Tripping Up...

Something has happened and I'm not sure when it actually happened I just know that it did.  Suddenly I'm 20 years out of college. 20 years not out of high school but out of college.  It's crazy because it doesn't feel like it should be that long.  It puts me even further out of High School.  It's just one of those things.

There are a few things that I remember though and one of them is one of those super embarrassing moments that happens in everyone's life, you know the ones I mean, where you look around and hope that no one sees you.

I was on the phone talking to who knows, I am pretty sure it wasn't my parents though, the conversation ended in a not parenty way if that makes sense,  I jumped up turned and sprinted into the laundry room.  See back in the day you had a pay phone and calling card, living on campus in a different set of dorms, you could have a phone in the room, or you could do the whole pay phone thing,  anyway instead of landing in the laundry room, I slammed into the window next to the door.  Pretty hard, don't get me wrong I recovered, but I also did that whole check to see if anyone had seen, I'm not sure how they couldn't have but it must have been okay because no one said anything, they were probably just being nice, who knows.  That memory brings to mind something that we all do...

Have you ever been walking down the street, and for no visible reason you seem to just trip.  Your foot catches some phantom root, or a crack in the sidewalk.  Which brings me in an admittedly circuitous way to my thoughts for today...



Rules are better than faith because rules are easily measured.  I make lists of what needs to be done,  I set a calender and live by it, rules make sense,  Follow the rules and happiness happens, ignore the rules and hard times ensue.  Right?  I mean that makes sense.  The problem is people suck at following rules, most of the times humans try to find ways around the rules, they look for loopholes, they follow the letter of the law but ignore the spirit behind it.  Why so many people want to go back to a rules based faith is beyond me but we can find that problem all over the place.  Equally troubling is why modern Christians, think that post modern seekers, and Christ followers, willing to read a bit for themselves and live out their faith in tangible ways, are messed up and far from God because they just don't get the importance of Levitical Law and it's meaning to our faith.  Which brings me to the whole reason for the post.

When I read the verses in Romans this morning something happened that seems to happen more and more often the further I get from my days as a know it all college kid studying to be "in the ministry."  I made a connection between an every day occurence and a Biblical truth.  We need to trip up, and many times our failure at the rules of faith enable our faith to grow more robust.  Think about it, when you trip over that unseen crack in the sidewalk, what's the first thing you do. I know what I do, when I trip on that unseen thing, I stop for a moment, and sometimes, no that's not really accurate, 98 percent of the time, I go back and try to figure out why I tripped.  I look at the spot that I lost my balance, I try to find the cause...Now apply that, to the verses in Romans.  When we try to live and move and have our being in the rules of Christianity, as opposed to in the person of Christ we are going to trip and if we do it right, if we trip up, as opposed to just tripping. We will be brought back to that place where we see that no matter how hard we try, without a living breathing active faith, that has its foundation not in Leviticus but in Christ, we are lost, we do what so many of us do, what I did when I ran into that window outside the Laundry Room, we look around to make sure no one saw what just happened, and if they didn't we turn around and act like everything is fine, like we have control of things, like nothing happened.  Meanwhile the person that we claim to follow weeps, not so much because of the misstep but because we are leaving out the one that wants more than anything to be more to our life than a label.

Imagine the difference in our world, not the world.. our world, the sphere of influence that we have, if we are willing to look at the places we fall instead of trying to act like they never happened, people would see us in a whole new, approachable, light, and isn't that what we're supposed to be?

Who talks like that?

“To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.Now I do all this because of the gospel, so I may become a partner in its benefits.”
(1 Corinthians 9:22–23 HCSB)

This one's just a personal thing but it's attached to this verse in 1 Corinthians.  Now don't get me wrong I get it.  I know that I'm kinda pulling things out a bit on this one.  I know that this particular scripture has been used for all sorts of reasons, usually the wrong ones.  People use it as an excuse way to many times, when Paul talks about following the letter of the law, when he tries to reach one set of people, and not following it to reach another, people on both sides of whatever issue they have with law and grace have a field day.  The concept though is solid, Paul realizes that the intended audience is important, and how we interact with that audience matters when we are presenting something as important as the Gospel of Christ.

