In the news again...

The fight continues. I don't know why they pick me to speak in their clips. I'm so monotone.

Even better...

Even better, my wife's voice has been heard through the letters to the editor in the Sunday edition of the Indianapolis Star. I'm so proud of you, honey!!!

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100418/OPINION01/4180346/1031/Branch-backers-want-doors-open-Don-t-forget-precious-ones

Woohoo! I made my voice heard!

Dorothy

Dorothy, when I first met you, you scared me. You were so rough, so ghetto, so very, very black. Your heavy African-American dialect was almost a foreign language to me. And the anger behind your eyes betrayed a deep hurt; a past I feared to even peek into (only much later did I learn about the father who would beat your senseless with an extension cord). When you got in my face and yelled at me after being in the inner city for only a week, I thought, "Well, Greg, you're not in Kansas anymore." You awakened me to a world of darkness and hatred and bitter animosity. I must say that your words were hurtful. The gruff, calloused tone you used with me made me feel belittled and childish and I wanted to retreat to suburbia where people are decent to each other. Sometimes you were downright out of control like when you stood up in church on a Sunday morning and berated your pastors for not visiting you often enough. We stood there -- shocked like deer in the headlights -- and took it. And licked our wounds later when the sanctuary emptied.

But then something or rather Someone did something to you. I don't know how. I confess I nearly stopped praying for you altogether. I had signed you off to darkness and thought God's grace too weak to permeate your thick hide.

I remember when you smiled at me for the first time -- those ivory teeth shining through your beautiful black face. Soon you began to joke with me and I learned to joke back. And when I dished it in return, you would rear your head back and roar with laughter. Somehow deep down a Healer was at work in you. I knew it wasn't me. But the walls were coming down.

Today, Dorothy, you're a new woman. Sure, you're still pretty rough around the edges and you still need to learn to keep your big mouth shut sometimes. But, darn it, you're fun to be around. Now when you gripe about how rotten your day has been I can see a twinkle in your eye and a smirk on your face. You've met Jesus and He's changed you. Now when you speak your rapid fire ghetto talk at me I can understand you better and I hear it loud and clear when you declare, "I love you, pastor." The first time you said it, it brought me to my knees in gratitude to God.

And then you called me last week. You were gushing. You sounded as giddy as a school girl on the first day of summer break. "Pastar, I just caint bu-lieve how GOOD God is to me! My grandbaby's gettin baptized and my whole family's gonna be there. We aint been togetha for twenty years! God's so GOOD. My grandbaby --she's sayin shes gonna start readin the bible and praying and going ta church and e'rythin. My own mama wanna come down from Chicaga's southside, but I tell her she caint do it since shes 72. Pastar, I aint never been so happy! God's done saved my whole family! I haven't been so thankful since before my son got shot in '87. I luv dis church and all the lovin people in it. And I love Jesus... He's so GOOD, so GOOD!"

Dorothy, pardon my saying so, but if God can save you, he can save anyone. And He's "done saved you." You keep telling me (with the force of a hurricane) every week that you want to become a full member of this church. Well, I'm going to make you one! Your not the alcoholic, swearing, demon-possessed, crack-mama you used to me. In fact, I think the technical term for what you're becoming is a "saint." And watching God do this in your life brings me to my knees and makes me weep with joy.

So tomorrow I'll baptize that granddaughter of yours and we'll sing and eat and celebrate the goodness of God! If this isn't the kingdom come down, I don't know what is.

Joy in the Ashes

Ash Wednesday is quickly becoming one of my favorite days of the year. Last night my small congregation, young and old alike, joined together for an evening of prayer, penitence, instruction about the meaning of lent, exhortation to fast, and the imposition of ashes. What a treat!

It's true that Ash Wednesday is somber. I joked with my congregation that you can't really go around saying, "Happy Ash Wednesday!" But in the midst of the solemnity is real joy. It is the joy that always comes from true penitence. Rending your heart because you know you've fallen short. Crying out to a merciful God that you know always shows mercy. Confessing sins before the entire congregation. Following in the tradition of the Ninevites who marked their heads with ashes as a sign of sorrow. But in the mist of the ashes is the deep joy of knowing that we serve a God who delights in the confessions of his people. He is a God that rejoices more over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine who think they don't need to. In the penitence, is a profound hope for the future: hope that my life and your life can be different -- that our lives can be marked by victory and liberation and life to the full rather than defeat and bondage and darkness.

