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New Blog!

2011-11-04T19:29:00.003-06:00

Do you still have this blog on your RSS feed? That's crazy! You should check out my new blog. I'm updating every Thursday...

http://musicalspheres.blogspot.com

Theology and Philosophy Need to Start Seeing Other People

2010-10-12T17:54:00.001-06:00

The more I learn about theology, the angrier I get. 99% of theology seems to me to be rehashed philosophy. It is as if Christians let philosophers drive the car 2,000 years ago and never looked back. So many of the problems that we face in making sense of our faith go back to this.

The early church struggled ad nauseum about the identity of “the Logos” and its place within the divinity of God. It was a huge issue that got some people on the wrong side of the debate kicked out of the church. Does the Logos matter to you? Probably not. You aren’t looking at the world through Neo-Platonic eyes, so why would Neo-Platonic ideas have any importance to you?

The Eastern and Western churches had a massive split in 1054 AD that was over whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father or from the Father AND the Son. Granted, there were political issues involved as well, but that is seriously the theological issue that split the Church. There are only a handful of verses in the Bible that say anything at all about the nature of the Trinity, yet they were so sure of their own understanding that they were willing to call the other side heretics for it.

As I read the works of prominent theologians, it angers me that they seem to quote philosophers more than the Bible itself. What gives philosophy the authority to say anything true? I would argue that philosophy has no real grounding whatsoever. Philosophers trust their reason to make sense of the world, but we are fallen creatures, and our minds are every bit as broken as our bodies. Honestly, I think that philosophy and theology got so intertwined because philosophers live in the world of logical arguments and we like the comfort that it provides. That falls apart when you start talking about a God that is beyond our realm of experience and who is wholly “other” than us.

What can we truly say about the nature of the Trinity, sin, the nature of the afterlife, the attributes of God, why bad things happen to good people, how the Universe was created, or how God administers his justice on Earth? Does it benefit us to make speculations?

The theologian must begin with the understanding that they can say nothing absolutely true about God in the same way that a blind man can say nothing definitely true about the Mona Lisa. Any theologian who is serious about what they are doing will admit to that, but will then go on to talk about what God “must be” or “must do” or some other nonsense like that. If God were subject to your rules of logic, then He would not be God. If God had to follow the rules, then there would be no reason to worship Him. If God fit into any given philosophical worldview, then you might as well worship the philosophers who came up with it. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end”. God has put a small bit of the knowledge of eternity in us, but we have no idea how it works.

Job 1-37 is filled with Job and his friends trying to figure out God. They quote scripture, try to reason away His actions, and blame Job for what has befallen him. In their worldview, God only punishes wicked people, so there is no room for Job to be both righteous and punished. They were unwilling to accept that their philosophy was wrong. So after 37 chapters of this, God finally shows up and He does not explain everything away like we might hope. Instead, he spends 2 entire chapters sarcastically taunting Job with phrases like,

“Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?” “Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!”.

To which Job wisely responds,

“I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer— twice, but I will say no more.”

God’s response is,

"Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?”

After another chapter of sarcasm, Job finally responds,

"I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak; will question you, and you shall answer me.' My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

What would theology look like with that level of humility? If we first assume that God is too great to fit into any classification we can make for Him, what does that free us to do? If philosophy lost its strangle-hold on truth and we all accepted the fact that we are woefully under-prepared to hook God like a fish, what would we look like? What would happen if we took the keys away from philosophy and let other ways of seeing the world take the wheel.

The musically-minded person might come up with a combination of notes that is every bit as descriptive of the nature of God as any theological essay.

The sociologist might see evil not in terms of personal sin but of systemic injustice and abuses of power. They might see God’s redemptive work as a means of subverting the system, not necessarily of making individuals clean.

The historian might be free to see God in the narrative of history and not just in the progression of Christian Thought.

The scientist could see God in terms of theories that constantly need revision in light of new discoveries.

The artist might paint an image so beautiful that the Spirit of God dwells in it.

The list goes on and on. I don’t see anything particularly helpful in giving philosophy as much control as it has other than the fact that it gives us the illusion of absolute truth and some quantifiable understanding of God (both of which are based on pride). I want to try and explore the freedom that exists when we have Job’s humility and realize that every attempt to rationalize God and bring him to our level will fail miserably. I might even go so far as to say that the God who we create with our rigid theologies is not the true God, but rather an idol.

How do you experience and/or express God? I’m curious to see if it is possible or even beneficial to take the keys away from philosophy and to let someone else drive for a while.

fighting fire with fire or how i learned to stop worrying and hate the bomb

2009-08-30T20:41:00.004-06:00

so i've been thinking about the military a lot recently. i was at an anti-war benefit show last night and they had an open mic. the poems were very poignant and there were some extremely well spoken individuals. so i got up on stage with my ipod and my musical gameboy and said, "i wrote this song because i'm a christian..." ::awkward silence from the crowd:: "...and it breaks my heart that people have somehow read Jesus saying 'love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you' and 'he who is without sin, cast the first stone' and taken that to mean 'kill the infidels' and 'bomb all the muslims'. i'm sure it breaks jesus' heart that powerful, rich white men have dragged His name through the mud like this". then i started my song...

A child caught with muddy hands
A termite mound with bigger plans
We stormed the beach and saved the land
But it turns out it was only sand

Wet with blood from other gods
We rallied all our wearied squads
With tired eyes and patient nods
We asked the Lord for better odds

Peace, be still
We've been this way before
Peace, be still
We'll go this way again

The Son of God stood up and said
"Love will carve the path ahead"
So we tied him up and shot him dead
And put his name on our guns instead

muddy_hands.mp3

that last verse is my favorite because the music is quiet and every last syllable is able to be heard. it was surprisingly well received. when i first said that i was a christian, most of the people there immediately thought of the christianity that has been responsible for so many deaths throughout history. they saw the popes sending hundreds of thousands of christians to kill all the muslims. they saw the inquisition, manifest destiny, the people who bomb abortion clinics, and the trail of corpses across history with crosses ironically marking their resting places.

that's understandable.

when people learn about christianity in school, that's what they learn about first, but while hundreds of thousands of people were being killed in the name of the prince of peace, st. francis had another idea. the crazy monk walked unarmed into the court of the sultan of egypt to talk. he was disgusted by how many of his brothers were killing people in the name of the God who refused to fight back against rome's whips, so he decided to do what Jesus would do and lovingly build a relationship with "the enemy" and leave the religious zealots to their own foolishness. had the popes been half as courageous and humble as little francis, then things would have probably ended up differently.

if we were to follow the teachings of Jesus to the letter, we would be more extreme pacifists than anyone in the world. anyone can say that killing someone is wrong. murder is wrong in a lot of contexts, but Jesus takes that a step further to say that if you hate someone, you have already killed them. to follow Jesus' words would mean to not only not murder but to not hate at all. in c.s. lewis' "the great divorce", a murderer and his self-righteous boss are reunited in the after-life, and the murderer tells him this,

"murdering old jack wasn't the worst thing i did. that was the work of a moment, and i was half mad when i did it. but i murdered you in my heart, deliberately, for years. i used to lie awake at night thinking about what i would do to you if i got the chance".

so i ask you this. do you take Jesus seriously? or have you made his words into clever metaphors and pleasant sayings for bookmarks and email signatures? at no point in his 33 years, was Jesus ever a friend of the state. in fact, for the first 300 years of christianity, it was just common knowledge that no christian would be a part of the military or government. after all, what would be the point of trying to use bureaucracy and violence to fight evil when you have the Creator of the universe in your corner? firemen don't bring flame-throwers to a burning building. if you want to fight fire, you fight it with water. if you want to fight violence, you fight it with peace. fighting violence with violence makes about as much sense as fixing a broken window with a brick.

how can a christian who takes Jesus seriously pick up a weapon with the intent to kill another human being? and for what? for the united states? the united states is in NO WAY a christian nation, and the founding fathers (or at least washington, adams, and franklin) made it clear that we are NOT a christian nation. also, what if the person which you are killing is also a professing christian? i am positive that christians are currently killing christians all over the world in the name of their particular geographic region. it blows my mind that this is ok in so many circles! of all the big issues in christianity, this was the one that bothered me most as a kid growing up in a church that was very pro-military. if Jesus were really ok with this, would He really have wasted His time telling us to turn the other cheek? why would he have forgiven the romans instead of fighting back? why wouldn't He have heeded the advice of the zealots all around Him and amassed an army to take out the romans? nothing that Jesus says makes any sense if He is all about war and killing.

if a christian can read all of Jesus' words and still pick up arms to kill another human being whom God loves "for his country", then that person has bought into the lies of patriotism and forgotten that we are in fact members of no nation, but members of the Kingdom of God. we are a nation within (and without) nations. there are citizens of my nation that are cursing the name of obama for the bombs that are destroying their lives. there are citizens of my nation that are living in holocaust-like conditions in gaza because the united states is funding their oppressors. my nation is full of love, patience, peace, perseverance, and hope. my nation will remain long after all of the other nations have blown each other to Hell. my nation has no master but the Lord God Himself, and we refuse to stoop to the level of this fallen world by resorting to violence, hatred, and bigotry. we will advance our kingdom with love. while other nations make war in order to make peace, we will make peace in order to make peace. we will continue to renew the world despite its best efforts to destroy itself, and there is nothing that ANYONE can do to stop us.

