Simple Life In Christ

I finished the last post with these questions: Why was Jesus made King? What is so special about him?

I believe these are important questions that it seems are rarely asked by Christians.  Maybe we asked these questions when we first came to Christ, but sometimes it’s good to look back on the simple things.

To put it in the simplest of terms; Jesus was made King because He could do something that none of the rest of us could do.

Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves here!  I know what you’re thinking….maybe.  You might be thinking, ‘Oh, I get it. Ed’s going to talk about how Jesus came back to life.’  Yeah, well, maybe eventually, but not yet.

Can you think of what Jesus could do that we can’t?  I’ll give you hint…it’s got nothing to do with carpentry!  Although, I am a totally useless carpenter….

I want us to go back to the Cross in our minds.  I’ve often been encouraged to put myself in the place of many figures surrounding the cross; Barrabas, Simon of Cyrene, Mary, John, the centurion, one of the thieves…

I want you to put yourself in Jesus place.  You are laid down with your shoulders on the crosspiece.  Your arms are held out over the wood while iron spikes are driven through your hands near the wrist.  Your legs are crossed and nailed to the pole. The pole is lifted up until it slides into the prepared hole with a jarring thud.  You hang there as people jeer at you and spit at you.  You hang there until you can’t breathe anymore.

All of us would find that extremely hard, but there is something about Jesus that makes it worse.  Jesus didn’t have to do it.  He had a choice.  All he had to do was say, ‘no’, and it all stops; the pain, the teasing, the fear of separation from the Father.

Now put yourself in his place.

I couldn’t do it.  I can tell you now, I would be off of that cross so fast!  I don’t think there’s anything that could keep me on there.  It wouldn’t matter if I had an angel whispering to me that this is for everyone; everyone who has ever lived, is living, and ever will live!  I can save them if I just stay on the cross.  I know I couldn’t do it.

But Jesus could.

That’s why He gets to be King.  That’s why He received power from the Father to take His life back.  That’s why all those who follow Him will live forever.

Jesus of Nazareth, in the big moments and in the small, always chose to sacrifice himself, and obey the Father.  He perfectly fulfilled the role of man, and was the express image of God.

So what does that mean to us?

Alot of things.  Everything.

We’ll start looking at the implications of the life of the King next time.

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Don’t freak out…you are not seeing things.  SLIC is back for 2010! (hear that in the monster truck/wrestlemania voice of your own choosing)  My apologies that a month long break turned into a four month hiatus.  What can I say?  Mea Culpa.  I hope that you will forgive and pickup where we left off.

I was asking myself the following question the other day; why did the Romans kill Jesus?  It had little to do with religion.  The Romans were actually quite tolerant of other religions.  Consider the Jewish religion, even with it’s overtly nationalistic tones, the Romans allowed them to continue to worship and gather.  The charge laid against him, and later nailed above his head on the cross was, ‘King of the Jews’.   They charged him with claiming authority.  You could argue that Pilate neither believed nor cared that Jesus wanted to be a king; that he was just doing this to pacify the Jewish leaders.  Fair enough.  So why did the leaders of the Jews want him crucified?  bc he sat on a mountaintop in Judea and said, ‘Love everybody and be nice.’?  I don’t think so.

They were as frightened of him as I often am today!  Jesus was killed, in the body 2000 years ago, and in our hearts quite often, because he represents an entirely different way of doing things.  That ‘way’ threatened the foundations of power in Palestine so many years ago, and it threatens the foundations of my life today.

He didn’t come with a moral code.  He didn’t come with clever insights or handy proverbs.  He didn’t come to be another in a long line of  power hungry rulers.

He did come with love, but a love so different, we shoulda made up a new word for it.  He came with paradoxes and parables to show people that an entirely different of living and seeing was possible.  Most people didn’t/don’t get it.  Of those that do, very few of them like it. Some want to kill him for it.

We finished the last post….so many months ago, by asking how we are going to accomplish our task as image bearers.  The task that Christ perfectly fulfilled.  The task with which he charged his disciples, including us.

