Category: Culture

Gospel Shoes

The art of music has a way of moving us and conveying messages that might not be as well received more directly and bluntly spoken

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Blindfaller by Watchhouse

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? ….
God will judge those outside….

1 corinthians 5:12,13

Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians while urging them to deal with sexual immorality in the church that was so bad it would not have been tolerated by pagans. (1 Corinthians 5:1)

I am reminded of these words that Paul wrote as I listen to Gospel Shoes by the folk/Americana group, Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) from Chapel Hill, NC. This isn’t a “Christian” song written by people who profess to be Christian, but it speaks with poignancy, clarity, and tenderness. This version is particularly well done:

 Some set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose
Drift about their good times, slivers in their boots
Some walk the straight and narrow, only passing through
Trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes

The opening stanza of the song contrasts the “pagans” of the world with the “Christians” (more or less). Andrew Marlin (the writer of the song) may put it another way. He might say that he is contrasting “normal”, average, typical people with “religious”, church-going people.

To be fair, the caricatures of religious people do not accurately describe most of the people in my church (or in any church I have gone to, for the most part). BUT, those caricatures do have some elements of truth to them about some people, or some segment of people, who are religious in our society.

Those who “set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose”, are living this life for all it can give them because they believe this life is all there is. They “drift about their good times” because they have no particular aim, meaning, or purpose. They are looking for whatever fun and pleasure they can get, though they accumulate “slivers in their boots”.

Those who “walk the straight and narrow, only passing through”, are the religious people, of course. They are people who profess to believe in a better life after death, “trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes”.

The term, “gospel shoes”, finds some resonance in Isaiah:

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

Isaiah 52:7

The word, “gospel”, of course means “good news”. The feet are beautiful of those who say “God reigns!” because it is news of peace, good tidings, and salvation. Or so it should be. Paul says, our feet should be “fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

Ironic, isn’t it? That Paul in talking about the “armor of God” includes “shoes” made of the “gospel of peace”. (Ephesians 6:15) It’s no wonder that we send mixed messages out into the world. But, that isn’t the “fault” of scripture; it’s our misunderstanding of it and of the upside down nature of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached.

The armor of God does not protect us against people (flesh and blood) but against dark spiritual forces. (Eph. 6:12) We are not intended to use the armor of God as a weapon against people.

Of course, some people often don’t want to hear about God. They don’t want to do be accountable, so the news of God is not “good” to them. The people who set their heads to swimming, who think they have nothing to lose and drift about the good times, however, are bound to gather slivers in their boots.

Drifting through life doing “whatever feels good” inevitably results in hardship and heartache. These are people, however, for whom God emptied Himself to become human in Jesus and for whom Jesus gave up his life, dying on a cross. He didn’t come to condemn them; he came to save them. (John 3:16-17)

Those slivers in their boots are problems that will fester and get worse. People often do not wake up to the folly of our youth until we have accumulated more hardship, difficulty, and pain than we can handle. And sometimes, those slivers cause problems that linger for a lifetime.

God who loves “those people” so much that He gave His son for them. He loves them no less than any religious person in the world, no matter how devout. Thus, God desires to reach them with His Gospel, the good news that there is a way for them to avoid the pain of their own doing and judgment that inevitably follows this life and enter into relationship with the God who created them and loves them.

As I recall Paul’s words to the Corinthians, I am struck that we often seem to have gotten things backwards. Instead of loving the world and seeking to reach them with the good news, we condemn the world and preach judgment.

Continue reading “Gospel Shoes” →

Keeping It Real for the Church: Talent in Tension with Character

Talent, confidence, and boldness can be a dangerous combination in the Church without the character to counterbalance it.

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I have been listening to the podcast series, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. I didn’t listen to it when it came out and was popular. I tend to eschew popular things. This might be wisdom. It might be pride, or it might just be the way I am wired.

That instinct or intuition or character trait, whatever it is, has been good for me in many ways. I resist going along with the crowd, and I have learned not to trust crowds and crowd mentality. That mentality may have been instrumental in my coming to faith and becoming a follower of Jesus.

Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14, NASB) When I read that, I was (perhaps) predisposed to be drawn to that sentiment.

Perhaps, I was that way because of some noble intuition. Perhaps, I was that way because I felt like an outsider. It’s hard to be sure (really) of our own motivations. I think the prophet, Jeremiah, was right when he said that human hearts are deceitful. Who among us can really (truly) know our own hearts completely?

Pride has a way of making our own weaknesses look like strengths. Pride tempts us to embrace our character flaws and to lead with them. Pride can even clothe itself in a form of humility and nobility.

The truth is often a very mixed bag. My inclination to buck what is popular and trendy and to seek “the narrower” way may have helped me in being willing to embrace Jesus and become a follower, but it has also lead me down some rocky and rough terrain that was, frankly, dangerous.

For one thing, I almost didn’t return to college for my senior year because of a “cultish” denomination that believed their theology was right, and everyone else was wrong. I was afraid that going back to college might be walking away from God because I was predisposed to believe in the narrow path. (And their path was very narrow!)

Another example has had much more long lasting effects on my life and sent me on a trajectory that continues today. I shared recently some of my story in, Keeping it Real on the Path to Wherever I am Going. My predisposition to avoid the beaten path influenced me to take an alternative route to ministry, which is all I wanted to do after I got “saved” in college. In that piece I wrote:

“I didn’t trust my college advisors because they didn’t believe the Bible like I did. I should have gone to seminary, but I didn’t because the apostles who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached powerfully and eloquently in various tongues to the crowds in Jerusalem were unlearned men. I wanted to be like them.”

Keeping it Real on the path to wherever I am going

That path to ministry never worked out for me, and maybe it’s a good thing it didn’t! The audacity to think that I could perform in ministry like the apostles without sitting at the feet of Jesus in the flesh for three years would not have been a good foundation for shepherding his flock.

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is an object lesson in where my kind of disposition can lead. I am not saying that it must (necessarily) lead to the kind of crash and burn that occurred with the Mars Hill church movement, but the danger is certainly great.

I have listened to all of the primary episodes of that podcast, and I am listening now to the bonus episodes. I am finishing the one that features Tim Keller. The more I listen to him and read what he has written, the more I appreciate his depth of understanding and wisdom.

(You can listen at the link below if you are so inclined. In fact, if you don’t have enough time, energy or inclination to go much further here, I suggest you stop and listen rather than read on. But, I will continue anyway.)

Continue reading “Keeping It Real for the Church: Talent in Tension with Character” →

The Untitled God Song and the Deity of Our Existential Angst

The solution to our existential angst and a “god like me”

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I saw Haley Heynderickx this evening at Space in Evanston, IL. She was (once) an obscure, modern folk artist. Then, a song of hers went viral on TikTok. (So, my son tells me.) The crowd this evening was young, even for this trendy venue on Chicago’s ever hip north shore.

Existential angst (or dread, depending on your flavor of melancholy) is the thread that runs through her work. She is a siren for the spirit of this age. Her chords strike true with my son, who turned me on to her, and with my daughter, who accompanied us to the show.

I was young once also, and the existential angst of my youth drove me on a quest that led me to the threshold of Jesus, the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the world. A different generation, now, leans into a similar ages old myopia.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
….
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

Ecclesiastes 1:2

This words may have accompanied a more ancient tune played on a lyre from a more distant youth, but the melody sounds the same.

Existential first visited me one night when I was too young to have a vocabulary for the experience. We watched old home movies from a projector in our living room. Younger ghosts of my parents and grandparents played on the grainy screen in washed out black and white.

I remember it like a dream sequence. The images and feelings of the past are equally washed out in my mind now, but the poignance and clarity of the dread that I felt is clear.

This was, I believe, the first time I became aware of the unforgiving and unrelenting passage of time. This was the first time, perhaps, that I stared the inevitability of death in the face, and the eyes of death stared back, penetrating into my soul.

The next sequence in this dream is now (and always has been) more palpable and imminent than those grainy home movies. Later that night, I found myself detached …. floating in a yawning chasm of outer space …. utterly alone and disconnected.