The problem for most of us is we don't really know who our intended audience is.  Which brings me to the title.  Why do so many people who are supposed to tell others about Jesus do so in ways that either make Jesus and more importantly his words inaccessible, or completely alienate them from the one known for hanging out with people not in religious in crowd.

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.””
(Matthew 11:19 HCSB)

Pretty harsh words for many of us, mainly because for years the church has done it's best to not be a friend of sinners, to be more worried about not smoking, not chewing, not drinking, not, not, not, not, not. The church doesn't really like that Jesus.  That Jesus makes the church uncomfortable, because that Jesus wouldn't really spend Sunday morning singing Heart of Worship, or Amazing Grace.

Phrases and words that bother me include but are not limited to "beloved," "Oh Church," "My People," "friends," "lets enter in," "close your eyes,"  "let's all join hands," the list goes on, I could sit here and come up with whole sentences that don't make sense but that's just a waste of time.

Perhaps the worst part of the title is that I have said those very same words at one time or another in my life as a Christ Follower and as a church leader.  It's easy for us all to get to a place where the phrases and words we use become more important than the message we are to give.  That playing to the base becomes easier than evaluating every part of what we do and finding the disconnect. Sometimes it's language, sometimes it's programming, it could be structure, or music, or decor.  There are all sorts of ways that we talk to people, many times trying to make our language more important than theirs.

Coffee shops are cool right so lets serve coffee shop coffee and make a cool sitting area like they have at the new place down the street, then the people at the coffee shop will come here on Sunday, except that the people are already going to the coffee shop.  Lights and sound and smoke are really cool, look at all the people who go to concerts, they like those things, let's incorporate them into Sunday Worship.  Except that in many cases we can't do it as well as they can, can't afford what it takes to make it really great, and if we can, we run the risk of looking desperate.  When we were growing up kids were seen and not heard, that's the way things were for us and what was good enough for us is good enough for them. Except that people with Kids now, especially Gen X'ers and Millenials don't want their kids to be treated the way they were treated when they went to church or any other function.  Look around the church, see the lack of young people, the mass exodus as soon as 18 hits and think about how you treated them when they came to church, that one can be painful.

The real problem that I see is that we try so hard to wrap the message of Christ in a package that is relevant, and attractive, and easy to understand and embrace...except that there are whole aspects of that package that are not attractive, not relevant by what churches assume are relevant standards, and are down right confusing to the people who spend their lives studying them, even if they won't admit it.   Sure the whole love thing is great.  and it's true.  If we would spend as much time loving people as we do telling them all the things we don't like about them, because face it when we point out a persons sin either to them individually or through a sermon series on Levitical laws and why they work for you, what we're really saying is "these are the things we don't like about you, if you want to belong, if you want to fit in, if you want to get to know the guy that we keep saying loves you unconditionally then you have to met OUR conditions.  Really loving people and talking about the love aspect of our faith is true and great but then you come to the harder things. Love is easy to make relevant and attractive and easy to understand. Repentance, sacrifice, taking up the cross daily, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile with the person that hurts you and hates you, standing up for what's right and just even when I'm uncomfortable with it, even when it's not my interpretation of, even when I don't feel like it.  Those things are harder to sell.  Which is why it's not our job to do so.  Look what Paul says...

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:6 HCSB)

We plant and water with love and grace and mercy, then God is the one that takes it from there, he's the one that brings about the realization that there are things in a person's life that need changed, he's the one that pushes a person to the point of picking up the cross.  The problem is we don't always like waiting for God to do the work, and so we start saying things that build walls around the very one that can and will make a person into what they were designed to be.  Romans 8 is one of those chapters that people use to prove their points about law, and faith, and love and freedom, but I am beginning to think it's more about what we say and what God wants us to say.  Starting in vs 26 and going to the end of the chapter we find an idea that I think is lost to many Christians today.