i need more raccoons in my life

2009-05-31T20:32:00.002-06:00

the house next to ours is rented our like an apartment and no one uses the backyard. it was completely overrun with weeds and bricks, and it looked pretty bad. so my roommates and i got permission, cleared the whole yard, built a 12' x 12' raised bed and filled it with compost from the recycling center at fairmount park. we wanted to try to live more sustainably by growing all of our own produce.

since then, we've spent countless hours frustratedly weeding, watering, and dealing with animals. a raccoon came into our garden the other day and screwed all kinds of stuff up so we built a massive chicken-wire fence around it with a big wooden door. we also cemented the rocks around the outside of it so that no animal could knock them over.

i was overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of it all today.

i have a caged in box of nature in my backyard.

people are so obsessed with controlling and dominating that we're going to spend an entire day putting up a fence to keep nature out of my nature. let the raccoon do whatever it wants to do in my garden. who cares if the rabbit comes and eats some tomatoes. here i am sitting in my room inside of a climate-controlled, water resistant, house that is attached at the hip to other houses that are surrounded by concrete as far as the eye can see. i couldn't be more disconnected to nature.

nature is rough. it's wet and cold and scary. sometimes raccoons come around and screw stuff up. isn't like the same way? how often have i tried to control my life only to find raccoons throwing everything around. i don't even care anymore. i guess that's why Jesus said not to boast about your plans. like the person who says "oh i'm going to save up for a new house and it's going to be great!" and then they die. life is rough. it'll mess you up. i don't want a fence around my garden. i want nature to be nature. let it get messed up. animals are miserable when you put them in zoos, and trees grow best when they are growing out of dead plants and animals. i think we need a little more chaos in our lives and a little less sense of control.

a little more raccoons and a little less fences.

everything is nothing

2009-05-11T06:32:00.002-06:00

this entry is entirely for myself.

just sayin.

it would seem that the answer to depression is not having an awesome life, being surrounded by people who love you, constantly seeing God's faithfulness, and having an active, worry-free lifestyle.

damn.

i was really hoping it would be.

i literally have nothing to complain about right now. i could try to if you would like...

ummmm... i don't have gratuitous amounts of money? i'm not at my absolute dream job? i don't have a chiseled body?

so it's obviously not coming from external circumstances. it would seem that no matter what life actually looks like, my state of mind is separate. maybe that's how paul was able to find the secret to being content in all things. every day is just like the one before it in the grand scheme of things. what trivial differences exist between days? if you take all of the mountains and valleys, plateaus and ocean beds, and consider it overall, the earth is as smooth as a bowling ball. it's all so trivial.

today i saw an advertisement in the subway. it was a guy in his early 20's with his arms crossed and a look on his face that said, "i'm a god. worship me and my greatness." it was some ad for someone's new album or something. the whole charade made me laugh. he's gonna die the same way i am.

kublai khan single handedly ruled an empire that spanned 20.6 million square miles.

and now he's dead.

during solomon's reign, jerusalem was so magnificent that the queen of sheeba walked 2,000 miles just to see it with her own eyes.

and then it burned down.

i think i've been putting too much stock in the way things are. nothing is very significant here. nothing is really that dire. the soul is eternal and everything else blows away. when nothing is significant, there's nothing worth getting depressed or upset over. the only thing that matters is already taken care of. my soul is saved, my life is bought. if i don't get a lot of sleep because my job is stressing me out, who cares? if i haven't been able to write anything good in months, oh well.

there's a fickle beauty in our transience. like a sandcastle or a house of cards. everything is beautiful because everything is nothing.

Apparently God Likes People Who Suck?

2009-01-28T17:08:00.001-06:00

In the beginning, God created a couple of selfish naked people who decided that having super powers was more important than listening to God.

Their sons became a murderer and fertilizer.

After a while, people went crazy and forgot all about God. Also, some angels had giant kids with women? That part is a little more hazy. So the man who God chose to basically repopulate the Earth liked to get drunk and pass out in his tent.

His son thought this was hilarious.

It was apparently not.

A bunch of generations passed, a tower was built, languages went crazy, and then the story picks up again.

God chose a dude from Iraq to be the father of the Jews and eventually the savior of the world. Turns out that he was a pretty big liar who liked to take matters into his own hands. He ended up with 7 bastard children, and became the patriarch of all 3 major monotheistic religions.

His grandchildren were a brainless buffoon and a conniving backstabber. They were twins. The conniving backstabber lied to his father, stole from his brother, and ran away where he had 13 kids.

11 of his kids sold their other brother into slavery. They hated him because their father liked him best, and he was kind of pompous too. These are the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Time passed and their descendants became slaves.

God decided to use a murderer on the run from the law who also had a speech impediment to liberate His people.

He did.

The next period of history is full of murderers, liars, cowards, thieves, prostitutes, assassins, and a bunch of brainless brutes.

Then Israel got a king. A king with no regard for the sanctity of God. He ended up going crazy and trying to kill his own court musician.

That musician then went on to become the greatest king that Israel ever had. He abused his power and had one of his good friends killed so that his affair with his wife would not come to light.

The child of that affair was no better. He enslaved his own people to build a magnificent palace for himself that was even greater than the massive temple he built. He had 700 wives and worshiped all kinds of gods.

His kid started a massive civil war and split the kingdom in two.

Every king from that point on would be worse than the murdering, adulterous, idol worshiping kings before them.

While the kings whored themselves out to foreign gods and the people were sacrificing their own children, the prophets were lighting their stoves with their own poop, marrying prostitutes, running around naked, and doing other crazy things to get people's attention.

Then an unwed teenage girl had a baby in a feeding trough while laying in a sickening combination of moldy hay and donkey crap. They were visited by some shepherds and a couple of pagan astrologers from Iraq.

That baby lived a mostly unassuming life until he was about 30 years old, and a crazy homeless man who ate bugs started screaming about the savior of the world coming. The crazy homeless man baptized the 30 year old, and then the fun began.

He assembled an all-star team of fishermen, IRS workers, anarchists, prostitutes, house-wives, business men, and hobos. This group of crazies "turned the world upside down", and most of them were killed. A lot of them were killed by a guy who would then change his mind and spread the gospel across the entire Roman empire.

Liars, thieves, whores, murderers, homeless, rich, male, female, oppressed, oppressors, religious nuts, and irreverent kings.

That's the cast of fools that makes up our sordid history as God's people. Never believe the lie that you are not "good enough" to be a part of God's plan.

Congratulations. You are part of a proud history of idiots.

"But God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong;"

1 Corinthians 1:27

Psalm 55

2009-01-25T21:02:00.000-06:00

This is how I am feeling these days in this broken city...

1 Listen to my prayer, O God,
do not ignore my plea;

2 hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught

3 because of what my enemy is saying,
because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
and assail me in their anger.

4 My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death have fallen on me.

5 Fear and trembling have beset me;
horror has overwhelmed me.

6 I said, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.

7 I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;

8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm."

9 Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
for I see violence and strife in the city.

10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
malice and abuse are within it.

11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;
threats and lies never leave its streets.

This is what I tell myself every time I start feeling hopeless...

16 As for me, I call to God,
and the LORD saves me.

17 Evening, morning and noon
I cry out in distress,
and he hears my voice.

18 He rescues me unharmed
from the battle waged against me,
even though many oppose me.

19 God, who is enthroned from of old,
who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
because they have no fear of God.

20 My companion attacks his friends;
he violates his covenant.

21 His talk is smooth as butter,
yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
yet they are drawn swords.

22 Cast your cares on the LORD
and he will sustain you;
he will never let
the righteous be shaken.

23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked
into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
will not live out half their days.
But as for me, I trust in you.

Thank you David.

I like that the greatest king Israel ever had was a singer-songwriter. That makes me feel better about what God has in store for me.

Finally an Update

2009-01-19T20:56:00.000-06:00

Back on September 30th, I wrote a note talking about how God came outa nowhere and told me to leave seminary in order to work with the poor people of the inner city. So, I finished up my semester and headed home with absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life. I applied to about 30 different jobs that ranged from wildlife conservation to homeless advocacy, and just about everything in between. Anyone who was around me knows how much I was struggling with not having a plan. Actually, I could have done without a plan, but not having even the slightest idea where to find work or housing was driving me crazy.

Then, I randomly got a call from Education Works on December 22 asking me to come in for an interview on the next day. They are an organization that sends people into low income schools to give extra attention to kids who are failing out. The entire process from the first call to me signing the contract only took about 2 weeks, and before I had time to let it sink in, I had a job. Well, it's not really a job. I'm a full time math tutor/mentor in Furness High School in south Philly. It's a pretty bad neighborhood, and the kids have about a 3% chance of rising above their situation. It's a pretty vicious cycle that ensures that these kids and their kids after them will be stuck in the same situation their parents were in. Education is really the best way for them to get out of that cycle. Education Works provide health care and deferment for my student loans, but the living stipend equates to about $5 an hour before taxes. Sadly, two of the things that were first to get their budgets slashed as a result of all of the wars was education and Americorps, so the funding for my program does not exactly runneth over.

So my next problem was housing. I was NOT looking forward to living in a tiny studio apartment all by myself in a new city. That was entirely the opposite of what I came here for. I came here to love people ridiculously and find the kind of Christian community that the early Church shared. So I emailed a couple of churches to ask if they knew of anyone who needed a roommate. One of the pastors from Circle of Hope forwarded my email to a group of guys living in West Philly who were in an intentional community that was looking for another guy. So I had dinner at their house, and met everyone. Over the the next 2 weeks, we emailed each other, and gave it some serious prayers. The house is a 3 story row-home near U-Penn, and some of the floors are pretty crooked which is why they call it "The Crooked House".