I don’t know to this day whether I had a dream when I fell asleep that night or whether it came to me in a ghastly vision. It doesn’t matter. If claustrophobia can be felt in an endless void, the experience would be close to what I felt. Angst and dread have nothing on the feelings I had that night.

I say this to frame my thoughts as I recall the song with which Haley Heynderickx closed out the evening: the Untitled God Song.

Continue reading “The Untitled God Song and the Deity of Our Existential Angst” →

The Surprising Elevation of Women in the Bible

The Bible was written by men during times in which men dominated thought and culture

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I am reminded again in my daily reading of Scripture of the prominence of women in the life and ministry of Jesus. Every time I read through the Gospels, I see it. As I read through the Old Testament with eyes sensitized by the Gospels, I see the theme there also. This theme is somewhat, hidden, however.

We have only committed to the idea that women should be equals of men in very modern times, and that idea is still not universal around the world. A cultural revolution was required in the western world to change ancient paradigms. The change has been slow, difficult, and filled with tension.

Christianity was influential in bringing about that change, but many Christians have also resisted it. This is true even while the roots of that cultural revolution are embedded in Judeo-Christian Scripture.

Tom Holland, in his epic book, Dominion, traced modern, secular humanist values back to a surprising root. He had no idea where the values he took for granted came from: gender equality, racial equality, individual freedoms, civil rights, etc. When he searched for them, he for found them in Genesis, in the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and in the letters of Paul, the apostle.

Rebecca McLaughlin writes about the prominence of women in the Gospel accounts of Jesus in her 2021 article, Jesus Changed Everything for Women. She quotes Holland to remind us of the cultural context in which those accounts were written:

In Greco–Roman thinking, men were superior to women and sex was a way to prove it. “As captured cities were to the swords of the legions, so the bodies of those used sexually were to the Roman man,” Holland wrote. “To be penetrated, male or female, was to be branded as inferior.”

In Rome, “men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet.” The idea that every woman had the right to choose what happened to her body was laughable.

Jesus chantged Everything

Jesus didn’t introduce the these radical notions, however. They go all the way back to Genesis, where we read that God made men and women, together, in His image. (More on that below)

Modern westerners have learned to reject and even to despise the paternalism of most of the history of mankind (pun intended), so it’s easy to miss the way the Bible elevates women. After all, the Bible was written by many men many centuries ago, before anyone in the west (or anywhere else) got the notion that women should be treated as equals.

Let that sink in a moment: the Bible was written by men.

As much as modern westerners like to recoil from the idea of men treating women as second class citizens, the 1st Century Roman world thought nothing of it. Aristotle taught that women are “defective men”. He believed that “women were fit only to be the subjects of male rule“, and “they are born to be ruled by men”. Aristotle and most men for millennia thought that the inferiority of women was obvious, stemming from their nature as the “weaker gender”.

Nowhere, perhaps, were women more objectified and diminished in value than the Roman world. (See ‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’: Tom Holland, by Shoaib Daniyal, Feb. 23, 2020.)

Given that context, the “clues” we find “hidden” in the Bible of a different narrative about women is remarkable. Though the Bible was written, literally, by men, Christians like myself maintain that it was inspired by God, and a divinely inspired narrative shines through it. This is true despite the obvious cultural influences we see on the face of it.

The Bible was written by men during times in which men dominated thought and culture. it is no wonder that the Bible is often criticized for being backward and paternalistic, but that view can only be sustained on a cursory, shallow reading of the Bible. A closer reading belies a very different narrative!

Continue reading “The Surprising Elevation of Women in the Bible” →

The Problem with Christian Nationalism

As finite human beings, we all have a deficiency of perspective.

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I was listening to the podcast, Apollos Watered hosted by Travis Michael Fleming, recently when NT Wright made a very simple, but poignant, statement: “One of the most fundamental things about Christianity is that it is for everyone.” The context in which he made this comment was the subject of Christian nationalism.

NT Wright, of course, is from the UK. He just authored and published a book with Michael F. Bird, that is called JESUS AND THE POWERS, Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror & Dysfunctional Democracies.

