Noted by Chaplain Mike.

I’ve been distracted lately from my reading of Eugene Peterson’s new book, Practice Resurrection, a conversation about spiritual maturity from Ephesians.

Tonight, I came back to it, and found this story. Sublime illustration.

Two friends, Fred and Cheryl, went to Haiti twenty-five years ago to pick up a child they had adopted. Addie was five years old. Her parents had been killed in a traffic accident that left her without a family. As she walked across the tarmac to board the plane, the tiny orphan reached up and slipped her hands into the hands of her new parents whom she had just met. Later they told us of this “birth” moment, how the innocent, fearless trust expressed in that physical act of grasping their hands seemed almost as miraculous as the times their two sons slipped out of the birth canal 15 and 13 years earlier.

That evening, back home in Arizona, they sat down to their first supper together with their new daughter. There was a platter of pork chops and a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. After the first serving, the two teenage boys kept refilling their plates. Soon the pork chops had disappeared and the potatoes were gone. Addie had never seen so much food on one table in her whole life. Her eyes were big as she watched her new brothers, Thatcher and Graham, satisfy their ravenous teenage appetites.

Fred and Cheryl noticed that Addie had become very quiet and realized that something was wrong—agitation…bewilderment…insecurity? Cheryl guessed that it was the disappearing food. She suspected that because Addie had grown up hungry, when food was gone from the table she might be thinking would be a day or more before there was more to eat. Cheryl had guessed right. She took Addie’s hand and led her to the bread drawer and pulled it out, showing her a back-up of three loaves. She took her to the refrigerator, opened the door, and showed her the bottles of milk and orange juice, the fresh vegetables, jars of jelly and jam and peanut butter, a carton of eggs, and a package of bacon. She took her to the pantry with its bins of potatoes, onions, and squash, and the shelves of canned goods—tomatoes and peaches and pickles. She opened the freezer and showed Addie three or four chickens, a few packages of fish, and two cartons of ice cream. All the time she was reassuring Addie that there was lots of food in the house, that no matter how much Thatcher and Graham ate and how fast they ate it, there was a lot more where that came from, she would never go hungry again.

Cheryl didn’t just tell her that she would never go hungry again. She showed her what was in those drawers and behind those doors, named the meats and vegetables, placed them in her hands. It was enough. Food was there, whether she could see it or not. Her brothers were no longer rivals at the table. She was home. She would never go hungry again.

My wife and I were told that story twenty-five years ago. Ever since, whenever I read and pray this prayer of Paul’s [Eph 3:14-21], I think of Cheryl gently leading Addie by the hand through a food tour of the kitchen and pantry, reassuring her of the “boundless riches” (Eph 3:8) and “all the fullness” (3:19) inherent in the household in which she now lives.

Practicing the Resurrection, pp. 159-160

And that’s how a pastor teaches and illustrates the Scriptures.

The Middle East is front page news again this week, and agreement and peace are nowhere in sight. Watch the following video and get a whole new angle on the story.

Is this man and the movement he represents the ones you want influencing the Prime Minister of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East? It’s happening.

Pastor Hagee in Jerusalem 3/8/10 (Part II) from Max J Blumenthal on Vimeo.

Here’s a Jewish report and opinion on the “new breed of Christian Zionists” who are not content to wait on God’s timing to see the future come to pass, but who feel that they are divinely called to move the hands of the prophetic clock: http://zeek.forward.com/articles/116518/.

Culture war Christianity was scary enough, and IMHO, deeply harmful to the true cause of Christ in the world. What shall we say about this radical combination of prosperity gospel and dispensationalism being applied to foreign policy?

I say it’s ludicrous theology, and dangerous intervention by careless zealots.

From Chaplain Mike.

David Hansen has been one of my surest pastoral guides. His book, The Art of Pastoring: Ministry without All the Answers, is in my view one of the wisest manuals for contemplative ministry available, especially for those in smaller churches.

Today, I want to highlight the main concept in another of Hansen’s books, Long Wandering Prayer: An Invitation to Walk with God.