It has to begin and end with Christ the King.  Six months ago, when I began this little series, I lamented that I proclaim Jesus ‘King of Sunday’, and I run to Caesar for the rest of my time.  It’s been a winding road from there, but now we have come back to it.  After the Cross, what was there?  Not a dead revolutionary. Not just another wannabe Messiah.  There was a King.  There was a King who would never die.

Why was he made King?  What is so special about him?  I guess that’s where we are headed next.

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Have you ever tried to read the Bible as if you didn’t know what was going to happen?  For most of us, we know the ending so well, we can lose sight of it’s impact.  Consider the grand scope of the OT.  God creates everything and charges humanity with ‘bearing His image’.  Man and woman are to be the markers that testify that God rules.

In the blink of an eye, they abandon that vocation to pursue self-rule.  Did you ever notice the first few verses of Genesis 5?  God made man in His image, but then after the fall, Adam fathered Seth ‘in his own likeness, after his image‘.  God’s image bearers are now bearing their own image.  At Babel, man sought to lift himself up and make a name for himself, and failed completely.  Immediately after that, God calls Abram, and begins His own project to lift man up.

God calls on Israel to bear His name and so recapture the image bearing vocation that He desired for all mankind.  For thousands of years, the Patriarchs, Moses, and the entire nation struggle to uphold this ideal, and be God’s people.  They have the Law, and the Land, and the Temple, but they still can’t do it.  The OT ends in utter frustration and despair.  God keeps hinting that someone is going to come along and fix all of this, but we just can’t see how things could ever go back to the way that He intended.  We close on Malachi 4, as God foretells the coming of One who will turn their hearts back from destruction, and we’re not sure if we really even want to keep reading.

But then something amazing happens.  A man named Jesus begins to work and teach in Galilee.  He just seems like a regular guy.  Yet, He quickly begins to do things that belie His boring exterior!  John opens his gospel by equating Jesus with the Word; a light shining out of the darkness.  John the Baptist gives Jesus the curious nickname of ‘the Lamb of God’, apparently associating Him with the Passover; a feast commemorating the greatest day in Jewish history.  Jesus tells His fledgling disciples in John 1:51 that He is Jacob’s ladder.  A symbol that simultaneously called to mind the close connection of God and His people, and the promise God made in that vision to Jacob, that He would bring Jacob home and give him the Land.  At the next Passover, John tells us that Jesus went to the temple and drove out the merchants who preyed on the pilgrims.  When asked how He could do this, Jesus equated Himself with the Temple, and promised to rebuild what would be torn down.

Law.  Land.  Temple.

In case we don’t get that Jesus is THE image bearer of God, God tells us!  He says, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’  Finally!  At long last, someone has taken on the task of humanity.  In Jesus, God has a human who truly bears His image!  In so doing, Jesus is the most human of all of us; think about that when you have time.

So He says a lot of peculiar things, and shows off some really cool powers along the way.  We begin to learn from Him that this image bearing thing isn’t what we expected.  Some people around Him are confused that He isn’t seeking to take control and ‘act like a king’!  Others are disturbed by His teachings and His rejection of things they have taken so long to establish.  Just like so long ago, God is rejecting their mighty tower and instead going with a wandering pilgrim.

We begin to see the dark clouds forming around Jesus, and wonder what is going to happen?  When will He throw down His enemies that are even now conspiring and rule Israel?  How will this end?

And then the most unexpected thing of all!  Jesus is arrested and tried.  He doesn’t fight back; he doesn’t argue.  Evil men, totally consumed with their own power and status, execute Jesus for threatening their position.  To do this, they persuade a cold, uncaring empire that Jesus is a threat.  It doesn’t seem that Pilate is convinced, but what is one life anyway?  His followers gather at the cross in disbelief, perhaps hoping that this will be the moment where Jesus will say, ‘ENOUGH!’ and use His powers to fight.  Those that hate Him, taunt Him with a similar idea, perhaps partly nervous that He might do just that.

