Kethuvim

The thing about Jesus is that he was so different from everyone else around him. Not "side-show circus freak" different, but different in the way he looked at people and responded to the culture around him. I've already showed you how Jesus gave the verbal middle finger to Rome by saying that the way to be blessed was not by force, but by being weak. That was just one instance. There were a million other situations where the words of Jesus flew directly in the face of popular thought. It all had to do with the fact that the way to win victories in this world were through love, humility, weakness, and acceptance of people.

It seems like the church doesn't do any of those things well anymore. We suck at love, we suck at humility, we strive for power, not weakness, and we only accept people that are like us. If you're reading this, and you don't consider yourself a follower of Jesus, I want to apologize on behalf of my brothers and sisters who say they believe in Jesus and yet look nothing like him. I'm sorry if you know me and I have acted this way as well. I'm sorry, I really mean it. Don't let the Church get in the way of you following Jesus, he was a beautiful man who lived a beautiful life. The way of life he proposed is the best way to live. It's a life of peace, a life of love, a life worth living.

So what is the solution? Well, it would help if we would take Jesus seriously. Jesus is easy and fun until he starts asking something out of us. When he gets uncomfortable, we start giving excuses as to why we can't do what he's asked us. I'm going to Haiti next year with a group from my church. We're going to be helping people by passing out shoes to children who have none, building houses, and that sort of thing. I've had so many people say to me, "I just couldn't go, I don't think I could do it." Bullcrap. The truth is that you don't want to, not that you can't. Going to Haiti isn't exactly within my comfort zone, I hate flying, but to be honest, I'm tired of living in my comfort zone. I don't find the words "comfort zone" in the Bible. But I digress.

It's time for the Church to take Jesus seriously. It's time for the Church to stop striving for power, marketability, and prestige, and start striving to be humble, loving, caring, and weak (by the our culture's standards). I really believe that if the Church recognized just how weak it is, God's strength would blow us away. Children would stop sdying from starvation, AIDS would be a thing of the past and young girls in Thailand would stop being sold into sexual slavery. Let's allow God to be God, and stop trying to produce his strength on our own.

Sorry, it's been awhile since I posted. You can sop up your tears of sorrow over that fact, because here goes...

I mentioned in the last post how right wing fundamentalist Christians are striving for power to try and bring about some glorious theocracy in this country. I also mentioned that I feel like this is contrary to how we're supposed to be. The Bible makes it very clear that when we are weak, we are actually strong. Jesus said in Matthew 5, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." I looked up the word "meek" in good ole' Webster and found three definitions:

1. enduring injury with patience and without resentment
2. deficient in spirit and courage
3. not violent or strong

In other words, meek=weak. Jesus calls those are weak in the eyes of the world "blessed." We can come to one of two conclusions, either Jesus was a complete nut-bar or he was really on to something. Now we have to look at the last part of Jesus' words to get the full meaning of what he is implying. Jesus tells the people the meek will inherit the earth. The word "earth" is actually better translated "land." This was a very political statement against the Roman Empire who controlled Judah at the time of Jesus. Roman culture was aggressive and bent on world domination. Put the pieces together. Jesus was telling the people that the way to inherit the land back was to be weak. Obviously, Jesus wouldn't get a job on any military strategy boards, but maybe he should. What would happen in this country if Christians stopped trying to gain political power, and we just sat back and loved people the way Jesus asked us to? We may lose some "rights," churches may have to start paying taxes, but really who cares. God is stronger than any policy any country can throw at his people. The book of Daniel says that the Kingdom of God has the power to crush all other kingdoms. However, this is only accomplished through love, humility, and service.

Let's turn to Paul, he seemed to know a little bit about God. In his first letter to the Church in Corinth, he says this,

"For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."

It doesn't seem to get more direct than that. In God's Kingdom, the have-nots beat the haves. The nerds beat the jocks, the uglies beat the supermodels. Please tell me that you see how different this is than the rest of the world we live in.

I've gone too long in this, so I'm going to add a part 3 in a couple of days.

Judges is quickly becoming a fascinating book of the Bible for me. I was studying the story of Gideon this morning and found it interesting. Gideon starts out with 22,000 men to fight against the Midianites. God then tells him that he is going to reduce that number so that the Israelites can't claim that they won the battle by their own might. God then reduces the number to 10,000 and eventually to 300. The Midianite army on the other hand was said to have men and camels beyond number. The amazing thing is that, according to Jewish Historian Josephus, the three hundred were the most cowardly among the Israelites. The text says that these three hundred drank from the river lapping the water from their hands like dogs. This was, apparently, a sign of cowardice in ancient times. So Gideon is sent up against an innumerable army with 300 pansies and God admonishes him to be without fear. Rrrriiiiigggghhhhhttttt.