I write this primarily in the light of what our friend Michael Spencer is going through these days, and the inevitable questions that arise about how to pray when we find ourselves facing such circumstances.

Whether you are thinking of Michael, or facing some overwhelming situation in your own life, if you are anything like me, you may be finding it hard to know how to talk to God at a time like this.

Let me introduce you to Hansen’s approach to prayer; one that I find utterly human, authentic, and true to life as it really is.

“Long wandering prayer,” Hansen calls it.

Long wandering prayer involves leaving our normal environment for the express purpose of spending many hours alone with God. It involves walking, or at least moving, and stopping whenever we want, to consider a lily for as long as we desire. Long wandering prayer uses the fact that our minds wander as an advantage to prayer rather than as a disadvantage. In long wandering prayer we recognize that what we want to pray about may not be what God wants us to pray about. Our obsessive drive to control our minds in the presence of God, that is, to pray about one thing or stick to one list, may be a form of hiding from God. In this kind of prayer we recognize the wandering mind as a precious resource for complex and startling dialogue with God.

Pastor Hansen’s “method” grew out of his own experience in ministry, spending long periods of time skateboarding as a youth pastor, taking long walks through snowstorms and down tree-lined lanes in New England, hiking through open lands in Montana and fly-fishing in its rivers and streams, chasing a golf ball on fairways in the Midwest—all the while, thinking about life and ministry, having conversation with God, working through the matters wandering around in his mind.

My morning devotions are a matter of discipline. My long prayers are a matter of appetite. I don’t pray all day unless I want to. I go out and pray long when I am thirsty for God. I pray all day when I need to exchange my anxious thoughts for the peace that passes understanding, when I want to know the truth that sets free, when I am out on a limb and the branch is cracking, when I feel lonely and I want the presence of the Beloved. The Spirit creates the desire in my soul, and I follow my will. God’s open ear is irresistible to me because he has given me a new heart. God’s Spirit speaks to my new heart, compelling me to pray lengthy, bitter prayers of repentance for the old Adam still at work within me. One day of prayer sounds like a psalm of praise, another sounds like Romans 7. Most days sound like a little of both.

Speaking of psalms, it is in the Book of Psalms that David Hansen finds the best examples of this kind of prayer. Observing the variety of emotions that may run through a single psalm, and the way a psalmist may address God, himself, his friends, and his enemies all in one composition, he concludes:

Obviously psalm praying is much more than just talking to God in the second person singular. Psalm praying appears to be a running inner dialogue in the presence of God. Many of the psalms appear to be poetic compositions of hours alone wrestling with God and self and even with enemies and loved ones.

The world is obviously no friend to grace when it comes to prayer and contemplation like this. It requires that we let go of deeply ingrained cultural biases toward activism, self-management, productivity, and efficiency. We must refuse to short-circuit the process of relating to God through extended, in-depth conversation that involves listening, questioning, pondering, wondering, speculating, expressing opinions and feelings, arguing, confessing, disputing, and coming to agreement.

There is so much more to be said. May God use promptings like those in Hansen’s book to raise up a whole generation of contemplatives, who truly walk with God in extended conversation—long wandering prayer.

From Chaplain Mike.

OK, so Mark Driscoll dissed “Avatar” calling it, “the most demonic, satanic movie I’ve ever seen.”

And Christianity Today didn’t like it, especially when he pointed to their review as an example of contemporary evangelicalism’s inability to exercise discernment.

This post is not about that.

For the record, I have not seen Avatar…yet. Though I plan to.

And that’s actually what got me thinking.

My big spiritual awakening happened when I was 17 years old. Within a couple of years, I was moving into ministry and had a conversation about going to the movies with my pastor one day. He was strictly old school. “I would never feel comfortable walking into a movie theater,” he told me. I don’t think he even thought much about the content of any particular movie; for him, the theater was simply a part of the “world” that ministers (and serious Christians) avoided.

The Bible college I attended had a clear “no movies” policy. Around that time, I recall the controversy when the Billy Graham Association released “The Hiding Place” in theaters. Schools like ours had to hold special meetings and consult with their constituents before granting a special exemption for students to go out and see it.