But He just hangs there.

He hangs there while people laugh and cry around Him.  He hangs there while His blood pours down on to the ground.  He hangs there and dies.

If that were the end of the story, I don’t think many people would read the Bible anymore.  It would have to rank right up there as one of the most depressing tales ever told.  Surely, those who believed in Him were shocked and depressed.

But there is a twist in the tail.  Jesus of Nazareth came back to life.  He came back and ate and drank, he opened hearts and minds, he built a fire and cooked, he made promises and gave His disciples their own vocation.

He is the Living Word for all time.  He rebuilt the Temple, and now all people can meet with God.  He prepares a new Land with a new Promise, that God will bring people to it to live forever.

In the end, He tells the disciples that they have a new job.  It’s their turn to be the image bearers!  It’s time for them to shine this light in the world.  How will they do this?  How will we?

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In the last couple of posts, I’ve asked, ‘What does it mean that the Kingdom is here on earth?’  What does it mean to the way I think and act?  We then looked at the history of modern thought and it’s impact on thinking in the church of Christ.  Particularly, we considered the mentality that through hard work and ‘right thinking’ we can solve everything.

This brings us to line drawing.  I think everyone would agree that when it comes to line drawing, there are God’s Lines, and there are ‘my lines’.  The problem is that none of us can agree where one ends and the other begins.

It is also clear that our past factors into the drawing of lines as well.  Think back to our last post about the modern assumption that we can solve everything.  This mentality continues to plague the church today.  The problem with this view is that it is short-sighted.  It is easy for us to see that people were short-sighted when they said that World War 1 would ‘end all wars’, or when politicians say that some program will ‘end poverty’.  Can we see the same thing when we naively believe that we can draw a line and say to ourselves,’That settles that, we’ll never have to think about that again!’  Again, we display our naivety and shortsightedness, when we claim to ‘hold to the old ways/paths’.  We typically say that to mean, ‘we hold to the way of the NT church.’; but what we are actually doing is holding to the way of our grandfathers.

So, for example, I meet with a church, who meets in a building, sings four-part Acapella harmony, and meets twice on Sunday.   There is no evidence, nor reason to believe, that the NT church met in buildings, sung modern four-part harmony, or even that they met twice on Sunday.  Meeting in a building can be traced to the fourth/fifth century A.D., and the other two can be traced to about 100-150 years ago.  I thus conclude that these are not God’s lines, but men’s, and are thus, arbitrary.  Does this make them wrong or bad?

Now, here’s where you can determine whether your mindset is modernist or post-modernist! haha!  A modernist says, ‘My lines are NOT arbitrary, I can PROVE that they are right!’  A post-modernist says, ‘ALL lines are arbitrary, so we shouldn’t draw ANY lines at all!’  I believe both of these view points to be faulty.  The modernist is wrong to try to bind her views on those who see things differently, and the post-modernist is foolish when he says there are no lines.

Let’s focus in on Acapella vs. instrumental music.  I do not use musical instruments when I praise God.  Do I have good reasons for this?  Absolutely, I’d be happy to share them with you if you like.  Included in these reasons, is that I see no evidence of the NT church using instruments.  But, is my line arbitrary?  YES!  I don’t sing like they did in the NT.  I use some modern ‘helps’ to sing with my brothers and sisters.   Can we not do something in full conviction and clean conscious before God, without feeling we have to force everyone else to do it my way?

‘But Ed’, you protest, “We have to ’stand for the truth’!”  Of course we do.  But in the above example, were I to fight with someone about this, am I standing for truth, or standing for my line?  Again, I understand the need for lines and respect that, but let’s be realistic.

Is the goal to do things just like the NT church did?  I don’t see how that can possibly be the goal!  It doesn’t seem to me that God particularly cares that we try to do this.  If He did, wouldn’t he have at least bothered to record a detailed account of a worship service somewhere in the NT?  It seems, in the OT, when God had specific things that He wanted, He was quite capable of being REALLY specific about them.  Did you ever ask yourself why we don’t see this in Acts, or one of the letters to the churches?  There are many things in the NT that God clearly does feel are important, and He is quite clear about these!