This is one of those stories where God seems to me to be a little bit crazy (I'm sure Gideon thought the same thing). To top it all off, Gideon's "army" is comprised of men that aren't even real soldiers. How do I know this? Gideon doesn't even give them real weapons. He equips them with trumpets, a jar, and a torch. Does this seem a bit crazy to anyone else? Long story short, they surround Midian's huge army camp in the middle of the night armed with torches, jars, and trumpets. The Midianites wet themselves (presumably) and run like scared little girls. Gideon's army of wussies wins without weapons.

I think there is a lot to see in this story. I also think that there is a lot that the Church doesn't get about this story. In a time where Christians in this country feel like it is our main goal to gain political clout and power, it seems that this story should be one that we take a serious look at. The idea of weakness being the ultimate in strength is all throughout the Bible (which I will show in part 2). Why do Christians strive for power (politics, corporate world, church growth, etc.) when the very Bible we claim to follow suggests that we're only strong when we are at our weakest? Our faith is not defined by laws that are passed. If someone wants to take the Ten Commandments out of a court-room, who cares, it doesn't mean that God is somehow weakened by it. If the government says that abortion is constiutionally legal, who cares, go out and love someone who gets pregnant outside of marriage and show them a better way. This is going to sound terrible, but if your faith is defined by laws that are passed for or against Christians, then your faith is worthless. Our strength is found in God and God alone, and nothing can take that away, nothing.

Seriously, this kind of crap has to stop. Take a look at this:

http://www.armorofgodpjs.com/

I'm not even sure how to respond. I love the look on the kids' faces. The only thing to complete the look would be a tattoo on their foreheads that says, "Please beat the crap out of me!" I'm just glad the Evil One now has no hold on our children. Dear Lord...

I've always had trouble with the description of God in the Old Testament. I can't lie, I'm bothered by the wars, the killings, and the apparent harshness of some of the Torah. I'm currently studying Judges and I came across a passage in chapter 3 that made me think a bit. Most of the stories of each individual judge start out like this, "and Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord..." It will then repeat that God, in his anger, handed Israel over to a certain nation. Israel would then be enslaved for a number of years and, in turn, cry out to God for help. Here's what I find amazing: he always listened and always sent a judge to get them out of their troubles.

The Bible says that God is slow to anger. I believe this to be true. I believe it because I am not just a burnt spot on the ground somewhere. However, we can't avoid the fact that, at times, God gets angry. He gets angry at injustice. He gets angry at disobedience. The reason he gets angry at disobedience is because he knows that following the Torah (and Jesus' summation of the Torah, love God, love people) is the best way to live. It's the way that leads to life. He gets angry at times because he desires so much more for our lives. His anger is fueled by disappointment. In the same way, there will be times when Ezra gets older that I will be angry with him for disobeying me. I won't be angry because of my own pride (i.e. "How dare he break my rules!"), but because I want so much more for him. I want him to live a good life that is marked with love. When he doesn't do this, I'll probably get angry with him.

The coolest part of the story in Judges is that God doesn't hold a grudge. When his people cry out for help, he listens, and he responds with love. If you look throughout the Old Testament, he does this with Israel hundreds of times. It's like it's part of a huge cycle, disobedience, anger and enslavement, mercy and grace, repeat the cycle. I'm amazed at God. I'm amazed at his infinite patience and love. I'm amazed that I can never be so far away from God that he won't allow me to return. I can never be so far away from him that he won't love me. I'm starting to be ok with a God who gets angry, I just have to remember that his mercy balances the scales.

All Hail Governor Forehead!

Posted above is a picture of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. You may be wondering (probably not) why I'm posting a picture of Senor Noggin. I only post this picture to tell you that my son now has the exact same hairline. My wife and I can't quite explain it. I've always seen babies lose hair on the backs of their head for obvious reasons (i.e. rolling around on the back of their head and whatnot), but I've never seen a baby's hairline recede like a 40 year-old man's hairline (or...mine). The hair on the back of his head seems to be getting heavier, but he's losing the hair on the front. It's hilarious because when he gets mad, he wrinkles his face up like some crotchity old man in a nursing home who's chicken and rice wasn't pureed enough for his liking. Now that he has the hairline to match, his brief tantrums seem quite charming and adorable. Who knows what the future holds for my son and his freakish hairline, perhaps a Governorship?

