A friend of mine sent me a link to this article by Robert (Bob?) Fitts. And it goes right along with what I wrote in my previous blog (see blog 216), even though she told me later that she hadn't even read what I had written.
Hmm...maybe I'm on to something? Or maybe I'm just letting my ego get to me. Anyway, here are some quotes from the article:
As I thought on this problem, God gave me a brief declaration of unity and told me to say it often and teach it wherever I went in my travels. Here is the declaration He gave me:
"I belong to everything that belongs to Jesus, and everything that belongs to Jesus belongs to me. It is not, "Us and them." It is just "Us!" There is only one Body of Christ, and the problems of the church are our problems, for we are the church! The problems of the church, the whole church, are OUR problems, for WE are the church. And we can do more together than we can do alone!"
Several years before I received this declaration of unity, I had read a short little poem by Edwin Markham that says about the same thing as the declaration above:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Can we embrace everything and everyone that Jesus embraces, even if they do not see things and say things like we do? He is Lord of the whole church, even a church like the one Paul planted in Corinth that was full of problems and carnal believers! We can, and by His grace, we will!
(see the rest of the article at http://www.house2house.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=56)
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
216. you say you want a revolution?
Okay, so finally I'm getting around to blogging about the stuff I've been reading about in the books, The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And I'm glad I read the two together because they illuminate the same subject but from slightly different perspectives and it really helped me work through the ideas they were presenting. I'm looking forward to diving right back in to the books again because I know I missed a lot the first time around.
Anyway, what follows is my take on what I got out of the books which is slightly different from what the books themselves say about Jesus and his gospel so if you think what I'm saying is crazy or wrong or unorthodox, don't hold it against the books.
The phrases, "kingdom of heaven" and "kingdom of God," are used throughout the gospels. Most of Jesus' parables reference this kingdom and it's all over his Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, in Luke 4:43 he says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent."
There's not a lot of explanation as to what exactly this kingdom is - at least not an explanation of the factual sort. When describing the kingdom, Jesus says things like, "it's like yeast, like seeds, like a pearl, like a party, etc." He used metaphors and stories when talking about the kingdom, and while that can be frustrating in today's information age, I think it was deliberate.
See, I don't think a comprehensive theological understanding of heaven and salvation was what Jesus was after. When Jesus came on the scene, there were at least three major schools of thought when it came to the Jewish understanding of the scriptures - the Pharisees, the Saducees and the Esenees. Each had their own detailed way of parsing scripture, each backed up their reading with examples, and each thought the other groups were sorely misled. In other words, it's much like what happens today between various Christian denominations.
If Jesus wanted to set out a clear doctrinal position on scriptural issues, he certainly could have done so. And in a way, he did that, but in a way that the scholars of the day didn't expect or recognize or want. What I'm trying to get at is the idea that the use of metaphor and parable was the only way that Jesus could make his kingdom recognizable to us. And by keeping things open to interpretation, I think he was trying to tell us that it's not about the specifics as much as it is about the general idea.
And I think that he meant for there to be variations in the way his message is interpreted because if the world that he created is any indication, God loves variety and diversity.
And I don't want to come across as saying that you can believe whatever you want to believe. There are limits as to what one can believe about the message presented in the Bible outside of which one can no longer be called a Christian, but I think these boundaries are a great deal more expansive than we think.
Calvinism versus Armenianism, baptism by immersion versus baptism by sprinkling, the elements of the Lord's Supper as the actual body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation versus the elements as symbols representing the body and blood, once saved, always saved versus the possibility of losing one's salvation, charismatic versus conservative, Catholic versus protestant, dispensationalism versus preterism versus amillennailism, old earth creationism versus young earth creationism versus theistic evolution versus intelligent design. And on and on and on.
I just cited a bunch of debates off the top of my head and there are lots that I left out. And there are Christians who are very passionate about one side of one or more of those debates. Some of these Christians believe so passionately about their side that they claim that those who do not hold their view are not really saved or if they are saved, it's only by the skin of their teeth and by the grace of God.
Everyone seems so set on defending their little piece of the truth that they forget that there's a big, wide world outside the church that doesn't care one way or the other - they just look at us bickering Christians casting stones at one another, pulling splinters with logs sticking out of our eyes, and they wonder why anyone would want to sign on to be a part of such a group.
But.
What if.
What if we treated one another with love? What if we agreed to disagree on the specifics and got on with the business of treating a lonely, hurting world? What if we learned to see the differing ideas within Christianity the way a botanist sees a garden - as a thriving system of bio-diversity? What if the truth of the matter exists in the space between competing ideas rather than on one side or the other?
What if Jesus used metaphor and parable (as opposed to facts and definitions) as a way to encourage this variety, this diversity? What if the question, "who's right" is irrelevant? What if the real question is, "who's making the world a better place?"
What if instead of trying to figure out the right model of church, we tried to figure out the right model of society. What if instead of trying to reform and redeem culture, we put forward an entirely new vision of what culture should be. What if instead of merely feeding the homeless, we also went on to dismantle the patterns that perpetuate poverty?
What if we saw our mission as more than just saving individuals? What if we saw saving culture and nations as part of our mission (because Jesus called us to make disciples of nations, not just individuals - Matthew 28:19)? What if we stopped imitating the art the world makes ("redeeming" it by grafting on Christian messages) and started creating art that the world has to follow?
See, I think Christians have been on the defensive for far too long. I think we have settled for far too little. And I think we have focused too much on saving ourselves and not enough on saving the world. People flocked to William Wallace in the movie Braveheart because he offered them a better future for their lives as well as the lives of their children. Same with our forefathers and the American revolution. Same with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.
What is it that we Christians are working towards? What kind of society did Christ want to establish? These are the kind of questions that are tugging at my heart right now because I want to be part of a revolution, not a renovation.
Anyway, what follows is my take on what I got out of the books which is slightly different from what the books themselves say about Jesus and his gospel so if you think what I'm saying is crazy or wrong or unorthodox, don't hold it against the books.