“In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings.”(Romans 8:26 HCSB)

If all the stuff we have decided is important to say is so important why bother with the God part of our faith.  If we were really that articulate why does God have to intercede for us?  Why bother with verse 27 or 28 or 29.  Why say all things work together for good when so many things don't.  I hate it when people say that to me when things are going bad, mainly because that statement holds truth in regards to my eternity with God, not in my finite journey on this earth.  If I have a relationship with him, even when things go horribly wrong here I know that there will come a day when the there will be no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain. but that's not necessarily today.  I fail to see the good that comes from a child diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, fail to understand the blessing that comes from that same child wasting away to nothing and dying, and from what I read and what I see I'm not supposed to be okay with it, I shouldn't understand it and I definitely shouldn't use scripture to explain away a persons grief or anger or resentment toward God.

Admitting we don't know, or don't understand is seen as weakness in the church world, but it shouldn't be.  We think that admitting a verse doesn't make sense to us, or that taken in today's context it may mean something different, must mean we don't believe it.  We think that we have to have all the answers, that we have to say all the right words and if we do if we talk the way churches have talked for centuries people will flock to God, and by proxy to the church, except it isn't working, in fact the opposite seems to be happening in a vast majority of churches and it's happening because we have tried to take our language, spoken, visual, and unspoken, turn it into cannon, and tell the people that if they will just listen to us, adopt our language, and do it our way then we will accept them, they will be loved, and we can then introduce them to the God we serve, the only problem is, in most cases, if we were really honest with ourselves and them...the god we serve is the one that is shaking their hand...

Death in Many Forms

This has been a difficult week. I mean there really is no way for it to be anything but. Some may have read my post about Orange being an oasis, and it was. I enjoyed Orange Tour immensely, and it just solidified my excitement for Orange 2016. What amazes me is that this will be my fourth yes that's right my fourth Orange. Time just keeps going...

But I don't want to gush about Orange Tour or any of the people there. I want to look at a couple of things that happened this week, and the way not just faith but values evolve, and since this is my blog well, I'll be looking at the evolution of my faith and values.

Growing up in church does a lot of things to a person, I've talked about that in some of the pages that are on here, dig in if you want that information, exact titles escape me at the moment but they exist and well I could use the readers let's be honest...

The problem with growing up in the church is that there comes a point when you are faced with the prospect of continuing to grow in and with the church, or growing out of the church, I almost said outgrowing the church, but increasingly I believe if churches do it the right way and if Christ followers do it the right way there is no real way to outgrow the church, just ways to grow in faith, and community. A person grows out of the Church, and sadly grows out of their faith, when the dichotomy of humanity happens. Simply put when what is said by leaders, what is done in program, gets cross referenced with what the individual is reading in the Bible what they are seeing when they look at the life of Christ and how he interacted with people, and what they see being done in their daily life by the people around them, many of whom are supposed to be evil or lost doesn't add up. Lets be clear, I do believe people that don't have an active relationship with God are lost. I believe that active relationship begins with the realization that without Jesus, no GPS in the world will get you or I out of the mess of being a fallen human. There must be an acknowledgment of personal sin, and a recognition that forgiveness comes through Christ and that forgiveness is applied to my life on a regular basis.

BUT it's important to realize that the church and Christians in general are their own worst enemy when it comes to new adopters and retention. Mainly because they refuse to evaluate and evolve. When you classify many Christians they usually get tossed into a box of intolerance, ignorance, hypocritism, and refusal, and sometimes those labels are earned, in fact more often than not they are. What's hard is when you actively try and grow when you embrace the possibility that you're wrong, that you read it wrong, that you understand it wrong or that you just can't be the kind of Christian you were because that Christian was not really all that nice...

This week along with the personal tragedy of losing my aunt, there were two tragedy's in the country that prompted this post.