So while I was waiting to hear back from them, I was taking the train to work. I should clarify. I was taking 3 trains to work. Apparently I have been spoiled by Chicago public transportation, because SEPTA is teeeeeeeeeeerrible. I've been doing these 2 hour commutes that end up costing about $10 a day for the past week or so, and they have taken such a toll on me. Every night at about this time, I start thinking about waking up in a few hours, and I just want to run away all over again.

Luckily, I just got an email from the guys at the Crooked House saying that they want me to move in. So as of tomorrow, my Philadelphia adventure will officially begin. Also, I'm going to start going to Circle of Hope on Sundays and get involved with some of the ministries to the poor and homeless that they have. My days will be full of helping kids rise above the situations they've been born into, my nights and weekends will be full of caring for the poor and homeless who have already been sucked into the cycle, and every other moment will be lived in community with like-minded Christians who are as tired of the comfortable Jesus as I am. Everything is starting to come together, and I'm REALLY excited for it. I'm taking on ridiculous amounts of work and responsibility, but I know that God will support me while I'm doing it.

I do have one concern though, that you might be able to help me with. Like I mentioned before, this is not a job. I am technically a full-time Americorps volunteer, and I am getting paid well under minimum wage. I really feel like this is what I need to be doing though. For some of these kids trapped in the cycle of poverty, education could be their only way to escape a life of violence and drug addiction. So, those of you who know me well know that I HATE asking people for help of any kind, but here goes.

I need help.

As it is now, I might need to take a second job on the weekends to pay to live in the city. That would basically mean that a good chunk of my ministry plans would have to change, and I might have to miss church. Both of these options seem ridiculous to me considering that this is the reason why I came out here in the first place. So basically, I'm just asking that if any of you want to help support me and share in the work that God is doing in Philadelphia, I would be eternally grateful. I understand that peoples' wallets are not exactly bursting at the seams right now, but if a bunch of people gave $10-$20 a month, I would be set. Or if you feel like God wants you to support my ministry more than that, by all means. The more support I gain, the more work I am free to do in the city, and trust me, despite its name, this city needs all the love it can get. I'm shocked by the amount of suffering in every corner. High school kids randomly beating up old guys on the subway, a father beating another guy with a hammer on the subway, rampant unemployment, 8th graders with 2 kids, and middle schoolers addicted to hard drugs. I want to do all that I can here, and I hope that you can help me. For those of you who want to help, I'm setting up a paypal system to make it simple and easy for you. Just let me know that you're interested, and we will settle the details.

Also, as a closing note, I'll be sending out a (roughly) weekly update on what God is doing through and around me. So if anyone is interested in that, let me know, and I'll add you to the list.

Well, thanks to all of you who have prayed for me and been with me during this whole crazy transitional period. I'm really excited for what God is going to do next in and through me, and I hope you'll all be as enriched by it as I will be.

The Problem of Evil is a Problem for Me

2008-12-17T10:54:00.000-06:00

i head home in a few days, and when i do, i will more clearly articulate the immense mercy that God has shown me since my last depressed, introspective post. like the ice that melts after being long exposed to the hot sun, so my inner demons have begun to melt away, revealing a truer form of myself than i could have ever imagined. all that on another day. today, i am consumed with another thought. i've been reading an absurd amount of c.s. lewis over the past 3 weeks (out of the silent planet, perelandra, the four loves, and the pilgrim's regress), and a common theme keeps popping out to me.

the afterlife.

more specifically, who goes where and why.

having been brought up in a conservative church, i was taught plainly that christians (though what they really meant was protestants) went to heaven and non-christians (again, non-protestants) went to hell. hell is the domain created to punish satan and his demons for their rebellion, and after our own rebellion, God begrudgingly began sending people there as well. bound to a law which was seemingly above God Himself, He had no choice but to send mankind to hell for their sins because God and sin is like oil and water; they can never mix.

a sort of double-predestination was taught to me from an early age. just as God predestined some people for salvation through faith in Jesus, He also predestined everyone else for eternal damnation. this always bothered me. this was the God who says that He wishes all people would be saved. Jesus, who wept over jerusalem's rebellion also apparently chose from before time began that they would reject Him. above all other things i was taught, this one bothered me the most, and it actually still does to this day. i've gone through so many stages from trying to ignore it, to trying to rationalize it away. i've even gone so far as to say that hell is just an allegory and we all end up in heaven anyway.

i know it isn't just me who struggles with this. the same people who have no problem telling you that every muslim is going to hell would hesitate to say that eternal torment is reserved for aborted babies, the mentally handicapped, or those who simply lose their minds and become like animals after a long life of upstanding behavior. as usual with these sort of things, the lines are a frustrating shade of grey.

the other night i was listening to a podcast from erwin mcmanus and he perfectly described the problem i was having. the entire issue can be rephrased like this,

"do i care about people more than God does?"

i have been so horrified by the concept of a God who could callously condemn people to eternal punishment because they just happened to live in brazil in 33 A.D. instead of jerusalem. the God that i was forming in my mind didn't care about people as much as i did, and that meant that He wasn't really God. it's the same realization a child would have if they were to realize that the hand they've been holding for the past 30 minutes is not actually that of their mother, but of a complete stranger. i didn't want to believe in universalism because i loved my fellow person that much. i wanted to believe it because i was afraid of the God who would condemn people to hell because they were born in the wrong country to hear the saving message of Jesus.

at this point in my life, i believe that the Bible does teach that those who were never given the Gospel were given their conscience which will either convict them or free them by the saving blood of Christ whether they know Him by His jewish name or not. (see romans 2). to that end, I would love to proclaim to you that gandhi is in heaven right now hanging out with st. peter and zarathustra, but i've been struck with a more profound truth. i believe that if i were to ask Jesus face to face what happened to gandhi after his death,his response would be a lot like his response to peter in the end of the gospel of john. Jesus had just finished insinuating that peter would be crucified, and so he turns around and asks
what would happen to john (obviously feeling like he was getting the shaft). Jesus responds by saying,

"If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!"

it is that same poignant sentiment that paul gives in in romans 9 when he reminds us not to assume to know the mind of God. he says that even if God had designed some people for destruction so that his saving power might be known, who are we to question that? paul won't come out and answer my question as much as Jesus won't answer peter's question. the honest truth is that it is not my business what happens with someone else's soul. the only reason i want an answer so badly is because i want to be able to trust that God does in fact care about people more than i do.

well, if God cared enough about people to actually empty Himself of His divinity and become a wretched, humiliated person so that humanity might be freed from the trap it walked freely into, i would venture to say that He loves people more than i do. that being the case, i have no doubt that on the other side of the curtain, things look a lot less bleak. by what standards God judges those who never had a chance to believe or were unwillingly deceived is not any of my business. my business is to follow Him, and trust that He does care about people more than i do.

so this is where i am. stuck between trying to trust the sovereignty of God in the face of the apparent fact that God is sometimes the cause of evil in the world. like when He inspired david to number the men of israel so that he could send a plague over the land. or when He killed thousands of egyptian children because He hardened pharaoh's heart. my view of God is somewhat confused right now. the old testament writers didn't have any problem saying that God was the cause of both the positive and the negative things that happen in the world, so why can't i believe the same thing? your input would be appreciated.

thank God preaching lab is done

2008-11-25T17:27:00.004-06:00

so i just finished giving my second sermon for my preaching class, which means that my semester gets even easier from this point on. while, i have not yet been able to bring myself to actually watch them, i heard that they were ok. actually, i thought i could have done MUCH better on my first sermon, but that is mostly because i'm so passionate about it. i was really proud of the way that the second sermon turned out. thanks to dr. green and his fantastic class/commentary, i was really able to disect the history and culture in Thessalonica to make the passage come alive. the class said that i paused too much and had poor word choice, but as a whole, i think it turned out really well. anyway, the reason i'm writing this post is to say that i've put them online. if anyone is interested in watching them, the links are below. anyway, i hope anyone who actually watches these enjoys them and are helped by the scriptures that i expound on.

Sermon 1
1 John 3:16-18
"Love With Feet"

Sermon 2
2 Thessalonians 3:6-12
"Eat Your Own Bread"

Why I Am Excited for Post-Christian America

2008-11-14T14:53:00.001-06:00

So I've been hearing a lot of doom and gloom coming from the American church over the past few years. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about the "good ol days" when kids could pray in school, abortions could only happen in seedy back alleys, homosexuals couldn't get married, and the president was a good, God-fearing, Christian. Ah yes, the good ol days... Because America was founded as a Christian nation, its Constitution was written with the Bible in mind, and the founding fathers all faithfully attended Christ Church in Philadelphia. Sorry to burst your bubble but...

America is NOT the new Jerusalem.

Nope. Not even close.

Ok, it's time for a very brief, fly-by history lesson about Christianity.

Christianity emerged in the first century as Jesus' first followers gathered together to figure out what it meant to live in God's Kingdom while at the same time living in the belly of the greatest empire the western world had ever seen. They were a beaten and oppressed people who were forced to meet in catacombs (caves full of corpses) so that the government wouldn't kill them. These early Christians kept popping up in little pockets all over the empire. In fact, the communities that thrived most were the communities that were most heavily persecuted. As one of our Church fathers, Tertullian said, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church". These early, persecuted Christians understood that they were a nation apart from the empire. As Jesus taught them, they followed the laws of the land that did not conflict with the Law, but they would NEVER swear allegiance to Caesar. This got Christians killed all over the empire because they refused to burn a pinch of incense and declare that "Caesar is Lord" once a year like everyone in the empire was required to do.

