“We just can’t continue to look into the filter of our politics at our spirituality. It’s got to be the other way around ….” (Spoken by Andy Stanley speaking at Catalyst West at Mariners church, Irvine, CA April 17, 2015 as reported in Christian Post)
Are we, Christians, more identified by our politics than our faith? If it is the former, we have terribly missed the mark.
It may not be completely “our fault”. Political pundits are constantly categorizing and labeling Christians and determining our political leanings. Political analysts and prognosticators are continually defining and redefining Christians and their politics.
But, we do play along and allow ourselves to be pegged by political affiliations and positions and, thus, allow ourselves to be defined by them. We allow ourselves to go with the flow and become indistinguishable from the world around us. Continue reading “Through a Glass Darkly”→
People say that they reject Christianity because of the Old Testament. They say that they cannot believe in a God who strikes people dead and instructs His people to wipe out (kill) other people.
There are other reasons, of course, that people give for not believing. My focus in this writing is only this pop culture view of Christianity and the God of the Bible.
I think what people are saying when they say they cannot believe in the God who is described in the Old Testament is that they can’t believe in a God who seems to be (to us) so arbitrary, angry and jealous as God is portrayed in the Old Testament.
There are many things that can be said in response to this popular sentiment. For one thing, if there is a God, it doesn’t matter what I believe or what you believe: God is God regardless of our beliefs. There is Truth in the world, and it transcends me and you. The important question is, then, not what we think about God as revealed in the Old Testament, but whether it is true.
Considering whether God as revealed in the Old Testament is true should begin with some understanding of the Old Testament. In reading what people write and listening to what people say, most people (in my opinion) reject “the God of the Old Testament” or God as revealed in the Bible with very little understanding of what they are rejecting. They are rejecting a distortion or caricature. If you are going to reject something, at least understand what you are rejecting!
I have found myself recently caught up in the torrent, reacting and re-reacting to the various comments, news clips and videos, like waves of offensives and sieges…
The world seems to be coming unglued! Militant, radical Muslims in Iraq are killing Christians, minority religious groups and even other Muslims. Hamas bombards Israel, and Israel responds with shelling that is killing women and children. At home, police decked out in military gear in a Missouri town are confronting an angry mob looting in the street and threatening to kill policemen.
Daily posts on Facebook and other social media demonize Barack Obama and “liberal Democrats”, or greedy corporations and capitalists, or Israelis or Hamas. The air is filled with ranting on both sides and all sides decrying every conceivable evil in the world. The cacophony seems to be reaching new heights. The many forms of social media make ranting as easy as shouting out the window to a world that is right within earshot.
I have found myself caught up in the torrent, reacting and re-reacting to the various comments, news clips and videos, like waves of offensives and sieges, until I began to realize something was happening to me…. Continue reading “Whatever We Fix Our Eyes On We Reflect”→
Music is a powerful thing. Perhaps, nothing captures human emotion like music. The theme of love runs through music, as it does with all forms of art. The intimate love of a couple is one of the most powerful and life changing emotions a person can experience. The intensity of being in love may be unmatched by any other human emotion, even the love of a parent for a child.
I muse on this as I listen to music this morning. One of the most intimate of modern musical muses is JohnnySwim. The kitschy and unlikely name belies a husband and wife combination making some of the best music today. They also seem madly in love with each other. Beautiful voices. Smooth harmonies. Palpable emotions. Powerful songs. It is catchy music, but it is not pop. I would call it indie, but folksy.
Their story is as compelling as their music. She is the daughter of Donna Summer, the disco queen. Her first CD as young girl was Vince Gil. He is Cuban. His father was a preacher. They saw each other for the first time across a room in college. She pegged him as a ladies man, out of her league. She avoided him for four years. He saw her and said to himself, “That is the woman I am going to marry.”
“We are the fire from the sun. We are the light when the day is done. We are the brave, the chosen ones. We are the diamonds rising out of the dust.”
“Make no mistake. Live while we’re young. Chase down the sun. Hands off the brake. We can die when we’re done. Let’s live while we’re young.”