The phrases, "kingdom of heaven" and "kingdom of God," are used throughout the gospels. Most of Jesus' parables reference this kingdom and it's all over his Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, in Luke 4:43 he says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent."
There's not a lot of explanation as to what exactly this kingdom is - at least not an explanation of the factual sort. When describing the kingdom, Jesus says things like, "it's like yeast, like seeds, like a pearl, like a party, etc." He used metaphors and stories when talking about the kingdom, and while that can be frustrating in today's information age, I think it was deliberate.
See, I don't think a comprehensive theological understanding of heaven and salvation was what Jesus was after. When Jesus came on the scene, there were at least three major schools of thought when it came to the Jewish understanding of the scriptures - the Pharisees, the Saducees and the Esenees. Each had their own detailed way of parsing scripture, each backed up their reading with examples, and each thought the other groups were sorely misled. In other words, it's much like what happens today between various Christian denominations.
If Jesus wanted to set out a clear doctrinal position on scriptural issues, he certainly could have done so. And in a way, he did that, but in a way that the scholars of the day didn't expect or recognize or want. What I'm trying to get at is the idea that the use of metaphor and parable was the only way that Jesus could make his kingdom recognizable to us. And by keeping things open to interpretation, I think he was trying to tell us that it's not about the specifics as much as it is about the general idea.
And I think that he meant for there to be variations in the way his message is interpreted because if the world that he created is any indication, God loves variety and diversity.
And I don't want to come across as saying that you can believe whatever you want to believe. There are limits as to what one can believe about the message presented in the Bible outside of which one can no longer be called a Christian, but I think these boundaries are a great deal more expansive than we think.
Calvinism versus Armenianism, baptism by immersion versus baptism by sprinkling, the elements of the Lord's Supper as the actual body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation versus the elements as symbols representing the body and blood, once saved, always saved versus the possibility of losing one's salvation, charismatic versus conservative, Catholic versus protestant, dispensationalism versus preterism versus amillennailism, old earth creationism versus young earth creationism versus theistic evolution versus intelligent design. And on and on and on.
I just cited a bunch of debates off the top of my head and there are lots that I left out. And there are Christians who are very passionate about one side of one or more of those debates. Some of these Christians believe so passionately about their side that they claim that those who do not hold their view are not really saved or if they are saved, it's only by the skin of their teeth and by the grace of God.
Everyone seems so set on defending their little piece of the truth that they forget that there's a big, wide world outside the church that doesn't care one way or the other - they just look at us bickering Christians casting stones at one another, pulling splinters with logs sticking out of our eyes, and they wonder why anyone would want to sign on to be a part of such a group.
But.
What if.
What if we treated one another with love? What if we agreed to disagree on the specifics and got on with the business of treating a lonely, hurting world? What if we learned to see the differing ideas within Christianity the way a botanist sees a garden - as a thriving system of bio-diversity? What if the truth of the matter exists in the space between competing ideas rather than on one side or the other?
What if Jesus used metaphor and parable (as opposed to facts and definitions) as a way to encourage this variety, this diversity? What if the question, "who's right" is irrelevant? What if the real question is, "who's making the world a better place?"
What if instead of trying to figure out the right model of church, we tried to figure out the right model of society. What if instead of trying to reform and redeem culture, we put forward an entirely new vision of what culture should be. What if instead of merely feeding the homeless, we also went on to dismantle the patterns that perpetuate poverty?
What if we saw our mission as more than just saving individuals? What if we saw saving culture and nations as part of our mission (because Jesus called us to make disciples of nations, not just individuals - Matthew 28:19)? What if we stopped imitating the art the world makes ("redeeming" it by grafting on Christian messages) and started creating art that the world has to follow?
See, I think Christians have been on the defensive for far too long. I think we have settled for far too little. And I think we have focused too much on saving ourselves and not enough on saving the world. People flocked to William Wallace in the movie Braveheart because he offered them a better future for their lives as well as the lives of their children. Same with our forefathers and the American revolution. Same with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.
What is it that we Christians are working towards? What kind of society did Christ want to establish? These are the kind of questions that are tugging at my heart right now because I want to be part of a revolution, not a renovation.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
215. feeding the homeless (part two)
The feeding the homeless project meant a great deal to me, not just because we got to feed people, but also because it ties right in to what I've been learning in regards to what exactly it is that Christianity is supposed to be about (see blog 211). What I mean is, I've been finding that being a Christian has to do with living life now, the way it will be lived after Christ returns and makes all things right in the world because that's a big part of how God intends to usher in his kingdom - through individual and groups (large and small) of Christians who live now, today, as if his kingdom were already here.
The whole thing went pretty smoothly. We prayed, unloaded the food, set up the food tables, prayed again to bless the food and started serving heaping plates of rice, corn, macaroni salad, and some kind of amazing beef stew-type dish. And the people kept coming and we kept dishing it out, piling the food up as high as they wanted. We smiled, looked them in the eye, and told them to come back for more.
And I loved it because all we did was give. We didn't ask for any kind of song and dance from them, we didn't preach to them or ask them to listen to a sermon while they ate. We did our best to talk to them, treat them with respect and dignity, and some of us got to pray for them individually. In short, we did our best to treat them as if they were a part of our church or a part of our family.
The other thing that we offered was a simple arts and crafts project for the children staying at the shelter. We brought a huge stack of magazines, scissors, glue, and construction paper and we encouraged the kids to explore their dreams by cutting out images from the magazines that represented what they hoped for. In the corner of the shelter where we were doing this, we put up a makeshift banner that read, "What are your dreams?" And I thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of - encouraging these kids to think beyond this shelter and beyond their difficulties, giving them permission to grab images that spoke to their heart, cut them out, and paste them to paper. When a child was done with their sheet, we taped them up on the wall under the banner.
