Posted on

The New Conversion

A few months ago, I mentioned that one of the best books I read last year was Gordon Smith’s Transforming Conversion. While the book was fairly in depth, his main idea was simple enough to grasp… we – especially those who identify in some way with evangelical Christianity in North America – should give some serious thought to what it means for a person to come to faith. The way we talk about conversion is lopsided at best, and at times can even be detrimental for a person’s spiritual development and self-understanding.

I could share various examples of what I mean, but I mainly wanted to point you to an article by Smith that recently appeared on Christianity Today’s website. It is entitled “The New Conversion,” and as you might guess it is more of the same. The benefit for you is that it is article-length versus book-length.

It [would] not be an overstatement to say that evangelicals are experiencing a “sea change”—a paradigm shift—in their understanding of conversion and redemption, a shift that includes the way in which they think about the salvation of God, the nature and mission of the church, and the character of religious experience. Although there is no one word to capture where evangelicals are going in this regard, there is a word that captures what they are leaving behind: revivalism.

Read it all HERE.

Posted on

Four (Good Things) for Friday

Remember when Martha Stewart used to share little tidbits of advice called “Good Things?”

Yeah, me neither.

In honor of Good Friday, four Good things for your enjoyment.

1) A Good Song // Just found out this week that I like Bombay Bicycle Club. Who knew?

Bombay Bicycle Club – How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep

2) A Good Video // My Good friend, Jacob, shared a video that I thought was fascinating. I love watching people do stuff they both love and are Good at. Predictably, they chose the most provocative image from the video to “sell” it.

3) A Good Book // I’ve mentioned once or twice that there is a something of a controversy surrounding the Christian doctrine of justification. I’m pretty certain not many of you (nor myself for that matter) are losing any sleep over this, but some might say that “justification” lies pretty close to the heart of the Christian message. Therefore, tinkering around with it, or having the appearance of playing fast and loose with it, does tend to ruffle some feathers.

I’ve been reading a book entitled, Justification: Five Views, and it is Good. The title couldn’t be more clear… Five different views on justification. Each view is written up by an “expert” representing that view. And every other contributor writes a response to the essay. It is as close to a theological cage-match as you’re going to find. In the introduction, the editors do a fine job of mapping the current landscape of the debate. Of course, a book on this fundamental doctrine couldn’t be more appropriate for Good Friday.

4) A Good Maundy Thursday Service // Yesterday, our church had four brief services to commemorate the Last Supper and point us towards Resurrection Sunday.

20120406-164927.jpg
@fellowshipnorth

My Good friend, Sarabeth, shares some of what went down at those services. This has been a rich Lenten season for me, and I couldn’t be more ready to celebrate our risen Lord.

Posted on

civilized vices

Excerpted from “The Cross and the Cellar” by Morton T. Kelsey (as found in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter)

Let us look at some of the people who brought Jesus of Nazareth to crucifixion. They were not monsters, but ordinary men and women like you and me.

Pilate receives most of the blame for Jesus’ death, and yet Pilate didn’t want to crucify the man. Why did Pilate condemn Jesus? Because Pilate was a coward. He cared more about his comfortable position than he did about justice. He didn’t have the courage to stand for what he knew was right. It was because of this relatively small flaw in Pilate’s character that Jesus died on a cross. Whenever you and are willing to sacrifice someone else for our own benefit, whenever we don’t have the courage to stand up for what we see is right, we step into the same course that Pilate took.

And Caiaphas, was he such a monster? Far from it. He was the admired and revered religious leader of the most religious people in that ancient world. He was the High Priest. His personal habits were impeccable. He was a devout and sincerely religious man. Why did he seek to have Jesus condemned? He did it for the simple reason that he was too rigid. He thought that he had to protect God from this man, thought he had to protect the Jewish faith, and so he said: “It is good for one man to die instead of a nation being destroyed.” Caiaphas’s essential flaw was that he thought he had the whole truth. People who have fought religious wars, those who have persecuted in the name of religion, have followed in his footsteps. Those who put their creeds above mercy and kindness and love, walk there even now.

