Religious heretics

Yesterday I posted this thought on Facebook:

Taking the Bible at face value & obeying it will almost always make you a heretic to religious people.

I wanted to unpack a little bit what I was thinking when I wrote it.

First, we're a very religious society. While I totally oppose the concept that we in the United States have every been, are now, or should be in the future a "Christian" nation, there is little debate that we're one of the most religious societies on earth.

Second, religion has its ups and downs. We all have religious practices, to one degree or another, and those practices can have deep meaning and impact on our lives. They can also become places of pride, contention, and downright violence in proving who is right.

Third, religion has tended throughout history to be user and usee when it comes to political clout, power and influence. Religion, once it becomes the accepted practice, does not want to lose its influence, so it seeks to maintain the status quo and hold on to a position of power.

When the early church has no clout, no social capital, it lived on the margins of society and had its most incredible growth and impact EVER. The rise of the church in the first 300 years is nothing short of amazing. But in the 4th century, as the church became the institution of the social norm, it moved away from the margins and into the center. It became sluggish and dull, fat on the feeling of stability and power.

And so has it been for nearly 1700 years since.

Those who rise up and challenge the established religion, often by a humble return and obedience to the core passages of the Scriptures, are labelled as heretics because they challenge the position of power that the religious structures and leaders have long held.

I believe God opposes these positions of power, and challenges us instead to live on the margins, influencing society through acts of service to the quartet of the vulnerable, speaking prophetically to the thrones of power that seek only to maintain their place of favor, even at the cost of those most vulnerable. To love God and neighbor with such reckless abandon that it cannot be dismissed nor bought nor bribed.

That's the kind of heretic I want to be.

The Christmas Wars

I tried last holiday season to write a thought or two about the supposed "war on Christmas" going on in the US. Yes, I think it's a supposed war.

But this year, Jim Wallis makes the case much better than me. You can read his entire blog about this here, but I wanted to share a few quotes and thoughts from his post.

Making sure that shopping malls and stores greet their customers with “Merry
Christmas” is entirely irrelevant to the meaning of the Incarnation. In reality
it is the consumer frenzy of Christmas shopping that is the real affront and
threat to the season.

Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on
Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the
planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A
material blasphemy of the Christmas season.

Yes, yes, and yes! We cannot take a symbol, whether that's a tree, a gift, a slogan, a greeting, whatever, and then compare it somehow to being "the meaning of the season." As Wallis goes on to say, is Jesus humbled when he walks into a store and sees how the "merry Christmas" sign in the window points people to him? Who has ever come to Christ from a "merry Christmas" sign? From a public nativity?

Holiday means holy day...is that really that bad?

Why do we spend so much time on the symbols of Christmas, and neglect imitating the incarnational presence of Jesus in our world? I have rarely (I don't remember ever) trying to speak on behalf of Jesus in this blog, but can I say that I don't think he cares one bit about whether my Best Buy has "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" in the window?

The true reality is that Jesus came to earth and lived among a poor and oppressed people, in order to redeem their lives to the fullness God originally intended. As Wallis says, to restore right relationship between God and between each other. Let's focus some energy on that goal this Christmas. Let's really seek to have "peace on earth and goodwill among men."

I hope you'll click the link and read Wallis' post. And you'll go to www.worldvisiongifts.org and make a meaningful gift this Christmas. Or holiday season.

I'm okay with either one.

Immigration issues

Here's a link to a PBS article about Alabama's immigration law and the impact it's having on people there. I especially like the interviews with people on the street, in particular the guy who said:

MAN: Oh, I'm all for it. I feel like what's taking place in America right now is a slow-moving invasion. Our country is being taken advantage of and being exploited.

Slow-moving invasion. So unless this guy is a native American, he or his forebears are guilty of perpetuating one of those slow-moving invasions themselves.

This is crazy to me that people are so self-centered. Since my ancestors from Europe won a war, I have a God-given right to say who belongs here or who doesn't.

No you don't, not if you're going to follow that God in the Bible, the one who loves the "quartet of the vulnerable"--orphans, widows, the poor and the aliens.

If your family was part of the "founding" of this country, they were illegal immigrants.

If your family came to this country between 1776 and 1950, they came under laws that favored west Europeans, often to the exclusion of other nations.

There are families of "illegal immigrants" along the border with Mexico whose ancestors lived in that land hundreds of years before anyone of European descent even came looking for a passage to the Indies.

It is time to fix the immigration system here in the US. It's time for real decisions and leadership on this issue, not the broken-down rhetoric of political expediency. Families are suffering, children separated from parents, people are having their basic rights stripped.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Book Review: "Why God Won't Go Away" by Alister McGrath

In the past 10 or 15 years, a new breed of atheist has sprung onto the scene. With Christopher Hitchens somewhat at the front of the pack, this group of atheist thinkers seem to be more about anti-religion thought than they are truly atheistic in nature. It reminds me of the phrase that I once heard someone say about these neo-atheists (I think about Richard Dawkins, but I could be wrong): "There is not a god, and I hate him."

