Month: March 2004

I am so sorry.

This is not what I meant to say. I have a lot of things I’d like to say, as soon as I can set myself down enough to say them. But right now I’d like to say to the whole world, on behalf of the body of Christ that I am so sorry.

I’ve been living in a bit of a bubble my whole life. Honestly, I really liked my bubble. I grew up in a family with no TV and no radio. Well, we had a TV and radio, but nobody was allowed to use them. I attribute this fact to my mother. We’d attempt to have the TV on and she’d come home and hear it and cry out, “I hear stupid! Turn it OFF!!” Needless to say the TV wasn’t on much.

Since then I have spent something like 8 years in and out of colleges, ministry schools, and the like. For the most part I have been either too poor or too cheap to really find out what was going on in the broader circles of the church and the world.

I’ve had a few inklings. I was aware that, for the most part, the church has been ineffective in reaching the world of today. From the external perspective, it seems like a lot of this has been because the world has been getting increasingly slick, while most of the church just can’t seem to acquire the funds to put on that kind of a show. Deeper inquiries usually come to the conclusion that there is a substance, called “vival” which we used to have and may one day acquire again, a sort of “re-vival,” if you will.

I hear a lot of people praying for that, expecting that, proclaiming that. REVIVAL IS COMING!! They’d say, like it was just around the corner. I remember my roommate my freshman year coming back from a church service he’d been to where some famous minister or another had proclaimed that IT was coming at the next meeting, like some magical fairy dust that was going to sprinkle down on the congregation and then spread to the rest of the world. Tom was impressed, but I tried to mask my unbelief. I don’t remember if anything ever came of that expected service.

Later, when I was at ministry school, I was talking with my friend, who was telling me that his primary purpose was to pray for and facilitate revival. At that time, I had the opposite problem. My church was so darn vived that I performed no useful function. My question was then, what do you do when there are no needs? I was beginning to think that the world was neatly divided into two groups: We had the world, which had already pretty much decided that they liked “sin” and “fun” more than they wanted Jesus, and we had the church, which had God and all the spiritual answers, but hadn’t really become quite cool enough to get people to peek in.

Lately though, I’ve been a little more out in the world, and I’ve taken enough time to quiet my heart to stop talking and start listening. And I’ve listened to the Spirit of God, and I’ve watched people, and I think I’ve come up with a few observations:

First, people are sheep. This was a shocking discovery for me. I know, we hear it all the time, but it was a real revelation for me, because I’m not a very good sheep. I’m more of a moose. I like my kind and all, but I’m really kind of a loner, and if you listen to what I say, it’s usually really big and kind of goofy. So when I ran into normal people growing up, they didn’t seem like sheep to me. They seemed more like wild dogs. They travel in these great big packs, all doing thing, and automatically forming a hierarchy, and they’re kind of aggressive. And if you’re not the right breed, they’ll rip you to pieces. But they’re really sheep. They travel more in herds than in packs—packs roam all over the countryside, while herds stay in the same place until there’s nothing left to eat.

Second, sheep get scared really easily. They’re not aggressive, but when they feel threatened and there’s nowhere to run, they do butt into you and try to bite you. I thought I was being ripped into because I was the wrong breed. I was getting butted and bit because I was scaring the sheep. Apparently I wasn’t getting the TV memo on how normal people act.

Third, sheep need a shepherd. They want a guy to tell them how the world works, and soothe them, and take care of everything for them. They want an authority figure who can do authority figure things and hold their hand every step of the way.

Fourth, we don’t have enough shepherds. I’m really convinced of this. Most of the people who are set up as shepherds are really hirelings. I mean, they’re not all that bad. In a tight spot, a hireling is better than nothing at all. But the hireling doesn’t leave the 99 to find the one. A hireling conserves resources and moves on. A hireling makes a mental note not to go next to the cliffs from now on.

I’m saying all this because my roommate convinced me to buy an antenna this week. We’re going halves on it, so it’s no big expense or anything. Actually, we’re probably going to take it back. I barely got 12 channels on it. And most of those were fuzzy. But one of those channels that came in pretty clearly was a Christian station. I didn’t even know they made those. I was pretty impressed, so I stayed to watch.

I about gagged twice. These were well known ministers, in fancy suits, leading congregations mounting in the thousands, and they kept saying things that were just wrong. A lot of them were prosperity message issues, that I thought we had gotten over at least a decade ago. But it was all bad. Very entertainingly said, but…wrong! Sometimes I could even hear what they were trying to say and exactly where it was leavened with the stuff of hirelings.

And this is how I know I’m called to be a pastor (no matter what excuse I may make tomorrow)—it kind of made me mad. If Christians are the very possessors of the only word of God, how come what the world sees is this? The truth has been out for 2000 years. Hope and a pure life in Christ Jesus has been available for quite some time now. How is it possible that we keep forgetting? Why are there so few shepherds? Why is the unleavened Gospel so hard to get a hold of? Why is it that when a man is broken and hurting and alone in his house, it’s easier to acquire quality ography than quality preaching? Why is it that, for the man on the street, it’s easier to get someone to lead you to a meth lab, than to the presence of God? Is God so hard to find?

I think maybe He is. He’s as hard to find as fresh fruit at a convenience store. You go in there, and all they’ve got available is that “fruit juice flavored drink” stuff, which you know is made up of 10 percent fruit, 60 percent water, and 30 percent high fructose corn syrup. It isn’t as if the real stuff is harder to make. It just costs more.