I know Christians for whom “Chariots of Fire” was the first film they ever saw in a cinema. Many of them were looking over their shoulders the whole time.

When Blockbuster and other stores began the video rental explosion, I remember hearing a young Joe Stowell, then president of Moody Bible Institute, tell a room full of pastors, “I don’t see how any Christian can walk around a video store and not feel extremely uncomfortable.”

(BTW, when I started following Christ seriously, television was also an issue for some believers. Our Bible college had one TV, in a public area. My future wife’s family did not have TV. When we got married, we didn’t have a TV for many years. Frankly, I’ve only had satellite for 5-6 years now, and part of that time we’ve had it turned it off. My kids laugh at us today for the pitiful 20″ screen on which we watch our shows.)

I don’t say any of this proudly or to make the point that the current evangelical concept of “engaging culture” is wrongheaded.

It’s just another one of those times when I am prompted to pause along the road of my journey, look back, and marvel at how things have changed with regard to Christian attitudes.

Hey, we live in a day when the nation’s leading evangelical Christian magazine criticizes a pastor for negatively evaluating the spiritual content of a Hollywood movie!

Does that make anyone else shake their head?

I am not now nor have I ever been a separatist in spirit. Even during the years when our exposure to things like movies and TV and, to a lesser extent, popular music was limited, I never thought it was absolutely necessary for us to approach things that way, nor did I suggest that others must live by a set of rules with regard to participation in pop culture. Our life was focused on other priorities, and such entertainments just weren’t as important. But I have always loved movies and TV and popular music, and have thought it silly for Christians to quarantine themselves from them as from the plague.

Separatism is certainly not the dominant evangelical view today. In the video that has gained so much attention, it was interesting to hear Mark Driscoll defend himself against the charge of being a “fundamentalist” with regard to involvement in culture. No “cutting-edge” Christian today wants that label. When some of you read what I’ve written here, you will probably think I must be some ancient geezer who grew up in the days when we hauled water from the stream and went to town in the horse and buggy.

Not at all. I’m a typical American baby boomer, who ate dinner in front of the TV. I went to the movies from the time I was a baby. Rock ‘n roll and I grew up together. For much of my life, I’ve enjoyed pop culture as much as anyone I know.

However, I remember when even my parents, who were absolutely not fundamentalist Christians, wouldn’t let me see “Bonnie and Clyde” because of its subversive tone and explicit violence. I recall them coming home early from certain movies because of the immorality and amorality that was depicted.

It’s not just evangelicalism that has become more “liberal” with regard to feeding on the offerings of popular culture and entertainment. The world has changed. And followers of Christ have changed with it.

So, for me, the fact that Mark Driscoll would have a negative review of “Avatar” isn’t the interesting thing here. It’s the new world of conversation the Christian community in America now inhabits.

From Chaplain Mike.

A difficult conversation today brought to mind Luther’s Small Catechism and what it has to say about the Eighth Commandment:

The Eighth Commandment.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

What does this mean?

Answer.
We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.

Our Open Mic question today is a practical one:

How do you think your life and mine would be different if we lived by this standard? What would it be like in Christian congregations? How might our relationships with our neighbors and the world in general change?

I know the first thing I would do—cry out to God for mercy, using Isaiah’s prayer: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips…” (Isa 6.5)

Your turn.

You might be surprised to find a positive, affirming article about evangelicals in the secular press, but Nicholas D. Kristoff of the New York Times wrote an op-ed this weekend called “Learning from the Sin of Sodom” that praises evangelicals such as World Vision for the excellent work they are doing to meet real needs around the world.

In an addendum to the piece, Kristoff summarized his main point by saying this:

There’s a tendency for liberals to devote lots of ink to decrying conservative Christians, because of their positions on social issues. I disagree strongly with typical evangelical positions on gay marriage, abortion, abstinence only education — but I also think that liberals don’t appreciate the impact of the arrival of evangelicals into humanitarian space or give sufficient credit for that change.

Thank God for rightful recognition given. Perhaps this is a positive sign that the evangelical movement has turned a corner, leaving further behind failed culture war strategies and focusing more on serving the needy and working for justice. At any rate, others are watching and are impressed by the quality of missional work being done by Christians.