I like Alister McGrath. He thinks well and deeply, and has a great way of taking that deep thinking and making accessible to the public at large. In this book, McGrath dissects the writings of the 4 leaders of the new atheist group: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. And instead of the same old apologetic critiques of atheism, he puts out some great initial thoughts on counteracting the new atheist arguments against God and religion.

If you're looking for a book that dives deeply into the arguments for theism, with all the nitty gritty details, this probably isn't it. But for the average church-goer, this is a great primer on the basics of new atheism and the arguments to counter that teaching.

Probably the most important thing I can say about McGrath's book is that it is full of love. Not wishy-washy stuff, but genuine love and concern for these 4 men and the others who follow them. He knows them personally in some cases, prays for them with what appears to me to be sincerity, and truly wants to get to the truth. That alone makes the book unique and worthwhile in our vitriolic era.

The book is in 3 sections: a description of "new atheism", a discussion of 3 core themes to engage new atheism about, and a little look at what he sees as the future of new atheism. As I already said, the first section is not an in-depth philosophical examination, but meant for the average church goer, and as such does a great job introducing us to the common themes, elements and players on the new atheism stage.

The real value of the book is in section 2, where McGrath explores what the new atheists say about the Christian religion's history in 3 areas: violence, reason, and science. McGrath is honest--truly much idiocy has been done in the name of religion, and even in the name of Jesus. But he also looks at the things done in support of atheism, which certainly isn't any better of a track record. In fact, both of these support the biblical truth of innate depravity within human beings. We are bound by evil in many cases, regardless of how religious or irreligious we might be. One quote: "Maybe it's not that religion corrupts humanity but that a corrupt humanity creates a look-alike religion." (p. 92)

One great quote from the science chapter: "If science is hijacked by fundamentalists, whether religious or antireligious, its intellectual integrity is subverted and its cultural authority compromised." (p. 108) And in praise of science, McGrath says "science is about giving us reasons for believing that certain things are true, while at the same time insisting that we realize that future generations my rightly want to challenge those beliefs. That's why science is so successful: it's willing to change its mind in response to new evidence." (p. 115)

We all must be looking to how new evidence changes what we believe. We believe in an unchanging God, but not in an unchanging understanding of him. May he enlighten us with all truth because of our hope in him (Ep 1.17-18).

How irrational are you?

Here's a great article on the irrational beliefs we tend to hold to. Read this!

Defining Evangelical

Jim Wallis writes a good, balanced call for Evangelicals to not let ourselves be defined by either extreme. Check it out here.

What makes an American?

What are the core aspects of being an American? What are American values?

A friend asked me these questions recently. He asked me to blog about it...it makes me feel small just thinking about it. I mean, who am I to try an answer such questions? Yet here I am, sitting at my laptop, unable to escape an attempt at a response.

First (as always), my disclaimers.

As I said already, I feel inadequate for this. There is an incredible diversity to being American. First of all, I'm only including the United States of America. Yes, I know that's what most people mean by "American", but as I've learned from many people (including my South American wife) America involves 2 continents and multiple countries. But just within the US, there is diversity in culture (southern hospitality vs the speed of the metropolis) and language (what is the plural of "you"?) and timing (what defines "American" today? how is that different from 1911? 1811? 1411?) and I'm sure hundreds of other categories. To try and identify definitively the core things that make us Americans seems inherently arrogant. So I'm humbly offering my list in hopes that a dialogue might emerge where we can learn from each other. I declare my list to be faulty and biased before I even start it, because I know that I am faulty and biased.

Second caveat: American values and biblical values are not the same thing. Oddly, I'm much more comfortable talking about what I believe the Bible says that what I think an American values. But they are clearly not the same set of values. There are times when they will agree, there are times when they can be complementary and there are times when they will clash. And perhaps clash hard, harder than any American who is following Jesus is comfortable with, if we really engage the teachings of Jesus and scripture as a whole. Which leads to my third disclaimer;

Every American follower of Jesus will at some point be confronted with the choice of which "kingdom" comes first, which sets of values will be more influential on our families, our work, our choices, our beliefs. Honestly, we are probably confronted with that choice at least daily, we just don't realize it. And my fourth disclaimer? Following on the heels of #3;

Too many Americans who self-identify as Christians are living as though the "kingdom" of America and her values are at least as important as biblical values, if not more so. Yes, I am admitting that I believe many of us (yes, us, as in "me too") are failing miserably at "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."

So with those caveats, if you're still interested, here's what I think are the core American values, not necessarily in a particular order (although you might see a pattern in a few of them if you're familiar with our Declaration of Independence and Constitution):

• freedom
• human rights and opposition to tyranny
  
• equality
• consent of the governed
• justice
  
• capitalism
• individualism and e pluribus unum

I'm sure there are a number of others, but this is my list. But I can't just leave it there, because people pour lots of meanings into such complex words and thoughts. So we'll pick it up there in the next day or two and expound on the concepts.

In the meantime, feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. Looking forward to the dialogue!

Then why?

Conundrum: why do so many people who believe in smaller government still want to be president? Just wondering...

From Relevant Dude to Spiritual Father

This was a great article for any man (or woman) who wants to have influence in their world, particularly on today's younger followers of Jesus.

The Evangelical Mind

I have long liked Mark Noll. This is an excellent interview about his new book.