It was an encouragement to me to see a corner of the shelter decorated by the dreams of children. And I don't know if or how they were affected by it, but I like to think that maybe some of those kids will take hold of their dream and follow it until it becomes a reality. I imagine that these kids don't get to dream big dreams very often and it's my hope that our little exercise opened up their minds as to what's possible.
My mother showed me an article in the paper to day about a man who went from being a homeless single father to a multi-million dollar stock broker who routinely gives waiters and housekeepers and other service industry workers thousand dollar tips. And there are lots of other stories like this.
I don't know. Maybe I'm being entirely too optimistic about the whole thing. I mean, here I am in this house on this computer, I have a car in the garage, money in the bank, a job to go to, a healthy support network of family and friends. It's easy for me to think that our one night of food and arts and crafts made some kind of impact on those people and their children, but the reality is that most (if not all) of them are still there tonight.
But God doesn't ask us to save the world overnight. He asks us to do our part, to bring a piece of his kingdom to those who have no home and no food. Big changes only happen after small choices are made - like the choice to serve.
And I don't write all of this to brag about what a great Christian I am, to call attention to my charity.
"So why are you writing then?"
Because I feel like I caught a glimpse of heaven touching earth in that shelter. I got to see God doing his thing - bringing blessing and love and grace. And I felt encouraged and blessed, and I suppose I write about it because I want to share that experience with others.
And as I write that, I think of the blog I posted a few weeks ago (see blog 208) about how I wasn't stoked about sharing Christ with other people because I wasn't sure what Christianity was about. Yet here I am, writing about what what I saw. And I'm kind of tripping out because I feel as if I'm on the verge of having an understanding of the Gospel that I actually want to talk about and share.
It's a trippy feeling. And it feels pretty damn good.
PS. don't forget to pray for the homeless - a reminder I write for myself more than anyone else.
The whole thing went pretty smoothly. We prayed, unloaded the food, set up the food tables, prayed again to bless the food and started serving heaping plates of rice, corn, macaroni salad, and some kind of amazing beef stew-type dish. And the people kept coming and we kept dishing it out, piling the food up as high as they wanted. We smiled, looked them in the eye, and told them to come back for more.
And I loved it because all we did was give. We didn't ask for any kind of song and dance from them, we didn't preach to them or ask them to listen to a sermon while they ate. We did our best to talk to them, treat them with respect and dignity, and some of us got to pray for them individually. In short, we did our best to treat them as if they were a part of our church or a part of our family.
The other thing that we offered was a simple arts and crafts project for the children staying at the shelter. We brought a huge stack of magazines, scissors, glue, and construction paper and we encouraged the kids to explore their dreams by cutting out images from the magazines that represented what they hoped for. In the corner of the shelter where we were doing this, we put up a makeshift banner that read, "What are your dreams?" And I thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of - encouraging these kids to think beyond this shelter and beyond their difficulties, giving them permission to grab images that spoke to their heart, cut them out, and paste them to paper. When a child was done with their sheet, we taped them up on the wall under the banner.
It was an encouragement to me to see a corner of the shelter decorated by the dreams of children. And I don't know if or how they were affected by it, but I like to think that maybe some of those kids will take hold of their dream and follow it until it becomes a reality. I imagine that these kids don't get to dream big dreams very often and it's my hope that our little exercise opened up their minds as to what's possible.
My mother showed me an article in the paper to day about a man who went from being a homeless single father to a multi-million dollar stock broker who routinely gives waiters and housekeepers and other service industry workers thousand dollar tips. And there are lots of other stories like this.
I don't know. Maybe I'm being entirely too optimistic about the whole thing. I mean, here I am in this house on this computer, I have a car in the garage, money in the bank, a job to go to, a healthy support network of family and friends. It's easy for me to think that our one night of food and arts and crafts made some kind of impact on those people and their children, but the reality is that most (if not all) of them are still there tonight.
But God doesn't ask us to save the world overnight. He asks us to do our part, to bring a piece of his kingdom to those who have no home and no food. Big changes only happen after small choices are made - like the choice to serve.
And I don't write all of this to brag about what a great Christian I am, to call attention to my charity.
"So why are you writing then?"
Because I feel like I caught a glimpse of heaven touching earth in that shelter. I got to see God doing his thing - bringing blessing and love and grace. And I felt encouraged and blessed, and I suppose I write about it because I want to share that experience with others.
And as I write that, I think of the blog I posted a few weeks ago (see blog 208) about how I wasn't stoked about sharing Christ with other people because I wasn't sure what Christianity was about. Yet here I am, writing about what what I saw. And I'm kind of tripping out because I feel as if I'm on the verge of having an understanding of the Gospel that I actually want to talk about and share.
It's a trippy feeling. And it feels pretty damn good.
PS. don't forget to pray for the homeless - a reminder I write for myself more than anyone else.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
214. feeding the homeless (part one)
This Sunday, our house church joined up with a couple other house churches and we went to a shelter put together by the State and we fed the homeless. And for me, it was a heart-warming, inspirational experience for me because it really felt like we got the chance to be (in our earnest, but imperfect way) Jesus to these people. And it we didn't bring angry Jesus or judgmental Jesus or transactional (we'll feed you if you agree to try and get your life together) Jesus. We simply arrived with food and fed as many as we could and we prayed with those who wanted prayer. And we asked for nothing in return.
And I think again about the conservative ideology that I immersed myself in while I was in college in the mid-nineties. I think about how so many politicians and pundits were talking about reducing the size of entitlement programs like welfare. Basically, the reasoning went that there were millions of people sponging off the system, leeching off of welfare programs so that they wouldn't have to work, and the way to break this cycle was to reduce funding for the welfare programs that allowed these people to live lazily off of the tax-paying worker so that they'd be forced to work themselves. They basically painted all poor people as lazy individuals who would rather stand in line for a welfare check than go to work. The argument conservatives made was that if there was no check at the end of that line, that they'd be forced to get off their lazy butts and get the job that they'd been avoiding.
I had that reduced-entitlements drum beat into my head over and over again and so while I was there at the homeless shelter, it came to mind.