Why did Judas betray his master? He wasn’t interested in the thirty pieces of silver, at least not primarily. Judas had wanted Jesus to call upon heavenly powers, to take control of the situation and throw the Romans out of Palestine. When he failed to do this, Judas no longer wanted anything to do with him. Judas’ fault was that he couldn’t wait. When we can’t wait and want to push things through, when we think we can accomplish a noble end by human means, we are just like Judas.

Then there was the nameless carpenter who made the cross. He was a skilled workmen. He knew full well what the purpose of that cross was. If you questioned him he probably would have said: “But I am a poor man who must make a living. If other men use it for ill, is it my fault?” So say all of us who pursue jobs which add nothing to human welfare or which hurt some people. Does the work I do aid or hinder human beings? Are we cross makers for our modern world? There are many, many of them.

These were the things that crucified Jesus on Friday in Passover week A.D. 29. They were not wild viciousness or sadistic brutality or naked hate, but the civilized vices of cowardice, bigotry, impatience, timidity, falsehood, indifference – vices all of us share, the very vices which crucify human beings today.

Posted on

Poem for Friday

Over the past couple days, I had the opportunity to attend a summit on “Racial Healing and Equity in the American South” hosted by the Clinton School‘s Center on Community Philanthropy. While there is much that could be shared from my experience there, I’m simply including a poem that I heard for the first time today. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that poetry isn’t on my short list of things that I tend to appreciate, but something about this one struck a chord.

“Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races” by Lorna Dee Cervantes

In my land there are no distinctions.
The barbed wire politics of oppression
have been torn down long ago. The only reminder
of past battles, lost or won, is a slight
rutting in the fertile fields.

In my land
people write poems about love,
full of nothing but contented childlike syllables.
Everyone reads Russian short stories and weeps.
There are no boundaries.
There is no hunger, no
complicated famine or greed.

I am not a revolutionary.
I don’t even like political poems.
Do you think I can believe in a war between races?
I can deny it. I can forget about it
when I’m safe,
living on my own continent of harmony
and home, but I am not
there.

I believe in revolution
because everywhere the crosses are burning,
sharp-shooting goose-steppers round every corner,
there are snipers in the schools…
(I know you don’t believe this.
You think this is nothing
but faddish exaggeration. But they
are not shooting at you.)

I’m marked by the color of my skin.
The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly.
They are aiming at my children.
These are facts.

Let me show you my wounds: my stumbling mind, my
“excuse me” tongue, and this
nagging preoccupation
with the feeling of not being good enough.

These bullets bury deeper than logic.
Racism is not intellectual.
I cannot reason these scars away.
Outside my door
there is a real enemy
who hates me.

I am a poet
who yearns to dance on rooftops,
to whisper delicate lines about joy
and the blessings of human understanding.

I try. I go to my land, my tower of words and
bolt the door, but the typewriter doesn’t fade out
the sounds of blasting and muffled outrage.
My own days bring me slaps on the face.

Every day I am deluged with reminders
that this is not
my land
and this is my land.

I do not believe in the war between races
but in this country
there is war.

Posted on

Four (quick picks) for Friday

No uninspiring graphic.

No banal commentary.

Just music.

Delta Spirit – California
[audio:Delta%20Spirit%20-%20California.mp3]

Carolina Chocolate Drops – Country Girl[audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8450927/Music/FourForFriday/Carolina%20Chocolate%20Drops%20-%20Country%20Girl.mp3]

Shearwater – You As You Were [audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8450927/Music/FourForFriday/Shearwater%20-%20You%20As%20You%20Were.mp3]

Gungor – This Is Not The End [audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8450927/Music/FourForFriday/Gungor%20-%20This%20Is%20Not%20The%20End.mp3]

Later.

Posted on

Four (from around the web) for Friday

Today’s edition of Four for Friday is a little gathering up of some stuff from around the intranets…

1) In about a week, I’ll be heading west with eighty friends for a little organized madness in God’s country. This video is inspiring me to keep my skis on the snow as much as possible.