In the conclusion to his op-ed, Kristoff challenges secularists and religious alike, encouraging us to abandon some of our ingrained distrust of the other in order to work more in partnership for the common good.

If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.

Guiness says, “In many ways, the new atheists are partly created by the Religious Right. You can see that in America there is no vehement repudiation of religion until recently. In Europe, the atheism is a reaction to corrupt state churches. Here, you’ve never had that until the rise of the Religious Right.” Part of the reaction against religion, he argues, stems from the poor ways people of faith think about science.

What do you think? To what extent is culture war Christianity, including its commitment to views like “creation science,” responsible for the rise of reaction against religion in the U.S. and an impassioned public atheist movement?

I anticipate some strong opinions. Please keep the conversation civil and respectful.

Chaplain Mike continues his response to this new book.

We’re back after a break to resume our introduction to and consideration of Eugene Peterson’s latest book. Practice Resurrection is a theological conversation on growing to maturity in Christ, based on a study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

In concluding his introduction to the epistle, Peterson draws attention to two texts that bring out Paul’s message.

The first is Ephesians 4.1: “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life [walk] worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” The key word is “worthy.” The word is a metaphor, referring to a balancing scale. Situated as it is, right at the pivot point in the letter, this picture-word describes the exact balance point at which we find wholeness and maturity in Christ. “When God’s calling and our walking fit, we are growing up in Christ.”

The second text is Psalm 68, a passage Paul quotes in chapter 4 of his letter. Peterson writes about how Paul adapts this text to describe Jesus, ascending as King to heaven, receiving gifts of worship (which is the emphasis of the psalm), but then giving gifts to his people as well (Paul’s emphasis). This is extremely significant for Paul, for by placing the emphasis here,

Paul lays out the conditions in which we grow up, namely, in a profusion of gifts: “When he ascended on high…he gave gifts to his people.” The ascended Jesus, Jesus at the right hand of the Father, Christ the King, launched his rule by giving gifts, gifts that turn out to be ways in which we participate in his kingly, gospel rule. This kingdom life is a life of entering more and more into a world of gifts, and then, as we are able, using them in a working relationship with our Lord.

This is one of the best sentences I have read in a long time: “This kingdom life is a life of entering more and more into a world of gifts…” Growing up in Christ is a process of continual discovery, an ongoing exploration and appropriation of the grace of God. We have been brought into a new creation, filled with wondrous benefits and blessings, God-soaked through and through. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1.3).

These two texts complement each other. Specifically, Psalm 68 grounds Ephesians 4.1 and its balance metaphor in God’s grace and generosity toward us in Christ. Without it, the task of “growing up in Christ” would be a hopeless endeavor. We could never “walk” in a way that is worthy of God’s “calling” by ourselves.

However, because our King has ascended on high and brought us into his glorious reign, we can now grow because we live and move and have our being in a new creation that is filled with God’s gifts.

Ok. So, let’s get real about the Bible.

A lot of folks have a mistaken and inadequate understanding of what the Bible is like and what it contains.

I agree with author Frederick Buechner, who says:

When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being said but only what they expect to hear read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson—something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because if you really listen…there is no telling what you might hear.

He’s exactly right. Most of us have the idea that the Bible is a nice book for nice people about nice folks who said and did nice things, where everything leads to a nice and happy ending.

Take the first book in the Bible, the book of Genesis, for example. It’s likely that many people have Sunday School images in their minds when they think of Genesis—they picture God creating the world, Adam and Eve frolicking in the Garden of Eden, Noah gathering cute little animals onto the ark and God putting a beautiful rainbow in the sky, Abraham and Sarah having a baby in their old age, and Joseph wearing his coat of many colors. Nice.

