You Say Potato, I Say Pohtahtoh

"The issue between Trinitarianism and modalism at its essence is one God manifesting Himself successively in three ways, or one God, three persons, simultaneously existing eternally. Your best understanding now ... would you say it's 'one God manifesting Himself in three ways' or 'one God in three persons?'" ~Mark Driscoll.

Apparently if you answer that question wrong some folks label you a heretic. It reminds me of an incident about 16 or 17 years ago. As a child I was raised a Christian but I don't think I paid much attention. As a teenager I went all Prodigal Son on folks and didn't return to my faith until I was in my early forties, so I ended up with a renewed faith in Christ, but with few theological or denominational biases. My attitude was if you preached Christ crucified, Risen, and Coming again I could worship with you, an attitude that I still pretty much hold today, almost twenty years later.

What happened was I changed churches within what I thought was the same denomination. During the new member class the pastor was quite adamant about the communion service. He believed that the minute you ate the bread and drank the wine it was transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ, and the members of the church I had left who belonged to another branch of the same denomination, a branch that believed the communion bread and wine were symbolic of the body and blood, were heretics.

I was amused, much in the way I think Driscoll's question is funny. Seriously, you spend time agonizing about stuff like that? Well, if it makes you happy and keeps you out of the hair of folks trying to enlarge the kingdom, then have at it. But that's how we end up with thousands of denominations bickering about minutia, thoroughly confusing non-believers who can hardly be faulted for perhaps thinking "These folks can't make up their own minds, why would I let them change mine?"

Some things, of course, are critical to what constitutes a Christian, things which can and should be non-negotiable. The rest of it? Not so much.

About That Hate Religion/ Love Jesus Video

On January 10th of this year a young man posted a video on You Tube, Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus || Spoken Word, that instantly went viral, attracting over 14,500,000 hits in just nine days and creating a raging controversy in the Christian blogosphere. You can view the video here. It's a video sure to enrage traditionalists and encourage rebels.

But I think much of the controversy and commentary misses the point. Those 14 million viewers are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Our country is full of people who think Jesus is cool, religion, not so much and they are unlikely to darken the door of a sanctuary anytime soon. What an amazing opportunity for the church. Why don't we stop arguing with them about religion, which after all, is not germain to their salvation and start talking to them about this Jesus they like?

This means we're going to have to get outside of our comfort zone, we're going to have to get up out of the pews and into the streets and meet these wonderful seekers where they're comfortable. Will we have to change the way traditional churches work? Of course not. These people are as full of prejudice and closed minded about the church as we are about those that threaten the way we do religion, what we have is an incredible common ground, we all like Jesus. So why not meet there?

At The Fellowship Of The Cup we've spent the past 18 months reaching out to these folks with the attitude that "You hate religion but think Jesus is cool? Fine, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and let's chat." The results have been incredible, we don't lecture them, we respect their thoughts enough to hear them out without criticizing, and then we simply say "Here's another way to look at it." And folks who were really antagonistic have warmed to scripture, gotten involved in the Fellowship, and have begun to rethink their belief systems.

It's really a matter of focus. We get angry when we hear the "I hate religion" part and completely miss the opportunity in the "But I like Jesus."

2011: A Mercifully Brief Retrospective

Beginning January 1^st, 2011 was an extraordinary year, a year that will go down in history along with the previous two thousand and ten years, which is where we normally store used years. In history that is. 

Lasting an incredible 12 months it was a year replete with seasons, both cold and hot, holidays celebrated on Mondays in order to insure a steady supply of three day weekends for all except members of Congress who actually put in fewer hours than the chronic unemployed, and the occasional drone attack on worn out terrorists who don’t have Facebook or Wickipedia to keep them abreast of what’s hot in the counter-terrorism community.

So here we are in late December with nothing happening, and like, what better way to light up the coming year than with a retrospective on 2011? Unless of course, like me, you’re just glad it’s over. 

Hello 2012.

So Long Dad

So Long Dad

June 28, 1928-December 5, 2011

It’s been a couple of weeks now, and I’ve finally got a little time to reflect on Dad’s passing. My sister took Mom home to spend Christmas with her five granddaughters and thirteen great-grandchildren, so Mom’s going to have some joy this Christmas along with the sadness and I’m going to spend the Christmas holidays relaxing with dear friends and renewing my spirit. That warms my heart.

The immediate aftermath of death is exhausting, there’s a mountain of details to be attended to, a funeral to be planned, a grieving 81 year old mother to be comforted, forms to be filled out. There was precious little time to mourn or even just sit and feel my emotions.