And I work at a staffing company (basically a temp-service) and so I get to see first-hand, the kind of spoiled, lazy, don't-want-to-lift-a-finger workers that conservatives use as examples of the need for welfare reform. Every morning we get calls from work-sites where our employees failed to show up. And we call these people and while most of them have the dignity to make up an excuse (feeble as they usually are), some come right out and say that they just didn't think they had to show up and would we please leave them alone so they can get back to sleep. And then when payday comes around, they make a big stink about how they worked a quarter hour more than what's shown on their timecard and we better get on the phone and do our job to make sure they get every penny that they have coming to them. And after we fire them for not showing up to yet another job, they march straight into the unemployment office to charge up their EBT card.
I run into these kinds of people on a weekly basis and there's a part of me that says, "yeah, why should the tax dollars that come out of the work that I do go to buy meals for people who are too lazy to even make up an excuse not to go to work?"
But.
But then there's the man I met, that night at the shelter, who has diabetes and he hurt his back in an accident that wasn't his fault and so now he can't work and so he thanks us for the food and for listening to his story. And then there are the women whose husbands left them with children to raise, to feed, to discipline, and to love. Some of them came to Hawaii from Micronesia and Guam and Saipan and so they don't have family that they call call upon to babysit. How is someone like that supposed to find the time and the energy to find, let alone keep, a job? And even if she found a job, who would watch her children?
I suppose in an ideal world. we would have a system where the sponges would get filtered out so that there would be enough support money to get those who really need help back on their feet. But we don't have that system yet and so the question is, what will we do in the mean time?
And I think of the parable of the sheep and the goats and how Jesus doesn't make a big deal of sorting between the needy who deserve help and the needy who don't.
Oops. I didn't mean for this to be such a rant. I originally wanted to talk about the good things I saw about feeding the homeless. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, but for now, to bed.
Stay tuned.
And I think again about the conservative ideology that I immersed myself in while I was in college in the mid-nineties. I think about how so many politicians and pundits were talking about reducing the size of entitlement programs like welfare. Basically, the reasoning went that there were millions of people sponging off the system, leeching off of welfare programs so that they wouldn't have to work, and the way to break this cycle was to reduce funding for the welfare programs that allowed these people to live lazily off of the tax-paying worker so that they'd be forced to work themselves. They basically painted all poor people as lazy individuals who would rather stand in line for a welfare check than go to work. The argument conservatives made was that if there was no check at the end of that line, that they'd be forced to get off their lazy butts and get the job that they'd been avoiding.
I had that reduced-entitlements drum beat into my head over and over again and so while I was there at the homeless shelter, it came to mind.
And I work at a staffing company (basically a temp-service) and so I get to see first-hand, the kind of spoiled, lazy, don't-want-to-lift-a-finger workers that conservatives use as examples of the need for welfare reform. Every morning we get calls from work-sites where our employees failed to show up. And we call these people and while most of them have the dignity to make up an excuse (feeble as they usually are), some come right out and say that they just didn't think they had to show up and would we please leave them alone so they can get back to sleep. And then when payday comes around, they make a big stink about how they worked a quarter hour more than what's shown on their timecard and we better get on the phone and do our job to make sure they get every penny that they have coming to them. And after we fire them for not showing up to yet another job, they march straight into the unemployment office to charge up their EBT card.
I run into these kinds of people on a weekly basis and there's a part of me that says, "yeah, why should the tax dollars that come out of the work that I do go to buy meals for people who are too lazy to even make up an excuse not to go to work?"
But.
But then there's the man I met, that night at the shelter, who has diabetes and he hurt his back in an accident that wasn't his fault and so now he can't work and so he thanks us for the food and for listening to his story. And then there are the women whose husbands left them with children to raise, to feed, to discipline, and to love. Some of them came to Hawaii from Micronesia and Guam and Saipan and so they don't have family that they call call upon to babysit. How is someone like that supposed to find the time and the energy to find, let alone keep, a job? And even if she found a job, who would watch her children?
I suppose in an ideal world. we would have a system where the sponges would get filtered out so that there would be enough support money to get those who really need help back on their feet. But we don't have that system yet and so the question is, what will we do in the mean time?
And I think of the parable of the sheep and the goats and how Jesus doesn't make a big deal of sorting between the needy who deserve help and the needy who don't.
Oops. I didn't mean for this to be such a rant. I originally wanted to talk about the good things I saw about feeding the homeless. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, but for now, to bed.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
213. earthling
Most of the people who read this blog (as far as I know) are people who know me personally, so most people know that in a few months I'm going to be moving to Seattle along with my band. And if you didn't know, well you certainly know now.
And I haven't written a lot about the move because even though it's a big change for me in all kinds of key areas, I'm not all that worried about it and so I'm not really thinking that much about it beyond practical items like making sure I have enough reserve cash to get me by until I get settled.
But the days are going by and the reality of the move is starting to dawn on me and I'm beginning to have thoughts on the matter. But not the thoughts you might expect.
I've started running again, and while running, I've taken to catching up on some of the podcasts that I've been downloading. This afternoon I was listening to an interview between host, Valerie Jackson, and author, Laurel Snyder. They were talking about Snyder's book, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales From Interfaith Homes, which is about the changes occurring in Jewish culture because of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.
It was a fascinating discussion, and I couldn't help but wonder if what's happening to the Jewish community (the mixing of once pure bloodlines and the resulting cultural conflicts and confusions) is happing to all kinds of ethnic groups (and yes, I realize that being Jewish has both an ethnic and a religious component to it but I'm just using it as a launching pad for a larger discussion). Intermarriage between people of differing racial origins, while far from ubiquitous, is not as uncommon as it used to be. And I couldn't help but project this phenomenon out into the future and I started wondering about a world where race is a non-issue because of intermarriage.