Seriously. If I crapped as much as my kid, I wouldn't have any bones left. We're going through diapers like the Irish go through Guinness. Also, I didn't know that the best way to get a child to poop is to put a brand new diaper on them. Last night I was changing him before bed and no more than 30 seconds after I put his diaper on him, I saw the classic look: furrowed brow, pensive look, squirmy legs. Sure enough, soon following was the inevitable gastro-intestinal explosion. I didn't have to check the diaper to know that he just dropped a deuce in his Huggies, the look of relief on his face was enough to know what happened.

So this morning before I left for work, he was in his swing and sleeping. I leaned down to tell him I loved him. No sooner did I get back up that I heard the same unmistakeable sound. I'm not sure if it's a good sign that everytime his dad looks at him, talks to him, thinks about him, he loads his pants. Maybe he's trying to tell me something.

I had a great experience in Ezra being born...I got to cut the umbilical cord. In the weeks...months...years...eternity leading up to Ezra being born, I was torn as to whether I was going to cut the cord or not. However, when the moment came, I decided to go ahead and do it. If you want to recreate this experience (and I know that so many of you are just dying to), the best thing I can tell you to do is to find the sharpest pair of scissors in your house, and cut through a bratwurst. I guess it's kind of like that, except with less blood and no screaming child attached to the other end...anyway, I digress (can you digress from nothing?...perhaps Nietzsche would have something to say about that)

I came to realize something as I cut the cord. Ezra took his first step of growth. He was taking a step toward independence from his parents. While he was in the womb, he relied on my wife for everything. That cord was his entire life force. He received everything from that cord. All of his red blood cells came through that, all of his nourishment, everything. He wasn't able to do anything on his own. Now that he's out of that cursed ovarian bastille, he has to work for his food, his liver must produce it's own red blood cells. His organs all have to function on their own. See what I mean by him taking a step toward being independent from us? He still has a long way to go, but he is taking steps toward that. Soon enough he will be eating cereals, then baby food, all the while needing his mom's milk less and less. The he'll start using a spoon on his own and won't need us to feed him anymore. Then the next thing we know, he'll be married and put us in a nursing home (too big of a leap?).

My point with all of this is that I think there's a greater truth in all of this. When we first begin seeking God, we're attached by a cord. Maybe I should say that when we first come to the consciousness that we're seeking after God, because I've mentioned before that I think we're all seeking for him although we may not necessarily put it in those words. When Jesus becomes the man we follow, we're nothing more than infants. We're in desperate need to mature, or we'll perish, in the same way that Ezra must mature or he won't be around long (I think I just threw up in my mouth typing that). Paul (a writer in the Bible) puts it this way, "But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it." The problem with the Church today is that we have so many Christians that are content to be on milk their entire lives. They just sit there and let everything happen to them. They are content to never mature. The crazy thing is that no one cares about this fact. Can you imagine seeing a twenty year old sucking on a bottle full of formula? We would think they were crazy and we would question them about it. But the Church is full of twenty year olds sucking on bottles (figuratively speaking of course).

What is the by-product of all of this? A Church that says that it's the poor people's fault that they're poor and they can help themselves. A Church that claims that you have to be a Republican to be a "good Christian." A Church that thinks it's ok to have multi-million dollar buildings. A Church that believes that violence can bring about peace. A Church that resorts to the very legalism that Jesus hated (i.e. don't drink that, don't say that, wear this, don't wear that, etc.).

I don't know about you, but I think it's time for some solid food.

The second thing I realized when I looked at my son is that I never want anything to harm him. I also realize however, that this is totally unrealistic. I don't want Ezra to hurt. I don't want him to ever have to deal with a broken heart, broken bones, cuts, scrapes, grief, etc. I love him too much to want to see that. The problem is that he lives in this world. This means that he's going to break a bone, he's going to get cuts and scrapes, he's going to have to deal with sorrow and pain.

I realized something about God in all of this. I've always wondered (like most, if not all, of us have) why a supposedly good God allows us to hurt and grieve. It clicked with me when I saw my son that it isn't that God wants us to suffer, but that it is inevitably part of living in this messed up place. Watch the news for three seconds and you realize that this world has issues. In fact Jesus says something along these lines, "In this world you will have trouble..." In other words, crap happens. It happens because this world is a mess, and we can't help but be caught up in the mess.

