Jesus Was a Liberal (And Other Irreverent Thoughts About Discipleship)

Emphasis on the past tense verb…Jesus was a liberal.  But that doesn’t mean he’s now a conservative either.  This is a post that’s been building for a few weeks.  Several weeks ago I had an interview at a church for a youth pastor position.  One of the questions I was asked is “Are you liberal or conservative?”  I responded buy saying that I don’t like those terms because their too subjective and divisive.  ”I just try to be as faithful and consistent with Scripture as I can?”  The committee apparently didn’t like that answer because they followed it up with “Would you consider yourself open-minded or closed-minded?”  Honestly, I really didn’t know how to respond to such a question.

In a recent tweet, I stated “becoming more & more confused about what it means to be conservative or liberal & why it matters…”

And then in the article I re-posted entitled “God Hates You,” the author makes this statement:

I have always found it supremely odd that most Christians, when pressed, will admit that they don’t care very much how Jesus lived his life, or the theology he lived out or spoke of, but they claim “salvation through his ’substitutionary’” death.

Filed under: Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, Discipleship

God Hates You (Reposted from Burnside Writers Collective)

The Burnside Writers Collective is an online magazine co-founded by Donald Miller.  The purpose of the magazine is to spur conversation and engage culture from a semi-emergent, semi-evangelical perspective.  I recently added their link in my sidebar and you can RSS them if you want – which I’ve done.  Below is the text of an article that makes a very strong, personal, and hard point.  While not stated explicitly, it’s getting at the heart of disicpleship – i.e. living like Jesus.  Just read it…it’s well worth it…

GOD HATES YOU

FEATURED, SOCIAL JUSTICE — BY M. MORFORD ON OCTOBER 28, 2009 AT 12:00 AM

 

When I was a kid, we used to play the “opposite game”. A typical conversation would go like this;

Me: “I’m not hungry.”

My brother: “I’m really not hungry.”

Me: “I’m really, really, not hungry.  I’m so not hungry that I couldn’t take a single bite”.

My brother: “Oh, yeah, I’m so not hungry I couldn’t even LOOK at a picture of food right now.”

Obviously this is game no one wins and it veers into absurdity almost immediately.

Sometimes I think churches and religious organizations are playing this game as I read articles and emails that tell me in breathless urgency what God hates.

Filed under: Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Culture, Discipleship

Let’s Try This Out (more on Matthew 2:13-23)

After publishing my previous post and asking for input from people over Twitter & Facebook, I think I may have gotten somewhere.  One friend suggested I listen to a sermon.  In itself, I didn’t find the sermon to be all that helpful, but what it did do for me is get me thinking about sermons.  I seldom listen to sermons online, simply because I want to avoid the risk of being tempted to re-preach something.  What I study the Bible and write sermons, I do my best to come to the text trying to understand what it’s saying and what value does it have for the congregation I’m preaching to, apart from any theological bias (although it’s impossible for anyone to do that perfectly).

But I started searching the internet for sermons on Matthew 2:13-23.  I’ve been searching for commentary, but never sermons.  I came across a sermon that actually did a pretty good job speaking to the questions that have been holding me up with this text (but he misses the application, giving in to the simplistic providence theme I’m trying to avoid…see yesterday’s post for my reasons why).  But what this sermon did do is help me see a rather important connection that I had been overlooking…

The tendency that we often have when looking at this text is to focus on one of two things; we either focus on Jesus’ flight and return, or we focus on Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents.”  Much has been made of the lack of historical evidence supporting the “slaughter,” so we tend to be more incline to spend our time and energy focusing there.  But the text doesn’t give an extraordinary amount of attention to either point.  Matthew is focusing primarily on Jesus, trying to say something about him.  Based on the book as a whole, I’m coming to the text assuming that Matthew is still working to show his readers that Jesus is the messiah.  That is exactly what Matthew is doing, but not in the way we may expect him to – which is one of the reasons I’ve missed a very important “background text/figure.”  But the typical Jewish reader would have picked up on it immediately.

Filed under: Bible Study, Culture, Ministry, Theology

Health Care is a Moral Issue

Health care is a moral issue.

Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anyone say this…not even the Christian community.  I’m not trying to be original here; I’m just saying that I haven’t heard anyone talk about it this way.  Sure there are financial implications.  But ultimately, I think this is something that needs to be removed from the political/ideological/financial arena and placed squarely in the morality arena.

Let me pick on some people – or groups of people – for a moment.  Thirty years ago the Republican party became the “party of morals” and they’ve run on that platform ever since.  They were God’s party – the party that defends America, the Bible, and family values.  ”Conservative” and “liberal” became extremely polarizing words, often used as insults, and became more and more difficult for a person to avoid aligning themselves with one side or the other.

It’s the Republican Party that has also become systematically opposed to providing health care for all Americans.  The basis of their opposition is that this would create a bigger government, and that’s bad.  The problem for most so-called “conservatives” (as I’ve said before, I really don’t like breaking people into such categories because of the subjectivity inherent in them) is that the moral issue of health care at this point in history is in conflict with a core belief in small government.  So when push comes to shove which way are the political conservatives going to go: morality, or political philosophy?

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Church, Culture, Theology

Eugene Says it Well…

I don’t have a habit of reposting other’s material.  But I read an article this morning that got me really worked up about under age human trafficking in Portland here and felt it was worth blogging about it.  Eugene is a pastor in Seattle and is the only pastor I know of who has given any considerable thought to this.  That’s why ‘m reposting his post.  ”f**k human trafficking. there i said it.” is primarily about trafficking over seas, but what he has to say fits for the US just as well.  The wording is strong, but as he says in the post, it’s justified in this case.  After reading the Mercury article, I echo his sentiments: “f**k human trafficking!”

Here’s Eugene’s original article…

Is it possible that we as Christians just aren’t angry enough about injustices like human trafficking and slavery?  Perhaps, we’ve grown too desensitized, domesticated, and docile. I’m not trying to say this for the sake of the ’shock factor’ but I really believe there are times when the Church needs to have a deep[er] anger about the grave injustices of the world particularly when it involves the exploitation of children. Have we deduced our faith to convenient and self serving pleasantries?

Filed under: Christian Living, Church, Culture, Ministry