For Joy

by brian johnson

“And He has shown you what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

It was supposed to be so easy. God told us what we need to do and we decided either to forget or to go above and beyond. We either want to mind our own business or take the place of God and determine what is right, what is wrong, what needs to change and when. I know that I have a tendency to do both depending on the situation.

I believe somewhere between the general self-righteousness and the self-righteous self-sacrifice that typify the right and left extremes of American Christianity (what the heck is American Christianity anyway?) there is a happy medium that balances our need to create justice and to exemplify humility.

Jesus came to turn the world upside down. He called his followers to a radical way of life, but didn’t he also tell us to not worry and to be happy in his own kind of way? Sometimes, when I imagine Jesus I imagine him whistling the hook to Hakuna Matata. Between challenging scribes and healing those cats he met on the street, I can almost see Jesus hanging out on reggae night at the local club with the tax collectors and prostitutes. Even given the state of the world then and now, it’s just not that heavy.

Now, before anyone throws their Bible or anything else at me, I want to be absolutely clear that I think the life best lived is one in service of others. In Matthew 25, Jesus explicitly told us where to find him and what we should do when we see him.

But, how to do both? How to be light-hearted, lightly burdened in the face of everything? In Buddhism, there is a concept called dynamic sunyata which among other things entails a mindfulness of all things spiritual/eternal and earthly/ethereal at once. With regard to service and works, I think we Christians can also try to be mindful of both realms in all that we do. Some other dynamics that we love and cherish: God was, is and is to come; the Kingdom of God is come, is coming and is to come.

This life, our lives mean everything and nothing (taken in full context) all at once. In becoming Christians, we die (Galatians 2:20); we deny ourselves and give up our lives (Mark 8:34-35) all the while remaining 100% human just as Jesus did.

“Neither” Joshua 5:14

This was the response of the angel of the Lord when Joshua asked him, “Are you for us or our enemies?” The angle’s only demand of Joshua and which comes down to us in scripture was to “take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” In the end, the battle is God’s.

This world is beautiful and we should make sure that it stays that way and that everyone in the world has the opportunity to recognize and enjoy it as well. We have a duty to be God’s hands and feet in service of the orphan, widow, slave and stranger. As the body of Christ, we, each and every one of us in the most literal way hurt as when any other is in pain, but we can still have joy. There’s a song that we used to sing in my church back home that continues to encourage me, maybe it will resonate with some of you readers:

Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him
Though He slay me, I'll trust in the Lord
Though talked about and misunderstood
Yes, I've been lied on, but still have my joy
Still have joy, still have joy

In spite of everything I’ve been through

I still have joy
Now try to think about it using the first person singular and plural at the same time.

Ivy and Dead Trees

What is paper but thin slices of dead tree? Pages cannot breath in carbon dioxide, exhaling oxygen straight into our thirsty lungs. The Bible, as a book, is a collection of slender, two dimensional, pieces of lifeless, breathless limbs. Reverberating in the halls of the hearts of our generation is the desire to see life and for many, that life is only seen in the action of social justice.

Many before and after this writer have noted that today, Christianity is for the most part, a dead religion studied by professional students known as pastors. A sweet drink it is to swallow down the satisfaction of understanding something intellectually. On Sunday nights, when we gather to eat a meal and read the Bible, its easy for our group to slip into a conversation about the pages. What is the context, why is it relevant, where did it take place, who is the writer. Of course many of these questions can serve the purpose of furthering the expedition, but for the most part, they are just a tasty liqueur.

On the ivy covered gates of the ivory towers and the tinted glass windows of church offices, many sit and discuss series titles, sermon ideas. For the restless and curious, these things force withdrawl and a matriculation into the ranks of spiritual ambivelance and social activity. Tragically, we find ourselves quickly seeing the benevolence of seeking justice and are unable to reconcile God's word as alive and active in the same way, because its presented as a text, which a man has interpreted and expects you to absorb from a church sponsored syllabus.

So a proposal to both parties...

To the skeptic: Jesus said the burden of being with him is easy and light. Seek justice like Jesus did, but seek him too, because he is there and he is alive.