So this leads to another question: why does a good God not insulate us from the mess? Think about it; if I don't want Ezra to hurt and don't ever want him to find trouble, I can insulate him from the world. I can lock him in the house and not let him leave. But what kind of a person would that make him. If I give him everything he wants and form a cocoon around him to protect him from junk, I'll end up with a male Paris Hilton (with a great deal less money of course), an entitled, awful human being. This makes sense to me when it comes to God. He doesn't keep us from suffering because suffering can form us into better human beings (or bitter human beings if we let it). We end up loving God, not because of all the stuff he gives us or because he acts as a barrier from trouble, but because he's God. We love him for the sake of love, not out of a sense of duty.

One last thing with this. The end of that verse from Jesus says this, "...but take heart, I have overcome the world." In other words, if we cling to him, we win. When Ezra gets a cut or scrape, I'll be there to clean up the blood, dry his tears, and wrap him in my arms while assuring him that it will be alright. When we are wounded, God seems to have just the salve we need to let us know that everything will be alright.

**On a much lighter note, I had a dream the other night that I was one of the X-men. Apparently my only real power was the ability to wake up in a puddle of saliva with a loss of feeling in one of my arms. Not exactly extraordinary.

Just a quick update on the boy and mommy. He's great, she's great. He's eating like a hog. When he isn't nursing on mommy, he's fruitlessly trying to nurse on me.

So it says in Genesis that people were created in the image of God. This means that there are elements of God in all of us, we just need to look hard enough at our surroundings to find it. In watching Ezra being born, I started to think about certain aspects of God in a whole new way. The next couple of posts will deal with some of my thoughts.

I was one of those dads that kept vehemently insisting that I wasn't going to watch my kid being born. I was just going to stare at mommy's face and be a support. After all, I saw the birthing video in eighth grade, and it scarred me for life. But alas, I watched. I happened to glance down and I saw a cone-shaped head with peach-fuzz on it. When he was pushed all the way out, they placed him on Mandy's chest (cord and all) and wrapped him in a blanket. It was in that moment that I had this thought, "So that's what God thinks about us."

When I saw him laying there screaming from trauma, I realized that God's love is infinitely larger than anything we can imagine. Higher than the heights, deeper than the seas, that sort of overly poetic stuff. I think I always knew that God loved us unconditionally, but I didn't understand it (or at least partially understand it) until last Monday. To see something that you created be born was an experience like no other. Nothing that kid could ever do could make me love him any less than I do right now. He's going to say things to me to hurt me, he's going to wrong me in a lot of ways throughout his life, but I'm never going to stop loving him.

God's love is like that. We hurt him, we go against what he knows is good for us, and yet he always loves us. Even if we don't love him back, even when we curse his name, he responds with love and acceptance. Contrary to popular belief, God isn't waiting for us to screw up so that he can drop us into hell. He's genty coaxing into a better way of life. A life of joy, a life of peace, a life of good decisions. When we deviate from that plan, he still loves us. He always has, he always will. That's how God feels about you.

Well, it finally happened. The boy was finally born...all 8 pounds, 11 ounces of him. To say that he's the cutest baby ever born is, of course, an understatement. Don't believe me, check it out for yourself:

See? I told you so. That's a great picture, but not as good as this one:

I think he likes his car seat. He's just masking his real emotions.

Anyway, he's the cutest. I'll be blogging fairly frequently in the next few days. This whole experience has caused me to think a lot about what God thinks of us. I'll share my thoughts.

Seriously, has it been like two years that my wife has been pregnant? Does she have the gestational cycle of an elephant? If you can't tell, we are still sans-baby and still heavily fetus in this whole birthing process. And if you can't tell, my patience is wearing a bit thin.

I'm past the point of being nervous about being a dad and I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I will, in fact, be a dad sometime before Armageddon (not the Ben Affleck "Armageddon", the biblical one).

Speaking of Ben Affleck, I can't stand him. Let's be honest, he's played one good role in his entire life and that was as O'Banion on Dazed and Confused. Speaking of Dazed and Confused...

My wife is due a week from today. We went to the doctor this morning and we are scheduled to go in next Monday to induce her labor if she hasn't gone into labor on her own before that. In the Doc's words, however, he said, "I don't think you're going to make it until Monday." Of course, he say this while he's "examining" her. I'm going to write to Webster's Dictionary and make an urgent appeal to change the definition of the word "disturbing" to mean this: (1)watching a male gynocologist examine your wife's nether-regions while hearing him say words like "ripe" and "cervix" in the same sentence.