So I wanted to say I’m sorry. I had no idea things were so bad. I had no idea we had such a dearth of good Christian teaching. I thought people were rejecting the gospel because they didn’t want the truth. But it turns out that, in a lot of occasions, the gospel hasn’t even been being preached. Or when it has been, the delivery has been so shoddy that it scared the sheep. Jesus said to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, and to this day we still think it’s because we don’t have enough bread.

So I want to make this promise to you (whoever “you” is, in the great big public void): I’m going to read my bible, and I’m going to deliver the obvious stuff. I’m going to say it as clearly and as simply as I know how. And I am sorry. I wasn’t doing it before because I thought somebody was already saying this stuff.

Pardon me while I take this moment to preach. I’ve been working at this ministry, and I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about theology and there’s one thing I’m very tired of—I’ll call it “get to heaven” Christianity. It’s this bizarre unscriptural idea that when you get saved, or become a Christian, or however you want to put it, you get a ticket into heaven and you get to admit yourself into the fellowship of other believers, but essentially your life doesn’t really change.

I hear this phrasing all the time: “Now you’re going to heaven, and you’re saved, but just because you’re saved doesn’t mean you aren’t going to sin anymore. We’re still human, and we still fail, but God forgives us our sins. It’s not that Christians don’t sin anymore, but Christians are forgiven.” I think this displays a view of grace that is fundamentally flawed. Understand, I don’t think that when you convert you suddenly become superman, able to leap over temptation in a single bound. We are still human, and we do still sin. But God help me if after 10 years of Christianity, I’m still sinning in the same way that I was before I became a Christian.

Let me put it this way: The Olympics is going on this summer in Greece. Imagine for a moment that you turn the TV on and watch the gymnastic events. Imagine that there is some there who executes every event flawlessly. She gets a perfect 10 in every event. At the end of the competition, they hand her the gold medal, and what’s more, she’s broken every Olympic record they have. What do people say about this ? She’s very Graceful. I don’t think that’s supposed to mean that somebody else took her place when it came time to stand for the judges. It means that she has the miraculous ability to perform excellently.

The Greek word in the Bible that is translated “grace” does in fact mean a gift. The word is “charis,” from which we get the word “charity.” It is also the word used in 1 Corinthians to describe the “gifts” of the spirit: charismata. But nearly every gift mentioned in 1 Corinthians describes an ability that is not within the normal scope of human ability to perform.

What I’m trying to say is that would be impossible for salvation to be a gift merely of nomenclature. Yes, Abraham believed God, and God accounted it to him as righteousness, which is to say that God just sort of pasted the label “righteous” over him. But God also gave Abraham the ability to act like a righteous man. Yes, Abraham did still sin. And he did some doosies. But that thing where he rescued Lot and didn’t keep any of the treasure was pretty impressive.

Paul makes this classic statement in Philippians 3: “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” And to hear some people talk, that means that none of us are ever going to make any major improvements. We’re just supposed to press on, I suppose, for the sake of pressing on. We’re just to demonstrate our faith by working on it, but without the hope of ever actually getting anywhere with it in this life. Paul goes on to say that anyone who is mature in Christ should think about it that way, that he should never claim to have attained it, but should always be pressing on. And then in verse 16, he says, “Only let us live up to what we have already attained.” Which communicates to me that it is possible to attain at least some level of righteousness in this life.

“The wages of sin is ,” but sin brings wages, not an annuity. You don’t get the of sin in one lump sum after you die. Instead you walk out that every day. Sin brings its own suffering. Most people know the wages of sin now, in their lives now. They carry their own hell with them. So what great threat is it to know that when they die, they’ll go to a place where life is pretty much the same as it is here, perhaps a few shades darker? And what great promise is it to know that, that if they believe on Jesus, they will go to a place whose goodness they can’t really imagine?

Let me make this clear: If righteousness were only attainable once you get to heaven, I wouldn’t want to go there. I would ask God to blot me out of his book. What good is a God who can only set you free from sin, who can only make you righteous, once He puts you in a place where sinning is not possible? What kind of weak and powerless God is that? For this Christ died for me? So that once He’s weeded out all the bad people and put all the good people in a perfect environment, then we can finally stop sinning? Let it not be so!

I don’t believe that it is so. I believe that the cross of Christ was far more powerful than we currently imagine. No, I don’t believe that we will ever attain perfection in this life. Quite honestly, I don’t know that we will ever fully attain the perfection of God even in heaven. We are finite; he is infinite. Revelation describes a scene where 24 elders are forever sitting around the throne of God, constantly saying “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God almighty.” I believe that every time those elders look up, they see a new aspect of who God is, and they fall back on their faces, crying “holy!” At that rate, it may take an infinity just to perceive the holiness of God, let alone to attain it. Nevertheless, to follow Christ is to become like Him, and I believe that He gives us the power to become like Him, even as he gives us the ability to perceive how holy He is.

And because it’s who I am, let me end with another geometry illustration. Xanga won’t let me draw much, so please forgive me while I try to describe it. In your mind, draw a line going up and a line going to the right, so that they meet in the bottom left corner. The vertical line represents some imaginary measurement of how much a person is like Jesus. The horizontal line represents your daily walk. On the right hand side, draw an arrow pointing straight up. God’s perfection is infinite, so “having attained it” is infinitely ↑ that-a-way. Hopefully you’ve seen a population curve. That’s the one that starts real close to horizontal, and gradually increases the slope so that, before long, the curve is almost pointing straight up. But the curve never actually attains to a vertical line. That’s how our walk with Christ is supposed to be. Every day is a little more vertical. No, you never quite attain to perfection. But, by God’s grace, every day is a marked improvement.