1. On Wednesday September 30 in the early morning hours Kelly Gissendaner was executed.

2. On Thursday October 1, 9 people were killed at a community college in Oregon.

The thing is my faith and values have been challenged for a long time and have really been evolving. Most evangelical Christians support the death penalty and are very much anti gun control. I don't have numbers or research to back this up more than some of the posts that make their way across my Facebook Feed, and observations of political candidates that claim Christianity and being conservative and their comments. I'll be honest I had been a supporter of the death penalty, at times using the Old Testament argument, for the death penalty, but if you actually went by Old Testament law reasons for the death penalty can be pretty amazing. From working on the Sabbath, to Cursing your parents, to Losing your virginity there are several reasons that people were supposed to be put to death. Many Christians use this verse “a fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Whatever anyone does to injure another person must be paid back in kind.” (Leviticus 24:20 NLT-SE) conveniently forgetting that Jesus specifically adresses this practice ““You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.”
(Matthew 5:38–39 NLT-SE) I guess what bothers me is the idea that anyone holds any life as less than, especially considering we are all crafted in the image of God. People will look at Kelly Gissendaner and say she got what she deserved. She did the crime she paid the penalty, it was justice. I'll also be the first to admit that I have not had anyone close to me murdered. I can't say that my opinion on this topic wouldn't be differen or switch back if someone killed someone I love, that's part of being human I guess, it's easy for me to look at the situation and say wow all lives matter and all life is precious because I've not experienced the death of a loved one by the hand of another human being. Still at this time I find myself landing on the side of those that are against the death penalty. Life is sacred, all life, how can we advocate for one set of lives and ignore or campaign against another? If I really believe that grace is for all, that forgiveness is available to all, how much am I standing in that space when I call for the death of another human being? This all started to bother me when a well known Christian leader made the following stupid comment regarding Hugo Chavez..."We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's The 700 Club. I don't see much grace, mercy or hope for the salvation of a fellow human being in that statement. What's crazy is the same guy that was calling for the assassination of a human being, has called for a moratorium on the Death Penalty and sits at odds with other Conservative Christian leaders. Following the Gissendaner case just really solidified my opposition. So yes my faith and values have changed when it comes to this very divisive issue.

The Oregon Shooting is yet another reason that I am and have been for some time firmly in the gun control camp. When friends post comments that I find idiotic I struggle with allowing their posts on my news feed. The idea that more guns carried by more people will make us all safer boggles my mind, yet I regularly find these types of comments, and posts. In 2014 the NRA spent over $3,000,000.00 this year so far they have spent over $1,000,000.00 and the year isn't over yet. The desire to have zero regulation when it comes to owning fire arms. ZERO regulation is amazing to me. The NRA opposes background checks, thinks owning assault rifles is no real problem, don't want databases that show gun ownership to be kept, and don't like any changes to fire arm registration. They throw up the smoke screen of mental health issues, while keeping guns for any. My question has consistently been why?  Why do you need that Glock 9, what's the point of owning an AR15, why do you need an extended magazine? I'm sorry but if you're such a bad shot that when trying to "defend" your home you need more than the average of 15 to 17 rounds I don't want you to have a gun, after all it's not a toy. Why we think the answer to gun violence is more gun ownership boggles the mind, but I can go to my news feed on Facebook and find loads of people posting reasons that it's a good thing for more people to be armed. I'm not advocating for banning all firearms, far from it, but some things just make sense as far as I'm concerned. The arguments that people make are getting old and wearing thin, "Criminals will still get guns if they want them."  "If you think taking away guns will curb violence you're wrong." "The majority of gun owners and collectors are responsible and safe." Except when those things aren't true which seems to be more and more frequently. I'm all about gun control, have been for a while, will continue to be. I think part of purchasing a gun should be stating the purpose for said gun. If purchasing for "protection," state that in the application and along with the background check, that should be rather exhaustive, there should be a reference check. I think if it's for hunting that too should be stated, along with what you are planning to hunt, again with references as well as a comprehensive background check. It should be harder to purchase a gun than it is to purchase any other item. It should take time, it should be a rigorous process, that is evaluated every 3 to 5 years. Recently I had to renew my license to drive. There are two sets of renewals in MD. Once you hit 40 you can no longer renew at the kiosk, once you hit 40 you have to renew with a teller because they want to make sure you can see, they want to evaluate how safe you are to operate a car. Why should owning something that has just as much potential to end a human life as a vehicle not be subject to further evaluation on a regular basis?

Death comes in many forms. It can come at the hands of the state, it can come at the hands of a deranged individual, it can come softly in the night. The one constant is that it will come. It will bring with it sadness, and anger, and for some hope of eternity. What we do with death when it happens and we are left behind is what matters. If we look at the death of Kelly Gissendaner as what she deserved, and the shooting as "stuff happens" (Jeb Bush) we are missing out on an opportunity to be better, to change, to grow to evolve. As Christians we are missing an opportunity to be with the people effected to pray for those that are hurting and stand for those that have no voice.