2) Jonas David – Let Me Live // Time to get my mellow on.

3) As you are listening to the above song, take a moment to read some thoughts on a “sanctified imagination” by Kevin Vanhoozer.

My concern is that many Evangelicals are suffering from malnourished imaginations.

…

Reading is a kind of strength-training that flexes the muscles of our imagination.

…

I need a sanctified imagination as I seek each day to improvise my life to the glory of God.

Of course, the whole piece is worth reading.

4) You probably remember the magazine National Geographic. I used to love flipping through the pages and looking at all of the stunning photographs.

As all of life has been shifting toward digital, there is a chance that this venerable publication has become something of yesteryear. I don’t know how the magazine is fairing (I haven’t seen one in years), but they seem to have found their niche online. They are still doing what they have always done well… putting incredible photographs out there for the world. My favorite feature they have is their “Photo of the Day.”

Bonus…

For those of you who came looking for tunes, I feel a little bad about short-changing you. Here’s a little extra something.

Tim Fite – Joyriding

Posted on

good story, tell it again

Ok, the previous two posts were more or less introductory so that I could get to what I consider to be the really interesting stuff. I’m sure you are just like me and you lie awake at night wondering “How would the Abraham stories have been received by the people as Moses was composing them?” Or maybe another way of asking it, “Why did Moses tell these stories to these people in the way that he did?”

Let’s play make believe. Pretend you are one of the Hebrews who has been freed from Egyptian captivity and now you are wandering around the Sinai Peninsula. As you are moving from place to place, Moses is writing and sharing stories of your ancestors. Among those stories, perhaps the most famous of them is Abram’s call to leave his home and follow God into a new land.

You don’t have to be the ancient equivalent of a Hebrew rocket scientist to start putting two and two together. You (and frankly all your fellow travelers) might think, “Hmmm… leave one place to follow God to another? Sounds familiar. Isn’t this exactly what we are doing right now?” Hold that thought.

Then come the promises – great nation, great blessing, great name. Let’s take them one by one.

I will make you into a great nation – Becoming a “nation” is tricky business in the Bible. It is about both having a number of people and having a land. The Hebrews may have been numerous, but they didn’t have any land that they could call their own. When we are introduced to Abraham in Genesis, he was a man without a nation. When we are introduced to not-yet-Israel in Exodus they are also nation-less. Both Abraham and Israel were on their way to becoming a nation. They were both looking for their place in the world.

I will bless you – In some ways, this is just an extension of the promise of nationhood. However, it is more than just blessing in sort of a bland generic way. When they find themselves in the land, they will have fruitful lives. Shalom (or peace… or wholeness) is what is being promised. They will have a life that radiates the goodness of being in the life giving presence of the one they know as Yahweh. Again, imagine a disenfranchised people who are discouraged and hopeless. The Abrahamic blessing is a powerful reminder that this isn’t the end of them. In fact, it is just the beginning.

I will make your name great – When I was teaching on this passage, I made the observation that this promise isn’t as much about being famous as it is about legacy. But what I didn’t get around to was discussing the importance of naming. When one “names” another in ancient cultures (and maybe to some extent today as well) it is a sign of the namer’s authority, or dominion, or ownership.

Take for example, the retelling of Adam naming animals in Genesis 2. This isn’t simply a cute scene in which he is sort of randomly passing out names. Cow, bird, iguana… The point is that through Adam’s naming, he is demonstrating dominion or rulership. Likewise, when God says that he’ll make Abram’s name “great,” that is loaded with overtones of rulership. In giving him a new name – Abraham – God is in essence saying, “You are mine. You belong to me. You have a new identity that is defined by my choosing you and naming you.”

Right about now, we (as imaginary Hebrews) are beginning to pick up on some not so subtle clues that this isn’t just a story about Abraham. Can you think of another “person” who God gave a new name? There are a few, but I’m thinking specifically about Jacob. During one episode in which Jacob and God re-enact the WWF out in the countryside, God gives him the name Israel, which means something like “wrestles or struggles with God.” Maybe not the name they would have chosen for themselves, but that’s precisely the point. They didn’t get to choose their name; God did the naming.