All awkwardness aside, the fact that I am going to be a father in a week or less seems a bit odd. In the eternity that my wife has been pregnant (and an eternity it has been), I've known that I'm going to be a dad, but when you see the light at the end of the tunnel (which apparently my son is seeing right now as well) reality sets in. Butts to be wiped, bottles to be made, puke to clean up...that sort of thing. The cool thing is that despite my apprehension, I couldn't be more excited. On the way home from the doctor today, I was daydreaming about what it will be like to hold him, kiss him, play ball with him when he gets older, watch him as he goes out on his first date, gets his heart broken for the first time, etc. Everything I saw on the way home seemed to be more beautiful. I started noticing things with new eyes for some reason. Maybe there's God in all of that. When you create a human being out of a sense of love, you can't help but love that creation with everything you have. This causes you to find beauty in places where you never saw it. It causes you to see beauty in everything and everyone, or at least it should. Maybe this is how God sees everything. His love causes him to find beauty in even the most mundane and ordinary things. All of the mundane and ordinary things...like us.

I have a quote from Mother Teresa on my wall that says this, "We are not called to be successful but to be faithful."

What would this country be like if churches understood this? Would there be less haggling over budgets? Would there be fewer megachurches and fewer people going to bed hungry at night? Would there be smaller auditoriums and more people with homes? Would the bickering stop over music styles and songs? Would people stop looking out for number one and start looking out for everyone else?

I'm so tired of the Church (notice the capital "C") striving for success. It's all ego-driven no matter how much the Church talks about wanting to reach people. The fact is that preachers (for the most part) want a successful church because it feels good. It makes them feel like they are a success in this world. It puts them on a plane with the successful business man living the American dream. It gives them something to brag about at their Bible College homecoming (Don't believe me? Go to a Bible College homecoming sometime and see how long it takes for a conversation between two ministers to turn to this, "Where are you now?" "Oh, I see, how many people do you have?").

The problem is that God defines success differently than we do. His measure of success is in how faithful his people are, not how many there are. I think that when God looks at a church, he's not looking for masses of people, he's looking for people that are going to be true followers. Just look at Jesus, by the world's standards, he was highly unsuccessful. He really only had 12 close followers, one of which sold him out for money. I doubt Jesus would be asked to speak at too many ministry conventions, and he probably wouldn't be approached by too many publishing companies either. But Jesus was faithful ("Not my will, but yours be done."). What would our world look like if we understood this? Who knows. We can either just sit and wonder, or we can start a revolution and find out for ourselves.

I'm preaching this Sunday at church. I've been preparing this message in my mind for awhile and the more I delve into the subject, the more I realize it is endless. I'll be talking about brokenness and the flip side, wholeness. I was chewing on this subject a little bit today and I came to realize that everything we do is motivated by a sense of brokenness and a search to be whole. Every addiction (addiction to anything, not just the biggies like drugs and stuff) is based on being broken. We may not spell it out this way, but I think we all long for something bigger, something of substance. Some may call it happiness, joy, or whatever. If you're like me it is spoken of this way: Please tell me that there is more to life than this. In other words, we all long to be whole, so we run after all sorts of crap in order to make us whole. The problem is that it is all temporary smoke and mirrors that covers up all of our junk for a short time, there's never any long-term resolution. The band Waterdeep puts it this way in their song "If You Want to Get Free":

I'm so often deterred from my actual intent
By distractions in a cellophane wrap
And the cruel voice that taunts me when I open them up
To find just one more box full of crap

All marketing is based on this brokenness. Think about it, ads are designed to convince us that we need a certain product and we can't live without it. In other words, your life will complete when you purchase ___________. Don't believe me? Look at the cell phone industry. I can't tell you how many people I have heard say, "I don't know what I did before I had my cell phone" or "I just couldn't live without my cell phone." It's all bullcrap. You can live without one, you've just bought the lie that you can't.

Jesus had a lot to say about this kind of thing. As I was studying, I came across this passage where he says, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world." The word "peace" in Hebrew is "shalom" and doesn't mean just the absence of conflict. The word "shalom" is loaded with meaning and it speaks of a wholeness that comes from God. When you say "shalom" to someone (I doubt many of us do, but...you know...just in case you ever do) you are saying to them, "May the wholeness of God rest upon you." Given this meaning, Jesus' words here take on a whole lot of meaning. True shalom (wholeness, completeness) is only found in following the teachings of Jesus. Everything else is an illusion that will lead to more brokenness. This world is broken and fractured, this means that as we live in this world, we will find brokenness as well. Jesus can put the pieces back together, in fact that what he really wants to do. He's overcome the world, he won. By clinging to him, we win also, and can find wholeness in the midst of a broken and shattered world.