Last night I got to put ashes on the foreheads of about fifty people. They came to me one by one. Some of them smirking in embarrassment because it was unfamiliar. And some with tears streaming down their cheeks because they had been needing to do this for a long time. I made the sign of the cross on their heads and reminded each of them, "You were made from ashes and to ashes you shall return someday."

Something within us needs to openly acknowledge that we're all screwed up. Ash Wednesday is just such an acknowledgment. But it is more than that. It is an expression of hope that we won't always be that way. Within the ashes is a deep, rich, resonant hope that looks beyond the cross to that wonderful Sunday in our future.

The God Among Nonbelievers

I'm currently working on my first book as a co-author with my seminary friend Jeremy Summers to be published by Wesley Publishing House. It's intended to be a devotional guide for small groups focusing on a proper understanding of "the kingdom of God." I don't know if I'm supposed to do this (I might have to delete this post later), but here is the rough draft of my first chapter of the as yet untitled book.

*****

In the summer of 1998 I took a trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado with a couple of friends to attend a Christian camp. While there, one of the speakers made a strong claim. He said, “Only those who have been saved can do anything good. Good deeds are impossible for those who do not know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.”

But the more I thought about those words, the less they seemed to line up with my own expereinces. I started thinking of many of my non-Christian friends at high school who had treated me kindly – anywhere from buying me a soda to helping me with my homework. And more questions began to sprout: What about Gandhi? He wasn’t a Christian, but he did good things. And how about the entire Muslim world that provides billions of dollars to help the poor?[i] The more I thought about it, the less the speaker’s claim made sense to me.

Later that week we took a day away from the campground to climb Pike’s Peak. But those who have hiked tall mountains before know that altitude sickness is nothing to fool around with. The higher I climbed, the sicker I felt. Eventually when I reached the summit at 14,110 feet, I was feeling terrible. I remember actually laying down on the floor of the public restroom and not even caring about how dirty it was. I was miserable.

Then something wonderful happened. A man came up to me and asked if I would like a ride down the mountain in his van. My friends (also feeling ill) and I jumped at the chance to get back down to where humans were meant to live – in the land of oxygen. As we descended the windy, narrow roads of Pike’s Peak, I gradually started feeling better and was able to express my gratitude to this stranger who gave me a lift.

But I learned that the man who was helping me was not a Christian. Immediately the words of that speaker were in my head and I wondered, “But this is cleraly a good deed that this non-Christian is doing for me.” I haven’t forgotten that man – a Good Samaritan who confirmed for me that even the unsaved can do good things.

People love clear lines. We love to be able to draw a line between the good people and the bad people. When a nation goes to war, this is the first thing that it does. It paints the enemy as evil.[ii] And we, of course, are always the good guys. (It’s interesting to think about the fact that the other side is thinking the same thing.) Lines make us comfortable. They help us to simplify the world, to categorize it neatly in clearly defined packages. But there’s just one problem with the lines we make… they don’t always match up to reality.

The world isn’t as simple as “Christians = good; Non-Christians = bad.” In fact, we often find Christians doing horrible things and Non-Christians doing such good works that it puts many of us believers to shame. Our lines, we find, just don’t match up with the real world. The real world is much more blurry.

In the tenth chapter of the gospel of Luke Jesus is sending out his specially chosen missionaries to carry a message of peace and salvation to the world. “We’re the good guys,” the disciples must have been thinking, “and we’re going out to face the evil people.” But then Jesus says something really weird. As he’s giving them instructions before they leave, Jesus says, “And if a man of peace is there, then your peace will go and rest on him…” (Luke 10:6a).

“Hold on a second, Jesus. A man of peace? Out there!?! I thought we’re the ones carrying the message of peace! What do you mean that we might find people out there who already have peace!?!”

The use of the word “peace” in Luke is basically another word for “salvation.” It referred back to the Old Testament idea of shalom. It’s much more than just the absence of war. “Shalom” meant a harmonious community filled with happiness, security, plenty of food, and cooperation – basically the way the world was supposed to be.[iii] So it’s quite striking that Jesus tells his disciples that this shalom might already be out there in the world.