Some groups deride others for codifying their beliefs and saying, ‘This is what we, as a group, believe, teach, and expect of our followers.’  But are we any different, when we dissect and pull apart the NT, so that we can come up with a code of conduct and belief that we then try to enforce on those around us?

In the end, all such wrangling does nothing more than distract us from our true goal as followers of the Christ.  Modernists squabble and debate over where the line goes and endlessly chase their own tail in the process.  Post-modernists, rightly, reject this, but wrongly, do nothing and seek escape in the nearest distraction.  Christians must follow Christ!

We seek to follow a Christ who rejected Pharisaical bickering that placed their interpretations on equal par with the word of God.  This same Christ rejected the philosophical Stoicism and Epicureanism of the Greco-Roman society that ignored the will of God. This Christ espoused a path of love and submission, not knowledge and power-grabbing.

Must we draw lines?  Yes, of course, we must.  I must decide in my heart what my conscious will allow, and what I can’t participate in.  I don’t decide this based on some ‘inward journey’ to find ‘what’s right for me’!  I decide this by looking at God’s will with a desire to know what He is saying, not a desire to get Him to back up what I’ve already decided.  So I look at God’s word, base my life on the teachings I find there, and draw some lines in the process.  But, I do this in humility, understanding that some of my lines are personal decisions.  I do this without despising the brother that God has accepted. I do this remembering the very strong condemnations that Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the NT reserve for those who bind what God hasn’t bound, and who live with a combative, divisive attitude.

And so, finally, we come to the Cross, wondering how all of this will play out.  How will God fulfill the mission of unity, freedom, and redemption in the Cross of Christ?  How will I and my fellow believers achieve these things here on earth through the path of our Savior?  I would like for us to continue to explore this together in future posts.

Again, I must say a word of thanks to you all for joining me on this journey.  I very much appreciate your words of encouragement, and your hard questions.  I make no claims to be absolutely right about all this, quite the contrary, I openly confess that I am struggling to work all of this out.  If you disagree, or have questions, I invite you to share them with me.

Love to you all!

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One of my good friends here in Perth is named Jim.  Jim is mentally handicapped.  He has paranoid schizophrenia and is bi-polar.  For most of the time I’ve lived here, Jim has been homeless, and has required my help and others’ to find places to live.  There are many places here that will help people like Jim, but the problem is that they all have rules, and eventually, Jim runs afoul of them and has to find a new place to live.

Many of the people that have tried to help Jim, self included, get frustrated very quickly with him and his self-destructive behavior.  One of my friends, however, seems nearly immune to this.  I asked him recently why that is, and he responded with a question, ‘Why do you get frustrated working with Jim?’.  I considered it and said, ‘I guess because I just want him to settle into a stable situation.’  My friend replied, ‘That will never happen. You cannot solve Jim.  There is no easy solution.  He will always have problems, and he will always need help.  When you understand that, you will find your frustration eases a bit.’  Wise words.

Let’s pull back a bit and consider this concept on a larger scale.  To do so, allow a brief history lesson.  Enlightenment thinking centered on the concept that man can figure things out.  Through the application of hard work, scientific method, and critical thinking, any problem could be overcome.  Modernism embraced the concept that man could solve things.

Consider, WWI, ‘the war to end all wars’, and yet a scant 20 years late, we had another war that was even bigger!  Even today, modernist rhetoric dominates our thinking.  Politicians claim that various actions they are putting forward will end war, crime, poverty, and anything else that you’ve got!  Science has long promised to do away with disease, hunger, pain, and suffering.  All of the above continue to be problems.

So along comes Postmodernism.  Postmodernism throws down the simplistic, concrete thinking of modernity, and stands over it in sneering derision!  Postmodernism cynically rejects the idealism of modernity, while offering little in the way of positive answers.  Modernism promised to fix things and it didn’t, so it and it’s ideals have been roundly rejected.