Once again, imagine you are “Israel,” or perhaps you are “struggling with God” out in the wilderness. As Moses is sharing these stories, they are reminded that God has named them. They belong to God. And he has made promises to Abraham, and therefore to them as well, that they will become a nation in the fullest sense. They will have a land. They will be blessed. And perhaps, most importantly they will be given a new identity by the One who names.

What God’s Chosen People are discovering as they listen to Moses retell the time-worn tales is that those stories are as much about them as they are about Abraham. It doesn’t mean that Abraham’s story isn’t true. It does mean that Moses is perhaps making a point of highlighting certain aspects of Abraham’s story to draw lines connecting Abraham’s story to theirs.

And now fast forward one-thousand years to the time shortly after the exile, and imagine how these stories might have been heard by the nation who “struggles with God” all over again. The same stories and the same promises are re-appropriated for God’s people in a new time.

Then maybe fast forward another two thousand years, and we are no longer in the realm of imagination. Our own reality is that we all too often find ourselves “struggling with God.” And like all God-wrestlers over the centuries, we too are longing for our place in the world, a desire for blessing manifested in Shalom wholeness, and a new identity given to us by the great covenant-Maker.

I think I’m about done now. There is lots that could be said about the fourth promise, “You will be a blessing … to all peoples,” but you quite simply can’t say all that there is to say.

Posted on

Who wrote the Bible?

So yesterday, I attempted to discuss the whos, whens and whys of Genesis’s genesis, but I didn’t get very far. And by that I mean that I got nowhere. In this post, I’m hoping to address the “who” and the “when/where” issue. You sort of have to tackle them together, because they go hand in hand. Let’s start with the who question though.

Of course, an obvious answer would be that God is the author. That’s why we call it “God’s Word.” However, how he wrote it is a bit complicated. While possibly a surprise to some, it doesn’t appear that God himself dusted off some parchment and sharpened a quill and set himself to the busy task of penning Genesis through Revelation, only to drop the completed tome from the skies – gold leaf pages, leather bound, and in English no less – perfect in every way.

While we may have preferred to receive the Scriptures in that way, for whatever reason God chose human beings – fallible, limited, frail, time and culture bound people – to write and compile those things that He wanted to communicate to humanity. I’m not saying that Scripture itself necessarily shares in all the shortcomings of humanity, but it would also be a mistake to say that the Bible is devoid of human characteristics. Utilizing ordinary people wouldn’t necessarily have been my way of going about things if I were God, but apparently he has ideas of his own. I suppose to be a Christian means that I am to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

But back to the matter of which person wrote Genesis, as with all things Bible this is debated. The most conservative view of authorship of which I’m aware has Moses “writing” the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). He certainly would have had the available time – forty years to be exact – as he and the nascent nation of Israel wandered around the Sinai wilderness.

Other views would tend to see the Pentateuch (and much of the Old Testament) as having undergone an editing process over some centuries and not coming into its final form until a few hundred years prior to Jesus’ birth. In this case, it might be more accurate to describe the “author” less as a writer and more of a compiler.

While I’m not necessarily put off by either of these options, some people get very nervous with the idea that the Scriptures may have undergone “editing” or revising. For some reason, we seem to think that the only means by which God could have faithfully communicated his Word to us is if there had been an unbiased ancient journalist present at the time gathering first hand observations. The facts and nothing but the facts. One can be certain that this was not how the Scriptures came about.

My own opinion is that the formation of the canon was a highly complex process that involved first-hand accounts, stories passed down over generations that were both oral and written, all of it re-worked in such a way to have a coherent message that spoke to the contemporary situation in which the writer/compiler found him or herself. It seems plausible (even likely) to me that much of what we have in Genesis through Deuteronomy was initially drafted by Moses himself, but that perhaps it isn’t until sometime around the Exile (or more likely the return from exile) that it came into the form that we more or less have today.