You see, the disciples had drawn a very clear line between themselves (good) and those they were sent to (bad). But Jesus, we find, is constantly blurring these lines. The pharisees thought they had it all figured out – that God loved those who kept all the rules to a “T.” But Jesus comes along and speaks well of tax collectors, prostitutes, half-breed Samaritans, and sinners. He even tells the Pharisees that these “dirty” people are entering the kingdom ahead of them (Matthew 21:31).

So here’s my point: Christians don’t have a monopoly on God.

Did you ever play the board game Monopoly? The reason it’s called “Monopoly” is because by the end of the game (if you ever manage to endure the six hours it takes to get there), one person has all the wealth and all the properties. And that’s what a monopoly is. In economics it happens “when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.” In short, one dude has all the stuff.

The disciples of Jesus always seemed to think that they and they alone had a monopoly on what God was doing. So when the disciples saw outsiders casting out demons (“bad” people doing a good thing), Jesus taught them, “whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40).

God is at work in strange and unexpected places. He’s not just the God of the Church; He’s the God of Creation. He’s not just revealing himself to those who confess the name of Jesus Christ; He’s revealing himself to those who haven’t even heard of Jesus before. John Wesley called this “prevenient grace” which simply means “the grace that goes before us.”[iv] In other words, long before any of us ever heard of Jesus or trusted in him for our salvation, he was already at work in our lives in ways that we may not have even been aware of.

That should impact the way we relate to the world. Rather than being the “know-it-alls” that are bringing truth to a pagan land, we can approach nonbelievers in humility recognizing that they too have God at work in their lives. We can learn from them.

Digging Deeper

Head

The Bible is filled with examples of how the grace of God is at work in unexpected places. In Jesus’ day the religious authorities drew very sharp lines between those who were “in” and those who were “out.” They used the Torah (the first five books of our Bible and the holiest of all Jewish Scriptures) to categorize people as either clean or unclean. Not to be crass, but, for example, women who were on their period were considered unclean and needed to be separated from the clean people. Read Leviticus 15:19-23 if you don’t believe me.

So with that in the back of your mind, read Mark 5:25-34. How would Jesus’ reaction to the bleeding woman have been different than the response of a good, law-abiding Pharisee? What does this teach us about Jesus’ understanding of clean and unclean?

We find that Jesus is constantly doing this: blurring the lines between those who are acceptable and those who are not. It really ticked off the Jewish authorities who had a vested interest in preserving the hierarchy.

Answer these questions as a group: What are some ways that we are guilty of drawing lines between the “acceptable” people and the “unacceptable” people? Do Christians do this? Does the Church? How would recognizing the fact that God is at work in all people change the way we talk with others and witness to nonbelievers?[v]

Heart

Think of a time when a non-Christian did something kind or loving to you and share it with your group. How did you respond? Did it surprise you that good works can be done by the “unsaved”?

Why do you think people prefer to draw clear lines between themselves and those who are different than them? What would it look like for Christians to stop thinking of themselves as better than others? Envision how nonbelievers might respond if Christians stopped being preachy and instead started listening to the stories of how God is already at work in the lives of others.

Stop and pray together for God to change the heart of his church from an attitude of pride to one of humility. Pray for your own eyes to be opened to the ways that God is at work in unexpected places.

Hand

Everyone loves to be listened to. Every Monday morning at my church we have a large group of people come into our sanctuary to receive some groceries from our food pantry. I am constantly amazed at how eager these people are to tell me about their lives – even the deep hurts and secret places of their journeys. Unfortunately, sometimes I get the impression that I’m one of the only people in their lives that really listen to what they have to say and ask questions to show my interest in what they’re telling me.

Commit yourself this week to lend an open ear to someone who has a story to tell (which is everyone). Perhaps you can jump-start a conversation by asking simple questions like “Where did you grow up?” or “What do you do for a living?” As the conversation progresses, you might be able to ask deeper questions such as “Do you think of yourself as being a spiritual person?” But don’t force it! Commit yourself to listening rather than directing the conversation. And as you listen, ask yourself if you see evidence of God already at work in his or her life.

Habits

Make it a habit to notice the good things that people do who may not think of themselves as good people. You might even consider jotting these things down in a small notepad, keeping a register of the ways you see God at work in the lives of those who don’t go to church, don’t talk the right way, and don’t dress the right way.