So I can hear the few of you who have bothered to read this far asking, ‘Ed, what in the world does any of this have to do with your last post!?’  My answer is, ‘Quite a bit, actually.’

You see, whether we care to admit it or not, much of the thinking and approach to scripture of the church of Christ, comes from Modernist thinking.  Though some try to do so, it is foolhardy to pretend that we are unaffected by the culture we are immersed in.  The Restoration Movement began and grew during a time of ever increasing optimism in the greater culture, that through thinking hard and using good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, we could solve anything!  It embraced this mentality, and strove to solve many of the spiritual problems it saw.  This approach assumes that if we all can just agree to see things the same way, and work real hard, everything will be fine.

But everything isn’t fine.  And finally, we come to the disenchantment I discussed in my last post.  This frustration I feel is with what I see in the church as a whole, as well as the limitations and hypocrisy of my own life and thoughts.  I am not overly surprised by the popularity of my last post, because I think many feel this frustration that the idealism of our fore fathers has not produced the goods.  At issue is the fact that, though many of us have identified the problem, I’m not sure any of us have much of a solution.

We can’t all agree on everything.  The logical conclusion of unity based on agreement, is a church of one.  The church of Christ has almost destroyed itself with this logic.  A hypothetical congregation of 100 people worships together.  We are ‘The Church’, and anyone who thinks differently is forsaken! Soon we have a disagreement and split 50/50.  Now our 50 is ‘The Church’!  Either the other 50 were never right, or they ‘fell away’ from the Truth!  Problem is, now our 50 disagree on something, and we have to split 25/25.   Now our 25 is ‘The Church’!  and so it goes…

The answer to the above, for many who see it as a problem, is the total rejection of concepts like ‘doctrine’, ‘truth’, and ‘church’.  Consider the ‘Emerging church’ movement, which is rising out of the ashes of Pentecostal idealism and infighting(surprisingly similar to our problems in the church of Christ).  It is going to be the ‘real church’.  and so it goes…

So what is the answer?  I must admit that I don’t know, though I am reminded of my friend’s wise words that I started with.  Part of the answer must be the humility that comes with understanding that I can’t solve all of this, because, to a certain degree, it’s not solvable.  This side of heaven, there will always be disagreements, doctrinal issues, and pride issues.  These will lead to fights and divisions if we let them.  It’s up to us whether or not we let our own failings and the failings of our brothers and sisters lead to division, or do we overcome these failings with the love of Christ and achieve unity.

The only real answer is the Cross.  ‘But what does that mean, Ed?  That’s how you finished your last stupid post!’  I think I’m going to need one more post, before we can get to the Cross, and for that I apologize.  I am feeling a strong urge to rush to the answer, but I think that would be a mistake.

I thank you for reading this in patience.  I am very much ‘thinking aloud’ here, which I know is a dangerous practice.  I am far from having all of this ‘worked out’ in my own mind.

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So, I was listening to a sermon this morning as I was working out at the gym.  Go ahead, say it; I’m a nerd.  Anyway, as I listened I had a bit of an epiphany.  I don’t know about you, but often as I listen to someone else speak, my mind leaps away from what they are saying and begins to connect dots along a different line.  The speaker may give me the passage or thought that sparks it, but quickly I travel away from his point along my own line of thinking.  I believe this is neither good nor bad, just a fact of how my mind works.  I’m sure others do the same with my talks and I’m fine with that.

Today I found myself listening to someone talking about the interaction between Pilate and Jesus in John 18, and off I went.  In vs. 36 Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

He says his kingdom is not of and from this world.  Is it possible that we have allowed, over time, a misinterpretation of that scripture to pervert it into ‘My kingdom is not for this world.’

For some time now I have been dismayed by the apparent disconnect in my life and from what I can see of those around me between what I say I believe and how I actually live.  I have written about this numerous times over the past few years, if you are interested have a look!  I’m coming to understand that this concept may be at the heart of that disconnect.