Of course, something like what I have just described must be the case, at least in part, in even the most conservative of scenarios. Moses wasn’t born until the Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt (i.e. Exodus 1), so for him to have written Genesis would have meant that he was strongly dependent on an oral tradition that had been passed on over centuries. The Pentateuch suggests that Moses and God frequently had some one-on-one time so it is possible he got the info he needed in some of those gab sessions. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t seem likely that he could have written Deuteronomy 34, since it records his own death. Someone else (Joshua?) must have finished things up for him.

Right? Right.

Ok, tomorrow we do some finishing up of our own and turn to the upshot on all of this. Namely, what does any of this have to do with the way we understand Genesis 12 and 15.

Posted on

Covenant Revisted

BORING BIBLE POST WARNING: What follows is interesting to less than one percent of people who go to church, which in turn means that a fraction of a percent of people on the planet will care about what I’m talking about here. Who am I kidding? This is a post written by me… to me. I will attempt to make it interesting, but should you read any further than this just know that you have been forewarned.

Recently, I gave a message on the covenant God made with Abraham as we see it take shape in Genesis 12 and 15. This sermon was part of a teaching series our church is currently working through called “WORD.” Over the span of fifteen weeks, we are hoping to convey the overarching storyline of the Bible – to give people the big picture of the Bible – and not just some piecemeal stories from here and there.

And now I need to make a confession…

I don’t like sermons.

This is a problem, because I give a lot of them.

Now when I say “I don’t like sermons,” I don’t mean it in the way that your average organized religion basher might. To the extent that I am able to prayerfully, accurately, and compellingly communicate the ways God has spoken to us through his word, I love it. In fact, there are few things that I enjoy more than teaching out of the scriptures.

And still, I find preaching a sermon to be inherently frustrating. This frustration stems not from having a difficult time coming up with things to say, but rather for the opposite reason. I always have more that I would like to say than time permits. To those who patiently endure having to sit under my teaching on a regular basis, this perhaps comes as something of a surprise. Like most preachers, I can have a tendency to “go long.” So the idea that I might have more to say is not only unfathomable, it’s horrific.

The problem is that I don’t think I’ve done a topic justice unless I’ve said everything that there is to say about that subject. The following quote says it well…

Every good sermon is heresy when judged for all the important truths left untreated.

Fred Craddock, found in Eugene Lowry, The Homiletical Plot,  p. xiv

Preaching on God’s covenant with Abraham was no exception. My approach was to take the text at more or less face value and teach it all as straight forward narrative. This means that I made attempts to describe what the events surrounding God’s calling and covenanting with Abr(ah)am would have looked like for someone who had a front row seat of the whole affair. I generally think that is probably the best approach, as I’m guessing other preachers would agree.

However, these stories aren’t quite so cut and dry. There is much more going on in these texts. I don’t pretend to think for even a moment that I am fully aware of all the “much more” going on or could explain it even if I did. But I’m going to take a crack at trying to share the more that I do understand.

I can already tell that this post (not unlike my sermons) is going to stretch out some. And so to spare you from a narcoleptic episode, I’m going to break things up a bit. Here’s what we’ll consider in the next post or two:

1) who wrote the material we find in Genesis.

2) when and where was it written

3) which will lead us to consider the way these stories function as they are received by various (reading/listening) communities throughout history.

I know you can’t wait.

Posted on

Four (feat.) for Friday

I’m sort of a sucker for the “feat.” in a song title that means one musical artist has agreed to work with another. Here are a few that I’ve come across recently. I realize that for some the definition of “artist” is being stretched beyond credibility here. So be it.

Greg Laswell – Come Back Down (feat. Sara Bareilles) // Nice collaboration here.

Skrillex – Summit (feat. Ellie Goulding) // It is what it is.

The Beatards – Get Lite (feat. CSWS) // I’m sort of slow, but is there a chance that these young men are talking about using mood enhancing substances?

Ane Brun – Worship (feat. Jose Gonzalez) // I enjoy most all of the music that Mr. Gonzalez makes. This song is no exception. Video is sort of interesting.