by Joshua | Mar 3, 2014 | Faith
Last evening Ruby and I tucked the kids in bed a little early. We said we wanted them to get rest, but in reality we wanted a little down time, too. Mixed motives! Not too long after, our oldest came down because he couldn’t sleep. We sent him back upstairs to read – his choice…the Bible, a devotional, or the first of the Hunger Games books that he’s halfway through.
He came down a short time later and said he was freaked out. I thought he was reading the Hunger Games (great books, by the way). Nope. He was reading a devotional.
The line he was freaked out by…”Tomorrow it might be too late.”
This devotional written for young people exemplifies a trend in discipleship, especially among discipleship for kids, that greatly disturbs me. It is the trend that uses fear and emphasizes all the sin parts of the bible to get them to make a decision for Jesus. This is not just prevelant among kids – it’s the emphasis of much preaching, too. It is what prompted Scot McKnight to write his corrective to this trend in his (outstanding) book, The King Jesus Gospel.
There is so much wrong building our discipleship around the sin issue. The bible does not begin with Genesis 3 and humanity rebelling against God. It starts with the creativity of God in Genesis chapter 1 and bringing life out of nothingness. When we begin our discipleship in Genesis 3 the driving theme in our spirituality and our discipleship is death.
I would suggest we begin in the beginning – with our kids and in our churches – with Genesis 1 and the life God brings to all of creation. Framed that way, the narrative begins and ends with life – and the middle is filled with God’s work to return us to life in him. And this does ultimately happen in Christ – as he dies to defeat sin – and welcomes us into life.
Our kids are to precious to use fear to manipulate them into decisions for Jesus. I would encourage us to go back to the instructions given to us in Deuteronomy 6 that instruct us, as parents, to live out our faith. The thing that will impact our children most is how we are present with them – how we show them Jesus through living a life of grace and truth grounded in the life and love of God.
**As an aside, for those looking for an excellent resource for kids, check out The Jesus Storybook Bible.
by Joshua | Oct 7, 2013 | Faith
We have dimished the value of words in our world. In the current US government (in both national and local politics) the language is filled with hatred and intollerance toward one another. For some mysterious reason we believe we can isolate these words from actions. We think it’s ok to hold an aggressive posture toward others with our language as long as we are doing nothing aggressive in a physical sense.
I have no scientific proof – but I believe our language shapes and contributes to the environment we are creating for ourselves to live in. Violent language creates the space and gives permission for violent behavior. It sets the tone for what we will allow. And right now, locally and nationally, we are doing great violence to one another.
Sadly, when this violence materializes in a physical sense those who have been verbally violent will be ignorant of their contribution. Let me say it plainly: Those who speak violently toward one another contribute to the violent culture we experience. You cannot separate the two.
Words matter.
But words can also be healing. We don’t have to accept the majority tone: demeaning words, hateful words, prideful words, defensive words. You and I can change the tone. We can use words of peace, words of understanding, words of hope, words of belonging, words of love, words of forgiveness, words of sympathy, words of unity, words of affirmation.
So many times we wonder what we can do when the world around us seems so in love with its violence. I would suggest we change the tone, using our language and tone to be instruments of peace.
by Joshua | May 8, 2013 | Faith
Many times you can have a mentor who is an author – whose writings shape your perspective and understanding. Rarely do you have the opportunity to meet the author and interact with them personally. Fortunately I was able to meet this mentor/author, but only once. This solitary meeting left an imprint on my soul. In early 2010 I had the honor of meeting and speaking with Dallas Willard, who passed away today after a battle with cancer. I post this out of gratitude for his life and how he drew me, and many others, to Jesus.
It was early 2010 when I met Dallas. I was not in the greatest personal space. It was one of the hardest times of my journey. We met at a conference in Washington, D.C. where he was speaking to a group of pastors and planters – less than 150 of us. I’ll never forget sitting in his sessions having to make the choice of trying to write down everything he said or simply just sit and experience the God he spoke of. He didn’t waste a word. As I reflect back on that experience I now know what drew me to him – what caused me to hang on his every word. It was Christ in him. As a philosopher he could’ve talked theory and theology all day long – but instead he spoke intimately of the God he knew and loved – the God who knew and loved him.
During a break I remember approaching him and saying something to the effect of, “I feel like I’m losing all that I’ve known, but I’m feeling more alive.” A big smile came over his face as he said to me, “That sounds about right.” As he closed that conference he thanked the 150 of us there with tears in his eyes, calling us beautiful people. He thanked us, yet we were indebted to him.