If I look carefully at myself and sometimes others around me, I would be led to believe that Jesus’ kingdom presides over my moral behavior (and my attitudes towards others’ behavior), my doctrinal stances, and the heaven I long to go to.  Otherwise, I live the way I want to live.  I obsess over distractions and material concerns, all the while feeling ‘justified by faith’.

I am guilty of bowing before Jesus and saying, ‘King of my life I crown you now!’, and spending the rest of the week running to the Praetorium to scream out, ‘I have no king but Caesar!’  This is unacceptable.

Just because Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, does not mean that it is not for this world!!  God sent His Son to herald this coming kingdom that would bring the work of the Lord to earth.  Now that the kingdom is come, ‘Thy will be done’ is possible here just as it is in heaven.  It’s possible, if I am willing to totally crucify eddie and allow Christ to rule in my life.

What does that mean exactly?  It can’t mean that I take just enough Jesus into my life to feel superior to everyone around me, meanwhile being just as focused on the trivialities of this life as everyone else.  It can’t mean that my job is to be the morality police, running around judging everyone around me in an effort to ‘bring people to Christ’.  It can’t mean that I allow doctrinal obsessions to create blind spots for my hypocrisy to bloom.

It better mean, that I view my life through the lense of the Cross. So what does that mean?  We’ll talk about that later…

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In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul said, ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.‘

Do you find yourself thinking, ‘Yes, but…’ when you read that?  I’m not here to attack you if you did.  Honestly, I catch myself thinking that often.  I feel like I need to qualify Paul’s words.  Why is that?

Well, certainly, an increasing trend among many denominations to offer ‘cheap grace’ as a way to boost numbers and soothe consciouses does not help.  But, as I’ve said before, my faith is not supposed to exist in reaction to others, rather in reaction to Christ.  Unfortunately, for me, the culture around me can often have too much influence on me.

Let’s get down to the reality of my situation.  I don’t deserve to go to heaven.  My sins should not be forgiven.  They are shocking and terrible, and by rights I should be punished severely for them.   Somehow, despite all of this, God has chosen to grant me amnesty thru the free sacrifice of His Son.  So now I, like the Ephesians, have a place in a kingdom that I have no real right to belong to.  Paul says that this is so because God is ‘rich in mercy’.  amazing

Instead of being a reaction to others’ mistaken beliefs, God says that my worldview/relationships are to influenced by this grace.  I am to forgive as I have been forgiven(Col. 3:13).  I am to receive others as Christ received me (Romans 15:7), and I’m to do this for the glory of God.

Wow!  That last one is so powerful, I think we’ll have to devote a separate post to it.  My prayer is that I and all who read this will grow in our appreciation for the costliness of the grace extended to us.  I pray that we will also develop into people who are grace-full towards others around us.

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I would like to start out by thanking all of you who took the time to respond to my last post.  I especially appreciate the comments/emails from those who disagreed with me.  It is very important that we have such conversations, and the only way we can truly do that is to lovingly share with each other, and I think you have all done that!

I will not say that I regret writing the last post, bc it has stimulated some good conversation, and caused me to think about how I really feel about all this.  I WILL say that I did a terrible job of articulating my thoughts in that post. Also, I don’t think my thoughts were very clear in my own head, so I didn’t have much chance explaining them to others.  Most of the time I wait to write something until I’ve thought it through fairly well, but what can I say, we all make mistakes from time to time.  To the degree that my muddled thoughts were confusing or upsetting to you, I am truly sorry.

That being said, I hope that my failure to communicate will not hinder you from thinking seriously about these issues!

So, if you are still reading, allow me to share a few additional thoughts based on many of your comments.

Many of you pointed out that praying for America does not exclude other prayers, similar to praying for my family doesn’t exclude other families.  This is an excellent point and I agree with it.  Prayer was not really what I had in mind with this post, but rereading it in light of your comments, I can certainly see your point of view.  Again, this was more a failure of my writing, than it was my belief that people shouldn’t pray for the country they live in.  I hope I can clarify this further in a minute.