To the pastor: Stop talking about the Bible like a simple text. Of course your intellect is born out of reverence towards the book itself, but its no longer percieved as living and active, created before words, when you treat it like a puzzle, a source for material, or something to spend more hours discussing in offices and classrooms than living and loving on the streets of the world.

listening

by kristin friedery

Follow me on this...we live in a culture that is inundated with media. Music, cell phones, email, television, etc... Most of the time we can hardly hear each other talking over the din, let alone God. We are trained to live within our own world, walking the streets plugged into our iPods, heads bent over our cellphones texting each other nonstop. Don't get me wrong, technology has done a lot in bringing folks closer together. This blog has greatly improved my ability to dialogue with people across the country. But in our day-to-day how often is it that we take the time to look and listen to the world around us?

I spend a lot of time talking to my friends about living in our present reality. To me, this means engaging in a conversation without answering that text from your mom. Or maybe it means taking out both ear buds to hear what your friend just said, instead of just one. Or even, riding the bus without any sort of prop...just riding...and looking...and listening.

The theme of listening to God has been pervasive in my life recently. My church is in the process of listening and descerning God's vision for us. Now this seems more than appropriate for a church to do, but what about the rest of the time? It is important that we are always listening for God's voice because He loves us and wants what is best for His kingdom, which is ultimately best for us. Sometimes this pulls us into a place of peace and sometimes it takes us right outside of our comfort zone. But always it puts us closer to God. Listening to God's voice and direction in our lives aligns us with Him.

My pastor recently gave a sermon about listening to God and what it might look like. He spoke about how God uses the Holy Spirit part of the Triune to reach out to His people. My pastor used as an example the story of a man who has practiced and honed his gift of discernment (listening to God's Spirit speaking to him). This man has often found himself praying with strangers in parking lots at the urging of the Holy Spirit. Now, even this man would say that he has a particular gift that God has given to him and has developed in him, but doesn't the Spirit move in all of us?

The sermon started me thinking about whether or not I listen to God's voice in my every day life. I can't say that I have ever asked a stranger how they were doing at the prompting of the Spirit. So I decided to do an experiment and see what God says to me during the day. I will admit, I did not spend the day in conversations with people I just met, but I did realize how much of my time I spend NOT listening to God.

Jesus spent a lot of His ministry walking among the people. He was available for conversations, for teaching and touching lives. Sometimes it exhausted Him and He took a retreat to talk to the Father. But most of the time, Jesus engaged the people who were around Him.
We are called to live our lives like Christ. Relational ministry means being available for relationships. Maybe, like the guy in my pastor's sermon, this means being spurred by the Holy Spirit to ask that woman in line ahead of you how her day is going. Maybe it just means putting down the cellphone until the car ride is over so you can talk to the friend sitting next to you.

Coffee & Gambling

by austin p

Throughout high school and college I tried a lot of things, good and bad. Once my era of compulsion came to a close, few rocks remained unturned, except two glaring excpetions. Coffee, and gambling. Passion and compulsion are often woven together and often confused. I found I dove into unhealthy obsessions with almost anything I enjoyed. I enjoyed fine tobacco, until one summer I became a serious chain smoker. When I discovered baby corn in the Cheyenne-Arapaho dining hall I created a salad exclusively comprised of mini-cobs and it was a dietary staple for a period. I quit drinking alcohol all together for years. Then I realized for myself (which is not true for all), that in order to learn true self-discipline, I needed not abnegation, but moderation.

So as I learned moderation, I experimented. I tried poker and found the same effect as video games...something others had addiction to, but I was safe from. Not because of my self-control, but because of sheer displeasure from how terribly unskilled I was. Then came coffee, which to this day, I never consume in large quantities. Maybe that is because the first cup of coffee I ever had was a dry-processed Arabian coffee, which is a very special, complex cup...that set the standard very high. That was the day I fell in love with coffee as an act of worship.

Coffee is a special thing and one of my best friend's, Paul Smith, is a professional coffee roaster. He is the man most responsible for me appreciating how one beverage can be such an intricate act of worship and also that we all find different ways to savor God. Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz tells the title story as a time when Miller saw a man playing the saxophone on a street corner. Miller cannot play the saxophone, but he saw why you can love it, because the man did not open his eyes for 15 minutes. That is how I see Paul with fine food. I do not understand it like he does, but watching him love it, makes me appreciate God. So I have asked Paul to write a little bit about his love of coffee. It will be posted this month.

the breakfast club

When I started this blog I set out to write third person non-fiction pieces related to my inquisitions about disconnections I was observing between the Bible and American Christianity. Things like, if the Old Testament explicitly describes tithing as a 10% fund for the poorest of the poor, then why is it used in America to primarily fund building maintenance and professional salaries. Why are American's so worried about gender roles, worship styles, even theologies, when Jesus explicitly called humanity to compassion for the poor, the orphaned, the widowed.