I'm sure there are some who recoil in horror at the thought of the loss of the ethnic component of cultural identity. And I'm sure there are others who see that as a beautiful thing - an explosion of diversity and a potentially utopian symphony of different cultures coming together to create something altogether new. And pushing the idea even further into the future, I wonder if there will ever be a time when the idea of racial divides will be seen as an artifact of a darker, more ignorant era of human history. If this were ever to happen, I suppose people will simply consider themselves humans or earthlings.
Think that's impossible? I think a bit of that has already happened in America. There are whites in America who don't give much thought to the different Northern European bloodlines running through their veins. If pressed, they can probably tell you about their great-great-grandparents and some of the different countries they came from and how they, in their time, tried to maintain cultural traditions which they (sometimes more, sometimes less successfully) tried to pass on to their children and their grandchildren. But there are some whites who would prefer to just refer to themselves as white instead of breaking down their specific ethnic makeup by percentages. And I'm sure if you were to trace their family tree back far enough, you'd find an ancestor who would have recoiled at the thought of their great-great-great-great-grandson disregarding the racial component of their cultural heritage, but it happened anyway.
Thinking of the future in this way raises all kinds of fascinating questions and it's not hard to imagine some scary scenarios between the here and now and the there and then.
"Hey, I thought you were going to talk about your move to Seattle."
Oh yeah. So to kind of round out this soliloquy on race, I ended my little workout routine thinking about how life might be different for me being a part of a racial minority and if/how being an Asian-American from Hawaii might give me a different perspective from an Asian-American born and raised on the mainland. Because they're not necessarily the same thing.
I remember being an English major at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and I remember how in the Asian-American writing classes that I took, they were still talking about the Asian-American writers conference that they held at UH in the 70s. And you could tell from the way the story was told that there were still unresolved issues even some twenty years later.
The conference started off as a great idea. There was a burgeoning Asian-American writing community growing in Hawaii at the time, and so people thought it would be a good idea to get some input from the more established Asian-American writers in the mainland. And so they organized this conference and held it at UH. And then the shit started to hit the fan. Basically, what happened was, the Asian-American writers from the mainland started accusing the local (based in Hawaii) writers of not being political enough and not doing enough to challenge stereotypes. The local writers countered with the argument, who are you to tell us how we should write?
See, many of the mainland Asian-American writers used their writing to give themselves a voice in a community where they were minorities. A lot of their writing had to do with identity and dismantling the stereotypes that tried to define them.
Because Asian-Americans in Hawaii make up a racial majority, they were free to just write stories about their parents or their childhood or just regular adult issues. They didn't feel the need to assert their identity because they weren't burdened by stereotypes to the same degree that the mainland writers were.
I think of that story and I wonder how being Asian-American in Seattle (or anywhere else in the mainland) will be different from being Asian-American in Hawaii. And I'm not that afraid of running into outright racism, I'm more curious to see what the differences are. And I wonder if I get the chance to hang out with some raised-in-the-mainland Asian Americans and I tell them about the Asian-American writers conference at UH, if they will have anything to say about what happened.
I don't know.
There are lots of unknowns when it comes to moving and I'm not naive enough to think that race won't be a factor at all, I'm just interested in finding out how much if an issue it will turn out to be.
"So you're moving to Seattle, and you're thinking about these abstract ideas on race?"
Heh, yeah. Welcome to my world.
And I haven't written a lot about the move because even though it's a big change for me in all kinds of key areas, I'm not all that worried about it and so I'm not really thinking that much about it beyond practical items like making sure I have enough reserve cash to get me by until I get settled.
But the days are going by and the reality of the move is starting to dawn on me and I'm beginning to have thoughts on the matter. But not the thoughts you might expect.
I've started running again, and while running, I've taken to catching up on some of the podcasts that I've been downloading. This afternoon I was listening to an interview between host, Valerie Jackson, and author, Laurel Snyder. They were talking about Snyder's book, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales From Interfaith Homes, which is about the changes occurring in Jewish culture because of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.
It was a fascinating discussion, and I couldn't help but wonder if what's happening to the Jewish community (the mixing of once pure bloodlines and the resulting cultural conflicts and confusions) is happing to all kinds of ethnic groups (and yes, I realize that being Jewish has both an ethnic and a religious component to it but I'm just using it as a launching pad for a larger discussion). Intermarriage between people of differing racial origins, while far from ubiquitous, is not as uncommon as it used to be. And I couldn't help but project this phenomenon out into the future and I started wondering about a world where race is a non-issue because of intermarriage.
I'm sure there are some who recoil in horror at the thought of the loss of the ethnic component of cultural identity. And I'm sure there are others who see that as a beautiful thing - an explosion of diversity and a potentially utopian symphony of different cultures coming together to create something altogether new. And pushing the idea even further into the future, I wonder if there will ever be a time when the idea of racial divides will be seen as an artifact of a darker, more ignorant era of human history. If this were ever to happen, I suppose people will simply consider themselves humans or earthlings.
Think that's impossible? I think a bit of that has already happened in America. There are whites in America who don't give much thought to the different Northern European bloodlines running through their veins. If pressed, they can probably tell you about their great-great-grandparents and some of the different countries they came from and how they, in their time, tried to maintain cultural traditions which they (sometimes more, sometimes less successfully) tried to pass on to their children and their grandchildren. But there are some whites who would prefer to just refer to themselves as white instead of breaking down their specific ethnic makeup by percentages. And I'm sure if you were to trace their family tree back far enough, you'd find an ancestor who would have recoiled at the thought of their great-great-great-great-grandson disregarding the racial component of their cultural heritage, but it happened anyway.
Thinking of the future in this way raises all kinds of fascinating questions and it's not hard to imagine some scary scenarios between the here and now and the there and then.
"Hey, I thought you were going to talk about your move to Seattle."
Oh yeah. So to kind of round out this soliloquy on race, I ended my little workout routine thinking about how life might be different for me being a part of a racial minority and if/how being an Asian-American from Hawaii might give me a different perspective from an Asian-American born and raised on the mainland. Because they're not necessarily the same thing.
