Love Others

And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:39-40)

In addition to loving God, a disciple loves others.  The ironic thing is that for most of us, this is harder than loving God.  I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with the fact that God is spirit and we can’t really see him and we don’t really feel like we interact with him.  There is a part of God that almost seems like something way off in the distance that we never really come into contact with; it’s easy to love and obey someone you never shake hands with.

But our neighbors…that’s a different story.  We see them pulling out of their driveways in the morning, we throw their kids balls back over the fence, we listen to their dog bark incessantly at 3 AM.  We have to be careful with our neighbors because they live next door; pissing them off will just make our life even more unbearable.  We don’t have to like them, we just have to be nice to them.

And usually, being nice to them means staying out of their business and ignoring them.

Jesus loved people.  In addition to obedience to the Father’s will, his love for people was the reason he died on the cross.  And he loved all people.  He recognized that everyone bore God’s image.  He went out of his way to interact with and love on the “untouchables” of his day (Samaritans, Gentiles, Romans, etc.).  And he treated every single group with perfect equality and fairness.

The struggle so many of us face is in showing favoritism to certain people or groups of people.  It’s human nature to develop biases against some.  And so for those who desire to become a disciple of Jesus, there is a constant struggle to resist the natural urges.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Discipleship, Ministry, Original Languages, Theology

The Politics of a Follower

The other day I was a fly on the wall for a conversation about politics.  Both people were Christians – one in the generation above me, the other in my generation. The gist of the conversation revolved around the principles used for determining how to vote on various issues or persons.  The older of the two kept making the point that when voting, you vote for “the right person/side.”  The younger kept asking “How do you know who/what is right?  What determines or distinguishes something as right or wrong?”

These questions highlight a major shift that is taking place within culture as a whole, and that shift is making it’s way into the contemporary church.  I also think it’s a key component to the debate between the traditional and emergent churches.  And I think the root of these questions reveals something about worldview and the general mindset of younger followers of Jesus.

By my view, the conversation – which ultimately ended in a draw – is destined to never be resolved.  The reason being that there were two completely different views of politics and worldview at play.  Underlying many of the things discussed were questions such as 1) What is the Christian’s relationship to the state? 2) What is the purpose of voting? 3) What is the role of theocracy and Christendom?

I must admit that I personally was more sympathetic to the younger conversant, and I ultimately believe (or else I wouldn’t hold these views) that the younger’s view is the more Biblical view.  Before I go any further, let me admit that much of what I will say here is largely opinion – albeit an opinion shaped by reading Scripture.

Filed under: Random

Love God

I was reading Church Unique and something grabbed my attention:

[G]reat organizations…are ruthlessly clear about the one thing at which they can be the best in the world.

The author goes on to discuss how often times our vision casting becomes over-complicated by excessive communication and breaking down of the steps it takes to accomplish our goals.  As counter-intuitive as it may be, what we should be doing is spending a lot more time communicating what the one thing is rather than hashing out how we’re going to do it.

In the week and a half that I’ve been in Portland now, I’ve had two unexpected conversations about what I’m doing here.  Somewhere in the midst of these conversations the question is raised: “How are you going to do it?”  It’s at this point where things start to fall apart for me.  I’m torn between giving in to their indulgences and trying to flesh out, point by point, how we’re going to get this church off the ground even though I know that it’s not going to happen anywhere remotely like what I describe; and resisting their deep desire and need to know for more vision casting.  Based on the chapter in Church Unique that I read this morning, I should probably stick to the vision casting, at least at this stage in the game.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Discipleship, Ministry

And God Said… (Part 2)

I’m still ranting about Genesis 1.  I have spent a considerable amount of time over that past few months studying Genesis 1.  I originally started working on it back in December when it was assigned to me for my candidacy sermon.  Since that time, I’ve found it to have greater implications for followers of Jesus than I originally thought.

What we believe concerning humanity’s creation in God’s image has a tremendous affect upon our interactions with other people.  Many times I have seen and/or heard someone degrade another person for what I would consider to be nothing more than a difference of opinion on something.  Embedded in the Biblical doctrine of man is the expectation that God’s people will respect and protect all human life and every human being.  Like my last post, this may make some people rather uncomfortable: Imago Dei (image of God) demands social justice. (Problems can arise here too when we begin to act as though giving a person a glass of water earns us salvation or is equal to the thirsty receiving salvation.)

Perhaps one of the most common tendencies is to assume that a person only bears God’s image if they are saved.  It’s understandable why someone would say that.  God created us perfect and in fellowship with him.  But when Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, perfect creation (including humanity) became tainted and imperfect.  An imperfect being – the logic goes – cannot be considered an image of a perfect being.  Those who are saved are counted as perfect before God once again, and the imago dei is restored in that individual.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Evangelism, Theology

And God said… (Genesis 1)

I’ve written on the text before, but I just completed a full translation and study of Genesis 1…so I’ll blog about it again .

Genesis 1 is perhaps one of the best-known passages in the Bible, but it’s continually misused.  For the last 100+ years, North American evangelicalism has grossly misconstrued the creation story and turned it into something it’s not: a science lesson; scientific conclusions have been drawn from a text that has nothing to do with science.  I know this will probably get me labeled as a “liberal” by many who may stumble across this post, but all I’m doing is attempting to flesh out what the text says – not the English text, the original text…the Hebrew.

First off, Genesis 1 reeks of Hebrew stylistic and poetic devices – and this comes out even in English.  The text is wrought with repetition and poetic verbiage.  These characteristics absolutely must be taken into account when reading this text.  Poetry is never to be taken literally.  I’m sorry for the harsh tone, but we’re talking about the Bible; whether or not the world was created in six consecutive 24-hour periods is never addressed – one way or another – in Genesis 1.  Biblical Hebrew scholars almost unanimously agree that the repetition of “And there was evening and there was morning…” is entirely a structural device used for organizing the text and to aid in memorization, not to provide readers with a timeline.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christianity, Faith, Theology