I've decided every once and a while I need to get over myself and realize this is a blog, and writing in first person is okay. My fear was that it would simply be my voice barking about my side of a phantom debate. I need to confess I have to find a new direction for the blog. I think I've worn out a lot of the initial questions I had about the bureaucracy of the American church...I tell people I am not post modern, I am post cynical. I am ready to see the change, not file the indictments.

When I was in college I was in a group of friends we referred to as the Breakfast Club. We would meet 3 times a week for Breakfast in the same dorm and eat pancakes made by the man who the character Chef, from South Park was based on (I went to CU Boulder, where Matt Stone and Trey Parker also went). We would debate things like pre-destination vs. free will, women's roles in ministry, and other controversies including worship styles and ministry models. All of these terms are most likely cryptic to the outsider.

A year later, one of the girls renounced her faith. She was a great friend of mine and it pained me to see her delve into some dark indulgences she has fenced out of her previous life. The tragedy had nothing to do with her now violating the unspoken codes of American Christianity, it was the fact that I could see exactly how she got there. We had boiled Christianity down to a roman numeral outlined document of clauses and sub-clauses, a puzzled equation of single sentences throughout the Bible and self-serving metaphors to support our immature vantages.

If the precepts of Christianity were so compartmentalized for me, I had to explore my view of God. I realized I viewed God as a fumbled mess of self-serving adjectives. Just when I wanted justice, graceful when I needed grace...all the while seeing him as a him...a personal being that exists in finite space, a sort of back room off in the distance requiring travel or long distance communication to get to. After that I realized I felt some obligation to run around the world telling people about my distant friend/judge and finding ways to get them into my portals to him (bible studies, church, etc.).

After a few years of processing all this stuff I had to recognize what John meant when he said God is love and what God meant when he said I am. God is not loving, he is love, and he is not some form of traits, he simply is. As a result, he is everywhere and Christianity, its scriptures, are the prescriptions to access him in the moment, in the place. The trouble with an argument like this is that it flies in the face of certain pieces of scripture. You can always take one line from the Bible and condemn facets of society to damnation or justify your own selfishness. But when you grow up, listen to people, and take in some stillness (as so many American theologians do not) you realize that from cover to cover in the Bible, only a few motifs carry through the complexities of God's history and those things transcend our precepts.

failure and child can never be the same thing

A few years ago The Format came out with a song called "On Your Porch." Its a very captivating song and surely there are people all over who see it as a soundtrack to their life. The premise of the song is a guy who is sitting on a friend's porch smoking and chatting about deep things. The song feels like a small window strategically placed in a location young men rarely reveal or visit requiring just the right temperature, timing, lighting, and company we put aside our motivations and explore reality.

The second verse is about how his Dad was sick and he couldn't stand around for fear of having to say goodbye. Not many sons can say that about their Dad. Who knows if they even got along, but they certainly had something complicated and woven. The conversation goes like this:

And me, I ran, I couldn't even look at him,
For fear I'd have to say goodbye,
And as I start to leave,
He grabs me by the shoulder and he tells me,
"Whats left to lose? You've done enough,
And if you fail then you fail but not to us,
'Cause these last three years,
I know they have been hard,
But now it's time to get out of the desert and into the sun,
Even if its alone."



Sometimes in America we distort parts of the Bible like Colossians 3:23 into saying we are called to be accomplished and successful. Its the new prosperity gospel...all the glamor of success, under the guise of "for God." But the humanity of this story told on a friend's porch seems too true and allegorical of heavenly love to reconcile the two. What his Dad is saying is you may "fail" but you cannot fail us, because you're already our son. Its not some fuzzy analogy for God's love being attempted in this article, its just a painting of adoration by blood ties. The point is now cliche to say, "even if you are the biggest failure, you can still know God's love." Because thats sweet and redemptive.