I remember being an English major at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and I remember how in the Asian-American writing classes that I took, they were still talking about the Asian-American writers conference that they held at UH in the 70s. And you could tell from the way the story was told that there were still unresolved issues even some twenty years later.
The conference started off as a great idea. There was a burgeoning Asian-American writing community growing in Hawaii at the time, and so people thought it would be a good idea to get some input from the more established Asian-American writers in the mainland. And so they organized this conference and held it at UH. And then the shit started to hit the fan. Basically, what happened was, the Asian-American writers from the mainland started accusing the local (based in Hawaii) writers of not being political enough and not doing enough to challenge stereotypes. The local writers countered with the argument, who are you to tell us how we should write?
See, many of the mainland Asian-American writers used their writing to give themselves a voice in a community where they were minorities. A lot of their writing had to do with identity and dismantling the stereotypes that tried to define them.
Because Asian-Americans in Hawaii make up a racial majority, they were free to just write stories about their parents or their childhood or just regular adult issues. They didn't feel the need to assert their identity because they weren't burdened by stereotypes to the same degree that the mainland writers were.
I think of that story and I wonder how being Asian-American in Seattle (or anywhere else in the mainland) will be different from being Asian-American in Hawaii. And I'm not that afraid of running into outright racism, I'm more curious to see what the differences are. And I wonder if I get the chance to hang out with some raised-in-the-mainland Asian Americans and I tell them about the Asian-American writers conference at UH, if they will have anything to say about what happened.
I don't know.
There are lots of unknowns when it comes to moving and I'm not naive enough to think that race won't be a factor at all, I'm just interested in finding out how much if an issue it will turn out to be.
"So you're moving to Seattle, and you're thinking about these abstract ideas on race?"
Heh, yeah. Welcome to my world.
Friday, June 09, 2006
212. some thoughts on worship
A friend of mine posted a blog about worship. In it, he quotes from an article written by Chuck Colson for the magazine, Christianity Today:
"When church music directors lead congregations in singing contemporary Christian music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We’d been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called “Draw Me Close to You,” which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed. “Let’s sing that again, shall we?” he asked. “No!” I shouted, loudly enough to send heads all around me spinning while my wife, Patty, cringed.I admit I prefer traditional hymns, but even so, I’m convinced that much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend–slipping across the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book."
My friend used this quote as a jumping off point to ask questions about worship, questions like:
"What is worship?
What constitutes worship music?
Is it for our refocus on God?
Is it so we feel good, so we can then feel good about God?
Should worship be only songs with Scriptural significance and reference?
Is the Bible the end all of all that we can say of and to God?"
And the questions got to me because, like Colson, I have issues with a lot of the worship songs that get sung in churches today. And so I posted this response on his blog:
I have to say I understand what Mr. Colson is feeling (or not feeling) about contemporary worship. But I'm in an even more unfortunate position than he because I don't really care for hymns either...at least not singing them (they do contain some tasy poetry - fun to read - but it's draped over boring melodies and arrangements - not fun to sing).
I wouldn't go as far as Colson does in saying that contemporary worship tends towards entertainment. I do agree with him when he describes the song as having, "zero theological content." With that statement in mind, I can see how he can make the connection between contemporary worship and entertainment.
Perhaps an example would do well here.
Think about the difference between a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and any Van Damme or Stephen Segal martial arts movie. The former is widely regarded as a work of art while the movies of Van Damme or Segal are panned as shallow, meaningless products of the Hollywood production mill.
The difference between the two? CTHD explores themes like loyalty, love, discipline, sacrifice. It handles these topics with subtlety and care. The other movies use plot as a necessary inconvenience - a thread to connect fight scenes together.
Contemporary worship can be compared to the Van Damme/Segal movies in that they don't provide a lot of material for your mind to chew on. They play solely to the senses and the emotions.
Traditional worship, on the other hand, can be better compared to the films of Antonioni. Although many film critics would disagree, I find his films dry and far too cerebral. They are more of an intellectual exercise than an engaging story. Likewise, I think hymns are great to read and think about but not a lot of fun to sing.
So how do I worship?
To be honest, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'd rather take time out to see a sunset or look up at the stars than sing either hymns or contemporary worship songs.
At the house church I attend, we dont sing our worship. We have a time where we go around the room and give people a chance to share what God has done for them that week. We also encourage our members to praise God through acts of service to people in need, and people who do so share what they did during our worship time.
I like what we do, but I do think there is something about song that gets at a part of the heart that mere words can't get to and so while I like what we do at the house church, I would like something more, I'm just not sure what.
So I wrote all that and now I'm wondering if I need to put more of a priority in finding a way to worship God that makes worship more sincere and real - a worship that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.
Take a look at the kind of worship that Jesus said God wants:
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24, NIV)
Colson opts for "traditional hymns," for their theological content - truth. Lots of other people like contemporary worship music because it's very emotional - spirit. I'm wondering where it is that I can find worship that has both spirit and truth - worship that "the Father seeks."
This is a sad confession on my part, but worship doesn't play a huge role in my life. Certainly not in song, but that's not the only worship that I can participate in. The wonder of God's creation is all around us and although Paul cautions us against worshiping the creation rather than the creator (Romans 1:25), we would do well to remember that God's creation can point us back to him if we look carefully, attentively, diligently (Romans 1:20, my favorite verse of the Bible).
Living in Hawaii, there are times when I'm driving and I look around and think, "I can't believe I live here." It's in times like these when I can't help but lift up a little prayer to God in thanks and awe. I need to be more aware because the glory of God is all over the place, hiding in plain sight. And I need to soak up as much of this beauty that I can before I move up to Seattle with my band.
Opportunities for worship are all around me, all around us all, all the time. It's a problem of awareness, not availability.
"When church music directors lead congregations in singing contemporary Christian music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We’d been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called “Draw Me Close to You,” which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed. “Let’s sing that again, shall we?” he asked. “No!” I shouted, loudly enough to send heads all around me spinning while my wife, Patty, cringed.I admit I prefer traditional hymns, but even so, I’m convinced that much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend–slipping across the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book."