In the same way, the early Church refused to join the military or serve in positions of government because they would be forced to kill, exploit people, and lie, which were unilaterally believed to be antithetical to the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a nation amongst nations that works in a completely different system than the nations of the world.

Then came Constantine. The man that made Christianity legal and struck the greatest blow to the faith that anyone has ever done in history.

Up until this point, the Romans were unable to get rid of Christians. The more they killed, the stronger they got. It made no sense. So Constantine had a "vision" of a cross before battle in which God said, "by this, conquer". After Constantine won the battle, he "converted" to Christianity and ended persecution once and for all in the Roman Empire. Great news right?! Persecution is over and the leader of the most powerful empire in the West is a Christian. Conventional wisdom would tell us that this would be the dawn of a golden age of Christianity. Especially after Theodocious made it the OFFICIAL religion of the empire. How could it possibly get any better?

I don't think I need to tell you what happened next. We all know about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Conquistadors, and millions upon millions of people being ruthlessly killed in the name of Jesus.

And then we have America!

Our great nation which, in this season of Thanksgiving, we remember was heartlessly stolen from the "savages" who lived here first. But that's ok because God wanted us to have this land like He wanted the Jews to have Canaan. Oh Manifest Destiny, you have served us well. This wonderful country that expanded our borders through war with Mexico and built its wonderful landmarks on the backs of slaves.

Though don't get me wrong, even though America has killed more innocent civilians in the middle east than all terrorist attacks in the world combined in the past decade, I'm not one of those people who thinks America is the scum of the Earth. It's a great land of opportunity. It's the only place in the world where the son of a Kenyan and a farm girl who was raised by his grandparents can become president. In the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty good nation to live in, but it is NOT a Christian nation.

The simple fact is, there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Could you imagine a nation that took Jesus' words seriously? A nation that freely gave up its resources and land to its neighbors in need. A nation that refused to build a military. A nation in which everyone gave whatever they had to the common fund so that no one would be needy. That nation does not and CAN NOT exist. Besides, we already have a nation. The Kingdom of God is our nation. God is our president, the martyrs are our ambassadors, and our boundaries are as far as the east is from the west.

Anyway, back to my main point. This is not a Christian nation.

As founding father and second president of the United States John Adams said, "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". The founding fathers were, for the most part, deists, universalists, or Christians only for the sake of status. They may have had reserved pews at Christ Church in Philly, but they rarely ever went. America has never been a Christian nation, and the sooner we take God out of our pledge that people say before killing millions of muslims and off of our money that is used to exploit millions of poverty-stricken sweat shop workers, the closer we the church can be to reclaiming what we once had.

Look at the world. There is MAJOR persecution going on in China right now, and as a result, the Spirit is being poured out in a way that has never before been seen in Asia. We need to not pray for Christian leaders in America. We need to be praying that the American government gets over its civil religion and starts hating Christians. We need some good persecution to purify the American church. We've grown fat at the table of the Empire and accepted the slow, comfortable death of our souls as a result.

I'm not advocating that every Christian gets up and leaves the country, but I am asking you to be careful about where you pledge your allegiance. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and remember who your king really is.

Pray for peace in the middle east and persecution in America. It's our only hope.

i have problems. isn't that fun?

2008-11-07T02:01:00.000-06:00

i am consumed with the overwhelming desire to write right now. thanks to the book "soul cravings" (thanks elise), i've been doing a lot of very honest soul searching, and i think it's time i start being honest about some things. this will be my most vulnerable and raw entry, and even if it doesn't come across that way, this is the very core of my being. take it or leave it.

every seminary student here at trinity is required to take a massive personality test and then review the results with the counseling office. after going over my results and giving her the brief story of my life, she told me that she would strongly recommend counseling for me because i have not dealt with the demons in my past. she told me that if i were planning on staying in the program, counseling would have been required. that really hit me. i know i have issues. i know i carry around scars with me, but those are my problems and i will deal with them in my own way.

i think it's time i face these things with honesty. look them in the face and confront my issues.

sorry to disappoint you, but i'm not going to tell very many stories of the most scarring moments of my life because those stories are also other people's stories, and i'm sure that they wouldn't want me broadcasting their lives on the internet. so i won't be using any names. if you recognize any of these stories as a story we share, i hope this helps explain me a little better.

i am incapable of believing that someone who is not related to me loves me.

plain and simple. all of the friendships and relationships that have passed through my life have meant the world to me, and i have loved them all, but i don't believe that any of them truly loved me. plenty of people have said, "i love you" to me, and so many of them have even proved their words with ridiculously loving actions, but i still don't believe them. usually when i tell people this, they get offended. as if i were specifically doubting their love for me, but seriously people, it's everyone, and it's not logical whatsoever. it's no wonder that i've never been in a relationship for more than 6 months. it's kind of hard to make them work long term if you don't believe that you are loved.

i would always just tell myself that she only cared about me because she saw me as a concept and not who i truly am. or i would just figure that she was lonely and i was filling that hole in her life. relationships for me have always been vain attempts to find love with the expectation that i will never find it. other people might, but i never will.

i know it seems like a cop-out, but i'm going to jump back to 6th grade here, to my very first crush. we met in 5th grade, and i fell head over heels for her on the first day of school. she was beautiful, cheerful, and she actually acknowledged my presence. what else could a socially maladjusted 10 year old boy want? well, i never told her how i felt, and instead i spent my time writing sappy love poems about her and daydreaming of how i would sweep her off her feet if i had the courage. the best i could do was strategically seat myself in the room when i knew we'd be praying and subsequently holding the hand of the person next to us. i confided in one of my friends that i really liked her, but little did i know that so did he (and so did every guy at some point). so he convinced her it would be a funny prank to tell me that she liked me and then tell me she was just joking a few days later. how this was supposed to be funny, i don't know, but we were young and stupid, and the power rangers seemed cool, so we obviously had no idea what we were thinking. i'll never forget that day. never before and never again have i felt such a trusting, naive sense of elation. it was like those trust building exercises where you fall backwards into people's arms. at 10 years old, i had never experienced malicious deceit, and was just discovering whatever this desire to love was. i spent the next week sending her notes in class telling her all about how long i'd liked her and probably telling her way too much about how i felt. then it happened.

my friend turned to me in class and said, "haha. man, you know she never really liked you right?" to which i replied, "whatever," then he turned around in his chair and yelled to the other side of the room, "hey, (insert her name here). did you ever really like zack?" at this point, the world starting spinning in slow motion as she loudly proclaimed in front of the whole class, "are you kidding? of course i didn't!"

in the course of one week, 11 year old zack had his first taste of young love, blind trust, betrayal, humiliation, and crushing heartbreak. that's a lot of milage out of someone's first crush.

though i know it was a long time ago, and it wasn't that huge of a deal, i'm realizing that this experience colored the way i would approach love from that point on, and every relationship that proved my doubts only fed the fire that was burning away any shred of innocent trust i had left. so i'm not saying that my 6th grade crush ruined my life, but it started me on a path to what i am today.

i was a socially awkward kid throughout middle school and high school. i'm so thankful for my friends that i made in that part of my life because not only are they still my best friends to this day, but without them, i would have been completely alone. they became a refuge for me. as i pined for the girls i thought i could never get, and couldn't find the nerves to talk to the ones who were actually interested in me, i was hit with a surprise attack that killed my very soul.

it might seem innocent enough, but a single illustration from my 7th grade bible teacher sent me further into despair. if my first crush had made me lose trust in other people, this teacher made me lose trust in myself. his illustration went something like this...

"if billy graham were driving back from the most amazing crusade of his life, all pumped up in the spirit, and he was hit by an 18-wheeler, used the lord's name in vain, and died before having time to repent, he would go to hell"

basically, whenever you sin, you love your salvation until you repent of it. needless to say, after a while i just gave up on myself, assuming that there was something wrong with me because i couldn't go without sinning for very long at all. phrases like "assurance of salvation" and "the love of God" meant nothing to me. how can there be assurance when my salvation can be gone in an instant? how does God's love mean anything if it's based on how well i can do? from this i basically concluded that there was something wrong with me. like judas or cain, my soul was damned from the outset, and i was one of the people who just wouldn't make it to heaven. God did not love me because i couldn't be good enough.

conditional love was the phrase that best describes how i saw/see the world. people only love me to the extent that i don't fail them.

when i was a kid, i was a cub scout because my dad thought it would be fun. i hated it. i hated it mostly because he was working every night and could never come to the things that other kid's dads went to. don't get me wrong, my dad has been nothing but selfless and amazing to my family, but he just couldn't come to cub scout things. i stayed in the scouts for over a year, hating it all the way, only because i thought that if i quit, he would be disappointed in me. i remember the moment i told him like it was yesterday. he was in the front yard doing some weeding and i was sitting on our ugly brown couch in the living room trying to gather up the courage to tell him. i had prepared and entire speech and was repeating it over and over again in my head until i just decided that i would do this no matter how disappointed he was. i walked out with my head down and just stood next to him, unable to bring up the subject, until he noticed my demeanor and asked me what was up. in reality, my dad could care less if i quit the cub scouts. he only put me there because he thought i'd enjoy it, but in my mind, if i disappointed him, he wouldn't love me anymore. whether i recognize it our not, this way of thinking dominates every aspect of my life.