How often do we realize the moments of tangible affection are permanent, strictly based on the blood ties between us and God. Yeah you might not make a lot of money or friends or accomplishment, and really you don't need it either. Its more important to be talking and loving, not doing and winning.

discussion = heresy

Evangelical Christians are utterly fascinated with the “Great Commission”, a statement made by Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations. They drool over one sentence, completely ignoring the fact that Jesus spent a bulk of his time healing and caring for the untouchables of his society and smearing the false doctrines of the religious elite. Why would he act one way and then have people throw billions of dollars into facilities and programs to convince people of Jesus’ truth. Was it not his action that made people attracted to him? There is something very difficult to swallow when you begin to make the argument that Jesus’ first priority for humanity was so much more a person's belief, over ending the suffering of his children.

But no one wants to debate that argument, its dangerous and becomes heresy quickly rebuked by Christian leaders. It’s a dangerous question to ask because it implies mutual exclusivity. The principle of economic scarcity proves we can only do so much based on limited resources so often people must choose between the two. Jesus seemed to spend more time asking very dangerous questions to highfalutin religious leaders so why shouldn’t those dialogues happen in American Christianity? Why can't people ask the question, "why are you spending __, or hiring ___ people just to make a sweet institution?"

There is an intense group of Christians dominating conversations across the media and churches of America who often stand on the pedestal of sola scriptura, which is Latin for “scripture alone.” Whenever someone starts to talk about suffering and social justice, especially calling into question the incalculable resources put towards evangelical programming, there is the same response no matter whose asking. If someone outside the Church asks why a multi-million dollar facility is necessary when people even in the wealthiest country in the world are suffering and starving, it is chalked up to a different set of values not informed by the Bible. And if its Christians, then "they must not be reading the Bible."

The oddity is the religious leaders are so often creating their own ideologies and somehow people are expected to subconsciously believe it derives from the Bible. Whenever somebody starts talking about justice and love over professional Christianity and widespread conversion, they are labeled as pluralists and immediately categorized as people who reject the facts of souls needing saving.

There is a well-known evangelical pastor in the United States who once said to an auditorium of pastors, “McDonald’s has accomplished its great commission” as a way of arguing for churches marketing and trying to impress culture through media and programming. There are quite a few problems with saying something like this, but none of his evangelical buddies are jumping on it. First, what does the fact that there are a lot McDonald’s have to do with the Bible? Its pretty dangerous to start mocking movements of love or justice because they are not rooted in the Bible, but make a claim like that. Second, when did Jesus ever make an argument for massive, single culture domination?

More importantly, so many churches are asking the question, “how can we market to culture through media and programming so we can compete and grow?” Well the sad eventual tragedy which will lead to the bankruptcy of the movement is if

I. You claim God made the world
II. The world is aware of the crumbling of itself through starvation and injustice
III. You choose to try to impress people with lights and songs and neat sermons

then people are going to be furious at God for ever making the world and letting people be foolish enough to blow infinite resources on simply convincing people “church is fun and you should attend”…compared to hunger, child prostitution, war profiteering, and homelessness. There’s only two conclusions remaining for the onlooker,

I. There is no God.

Or

II. God is loveless and so are his people.

Tetris and Spirituality

The concept of faith being like a game of Tetris is a decent metaphor for the faults in making spirituality, concrete. The canard is by taking moving pieces and simply forcing them into perfectly symetrical and easily divisible triune compartments, numerical moral sets, and specific disciplines coded by terms only Christians understand, constructs form that are incapable of evolving with the moving pieces of human life, science, and tragedy.

It is no small wonder things like 9/11 and Katrina are dismissed as conspiracies, which are of course considered unmistakably ignorant claims by the rest of humanity. The Tetris metaphor applies because while one may wish to manipulate things into a tangible block, the truth is things keep moving and holes develop.

Then panic sets in, because the holes on top breed questions about the blocks below; things like the idea that there is a God who made the beautiful earth. It forces a crossroads where people panic themselves into an ignorant cave of denial or free themselves from spirituality completely, rejecting everything down to the roots and existing in the large, but dull, pluralistic view of vagueness and numbness, making it difficult to enjoy even the question of a creator who loves his art and made it because he loves people.

The only way to find a depth of understanding in the ends of the above spectrum are atheists and mystics. But most people fear both ends and find themselves restlessly bathing in the luke warm water of

apathy or ignorance.