But here’s what’s in the real, unedited version:

• A man and woman standing in nakedness and shame, blaming each other for what they did wrong.
• An angry and envious man, lures his brother into a field, brutally murders him, and then tries to cover it up.
• The world becomes so corrupt and violent that God decides to virtually wipe out the human population and start over.
• Noah gets drunk, and one of his son dishonors him by committing an immoral act in his father’s bedroom.
• Abraham twice tries to pass his wife off to another man to save his own skin. Later, his son Isaac does the same thing.
• Abraham sleeps with one of the household servants so he can have an heir. This was his wife’s idea, but she becomes so jealous after it happens, that she angrily throws the woman and her son out of house to live in poverty and shame.
• Lot offers to let a violent mob gang rape his daughters. Lot’s daughters later get their own father drunk and sleep with him so that they can have children.
• Jacob, Isaac’s son, is a deceitful mama’s boy who tricks his father and brother out of important family legal rights. He has to run away from home so his brother won’t kill him.
• He goes to work for his ruthless uncle, who keeps him in virtual slavery for decades. Jacob escapes by tricking him and running away.
• Jacob’s wives live in constant jealousy and competition, continually tricking Jacob and each other in an ongoing battle for supremacy in the family.
• Jacob’s sons loathe one of their brothers, sell him into slavery, then lie to their father and tell him he died.
• Jacob’s daughter Dinah is raped. Her brothers exact revenge by deceiving and then murdering the perpetrator, destroying and looting his city, and taking all his family members captive.
• Judah refuses to find a husband for his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar. So she disguises herself as a prostitute, tricks her father-in-law into sleeping with her, and becomes pregnant.

I had a pastor friend who once told me he was planning to do a family teaching series from Genesis. I’m afraid I wasn’t very kind. In fact, I laughed out loud and said, “What are you going to talk about, how to be a complete bum and still have God bless your family?”

He didn’t think it was funny. He had a overly pious view of the Bible that didn’t allow for the ugly stuff. However, that’s what Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) is like! It should be rated “R”—raw, realistic, and in some instances, even repulsive. It couldn’t be further from “nice.”

However, there’s this too: the Bible insists that, even in the midst of all the muck and mire of the reality of human sin, brokenness, ugliness and strife, a God of grace is present and working to fulfill a plan and ultimately make something new and good. The Bible is also rated “R” because its main theme is “redemption.”

In one of his lesser known plays, Eugene O’Neill wrote, “This is Daddy’s bedtime secret for today: Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue!”

I encourage you to read the Bible for what it really is and says. It’s not very nice, but it’s real, and I believe it puts broken things back together.

I read a message by Rick Warren on Christian Post today about belonging to the church. It got me thinking about the nature of the relationship that exists between evangelicals and the church.

Let’s talk about it.

Warren’s thesis is: “When we’re called to follow Christ; we’re also called to belong to the Body of Christ.”

After affirming that the Church is Christ’s spiritual body on earth, God’s instrument in the world, he identifies one of the biggest hurdles pastors face today: it is hard to convince people who attend church to commit themselves to the church family and become members.

Warren blames this on “today’s culture of independent individualism.” As a result, we have many “spiritual orphans who move from one church to another without any identity, accountability or commitment.”

Pastor Warren then gives several biblical reasons why we should commit and become members of the local church:

1. Belonging to a church family identifies us as genuine believers
2. A church family moves us out of self-centered isolation
3. A church family helps us develop spiritual muscle
4. The Body of Christ needs every one of us

He concludes with this exhortation:

We must remind those who fill our buildings each Sunday that joining the membership of a local church is the natural next step once they become a child of God. You become a Christian by committing yourself to Christ, but you become a church member by committing yourself to a specific group of believers. The first decision brings salvation; the second brings fellowship.

Here are some questions this approach raises for me:

• It seems, right from the start, that Warren is conceding the point that one can belong to Christ without being a member of the church. Membership in the church is a second “step” in the Christian life—important but ultimately a matter of choice on the part of the individual Christian. Is this disjunction between belonging to Christ and being a member of the church biblically and theologically sound?
• To what extent is “independent individualism” not just a cultural problem, but also an outgrowth of the kind of gospel we preach and the kind of churches we create in evangelicalism?
• Couldn’t one logically conclude from this approach that, in the final analysis, for evangelicals the church, though important, is ultimately optional?

The mic is open. As always, please keep the conversation civil and on point.