i dated a girl in college who was actually really good for me. her impulsive, adventurous spirit clicked with those same parts of myself and we had so much fun just driving to new places and finding snow-covered suburbs to call our own. on paper, it would seem like the perfect match, but something always fell apart. she was a very emotional girl who was strongly pulled by how she was feeling at the time. honestly, i loved that about her. it was as if adventure and the need for change was wrapped up in her very soul, but problems started materializing when i would react to these emotional episodes. in my mind, her affections for me depended entirely on how "great a guy" i was, and so i would become a completely different person to try to prove to her (and to myself) that i was really that awesome. when she would act out and play around with my emotions, i would treat her like a princess who couldn't possibly do anything wrong. before we dated, our friendship was so great because we were completely honest with each other. i would get mad at her, she would get mad at me, we would realize that we were both wrong, and things would go back to normal. she picked up on the fact that i had changed and deciding that she didn't like that version of me, she broke up with me.

twice.

i thought i learned my lesson the first time, but i had not even come close to finding the heart of my issues.

what would my life look like if i could believe that i was loved no matter what? i might actually try my hardest at something for a change. because if i only give 50%, then i can blame my failures on that, and i can rest assured that i have not actually failed. for me, failure is not just what happens when you don't succeed. for me, failure is the reason that no one really loves me. it's the reason why i sabotage every relationship i'm in. it's the reason i stay up at night telling God to just give up on me and find someone else who will be better at this thing. it's the reason why i never do anything to the fullest of my abilities. it's the reason why i never finish projects and am constantly moving onto new ideas.

when love is conditional, failure and love cannot coexist.

i don't understand how i am supposed to move on from here. i know that my 7th grade teacher was wrong. i know that God loves me in my failures. i know that my 6th grade crush was just an 11 year old girl who didn't know better, and not everyone will play with my heart like that. i've had people in my life who have actively and intentionally loved me unconditionally, and yet i still can't believe it. i can look at it right in the face, know that it is true, and still not believe it. how is that even possible? and what's even scarier, how do i move on from that? i've always hoped that if i could identify my problem, name it, and see someone love me unconditionally, then i would be ok.

but i'm not.

there is a lot of scar tissue here from decades of ignoring the problem, and i don't know how long it will take to get rid of it. i'm not going to lie to you either, i'm not always going to try to get rid of it. as i've already said, i don't do things 100% because i'm so afraid to fail, so i will probably not try my hardest to heal.

all i know is that my entire life, all i've ever wanted is to be loved beyond a shadow of a doubt. maybe it will just take someone who is very patient with me and who understands me enough to know what is going on inside this messed up head of mine. i don't know, and i'm getting tired of thinking about it. this entry is not getting an optimistic, hopeful ending either, because i am feeling neither of those things right now. i am feeling very vulnerable and lost in my own problems. i am resisting the temptation to just erase this whole thing and go drive around until i have sufficiently suppressed all of these inner demons.

despite seeming trivial and stupid, these issues are at the very core of my being. like i said before, i didn't talk about the more traumatic and hurtful stories because it wouldn't be fair to the other parties involved, but rest assured, these are not the only reasons that i am the person i am today.

i really thought that getting all this out in writing would be a cathartic experience, but i just feel more alone. i am a mess, and i feel bad for anyone who actually cares about me. i don't make things easy on you. sorry about that.

i'm going to stop writing now. maybe things will look different in the morning.

i'm gonna buy this place and burn it down

2008-10-28T15:05:00.003-06:00

my soul is acting up again. what am i doing here? i haven't been to campus since thursday, and in that period of time, i have done nothing except waste my time on the internet, and watch mindless television. how is that a life? i watch talk shows during the day to forget my own life. watching strangers expose their most embarrassing and painful secrets to the world for my own satisfaction as if watching a man find out that his wife was pregnant with another man's baby could make my life any less lonely. as i sit complicity by, thousands of images and messages pass before my eyes.

am i really happy without an iphone?
obama is going to destroy the country.
mccain is going to destroy the country.
george w. bush has already destroyed the country.
some senator is going to destroy illinois.
apparently everyone is about to destroy everything.
i don't have enough HD channels.
am i really happy with the way that i look?
can i really afford NOT to buy that car?
what is another loan in the grand scheme of things?
no interest for 12 months? why not?

i can quote dozens of commercials to you at this very moment, but what have any of them ever done for me? my every possession is only making me more and more attached to whatever the hell this american life is. yesterday i had a daydream in which my car caught on fire when i was driving home with everything i own packed inside. i stood back at a safe distance watching all of my belonging in flames. my treasures, the bricks tied to my ankles, slowly becoming ash. i thought of all the hours of work i put in to buy this computer, my guitars, my clothing, books, movies, ipods, cell phones, and huge speakers. all those hours spent doing jobs i hated to buy things that didn't make me happy.

it was the most beautiful fire i had ever seen.

let it burn. let my mound of treasures burn. let the media burn. let the american goddess burn. let my silver spoon become the trowel that turns these weeds into a garden.

burn it all. burn it to the ground.

i did it my way

2008-10-27T13:15:00.004-06:00

maybe it's my own selfish nature, a need for control, or something much more innocent, but i'm glad that i'm leaving illinois on my own terms. something about graduating wheaton and no longer having a place to call my own did not sit well with me. it was kind of like when a loved one dies unexpectedly and you never got a chance to say goodbye. there were a lot of loose ends here in chicago that have since been tied, and here i am with 2 months left in the frozen north. as we all know, i am unable to plan anything for more than a month or so ahead, so i won't count out coming back to the windy city, but i'm not betting on it. the east is where my heart is, it's where my family is, and it's where my next adventure is. as i prepare to leave chicago, i'm doing so with a completely different mindset than last time. i've said my goodbye and i'm ready to start the next phase of my life. still no word on definite plans for my philadelphia adventure, but i'm not terribly worried. God has done much bigger things with significantly less time. i'll probably be sitting in my tiny apartment in a few months thinking about lake michigan and the people i've left behind and i'll miss it all, but i have closure. i'm leaving, and this time it's on my own terms.

crazy stuff happens when you follow Christ

2008-09-30T13:46:00.000-06:00

It all started this summer with a simple Bible study about the sermon on the mount, and now here I am about to drop out of seminary and move into a homeless shelter. Curious as to how I got to this point? Then keep reading.

So I decided that with the last 3 weeks of our (Vlad, Vash, Marietta, Ryan, and I) Bible study, we would go through Matthew 5-7 because after all, that's like Jesus' masters thesis. It's basically 3 chapters describing what the Kingdom of God looks like, and I thought it would provide some real down-to-earth guidelines that we could all learn from.

The only problem was that Jesus showed up.

I did my best to contain Jesus' words and contextualize them in a nice little socio-cultural package that we could all go away feeling good about. I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for Vlad and his uncanny ability to call me out on things that most people miss.

I gave the generic, "Jesus tells us that we have to give to the needy" message, and I'm pretty sure everyone else bought what I was selling exactly as I had, but Vlad called me out on it. He said, "Ok. That's great and all, so how are we gonna do it? Find us a way to give to people who need it, and we'll do it". Needless to say, I stalled and procrastinated to the point where I didn't have to come up with anything substantial, but it kept bothering me. Up until that point, I'd been able to satiate my guilt by supporting a child in Honduras and basking in my smug sense of self-satisfaction that no one knew about it. I was living out Jesus' words to give my gifts in private, and I was proud of it. But Vlad's words wouldn't leave me.

What was I doing?
What had I done?
Why was I doing them?
Why did I do them?

Sure, I'd gone out one Valentine's Day with Christina to take homeless people in Chicago out to eat, but honestly I was mostly going to hang out with her, and the homeless thing was just an added perk to help alleviate some guilt.

It's always been about getting rid of guilt.

So I went off to Seminary here at Trinity, and God started to work wonders in my life. I've had all sorts of life-changing moments with God and strange, crystalizing moments where everything clicked. Life was fantastic, but a strange thing started to happen.

The Bible started seriously bothering me.

It hurt in the way that hydrogen-peroxide feels on an open wound. Every word of truth that poured from its pages only served to remind me of how much contextualizing I had done and how little I was actually following it. I can forgive people, but not like Jesus commands me to. I can love people, but not like Jesus tells me to. I can help the poor with my spare change and $30 a month (tax-deductable of course), but not like Jesus requires of me.

Jesus was a revolutionary and His words shattered hearts and tore down walls. His words carried so much power that they had to kill him (and those who kept speaking His words). The Jesus that I grew up knowing was not the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus that I grew up with pretty much wanted to date me. He wanted to come into my heart change the way I dressed and talked and what music I listened to. He then wanted me to go out and get other people to do the same thing. Caring for the poor was for the missionaries and I loved people primarily by evangelizing them.

That's what having a personal relationship with Jesus is all about, right?

The entire time I was hanging out with the privileged, attractive, high-fiving, blond-haired Jesus, I kept wondering if there was something more. What would it look like if a person lived out the sermon on the mount literally... What if we took it as capital "T" Truth (the post-modern part of me just shook its little head in disgust) instead of generic suggestions for proper living...

That's when I started stumbling across verses like these...

I John 3:17
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

James 2:15-16
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

Ezekiel 16:49
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

Matthew 25:37-40
Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?
And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

I could go on. In fact, I could go on for a LONG time because there are 1,200 verses in the Bible about the poor and needy. The early church was so concerned for the poor that if they did not have enough food to feed all of the people at their doorstep, they would all fast until there was enough food for everyone. Every single church father wrote about how the Church's offerings are to be given to the poor, not to million-dollar building projects or the payroll of intricate church bureaucracies.

So as time went on, God continued to fan this flame inside of me that I need to be taking this command (note: this is a command, NOT a specific calling) seriously. So I started reading books about people who care for the poor in radical ways (The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne is worth the $13). I also started writing my first sermon for preaching class on that 1 John verse about seeing a brother in need and doing nothing about it.