I think the two primary motivations for the last post are two problems that I have noticed for a long time.  They are very disturbing to me, even more so bc I can’t work out how best to deal with them in my own life.  Here they are…

1. The whole thing about ‘God Bless America’ was more about our government than individual Christians.  I believe America has lost all sense of it’s founding ideals.  When I say ‘America’ there I mean, particularly, the government.  It seems to me that a favorite tactic of the government is to use religious rhetoric to get Christians to support their activities.  This is disgusting to me.  ‘God Bless America’ is a favorite rallying cry, as if we can call on God to approve of this government.  This is not a new phenomenon.  Rome claimed the gods’ approval to ‘bring peace to the world’.  They brought peace by moving into a new area, demanding people submit and do things their way.  Any dissenters were done away with.  Any revolts were put down with brutal force.  That was the Roman definition of peace.  Hitler used religious symbology and tried to use the Bible to justify his attempted extermination of Jews.

America terms it’s assault on Iraq:  ‘Iraqi Freedom’.  Does this fit with the real motivation for our takeover?  Is freedom the real motivation any more?  If so, why don’t we go into Burma and Sudan?  I believe it is bc they have nothing to offer us.  We went to Iraq to secure oil supplies, all the while our politicos claimed we were bringing peace to the region.  Peace through bombs…that sounds like Rome to me!  It is vital that we secure that oil, bc we need it to maintain a standard of living that is not possible for the vast majority of the planet. This leads me to my second point…in a minute!

Another way to look at is would be this.  How would America feel if China began to attack and subdue other nations to secure resources for their growing empire?

The above is more to the point of what I was trying to say in the last post.  Can we endorse a government that acts this way?  Is it right for us to approve of and participate in the oppression of other people?  What path do we follow?  I suggest we follow Christ.  As I said in my last post, Jesus lived in a country obsessed with itself and it’s nationalistic dreams.  He was saddened that they lost their focus on God, and lived a life that encouraged them to rethink their priorities.  I believe this is a great example for us today.

2. How should we, as Christians, feel and act about the excesses of our country?  I know some of you struggle with this as I do.  I’m not going to prattle on too much on this, as I have talked about quite a bit in the past.  We all need to look at our lifestyle and be honest with ourselves about our needs.  In the modern world there are many ways we can share our lives and funds with the less fortunate, but we must want to do this.  I beg you, and myself, to not get distracted by our toys and pastimes!

Again, thank you all for your comments and consideration of what I wrote.  I pray that you consider what I have written above and again, let me know what you think about it.

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What do we mean when we say this oft heard phrase?  Especially since 9/11, I hear many Christians say this, but have they really thought about what they are saying?

I guess what I’m saying is, by any quantifiable standard, America is the most ‘blessed’ nation the planet has ever seen!  Materially we have more than our share.  We are blessed to have a say in our government.  Education opportunities are plentiful for all people. What more could we possibly be asking for?! ‘No. no. No!’ you say, ‘Ed, you just don’t get it!’  Fair enough.  If that’s not what we mean, what do we mean?

Think about the phrase: ‘God bless America’.  Why do we say that?  Why not  ‘God bless all people’?  Do we see ourselves as the new Israel?  Are we saying that we are God’s chosen nation?  There is much evidence to show that many American Christians think just that.  This prospect is so disturbing to me, and in such conflict with the New Testament, that I’ll just leave it at that and hope that’s not what we are thinking!  I must say that, at the least, it demonstrates a narrow-minded look at the world that fails to take into account the billions of people in the world who aren’t Americans, but who are people made in the image of the living God!

Another way to think about it is; does it fit what we know about God to expect Him to continue to bless America?  By this stage it is clear that America, as a whole, has chosen a path that is contrary to the will of God.  America has taken it’s blessings, and spent them on itself.  America is now concerned less about truth and justice, and more about getting what we want and protecting ‘our interests’.  We attack others for selfish purposes and then have the nerve to name these offensives things like ‘Iraqi Freedom’, as if any of this was about freeing people!  None of this seems to fit God’s ways.  These are the ways of Babylon and Rome.  It is the way of Israel and Judah as they increasingly became focused on pleasing themselves and protecting their pleasures.