My friend used this quote as a jumping off point to ask questions about worship, questions like:
"What is worship?
What constitutes worship music?
Is it for our refocus on God?
Is it so we feel good, so we can then feel good about God?
Should worship be only songs with Scriptural significance and reference?
Is the Bible the end all of all that we can say of and to God?"
And the questions got to me because, like Colson, I have issues with a lot of the worship songs that get sung in churches today. And so I posted this response on his blog:
I have to say I understand what Mr. Colson is feeling (or not feeling) about contemporary worship. But I'm in an even more unfortunate position than he because I don't really care for hymns either...at least not singing them (they do contain some tasy poetry - fun to read - but it's draped over boring melodies and arrangements - not fun to sing).
I wouldn't go as far as Colson does in saying that contemporary worship tends towards entertainment. I do agree with him when he describes the song as having, "zero theological content." With that statement in mind, I can see how he can make the connection between contemporary worship and entertainment.
Perhaps an example would do well here.
Think about the difference between a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and any Van Damme or Stephen Segal martial arts movie. The former is widely regarded as a work of art while the movies of Van Damme or Segal are panned as shallow, meaningless products of the Hollywood production mill.
The difference between the two? CTHD explores themes like loyalty, love, discipline, sacrifice. It handles these topics with subtlety and care. The other movies use plot as a necessary inconvenience - a thread to connect fight scenes together.
Contemporary worship can be compared to the Van Damme/Segal movies in that they don't provide a lot of material for your mind to chew on. They play solely to the senses and the emotions.
Traditional worship, on the other hand, can be better compared to the films of Antonioni. Although many film critics would disagree, I find his films dry and far too cerebral. They are more of an intellectual exercise than an engaging story. Likewise, I think hymns are great to read and think about but not a lot of fun to sing.
So how do I worship?
To be honest, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'd rather take time out to see a sunset or look up at the stars than sing either hymns or contemporary worship songs.
At the house church I attend, we dont sing our worship. We have a time where we go around the room and give people a chance to share what God has done for them that week. We also encourage our members to praise God through acts of service to people in need, and people who do so share what they did during our worship time.
I like what we do, but I do think there is something about song that gets at a part of the heart that mere words can't get to and so while I like what we do at the house church, I would like something more, I'm just not sure what.
So I wrote all that and now I'm wondering if I need to put more of a priority in finding a way to worship God that makes worship more sincere and real - a worship that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.
Take a look at the kind of worship that Jesus said God wants:
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24, NIV)
Colson opts for "traditional hymns," for their theological content - truth. Lots of other people like contemporary worship music because it's very emotional - spirit. I'm wondering where it is that I can find worship that has both spirit and truth - worship that "the Father seeks."
This is a sad confession on my part, but worship doesn't play a huge role in my life. Certainly not in song, but that's not the only worship that I can participate in. The wonder of God's creation is all around us and although Paul cautions us against worshiping the creation rather than the creator (Romans 1:25), we would do well to remember that God's creation can point us back to him if we look carefully, attentively, diligently (Romans 1:20, my favorite verse of the Bible).
Living in Hawaii, there are times when I'm driving and I look around and think, "I can't believe I live here." It's in times like these when I can't help but lift up a little prayer to God in thanks and awe. I need to be more aware because the glory of God is all over the place, hiding in plain sight. And I need to soak up as much of this beauty that I can before I move up to Seattle with my band.
Opportunities for worship are all around me, all around us all, all the time. It's a problem of awareness, not availability.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
211. a whole new world
Yeah, I haven't posted anything new in a while, but it's because I feel I'm on the verge, on the cusp of a grand new vista that's only beginning to open up to me. And I want to break on through to the other side before writing a whole lot more, but here's a little preview.
Last Sunday, I attended a church service at Hope Chapel Manoa and the service centered around 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 which reads:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
The bit that I connected with the most is the part in v26 which reads, ". . .I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air." And I connected with that verse because that's the exact opposite of what most of my Christian life has been like. My (pathetic lack of) understanding of what Christianity was about was formed out of a shallow blend of group-think, herd mentality, peer pressure, and fear. Basically, I swallowed whatever the church put in front of me and I know that's not healthy, that we're supposed to test what pastors and teachers say against what the Bible says but they've got their degrees and their titles and their position so who was I to question them? Besides, I was afraid they'd revoke my Asian identity card if I made too many waves.
So I did what I was told and I believed what I was told.
But at some point, I just got tired of suppressing the questions that I had and I gave up on trying to fit into the mold that the church seemed to be trying to cram me into. Looking back now, most of my Christianity was just "running aimlessly" and "beating the air." I was working at something but I wasn't going anywhere, I wasn't connecting with anything.
Now? Now I don't hide my questions. I mean, most of my blogs are riddled with questions (see blog 179 and blog 201 for a couple examples).
At the top of the blog, I mentioned how I felt on the verge of some kind of understanding, and this understanding has to do with what it was that Christ came to earth to do - what he was trying to teach us about why we're here and how his church was to be an agent of light and change in a world of never-ending hurt and alienation. I'm discovering these things as I'm finally making my way to the end of two amazing books: The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And I know I've been talking about these books for weeks, but I'm a slow reader, particularly with these books because they deserve (if not demand) a close reading.
And what I'm finding is that what Jesus wants to do in the world, and the way he wants to do it is far more amazing (shocking, in fact) than anything I have ever heard in my twenty years or so as a Christian. It's nothing short of revolutionary and it comes, not by way of force, but by love. And that sounds all hippie and soft and PC, but think about all of those Christians in the first century who were martyred by lion, by gladiator, by stoning. Think of the Christians today in the Middle East or in China who have to live with the fear of their government coming to their homes in the middle of the night and carrying them away to torture and to jail and sometimes to death. Not to be too harsh, but do you think that they would risk all of that for the kind of feel-good-Christianity that gets preached in many churches in America today?