But from 800 miles away, I kept hearing Vlad's voice.

Then it happened.

I was sitting in my room at 1 am reading The Irresistible Revolution and God smacked me in the face. The Holy Spirit showed up in that poorly furnished room in such sheer magnitude that I was literally shaking. I had to put the book down and just kneel there, letting the Spirit do whatever the heck He was going to do. I felt a lot like Samuel sitting there in the Synagogue feeling very small. The voice was distinct and specific. Not audible, but in a fashion that I had not experienced since the Youth Sunday service when I first was called into the ministry. He said, "You want to really know me? Come find me. Come find me in the faces of the poor and homeless that you avoid in your suburbs. Do you want to see me work? Drop your nets and follow me into the wilderness. Drop your text books and follow me into the streets". How can I preach the Word if I am unwilling to find a service project for my Bible study to do? If I have to contextualize the words of Jesus, why should I even bother?

The privileged, suburban Jesus turned out to be nothing but Uncle Sam in a robe. As it so happens, Jesus was actually a homeless rabbi of an oppressed, beaten people who surrounded himself with the scum of the earth. His teachings are radical, uncomfortable, and socially unacceptable, but His words are the very words of life!

"But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works."
James 2:18

So that's it folks. I'm done talking without doing. I'm done with the comfortable gospel of the white american suburbs. God has called me into the "wilderness" to live out my faith and find the radical God that got all those apostles killed. I plan on coming back to seminary and finishing my education after my time in the city, because I feel that my call is as a Church reformer and not just a Church criticizer. I'm excited for the crazy journey ahead and I would appreciate any and all prayers now and in the coming months as I get all my details straight. I hope to be either in Philly or Chicago (leaning towards Philly), but I'm always open to God switching things up on me and taking me down crazy roads. Life really is exciting when you aren't too concerned with your little 5-year plans and whatnot.

So I challenge you to really dig into the scriptures and find the God that wants to transform your soul so that you can turn around and transform His creation. Remember that we all have our specific callings, but we also all have the same two commands...

spread the Gospel
take care of the poor

If you read the New Testament, you can't avoid either.

Find ways to do both of these in ways that seem ridiculous to the world and I promise that you will see God show up in the most random and beautiful ways.

We really do serve an amazing God.

well that's that i suppose

2008-09-15T21:57:00.001-06:00

sometimes God answers prayers very strangely.

just sayin.

this is what we call a turning point

2008-09-09T21:04:00.000-06:00

what a strange couple of weeks it has been already. i already have 7 or 8 blog entries worth of things God has taught me, and i'm sure i'll get to them eventually. ::snicker::.

but seriously, it's been a roller coaster ride of self-realization and focus, and it feels like all of the people and pieces are starting to come together like the end of a dickens novel. this entry would quickly become a book if i were to give you background information on all of this, so i will make it simple.

nothing quite makes you realize who you really are than a new situation, new people, and a heaping helping of solitude. it's been really hard at times not having anyone close to me nearby to talk to and connect with, but it's presented me with some random situations.

monday, i went to campus at noon to get some work done, but i ended up just talking to people and taking a personality test instead. i haven't taken one of those myers-briggs tests in years, and what i read surprised me. everything it was saying about me was spot on. i'm a dreamer who can never finish what he starts. i crave adventure and spontaneity. i care about people WAY more than i care about myself. since i took that test, i've been doing a lot of thinking about myself and really for the first time allowing myself to be myself.

this all came to a crystalizing moment in the most random place.

tuesday night at like 10:00 i ditched my homework and drove down to chicago to hang out with a friend. it was random and fun and it made my day, and even if i only got 3 hours of sleep and bombed my greek quiz, it was totally worth it.

so i was driving back on 94 at about 1:30 AM listening to Fated to Pretend by MGMT and it hit me. i was finally ok with me. and not just the good parts. not just my creativity, caring nature, and intelligence. no, i was ok with my restlessness, my pride, my complacency. all of it. for the first time, all of the ugly, battered pieces came together and i saw the whole instead of the parts. i saw me. and i was ok with it. i can't really explain it, but it felt like i had just laid the groundwork for something big.

so today i was reading the book of james and i came across my least favorite verse in the bible...

James 3:1
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

i always hated that verse because i felt such pressure to not screw everything up because i know for a fact that i will. i always wished it wasn't there.

but today i read it differently.

today i read it and i thought to myself, "bring it".

i'm not just some kid anymore. i'm a seminary student. in a few years, i will be a church leader, and just the fact that i am planning on doing that puts me in a different place than i was a year ago.

everything i do is going to be scrutinized by the people around me. people are going to watch my life waiting for me to fail so that they can point at me and say, "see? i told you all christians were phonies".

but i look at the world now and i say, "bring it on. i'll show you what a spirit-filled christian looks like".

up until this point, i've kept my favorite sins close to my heart because i love them so much, and they are so much fun. but now i see that i'm not just living for me. i'm living for everyone who is looking to me. i'm living for everyone who will look to me as an example and everyone who will look to me in hopes i will fail.

and how can an imperfect guy do that?

i know i'm going to mess up. i'm not perfect. but i'm living honestly now. i refuse to hide my sins. hidden sins always come to the surface and ruin any chance that person had of being a witness.

you wanna know my issues? i'll tell you. just ask. i don't care anymore. this isn't about me anymore. this is about the living Christ who is inside of me showing Himself through my life. i'm not living for me. i'm living for every single person who will ever come in contact with me because God has made each and every one of them and loves them just as much as He loves me.

and it's not just about believing the right things, it's also about doing it. it's about living ridiculously. living like matthew 5-7. loving ridiculously, forgiving ridiculously, and living in such a ridiculous way that those who don't know Christ have no idea what's wrong with me and those who do know Christ are inspired to come along for the ridiculous ride.

my actions matter now, and i'm not scared to step up to the challenge.

i think this is what they call maturity or growing up or something.

i'm calling it identity, calling, and focus. i'm excited for the future and i can't wait to see what happens when a crazy christian like me gets sent out into the world.

september 10th is a big day in general

2008-09-09T17:45:00.002-06:00

so the theme of this blog is questioning and discussing things, so this is only partially off topic.

tomorrow, the large hadron collider gets turned on for the first time. i know little to nothing about the technical details, but basically this thing will either change the way we understand the universe or it will kill us all. either way, that's pretty awesome. so with what could possibly be your last day on earth, you should watch this informative, catchy, and strangely entertaining rap video that one of the employees at the LHC made.

myers-briggs is my scapegoat!

2008-09-08T15:44:00.003-06:00

An ENFP needs to focus on following through with their projects. This can be a problem area for some of these individuals. Unlike other Extraverted types, ENFPs need time alone to center themselves, and make sure they are moving in a direction which is in sync with their values. ENFPs who remain centered will usually be quite successful at their endeavors. Others may fall into the habit of dropping a project when they become excited about a new possibility, and thus they never achieve the great accomplishments which they are capable of achieving.

There you have it folks. The reason I can never stick with this blog is because the Myers-Briggs test said I can't. Justification tastes so sweet.

On a related note, I'm going on hour 5 of sitting here on campus not doing the homework I came here to do. Again I quote...

Because ENFPs live in the world of exciting possibilities, the details of everyday life are seen as trivial drudgery. They place no importance on detailed, maintenance-type tasks, and will frequently remain oblivious to these types of concerns. When they do have to perform these tasks, they do not enjoy themselves. This is a challenging area of life for most ENFPs, and can be frustrating for ENFP's family members.

Thank you Myers-Briggs for telling me why I can never finish my projects and constantly feel the need to go on adventures and explore new places. Man, people who don't like change must HATE being around me. But if you enjoy exploring and finding new and fun places, let me know because I am thinking about becoming a pirate. But not a mean pirate. More like if Robin Hood, Ferdinand Magellan, Huck Finn, and Johnny Appleseed all bought a boat and had adventures together. That's my plan for the moment. Anyone wanna come?

irony or just a lack of motivation

2008-09-07T17:26:00.004-06:00

so how about that? it's been almost a year since i've updated this blog and the last entry was entitled, "stagnancy is death". i'd like to claim that i planned that, but i'm not very good at planning that far ahead. maybe that's why i suck at chess... but i digress! i think i'm going to update this blog on a regular basis now. i don't know how many times i've said that before, but i swear it's true this time! on a serious note, God has been doing a ridiculous amount of work in me over the past few weeks, and i want to share it with all of you who have read this blog before (pretty much just vachel).

so i went to a small group meeting of sorts with my roommate the other week. i'd never been to the church that the people were coming from, and i didn't know anyone, but i really want to meet people out here regardless. so as i was sitting there in the living room of someone i had met only minutes before, the guy next to me named russ started talking about a recent diagnosis that his doctor had given him. he hasn't had any energy for the past year or so until the doctor finally figured out what was wrong with him, and he was finally feeling like himself again. to my surprise, he used that as a springboard to talk about asking God for his "daily bread".

if there was one part of the lord's prayer that i repeat without thinking, it's that one. when i ask God for my "daily bread", what i'm asking is that He would give me what i want.

that's pretty much it.

like a blanket prayer for all the stuff that i want that i can't think of off the top of my head.

like a car that works, someone to pay off my student loans, a recording contract, or a big ol steak.

but he was talking about how for the past year, he had been praying that God would give him his daily bread as in, "God, give me what i need to make it through the day". i hadn't thought of it like that.