It’s worth our consideration that in so doing, these nations incurred God’s wrath, primarily because they exploited the poor and oppressed the defenseless. God was pretty clear about His feelings on these matters.  He said to His chosen people,

“But you have eyes and heart
only for your dishonest gain,
   for shedding innocent blood,
and for practicing oppression and violence.”  ~Jeremiah 22:17

Don’t like that one?  How about something from the New Testament?

“Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.  Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.”  ~James 5:1fl

What makes us think that God will view America’s behavior any differently?  Let me be clear, I’m thankful that I was born and raised in a free country.  I think there are many great things about the USA.  But let’s not get patriotism and faith mixed up here.  I pray for our leaders, but I do not have much faith in them.

My allegiance is to Christ.  Jesus lived in a time and place of rampant nationalism that was every bit as fervent as anything in America.  How did He act?  He mourned Israel’s lost focus, and He sought to teach them a better way.  Maybe we should think about that a bit.

What if American Christians began to follow Christ and try to teach our country another way?  What if, instead of draping a flag over the cross, we stood up to our own government?  What if, instead of thinking the answer was playing the game of politics(Jesus didn’t see that as an answer), we demonstrated how self-sacrifice and love are an answer to the problems we face?

It’s safe to say that this won’t be the most popular thing that I’ve ever written, but I implore you to consider these words.  I also welcome your feedback, criticisms, and any other sorts of comments you wish to share.

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As we move a bit further into Acts 2, we come upon the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit.  There is a might wind, fire, and the apostles are able to speak strange ‘tongues’ that allow others to hear them in their native language.  Have you ever asked yourself why God did this?  Again, I’ve read this chapter a thousand times, and heard numerous sermons/classes on it, but hadn’t considered it this way.

So why did God express the Spirit in this way?  Why all the theatrics?  and particularly, why the miracle of speaking in tongues??

Let’s go back to our desire to see the Bible as a whole.  It is not really a bunch of books, chapters, and verses.  It is God telling His story to His people.  So how does this fit into the story?

We spoke last time about the connection between the giving of the Law(old covenant) at Sinai, and the giving of the Spirit(new covenant) at Zion.  Let’s continue with that connection.  At Sinai, God spoke to His people with thunder, and lightening and a cloud descending from heaven.  At Zion He comes with a mighty wind and tongues of fire.  We can certainly see the connection, and if we can see it, rest assured that the Jews of that time saw it!

I think we forget how immersed first century (sometimes called ’second temple’) Jews were in the story of God and His people.  They studied it and lived it.  They were always conscious of the relationship they shared with God.  Might be worthwhile for us to consider this for ourselves, but it’s also key for us to remember that they would have picked up on many of the allusions to OT themes/stories that we might miss in Christ’s and other NT writers’ teachings.

But what about the speaking in tongues?  I have thought about this quite a bit.  The two dominant languages of the day for Jews was Hebrew and Greek.  It’s likely almost everyone there would have had at least a passable understanding of one or both languages.  Two of the apostles could have spoken in these two dominant languages, and everything would have been fine.

In this miracle, I think God was trying to demonstrate something about Himself and His new covenant.  By translating the message into the native language of the hearer, God shows something He has repeatedly demonstrated; He will come to us!  God doesn’t make you come to Him.  He is going to come to you, and bring His message of peace in the language you most easily understand.  He wants to make clear to everyone that this message is for all, and He will go to any length to save people.

At Babel, God confounded the languages of men to frustrate their efforts and limit their effectiveness.  On Pentecost, He breaks throught this barrier to unite people under His Son.

Everytime you read this account of the tongues, remember the urgency God has for communicating the good news of His Son’s victory!  Remember that we worship a God who comes to us!

Do we have that same urgency and desire to reach out to those around us?

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