You can use the list you create in a couple of ways. First, you might be able to refer back to it as a reminder of the ways that God is at work in unexpected places and among unexpected people. Second, you could use the information to encourage those very people. Go up to her and say, “The other day I noticed that you gave Linda a ride. That was really nice of you. What made you do that?”

Before long, you will start to see how the peace of Christ is already at work in the lives of unbelievers. And this will give you a deeper appreciation for God’s prevenient grace – the grace that goes before us all.

---

[i] Did you know that most Muslims are required to give at least 2.5% of their annual income to the poor? Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Pillars_of_Islam

[ii] Gregory A. Boyd elaborates on this in his excellent book The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005). See especially chapter 4 called “From Resident Aliens to Conquering Warlords.”

[iii] Refer to Joel B. Green’s The Gospel of Luke in the New International Commentary on the New Testament Series. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997): 413-414.

[iv] John Wesley develops this idea in his sermon titled, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation” (Sermon #85).

[v] Two great books about evangelizing in the postmodern world: Live to Tell: Evangelism for a Postmodern Age by Brad J. Kallenberg and A. K. A. Lost by Jim Henderson.

Is God in the Earthquake?

Pat Robertson has done it again. He insists on seeing God as the author of evil. In the aftermath of the horrific and tragic earthquake that struck Haiti this week, he announced that it was their deserved punishment for "making a pact with the devil." Rev. Robertson, pardon my saying so, but your "god" is my devil. I serve a loving God who is not willing that any should perish. I serve a God who is working for the good, who does not require evil and violence as a means to his own end, who wraps children in his loving arms rather than crushes them under brick and mortar.

Jim Wallis has said it well this week: "My God does not cause evil. God is not a vengeful and retributive being, waiting to strike us down; instead, God is in the very midst of this tragedy, suffering with those who are suffering. When evil strikes, it’s easy to ask, where is God? The answer is simple: God is suffering with those who are suffering."

So many Christians are utterly confused on this point. They assume that everything that happens is part of the will of God. "There are no accidents," they faithfully proclaim. "We may not understand, but we do know that God's will is never thwarted." These well meaning people look in the face of tragedy and shrug, "It must have been what God wanted."

But look into the faces of the dead children lining the streets in Port-au-Prince and tell me that God did this. The New York Times reported: "The tiny bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their collapsed school. People with faces covered by white dust and the blood of open wounds roamed the streets. Frantic doctors wrapped heads and stitched up sliced limbs in a hotel parking lot." And you are going to tell me that the God revealed in the suffering love of the cross is behind this?!? If you are right -- if, in fact, God did cause this to happen -- then I will rise up against that God and with everything in me revolt against him. I will join together with others and initiate a revolution to overthrow such a tyrant.

David Bentley Hart stated it better than I ever could in his reflection on the 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia:

"Only a moral cretin at [the moment of a child's death] would have attempted to soothe [his parent's] anguish by assuring him that his child had died as a result of God's eternal, inscrutable, and righteous counsels, and that in fact his death had mysteriously served God's purposes in history, and that all of this was completely necessary for God to accomplish his ultimate design in having created the world... Ours is a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces -- whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance -- that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred... [In the eschaton] God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history as false and damnable... rather than showing how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes -- and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, 'Behold, I make all things new'" (The Doors of the Sea 99-101, 104).

Genesis 5, Psalm 5, and Matthew 5

Below is a correspondence between myself and a theological inquirer. I thought this dialog worth posting online since it raises a huge number of important issues:

Friend:

Subject: A Bible Question

So, my church is doing a read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year program which seems pretty hip, so I'm doing it, but I ran into some trouble yesterday and thought you two might have some answers/directing thoughts. We were reading Genesis 5, Psalm 5, and Matthew 5, and for whatever reason those three in order and in concert concentrated all my doubts and questions into one 10 minute reading session, a process which was, as you may imagine, somewhat disturbing and depressing. Here are the concerns (you may see them if you read those chapters in order): Genesis 5 is a history of generations of people who lived an improbably long time (Methuselah, etc.); Psalm 5 asks God to strike down the singer's enemies and bless him, and so seems like it could be any pagan hymn; and Matthew 5 is the Sermon on the Mount, which in comparison to the first two is revolutionary but seems unrelated, demonstrates how poorly the church lives up to the ideals of Christianity, and also demonstrates how a good understanding of Jesus' teachings needs pretty considerable learning and reflection, which 99% of humanity does not have the time or opportunity for. So there you have it; worries about reasonableness and coherence, the plausibility of undermining explanations, and the unwillingness and impossibility of current followers actually following all concentrated. Well, the complaints about Matthew are just me being idealistic and a worry-wort probably, but the Genesis question at least seems like it deserves an answer. Am I to really believe in a 900 year old man despite its apparent impossibility, or is there something I am supposed to be learning from this genealogy as allegory?