when the israelites were wandering the wilderness, God provided for them every morning with mysterious bread they called manna (it literally meant "what is this?"). the only clause was that they were not allowed to store any of the manna because by morning it would be full of worms and inedible. so basically, the israelites had to go to bed every night having faith that God would give them enough food to survive for the next day.

and no longer.

it makes sense though. if they were allowed to keep stores of the manna, they wouldn't need to rely on God for anything and would quickly start believing they didn't need God anymore.

been there. done that.

in this way, russ was praying that God would give him only enough energy for that day.

it got me thinking about myself (as usual).

my heart has been beating twice as fast as a normal heart for the past 3 years or so, and no doctor i've been to has been able to figure out why. i joke about it, but honestly it scares me.

a lot.

so i realized while listening to russ and his story that my fear is coming from a lack of faith. i believe that God has a purpose for me here on this spinning ball of dirt, but i guess I didn't trust that He would keep me alive until i'd accomplished that purpose. it's kinda weird that i trust Him with things that i can change like vocational goals, schools, and relationships, but I have no faith in him when it comes to things i have no control over anyway.

my heart is my manna.

it is beating fast, but it is still beating. i am learning to trust God that while it is still beating, i have work to do, and when that work is done, it will stop beating. every morning that i wake up is a gift, and i need to see it like that. just like the manna, i can't store up my heart health for the future. the fact that i haven't died yet doesn't mean that it is less likely to happen tomorrow.

faith is the word of the day.

stagnancy is death

2007-11-22T01:08:00.000-06:00

there's something to be said for deer trails.

if you've ever gone walking through the woods, you know what i mean. the paths that aren't as clear as the ones that people made, but are still easy to follow. they weren't made by big guys with axes over the course of an afternoon. they were made over months of deer and other animals walking the same paths over and over again. sometimes i like following those trails because i feel like the deer know more about the forest than i do and i'm going to come across some secret part of the forest i've never seen before. but let's be honest, there's never anything special at the end of them. they're just trails.

i spent 18 years walking around my life here in jersey. i made some trails and some ended up overgrown from underuse. i wish i could say that the most used paths were positive. habits like prayer and personal growth. i wish i could say that coming home makes me a better person, but i'm not that good of a person.

there's a reason i went to college 800 miles away.

after 18 years of making trails that i hated, i thought that a new start would fix everything. it did fix some things, but i just made new trails. i made some trails i'm proud of and some that i wish the forest would swallow up.

but here i am back in my old forest looking at the trails that haven't changed since i left. it seems that no matter how far i run, i still come back to the same me. i don't like the zack i left. i'm sickened by how few of my trails have been covered over and how many of them are exactly as i left them like some sort of photograph of what used to be.

i know it might be the most cliche and corny way to end this train of thought, but i think it's about time i take the road less traveled by. all robert frost references aside, let's see what happens if i turn my back on my deer trails and let the saplings grow. let's call it a spiritual experiment.

poetical musings at 6:30pm

2007-08-15T16:30:00.000-06:00

just some more random poetry from the mind of me. i'm piecing together an album concept that i'll mention later. this could be a part of it.

a child caught with muddy hands
a termite mound with bigger plans
we stormed the beach and saved the land
but it turns out it was only sand

wet with blood from other gods
we rallied all our wearied squads
with tired eyes and patient nods
we asked the Lord for better odds

the Son of God stood up and said
"love will carve the path ahead"
so we tied him up and shot him dead
and put his name on our guns instead

poetical musings at 4:30am

2007-08-14T02:21:00.000-06:00

it's 4:30 am and i've been writing for a few hours now. i've had a short, entrancing musical loop that i wrote playing in my headphones as i spent some time thinking/writing about the futility and miniscule nature of our lives as compared to the infinite nature of God. from those thoughts came a few lines that i'd like to throw out there to the internets. i want to make a few songs out of these words, but i don't have any music that really fits. looks like i have some work to do.

with broad strokes of grey and blue,
i paint a self portrait devoid of you
the lines are broken
as words are spoken
through the movement of my wrist

fingers press hard as strings breathe their first
a life spent singing a song unrehearsed
as fingers with hands with skin and bone
bring to life each coming tone
and then in death, as in the first
another string breathes unrehearsed

oh speak what use is man to you?
this broken portrait in faded blue
for even the canvas which you make new
will soon forget that which you do.

oh what has man that God should require?
what gift of gold or pillar of fire?
what dance of thieves or song of liars?
could satisfy the almighty's desire?

oh what words have we to speak your name?
what pious tone does not bleed profane?
which vowel still does now proclaim
that which brings our works to shame?

if you love me, feed my sheep

2007-07-11T09:05:00.000-06:00

if every christian in the US gave $90 a year. NO ONE in the ENTIRE world would be hungry or homeless.

seriously.
no one.
entire world.
$90.
american christians alone.
seriously.

feed the hungry? clothe the naked? support the orphans and the widows?
we could do that for 26 cents a day.

jesus must be pissed.

this one could get me in some trouble

2007-06-26T10:57:00.000-06:00

Let me set up the scene real quick. If you've already read "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis, then skip this paragraph...

All of Narnia is in chaos after a scheming monkey dressed up his dumb donkey friend as Aslan the great lion and began using him as leverage to get what he wanted. In order to fully exploit the trusting Narnians, the monkey teams up with the local Calormene people who worship a vengeful god named Tash. Both the monkey and the Calormene general tell everyone that Aslan and Tash are actually one and the same. This eventualy leads to the destruction of Narnia and the end of the world. The main characters are then walking through Aslan's new Narnia when they stumble upon one of the Calormene soldiers. This boy truly searched for Tash in his life and was a man of good character. He retells his conversation with Aslan here...

Then I fell at his feet and thought,
"Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him."
But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said,
"Son, thou art welcome."
But I said, "Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash."
He answered, "Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me."
Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said,
"Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?"
The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said,
"It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?"
I said, "Lord, thou knowest how much I understand." But I said also (for the truth constrained me), "Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days."
"Beloved," said the Glorious One, "unless thy desire had been for me thou shouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

and now a word from our sponsors... the bible

Romans 2:6-16
6 He will render to each one according to his works:
7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,
10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.

11 For God shows no partiality.

12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

What an interesting little passage. Theologians throughout time have taken this little gem and decided to run feverishly to either prove it is being interpreted wrong, or prove that Christianity has just as much claim on truth as does Islam. I'd like to take a moment here to step back and look at the truth behind the truths here. What motivates people in either of these directions?

Fear.

For the first group, it is fear that their religious house of cards might come crashing down and they will have nowhere left to stand. If it is true that people don't need to accept Jesus as their personal savior, then what right do Christians have of evangelizing, or even telling people about Christianity. Some real pitfalls do exist here, but clutching so tightly to human-religious constructs is what prevented the religious leaders in Jesus' day from seeing the truth about God. They ended up killing the very son of God because they were unwilling to open their minds a little.

On the other side, we have a social fear. If we declare that Christian doctrine is the one and only way to eternal life, then we risk ostracizing millions of people and being labels as a hate-monger or a bigot. There is a real fear that planting our flag on absolute truth will serve to ostracize more people than we convert. Also, evangelism can become an effort to prove someone wrong instead of an opportunity to share your soul. By allowing yourself to be open to other ideas, you can relate to more people, but at the same time there is a legitimate danger of losing your hold on what is true. Especially if you begin to dig too deeply into the philosophical and doctrinal aspects of religion and forget its purpose.

"I would rather feel contrition than be able to define it"
~Thomas a Kempis

So how do we approach this?

1. Carefully - Never, EVER study the Bible in order to prove something. If the Bible is not your starting point, then you are trying to use God's words to prove your point. People have done this to rationalize slavery, racism, sexism, crusades, inquisitions, imperialism, and manifest destiny.

2. Like you are dating God - If your motivation for discovering the character of God is like that of a private investigator, you will either lose interest fast or end up with a very biased view. If instead, you approach God the same way you would approach a new boyfriend or girlfriend, things might be a little clearer. Do you remember what it was like when you had that first girlfriend or boyfriend and you stayed up until all hours of the night on the phone with them just listening to what they had to say like it was the most interesting thing in the world. You wanted to know every little piece of them no matter how mundane or trivial. Why is that? Was it so that you could prove some theory, understand yourself better, understand the mind of the opposite sex? No. There was an unspeakable amount of awe and you couldn't believe that someone this amazing would want to be with you. Where is that sense of childlike awe and amazement? Find that and you'll find God.

3. Like you know nothing - Come to the scriptures without the audacious claim that you actually think you know who God is and how He must function, and the mysteries of the Almighty will begin to flow in.

Honestly, that was more for me than anything else. It's very easy for me to take a piece of scripture and play the research paper game. I'll jump into the Greek and pretend like I know what I'm taking about and throw my pick-axe all around the dig site, smashing any fossils that may be around in pursuit of what I think is truth.

Now then, let's try to approach this right...

Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the law, he came to fulfill it. He did not come to completely change the system, He came to reveal it for what it is. It is plain to see that before Israel existed, God spoke through people who didn't know the Torah or the Romans Road (since it didn't exist). God promises Abraham to bless his decedents IN ORDER THAT they might be blessings to all nations. All nations. ALL. He didn't bless the Israelites with divine revelation and favor because he liked them, or because he wanted to see them succeed the way that George Steinbrenner blesses the Yankees. No. God decided to bless them so that they could bless those around them.

Fair enough, but what about the "others"?