So today I think I’ll just write some things down. The sun is shining, a cool breeze rustles the palm fronds, and a feeling of peaceful reflection soothes my heart. Dad was an honorable man, a man of principles, and seriously old school. Right is right and that’s the way he lived. But since he was a man of few words, chatty is not a word that comes to mind when I think of Dad, if you wanted to hear what he believed you were going to have to listen to how he lived.

And since as a child and a young man I heard things with a defective ear, I ended up going all Prodigal Son on him. As a result my relationship with Dad didn’t really start until I was 38. In Luke 15 we hear the parable of the Prodigal Son, and my favorite part of that story is when the father is asked why he’s throwing a celebration at the return of such a loser and he responds, my son was dead and now he lives.

That’s how it went with my Dad, only a few details were different. In early June of 1989 I found myself sitting across from my Dad, broken and homeless, and Dad was yelling at me, talking to me like I was 10 years old not realizing I wasn’t nearly that mature. And the next day he got me to my first meeting of recovery, doing something not many fathers get a chance to do, give life to his son a second time.

It started a little slowly at first, but we finally became a father and son, not some fantasy relationship like in the movies, nothing dramatic, just father and son. I gave him a grandchild, of course by that time he was already a great- grandfather. (I tend to do things a little late.) We had holidays and visits and dinners, nothing for the history books, just father and son.

We went to church together the last ten years of his life, and I remember glancing over and seeing him and Mom holding hands. That’s a nice memory.

The last three years of his life dad was locked in combat with his body, a fight he was losing. But he never surrendered, never gave up. Every once in a while it would overwhelm him, “John,” he’d say, “I’ve finally met a problem I can’t solve.” But he’d shake it off and soldier on.

Dad’s gone now, and I haven’t had time to reflect on the meaning of his life. A year from now maybe the words would be different. But I had a chance, finally, to listen to how he lived and of this I’m sure….when I grow up I’d like to be more like my Dad.

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Hero of the Faith?

I gotta confess I don't get any of the controversy swirling around Tim Tebow. It's totally refreshing to see a professional athlete providing a wholesome role model instead of shooting himself in a bar and going to prison on weapons charges. Tebow's witness seems humble and lacking in self-righteousness, and while he's been granted a megaphone without any merit on his part other than athletic prowess, he seems to be handling it with admirable aplomb.
What I'm not sure about is elevating Tebow to hero of the faith status, I'm not sure that's fair to him or our faith. Telling sports writers they're on the side of Satan when they critique Tebow's 0n field performance is a little overboard, don't you think? Is the NFL really the place to engage in spiritual combat with unbelievers?
Let's face it, Tebow is probably the worst winning quarterback of the modern era, it's an absolute hoot how he is confounding his critics by actually winning games, but if he eventually fails is that going to be evidence of Satan winning out over Jesus? So let's admire him to the extent you choose to admire NFL players, be grateful that a sport seemingly dominated by lawbreakers has a really cool new role model in Tim Tebow (among others). But let's not invest anymore than that in Tim. It's not fair to him to put him on a pedestal he doesn't seem to ask for.

Sexy Sin: Part Two

As I said in Part One of this post, I believe sexual orientation, gay or hetero, is not a choice. We are born with our orientation already hardwired. I believe this because I never decided what sex I was going to be attracted to, so why would it be different for gays?
Why is this question so important? If same sex attraction is a choice then gays are evil influences on the unwitting and sexually impressionable. Anyone can be lured into gay sex, so believers feel compelled to battle for legislation limiting the civil rights of homosexuals. If gays are born gay and heterosexuals born heterosexual then they are no threat to anything or anyone. The need for laws against gays disappears.
This still leaves open the question of sin. Not so much what constitutes sexual sin, scripture is not ambiguous in this area, rather the question is how to address the issue of sexual sin. We can stop the hypocrisy of trying to legislate against homosexuality while leaving sex before marriage up to the individuals involved. We can stop the homophobic reaction to gay sex while tolerating the far more damaging impact of adultery among believers, which destroys far more marriages than gay sex ever will.
We do great harm to any effort we make as believers to reach out to the gay community with our hypocrisy. Gays aren't stupid. they know that God hates ALL sin, so why are we only trying to legislate against homosexuals? Where's the great outcry among so called "values voters" for a constitutional amendment banning adultery?
Maybe we trust that God can heal an adulterers sinful heart, but fear He really needs some legislative help with the gay community.