Okay, not to disappoint, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm catching glimpses of a vision of Christianity that is worth dying for, that is worth crawling over broken glass to share, that is crazy enough to be true, and impossible enough to be possible only with God's help.
And here's the coolest part. It's not some new revelation, not some new way to read the Bible, not some radical kind of re-visioning of the Gospel. It's quite the opposite. What McLaren and Wright are trying to do is peer back through time, back to first century Israel. They try to understand the life and message of Christ through the ears and experiences of his peers, through first century Jews and Gentiles.
Think of the Sistine Chapel. Years of varnish and soot from thousands (if not millions) of candles had darkened the ceiling painted by Michelangelo. In 1981, the Vatican undertook a massive restoration project which was not completed until 1994. When it was finally unveiled, it was a shocking revelation. Dull, muted colors (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationBefore.html) exploded with life and vibrancy (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationAfter.html). The results met with nearly unanimous acclaim from critics, academics, and the general public. But there were some who mourned the loss of the old version, claiming that things like the darkening patina and the later (150 years later) additions of loincloths on some of the nude figures was actually a part of the cultural history of the work. Now I'm no art expert, but I don't think it takes a PhD in art history to appreciate the ability to see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as Michelangelo originally painted it.
And I wonder if a similar kind of restoration needs to take place for Christianity. Perhaps we need to strip off the crust of two thousand years of embellishment and interpretation and tradition so that we can get back to the essence of the original message. And I'm not suggesting that we jettison all those years of critical thinking regarding the Bible, because they do offer necessary, valuable insight into what it does and does not say. But I do believe that we may have tamed too much of the Gospel through study and analysis. In making it simple and convenient to share (as if the message of Christ was a Hot Pocket), we've also sucked the mystery and mission out of it.
So be patient. There'll be lots more question and commentary to come, and I'm thinking that they're going to be big questions.
Last Sunday, I attended a church service at Hope Chapel Manoa and the service centered around 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 which reads:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
The bit that I connected with the most is the part in v26 which reads, ". . .I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air." And I connected with that verse because that's the exact opposite of what most of my Christian life has been like. My (pathetic lack of) understanding of what Christianity was about was formed out of a shallow blend of group-think, herd mentality, peer pressure, and fear. Basically, I swallowed whatever the church put in front of me and I know that's not healthy, that we're supposed to test what pastors and teachers say against what the Bible says but they've got their degrees and their titles and their position so who was I to question them? Besides, I was afraid they'd revoke my Asian identity card if I made too many waves.
So I did what I was told and I believed what I was told.
But at some point, I just got tired of suppressing the questions that I had and I gave up on trying to fit into the mold that the church seemed to be trying to cram me into. Looking back now, most of my Christianity was just "running aimlessly" and "beating the air." I was working at something but I wasn't going anywhere, I wasn't connecting with anything.
Now? Now I don't hide my questions. I mean, most of my blogs are riddled with questions (see blog 179 and blog 201 for a couple examples).
At the top of the blog, I mentioned how I felt on the verge of some kind of understanding, and this understanding has to do with what it was that Christ came to earth to do - what he was trying to teach us about why we're here and how his church was to be an agent of light and change in a world of never-ending hurt and alienation. I'm discovering these things as I'm finally making my way to the end of two amazing books: The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And I know I've been talking about these books for weeks, but I'm a slow reader, particularly with these books because they deserve (if not demand) a close reading.
And what I'm finding is that what Jesus wants to do in the world, and the way he wants to do it is far more amazing (shocking, in fact) than anything I have ever heard in my twenty years or so as a Christian. It's nothing short of revolutionary and it comes, not by way of force, but by love. And that sounds all hippie and soft and PC, but think about all of those Christians in the first century who were martyred by lion, by gladiator, by stoning. Think of the Christians today in the Middle East or in China who have to live with the fear of their government coming to their homes in the middle of the night and carrying them away to torture and to jail and sometimes to death. Not to be too harsh, but do you think that they would risk all of that for the kind of feel-good-Christianity that gets preached in many churches in America today?
Okay, not to disappoint, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm catching glimpses of a vision of Christianity that is worth dying for, that is worth crawling over broken glass to share, that is crazy enough to be true, and impossible enough to be possible only with God's help.
And here's the coolest part. It's not some new revelation, not some new way to read the Bible, not some radical kind of re-visioning of the Gospel. It's quite the opposite. What McLaren and Wright are trying to do is peer back through time, back to first century Israel. They try to understand the life and message of Christ through the ears and experiences of his peers, through first century Jews and Gentiles.
Think of the Sistine Chapel. Years of varnish and soot from thousands (if not millions) of candles had darkened the ceiling painted by Michelangelo. In 1981, the Vatican undertook a massive restoration project which was not completed until 1994. When it was finally unveiled, it was a shocking revelation. Dull, muted colors (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationBefore.html) exploded with life and vibrancy (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationAfter.html). The results met with nearly unanimous acclaim from critics, academics, and the general public. But there were some who mourned the loss of the old version, claiming that things like the darkening patina and the later (150 years later) additions of loincloths on some of the nude figures was actually a part of the cultural history of the work. Now I'm no art expert, but I don't think it takes a PhD in art history to appreciate the ability to see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as Michelangelo originally painted it.
And I wonder if a similar kind of restoration needs to take place for Christianity. Perhaps we need to strip off the crust of two thousand years of embellishment and interpretation and tradition so that we can get back to the essence of the original message. And I'm not suggesting that we jettison all those years of critical thinking regarding the Bible, because they do offer necessary, valuable insight into what it does and does not say. But I do believe that we may have tamed too much of the Gospel through study and analysis. In making it simple and convenient to share (as if the message of Christ was a Hot Pocket), we've also sucked the mystery and mission out of it.
So be patient. There'll be lots more question and commentary to come, and I'm thinking that they're going to be big questions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