Christian nationalism is currently a hot topic in the United States, though we are hardly the first nation that has ever flirted with Christian nationalism. England had such a period in its history. The nation of Israel, however, had even more provenance to think that way. Let’s take a quick look at how that played out in the 1st Century, before I get to my point.

The nation of Israel was long a nation of “God’s chosen people” by the 1st Century when God became man and “came to His own”, and what happened? The Apostle, John, tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel that they, tragically, “did not receive him!” (John 1:1-11) They did not recognize God in human form standing before them!

We should be asking ourselves why! God became flesh, and He walked among them, and they didn’t recognize Him. We have the Holy spirit, of course, but they had God in human flesh!

We might assume that having the Holy Spirit makes us different than them. That might be true if a person actually has the Holy Spirit, and if a person actually lives by and listens to the Holy Spirit. Of those who do have the Holy Spirit, do they actually live by and listen to the Holy Spirit all of the time? Even most of the time?

NT Wright is a prolific and influential theologian. He has written key works on Paul and Romans. His insights are particularly relevant and poignant as such an expert who has no dog in the political and cultural “war” that rages in this country.

Such a simple statement: “Christianity is for everyone.” Who would not agree with that statement? Jesus said he came for everyone who believes. Paul said there is no Jew nor Gentile; we are all one in Christ.

In the 1st Century Jewish world, only two groups of people existed: Jews and everyone else. The Jews called everyone else Gentiles. What Paul means, therefore, is that everyone in the world is unified in Jesus Christ.

Paul said that Jesus tore down the wall that divided the two groups of people in the world, and he made the two groups one. He reconciled all people to himself through the cross. (Ephesians 2:14-16)

The danger of Christian nationalism in the United States (or anywhere) is that some nationalistic Christians may see themselves as uniquely Christian, uniquely privileged by God, and that can lead to us to see other people as less uniquely blessed and less divinely privileged. This is dangerous because we are tempted to view ourselves as better than others.

This attitude can hinder us from seeing our own faults and weaknesses that are unique to our culture. We are apt not to see the planks in our own eyes while we focus our attention on the specs in others’ eyes.

We might also tend to focus on maintaining our privileged position we believe God has given us, first, to the exclusion of other people. We might be tempted to cling to our privileged position while we should be focusing on helping our neighbors, including our foreign neighbors.

Jewish people in the 1st Century had the same attitude, and it blinded them from seeing who Jesus was – the Messiah they had been waiting for – because they thought he was their Messiah would liberate them. They weren’t prepared for a Messiah who came to liberate the whole world!

Though “God’s own” didn’t receive Him, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God….” (John 1:12) We might be so familiar with the following verse that we miss the scope of God’s focus:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

John 3:16-17

God’s focus is the world – the whole world. He even gives us a sneak peak at His end game through the same Apostle, John:

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

Revelation 7:9

With Christian nationalism, however we might define it, the danger is that our perspective may become too narrow. We tend to focus too much on us when God is focused on the world.

Religious people wanted to kill Jesus in his hometown because he challenged their views as God’s privileged people. They became angry with Jesus when he talked about Elijah visiting and blessing the Canaanite woman in Sidon to the exclusion of all the widows in Israel. They were angered when Jesus said that Elisha healed the Samarian war general of leprosy rather than all the people in Israel who had leprosy. They were so incensed that they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. (Luke 4:24-29)

Christian nationalism of any kind flirts with unhealthy pride in national identity. Unhealthy pride and emphasis on any identity other than our identity in Christ has a tendency to warp us inward and to diminish our identity in Christ. Thus, Christian nationalism can lead us to diminish our love for God.

When we think too highly of ourselves, we value our own culture and ways of looking at and doing things more than we should.  When we think too highly of ourselves and value our own ways too much, we also tend to devalue others and the ways that other people think. Thus, Christian nationalism can lead us to diminish our love for others.

As finite human beings, we all have a deficiency of perspective. Each individual and cultural perspective is limited, which is why Isaiah said:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9

In short, we do not have the perspective of God. His perspective is far greater than ours. This is true individually, of course, but it’s also true of humankind. It is also equally true of people groups, cultures, and nations.

Continue reading “The Problem with Christian Nationalism” →