form of people to see who they actually are, what their needs are, and what their potential is. Only then can the Love of God find an avenue through us.”
Klyne Snodgrass quoted from Stories with Intent. A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus.Pg 90
Hello my Dear Readers,
I apologize over the last week if you have come to my blog and have had troubles. I changed the theme, that theme bogged my system down. I tried to fix it, made it worse, changed the theme and broke that one. Now I am using an old stand by. I know this one does not appear the best in Firefox. Bear with me, I am trying to find a good theme that is clean, beautiful, and everything I want.
I have considered having a custom one made. I am an idiot when it comes to code and doing those things, but $$ is tight and I do not want to go overboard. I am cruizing free themes and as soon as inspiration strikes.. BAM it will change again.
Thanks for your patience.
h/t To Marcus and RLP and the High Calling Blog Take a moment and read their post. All I Can say is yes, yes and YES! Very timely considering some of the conversations I have had with my creative friends as of late.