I’ve read plenty of his books, but what sticks with me is the 5 minute conversation we had. First hand I can say he helped me know Jesus better – and now he knows Jesus fully.
Thank you God for the gift of Dallas Willard. May you give the world more like him who know you so well.
by Joshua | Feb 28, 2013 | Faith
So much of life is focused on doing – so little on who we’re becoming. We focus on the outer person when the spiritual life focuses on the inner person. Christians tend to focus on the outer person and what we do, forgetting that what we do comes from who we are – and who we are comes from who we’re becoming. Yet, who we’re becoming is the last part we focus on. Why do we pay so little attention to who we’re becoming?
One reason is the doing part is easier to focus on. There is something measurable when we do something. We need to feel as though our time is being well spent and productive. When we focus on the physicality of doing something we can measure what we’ve done. We feel a sense of accomplishment. In essence, we have control over the process by which things get done, not to mention we derive a sense of worth from the finished product.
Not so when focusing on who we’re becoming. Yes, it takes some effort, but it is effort combined with the mysterious work of God and his grace. God’s timetable is different and there is no finished product. It’s a direction, or as Eugene Peterson aptly describes it, a long obedience in the same direction. We have no control over this process. The only thing we control is whether or not we’ll say yes to participation. Unlike having the ability to manipulate the speed we can accomplish the things we set out to do the only choice we have as we open ourself up to being is that of submission.
And no one wants to submit. Neither do we like not seeing an immediate return for the time we invest. Who wants to sit and listen when they may not hear? Who wants to sit silently in solitude when it is seemingly so unproductive? Who wants to reflect on their thoughts, actions, and days when they will not like what they see? But these are some of the things we do to focus on our being, and these are some practices that shape our becoming.
What we do comes out of who we’re becoming, and it would do good to take time and reflect on the things we do to notice who we’re becoming.
by Joshua | Dec 17, 2012 | Faith
Friday afternoon I heard the news of the massacre in Newtown, CT. I turned on the television to learn children – the age of my youngest – were murdered. Emotions are very close to the surface for me, and in that moment I felt varied emotions of sadness, grief, and loss. What was I to do with what was in front of me? I thought of responses to that question on a number of levels, but I want to share with you how I attempted to answer it as a pastor with our church family just yesterday.
Grieve.
Grieving is messy. In grief you experience the range of human emotions. Anger. Sadness. Emptiness. Tears. Wailing. If you do it well you look quite dissheveled in the process (a light bit of humor in a more serious post). Grieving means you don’t let that which caused the grief to pass you by. You don’t ignore it. You engage it. This is how I encouraged our church family to respond. There is something holy about grieving well.
Grieving lets God know there’s something wrong. Does he know it? Sure, but there’s no issue in reminding him. In fact, it’s quite biblical. Tragically, it’s something absent in our churches. Let’s just sing another upbeat song. For more reasons than I could list we have a fear of being honest about the dark parts of our heart, the struggles of our faith, or the grief we experience in life.
In spite of this fear I would suggest that grieving in times like these is the most appropriate response. I could do without hearing how the absence of prayer in schools is the cause of such atrocities. This in and of itself testifies to our very limited view of God and the toxic nature of making sense of such evil by constructing nice little boxes to fit answers into. Screw that. Wail. That’s a response.
I was drawn back to Henri Nouwen’s work, Turn My Mourning into Dancing. In it he writes this, “The world in which we live lies in the power of the Evil One, and the Evil One would prefer to distract us and fill every little space with things to do, people to meet, business to accomplish, products to be made. He does not allow any space for genuine grief and mourning. Our busyness has become a curse, even while we think it provides us with relief from the pain inside. Our overpacked lives serve only to keep us from facing the inevitable difficulty that we all, at some time or another, must face.”
Would an appropriate response be to grieve well? To me this is the beauty of God in the midst of the ugliness of evil. Where is God? I believe He’s in our tears if we allow them to be shed. Where can we find God in this? We find God as we find him at home in ourselves (Jn 14:23) and join with what we find Jesus doing as he experiences the grieving of a community upon the death of a friend: he weeps.
May we learn to grieve well. May we find solidarity with one another through grief. May we not avoid it but enter into it as Jesus entered into our world – fully engaged with the suffering of humanity to bring hope and redemption. Amen.