I'm tired of trying to be super-pastor to everyone. I'm tired of being told that good Christians are Republicans. I'm tired of ignoring the poor, but I don't even know where to start helping. I'm tired of my nice house. I'm tired of all my crap that I own. I'm tired of the Church acting as if the Kingdom of God is something futuristic for when we die, and not something ever-present. I'm tired of talking a good game and walking a crappy one.

I'm tired of church. Church isn't supposed to be this difficult. Why do we need meetings to discuss outreach opportunities, why can't we just go out and be with people? Why do we need committees lined up to direct the Church, why can't we just follow Jesus in our community? Why do we strive for more and more people in church, when Jesus makes it clear that very few will find the narrow way? I'm tired of talking about budgets, as if God lives by a budget. I'm tired of talking about buildings as if that is what makes a church a church. I'm tired of future planning. I'm tired of worrying about upsetting people, when I know that the man I follow ticked a lot of people off. I'm tired of what we pass as "worship." I'm tired of Christians, including myself, who talk about devotion to God and yet exhibit something completely different in their lives.

I'm tired, not mad, just tired.

...that makes me wish I wasn't a Christian. Actually, I take that back, there's nothing Christian about this. There's so much wrong with this news report, I'm not sure where to start.

http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=27fa6bf5-ff81-4cb2-9cb2-edf98780915e&t=m23&f=15/64video&p=

I think I missed Jesus' teaching about his followers making sure that they are a major market force in the nation's economy. Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us.

"...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

Those are Paul's words in Philippians. I've been thinking about it this morning. Apparently Paul is saying is that the resurrection is something that we have to attain. My questions are then, what does this mean? and how do we do it?

Any thoughts?

I was studying Philippians this morning and came across Paul speaking of preaching the gospel. He says that some people preach the gospel out of envy and rivalry, and some preach it out of good will. He then says that as long as the gospel is being preached, he rejoices. I hate this passage, it seems wrong. I've been wrestling with it all morning.

Here's my problem with it: if we preach the gospel out of a sense of rivalry with others, is that realy the gospel at all? Richard Foster says, "We cannot preach the good news and be bad news...what we are offering the world is life as it was intended to be." I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. The gospel is about God saying to us, "I have a better way for you to live, my shalom is available to everyone, including you." If we're offering life as it was intended to be, how can we preach that selfishly? If we preach selfishly, we're not offering people anything different than the rest of the world. We're saying that the world is about us. We're saying that we'll look out for number one and everyone else can take a hike. How is that different than the corporate world? This all seems inconsistent. Any thoughts?

Modern Christianity tells us that there is a secular world and a sacred, or spiritual, world; as if God created two separate entities. This is why we have "Christian" bookstores (which are terrible), "Christian" radio stations (which suck), and "Christian" television stations (no words to accurately describe how awful these are). We, as Christian, have sectioned ourselves off from the rest of society in order to not be polluted by the unending Hedonism of the outside world. The problem with this is that the Bible states very clearly that "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" (Psalm 24:1). This means that God owns it all.

The Bible never makes a distinction between sacred and secular. In fact, Paul tells us that "All things are yours" (1 Corinthians 3:21). This means that everything is ours for the taking. If it's true, it's God's. This means that if I find truth in a Pink Floyd song, it's mine, God co-opts it for his Kingdom. This happens a couple of times in Scripture. Paul tells the men in Athens that the temple to "an unknown God" is actually speaking of Yahweh. He then says in the book of Titus, "as your poets have said." Paul would have had to have known the writings of the "pagan" poets in order to use their writings for God's glory.

I'm currently reading "New Seeds of Contemplation" by Thomas Merton (which, incidently, rocks my face off). Merton says this about everything God has created being holy, "There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of his become an obstacle to our union with him." I think that's pretty self-explanatory. He also says this:

"When we are one with God's love, we own all things in him. They are ours to offer him in Christ his Son. For all things belong to the sons of of God and we are Christ's and Christ is God's. Resting in his glory above all pleasure and pain, joy or sorrow, and every other good or evil, we love in all things his will rather than the things themselves, and that is the way we make creation a sacrifice in praise to God."

What all of this means is that stuff, in and of itself, cannot be evil. It is made evil by our own devices. But the beauty is that we can take anything in God's created realm and make it holy and beautiful unto God. It's time for the Church to stop retreating from culture, but to dive into it and redeem it.