My response:

These are great questions. And here is how I would (very, very briefly) respond to them:

1. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not meant to be read literally. To read them literally is to misunderstand their genre and import our own expectations of what modernist historians have led us to believe true history is. Genesis 1-11 should be read theologically rather than scientifically or historically. What theological point might the author be making by claiming that the early humans lived for hundreds of years? A good book on this is "The Lost World of Genesis One" by John Walton. I highly recommend it.

2. The impreccatory Psalms are always disturbing to the Christians that take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Suffice it to say, that I believe in progressive revelation. I.e. Jesus was the fullest revelation of God and his will for humanity -- before Christ only a partial picture as available. David or the psalmnist who wrote Psalm 5 did not have full revelation and was operating under the theological rhubric of his own day. Today we can read these Psalms in reference to our spiritual enemies (Satan and his demons) OR as cries for justice coming from oppressed people groups. Try reading Psalm 5 again through the eyes of the Darfuri woman who was gang raped by the Janjaweed militia and it will make lots more sense!

3. I think your critiques about the church not following the words of Jesus in Matthew 5-7 are dead on. The church has mostly lost the radical nature of this message! What I conclude from that is that theological education is incredibly important among the clergy -- because we have had years and years of clergy misinterpreting what I would argue is the most crucial passage in all of the Bible. As for myself, I am being drawn to a new movement of Christians that call themselves "red letter Christians." They unapologetically argue that the most important parts of the Bible are the words of Jesus and that all other Scripture must be read through them. But beware! Walking down this path might end up making you a pacifist like myself and might cause you to rework much of your evangelical theology. Personally, I think the anabaptists have been among the very few to have read Matthew 5-7 correctly for centuries. We're all just catching up to them.

Obviously, books have been written about the topics I raise here. I recommend C. S. Lewis' "Reflection on the Psalms" for question #2 and John Howard Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus" for question #3. There -- I recommended further reading for all of the questions. Sound like a professor, huh?

Snow

A fresh blanket of snow is falling in my neighborhood today. I'm seeing something I rarely seen in the inner city: beauty. I am convinced that humans were made for beauty. It gives us reason to live and enjoy life. Fine music, quality artwork, innovative architecture, an exquisite cup of coffee, a well manicured garden -- these can be sources of great inner peace and contentment.

A part of me wonders if one of the causes of systemic poverty in America is simply the lack of beauty in the poor man's world. Seeing half of the houses boarded up and abandoned with yards untouched in years, noticing the piles of litter -- rusted beer cans, smashed glass bottles that once held cheap vodka, cigarette butts, even ammunition shells -- scattered in ever conceivable place. This is a world of concrete where everything is grey. Life does not thrive here. Green is a rarity. We in the city have paved paradise and put up a parking lot, as the songwriter says. I have friends who have never seen a lake or a farm or a mountain. And it makes me wonder what kind of person I would be had spent ever waking moment of my life trapped within the concrete jungle.

But today the ugliness is covered by pure white. Mounds of trash have become pristine and untouched knolls of soft clouds. Even the ugly abandoned houses next door have a sort of romantic, mysterious aura to them as they hide beneath a white blanket. It is almost as if the near Eastside has been made new -- even if only for a few hours. For a moment our cracked and weed-ridden sidewalks are as smooth as those of the suburbs. Our potholes disappear. And our collective poverty subsides for a moment as people gather around their cracked windows to catch a rare glimpse of beauty coming down from the sky.

Thank you, God, for snow. Thank you for beauty. And thank you for saying, "Behold, I make all things new." Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Romans 12:19

Tonight it is very hard to follow Romans 12:19. Deep within me I want to lash out. But I will chose the better way.