Nice to meet you, have you heard about Hell?

The concept of "missionaries" has always been a little suspect. By definition, missionaries "go." They enter into a foreign place, not native to them...otherwise they wouldn't be missionaries, they'd be locals who believe in something. In a lot of ways missionaries are an extremely American concept saturated in ethnocentrism. OF COURSE, this does not mean there are not extraordinary people technically titled missionaries (like say a Macedonian woman who moves to Calcutta and takes care of the worlds most desperate people). The suspect concept is the literal antonym to the concept of leaving and helping people, its the concept of entering and assuming.

The real crime in the concept of missional work is not Americans moving to China to help build sustaining communities (is their anything that more meets the core of selflessness?) The problem is when a pompous, middle-aged white guy assumes with his college education and smug smile, any culture besides middle America is easily sculpted and effortlessly entered into. They sit around and toss terms like "post-moderns, or urbanites" and immediately classify huge age, race, or economic groups into tiny definitions, which after defining are easily understood, minimized, and ready for transformation by the intellectual giant who stereotyped them.

In the early 20th century, single, middle-aged women from Presbyterian churches around America were commissioned to "help" the southwest as it changed from Mexico to America. These missionaries moved into villages and brought with them refrigerators and ovens with stove tops. They thought with these flashy appliances, clearly more sophisticated than the household items of these villages, then these people would immediately reject Catholicism and find Jesus...not necessarily literally in the fridge, but still.

Its the same thing today; the greatest link is the contemporary church. White dudes playing Nashville twanged pop songs with daft lyrics, all the while confident that this "olive branch" to the "sight and sound generation" will attract people to spirituality. Assuming some hipster kid or confident young jock is going to hear an old guy make a cute comparison between a Nickleback song and why they should be a Christian.

Christianity was never intended to be a momentous concept of simple conversion, passport stamping for heaven, or transfer of eternal destination. Its a spiritual life of mystery lived in love for people and love for a creator. But people truly hate it, HATE IT

and its because presumptuous people of another world nod their heads pretending to listen, all the while waiting to explain why middle American, suburban Christianity is clearly superior to bohemianism, public education, or any sort of free expression. The sad crime of this foolishness is the ridiculous amounts of money spent on gigantic auditoriums, with unbelievable sound systems, when the present generation is curiously watching Africa crumble and themselves self-medicate wondering "could ANYTHING possibly fix these things?"

Heroes

"I was young enough, I still believed in war." - Bright Eyes

Sometime around the age of 13 a war is waged on each individual's fantasies. Slowly, an insurgency of reality decimates youthful idealism and replaces it with "maturity, practicality, pragmatism." There is no middle ground to be found between cubicles and capes. Children pretend to fly and adults sit in front of computers all day long. Peter Pans and Peter Petrellis are wide eyed fools of fictional existences. It is impractical to die for someone else, screaming out their name in love.

The desire for heroism is inherently human because we are created in the image of Jesus Christ, who angrily disrupted the temple courts, stood toe to toe with Roman Guards and embarrassed religious elitists. But for us, hours upon hours are spent over cups of coffee between young people and "mentors" counseling about cautious dating, moral living, and practical planning of future ventures...which is dull.

The average person has no idea what it means to run into a burning building and pull out a body. The average child goes to a school or church that entertains them into not growing up into "liars", the average high schooler goes to a youth group that aims to charm them towards attending church when they are adults, and the average adult is offered free coffee to pacify them into listening about "clean and proper" lifestyles through fun stories.

Every person young and old, in the deepest caverns of their heart, wants to have the opportunity to run into a building and pull out a living breathing body, but no one is drawing that out of each other. If only American Christians could realize the opportunity to run into burning buildings is at every corner and we can pull out living breathing souls.

Heroes can exist, but we hardly dream to heroic proportions. Sure we give a dollar to a homeless guy, or join a committee at church. Could we start revolutionizing what it means to be an American Christian by angrily disrupting the people turning churches into market places, stand toe to toe with those who oppress the poorest of the poor, and embarrass religious elitists? Do it, be a hero this week and email us back.

Its time that saving a soul isn't associated as a momentary conversion through convincing philosophy, it is breathing life into a soul that is slipping into apathy, its time some of the wise people start challenging the religious elitists, and its time people start combating church materialism.