They portray that intimate, heady love that is the thing dreams are made of, the happily ever after feeling that books and movies attempt to capture on the screen and poets captured in words. It is a love that everyone yearns for, but often seems just out of reach. Listen to Take the World and You and I:
[T]hey can write stories
They can sing songs
But they don’t make fairy tales
Sweeter than ours
Tell me where we’re gonna plant these seeds
I come climbing up your apple tree
Can you take me to your garden please
Then there is the song, Over. It is as beautiful as it is haunting. “Wake me up the dream I had is over”.
The truth is that the Disney kind of love really does not exist. It is too good to be true. It is an illusion. It cannot be sustained, at least not in the passionate, head over heels kind of way. “[Y]our love is on fire on mountain tops not down with me….” is recognition of the illusion that many people fall for. They want to stay on the mountain top forever, but nothing really grows on mountain top, as beautiful as it is there. It is not a place a person can live indefinitely, even if you manage to reach its heights.
Many people chase a mirage that always seems to evaporate, and then they chase it again in a new direction – it seems always just out of reach. Poets and lovers have been trying to capture the essence of that elusive pot of gold for thousands of years. Even when love is found, it is fleeting, “like a shooting star” as the Bad Company tune goes.
Maybe that is because “we are all just dust in the wind”. From dust to dust we live. Even the strong, lifelong love that precious few are able to sustain with any degree of conviction and earnestness cannot maintain the original intensity. The 50, 60 or 70 years it lasts, is like the bloom of a single flower in the field of human history. It is a brief glory.
Is there a love that does not fade like a shooting star? Is there a love that rises above the dust? Is there a flower that does not lose its bloom?
We instinctively “know” there is something more. Musicians and poets have written about it for centuries. The longing is real.
Would we have any sense of “it” if there was no essence of “it” to be sensed? And if the essence that we sense is real, it must exist in some other realm than this human existence; it must grow out of a different soil.
Jeremiah the prophet said, “Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water.” (Jer. 17:13) He also predicted that one day “living water would flow out of Jerusalem.” (Jer. 14: 8) He said that, without God, we are like broken cisterns that cannot hold water, the living water that God offers to us. (Jer. 2:13)
Jesus was/is that living water. (John 4:10) Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:38) In Revelations, John saw a vision in which he was told that God will lead the people who follow him to streams of living water and wipe every tear away. (Rev. 7:17)
I believe this living water is the love that we sense and that we long for. This is love that is available to us from God. It is love that we only see through a glass darkly in this mortal coil we inhabit, but it is a love that grows in intensity rather than fading. It is a love that, indeed, lasts forever and quenches the thirst so that one will never thirst again. All real love is a subset of this Great Love, and divorced from it no love can be sustained. God is this Love. (1 John 4:8)
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C.S. Lewis famously said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we are made for another world.”
Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 1 John 2:9
God’s instruction for us is really pretty simple. We make it complicated. His message is straightforward – Love one another. Love God.
As Paul said, we can have faith to move mountains, but if we do not have love, we are empty. If we do not have love, there is no benefit to us. If we do not have love, we do not have God. Faith, hope and love are the measure, and the greatest of these is love.
Is love evident in your life? If we know God, love will be evident in our lives. We know God if we keep his commands. (1 John 2:3) The greatest commandment is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Love is not measured by the number of church services we attend, the amount of money we put in the collection plate or the number of church committees we are on. Love lives in the moment, every moment, of our lives. “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:6)
There is a great book by Bob Goff called, “Love Does“. I think John is telling us that Love also lives.
John lived with Love. He lived with Jesus. He talked and slept and ate and walked with Jesus. Jesus lived among people – and not just church people. His followers were not “church people” when you get right down to it. Jesus lived love, and we are told to do the same.
Love is kind, love is patient, love is long suffering, love keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not boast love does not envy, love is not proud, love does not dishonor others, love is not self-seeking. Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
If we give everything we own to the poor, but do not love, we have nothing. (1 Corin. 13:3) I believe that “love does”, as Bob Goff says, but love is something more than what we do. Love is who we are. Love lives.
Navigating by Faith 