I think it is fairly clear from this verse in Romans that missionaries don't have to worry themselves to sleep that they might not reach every single soul in the world. God is bigger than that. We don't have to weep for every single dying Buddhist. God is bigger than that. We don't have to have unbridled hatred for all Muslims. God is bigger than that.

If your God is restrained by doctrines and creeds, then your God is not supreme. If your God has a list of "cans" and "cant's", then your God is not supreme. If your God has to play by a set of rules, then your God is not God. If there exists a cosmic let of laws that God must abide by, then by all means worship that law. I will worship whatever is the most supreme. If it be a cosmic framework, I will worship that. If it be an all-powerful deity, I will worship that.

The God I encounter in the Bible is a God that is restricted by no rules. Did God HAVE to send his son to die for me so that my sins could be forgiven, so that I could go to Heaven, so that I could worship him, like some sort of divine Rube Goldberg machine? Heavens no! That part of the story is more for us than to fulfill some sort of legal transaction. What more potent way to show His love for us than by demonstrating it in a way we could understand?

THAT is the God I worship. Always trying to relate the wonderful truths that are so far beyond me in ways that I can understand.

I almost prefer the way that the Hindu faith sees its god to how most of us do. They understand that there exists an all-encompassing, all-powerful, all-knowing entity that is so far beyond all human perception that we literally can do nothing to understand it but give it a name. So this "Brahman" entity wants so badly to share itself with mankind that it reveals itself to people in thousands of different ways. The Hindus have a saying that god is one god with a thousand faces. So all of their statues and images depicting different gods are really all just aspects, or faces, of one supreme, unknowable deity.

That kind of understanding of God is full of so much awe and respect that I think many Christians lack. Don't think you can put Yahweh in a systematic theology box. If He wanted to, he could raise up sons of Abraham from the very rocks of the ground and leave everyone else in the dust (Matthew 3:9).

So what about the question at hand. Will there be Muslims in Heaven?

Yes. And there will be Christians in Hell.

The Bible says pretty plainly that God does not care who your parents or grandparents were, He does not care what sermons you've heard, He does not care how many Bibles you own. If He wanted to raise up a nation of Godly Taoists right now, who is going to stop Him? You? Your theology books? Your laws? Don't get proud in your salvation. It's not a paycheck or an inheritance check. It's a gift you didn't earn, and you don't deserve.

So what if God choses to invite Buddha himself to dine with Him in Heaven? What are you going to do about it? Cry and whine and point fingers like the Pharisees? Or realize that ALL have sinned and everyone is just as entitled to seek after God as you are.

So what about the other religions? Who has their flag on absolute truth?

No one does.

How on Earth could a bunch of imperfect humans have a firm grasp on absolute truth? To assume we do is delusional at best, and incredibly self-important at worst.

How can truth be sought in a false way? Two people can experience the ocean differently, but they are both wet.

The very nature of God has been implanted on each and every one of our souls and nature itself basically SCREAMS His name.

No wonder every society in history has tried to understand the question, who is God and why am I here?

Is it that far outside of the character of God to reveal truths about himself to people outside of the Judaeo-Christian faith? Read the paper I wrote about Satan that is linked 2 entries back and you'll see that much of what we cling to now is a direct result of the Persian exile and Zoroastrianism.

I'm sorry, but a God who would say that He wishes that every single person would be saved, but then only provides that salvation through a small people group for 2 thousand years and then through a particular belief system for the next 2 thousand years is not the God who wishes everyone to be saved.

Paul knew that, and that's why he wrote what he did. God has so blessed us with the most complete version of the story, but He never gave up on the rest of mankind. Everyone, EVERYONE is born with God written on their hearts, and how they choose to pursue that is how they will be judged in the end.

There will be Muslims in Heaven and there will be Christians in Hell. God does not fit in your box, get used to it.

the being of beings wants you to be

2007-06-21T13:13:00.000-06:00

"God is sheer being itself - Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."

John 4:24 (The Message)

I sometimes get flack from people for using translations like the Message, but I don't think I've ever read it said better than that. That word "spirit" is a tricky word for us these days, and it gets brushed over in most translations. We live today in a society that has been developing for thousands of years, with thousands of revolutions, philosophers, and scientists. Most people (especially Christians) have come to hold fast to a school of thought known as dualism. Basically, dualism teaches that people have two major parts, the physical and the spiritual. Our physical bodies are what give us all of our problems since it is our flesh that is fallen. We spend day after day in this heated battle between the spirit and the flesh until one day we die and our spirit is finally free to go back to its creator.

This way of thinking is by no means new. This is essentially what Plato taught, and what many people believed hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Dualism hasn't changed, but the understanding of the spirit has. Read the ESV translation and think about what images it conjures up...

"God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

God is spirit...
When I read that, I immediately think of God as a ghost. I think of God as a floating, ethereal, formless, invisible spooky thing that lives in another dimension and has no contact with the physical world. What do you think of when you hear the word "spirit"?

those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth...
What on EARTH does it mean to worship God in spirit and truth? How do you worship something in spirit? What does that even mean? Worshiping something in truth makes a little more sense if you understand it to mean "in sincerity". But again, that spirit thing is getting in the way.

The Greek word for spirit "pneuma" is one of those reeeeeeeeeally hard words to get over to English without leaving something behind. This is the word used to describe other-worldly spirits, life, breath, and being. The people of that time understood breath as the sustainer of life, and so you see the phrase "breath of life" or "he breathed life into him" all throughout the Bible. In the context, breath is just the indicator of life the same way that rain is the indicator of a storm. So the same way that we would say "it is raining" and "it is storming", they would also say "he has life" and "he has breath". The same applies to spirit. The concepts were so interwoven that finding an English equivalent is nearly impossible. The people of that time did not know where life itself came from, but it was somehow connected to breathing and an otherworldly connection to the other side.

So then to say that God is spirit is a statement akin to "Tell them that I AM sent you". God is spirit. God is life. God is breath. God is existence itself. God is mystery. God is transcendent. God is all that is. God is sheer being itself.

How on earth do you worship a being that is actually being itself?

In the innermost parts of your life, your being, your mind, your existence.
In truth, sincerity, honesty, without cliches, without Christian catch-phrases.

Forget Casper the friendly savior. The God of being wants to be worshiped with all of your being in all of the sincerity you can muster up. That's all. Nothing profound, nothing confusing.

Just be.

the devil is in the details

2007-06-06T21:03:00.000-06:00

so i know it's been quite some time since i've updated and i'm sorry for the 1 person who might read this thing every full moon or so. anyway, so real update today, i just wanted to post a link to a paper i wrote at the end of the semester. it's a paper on the development of Satan from pre-biblical judaism up until paul. in my research i came up with a whooooooole lot of very controversial conclusions that have recently gotten my in trouble in certain discussions. so, if you would please read it and then comment as to whether you think im a heretic now, that would be great.

http://www.anglebrahd.com/docs/devilpaper.doc

behold i am making all things new

2007-04-13T01:14:00.001-06:00

so i just turned this paper in for my jerusalem class. it was supposed to be a paper looking at jerusalem in one of the texts of the major monotheistic religions in the world. i chose revelation 21 and the new jerusalem. read it if you'd like. skim it if you'd prefer. or you can just go play some addicting online games like i'm probably doing right now. either way, have fun...

The year is 90 AD and Jerusalem still sits in the same pile of rubble it was reduced to nearly 20 years earlier by Roman legions. Millions of Jews have been killed or sold into slavery, the temple is nothing but a mound of ashes, its holy treasures have been sold to fund the construction of the Coliseum and worst of all, the Holy City of God is now in the hands of Godless pagans. As if that weren’t enough, Emperor Domitian has just begun the first official state- regulated religious persecution of all Christians in the Roman Empire. For a Jewish Christian, this is the end. Rome has already destroyed Jerusalem, taken all of Israel, and now they are setting their sites on Christianity. The last of the 12 disciple of Jesus is wasting away on the island of Patmos when he receives the most glorious vision from God.

Rev 21:1 - Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." (ESV)

In order to fully appreciate this vision, it is important to note that by the time that Jerusalem was destroyed, it was both a city and a concept. Jerusalem symbolized a divine connection to God; the axis mundi. God dwelt in the temple and in so doing, lived among his people. From the creation of the tabernacle to the temple, this was always the purpose of sacred space for the Jews as evidenced by Exodus 25:8, “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst”. Bethel, the burning bush, Mt. Sinai, the Tabernacle, and the Temple (and Jerusalem by extension) were all sacred spaces because it was in those places that God visited his people. Sacred space is the most important aspect of any religion because “the world becomes apprehensible as world, as cosmos, in the measure in which it reveals itself as a sacred world”.

For example, the existence of Mt. Olympus connected the sacred world of the gods with the profane world of mankind, and it is that divine bridge that gives the world transcendent order and creates the cosmos out of chaos in Greece. The same is true for the Jews who saw the temple in Jerusalem as the axis mundi of the universe directly on the pillar that supported the cosmos. Below the sacred rock were the chaotic waters and above it was the sacred order of heaven.1 This is why Jerusalem was so important to the Jews, but what happens when sacred space is conquered by heathens?

In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian hordes destroyed the city down to its very foundation and drove its people out into the unknown lands of Babylon. This is the point in history when Jerusalem becomes more than just the sum of its bricks. The exilic and post-exilic prophets strove to remind the Jewish people that God is not restricted to their little city, and He will be faithful no matter where they are. Since God was no longer confined to the Temple, Jerusalem also shook off the bonds of geography. It became not only a literal city, but it also began representing God’s desired fellowship with His people. The very idea of Jerusalem itself became sacred space.

A few generations later, Cyrus II permitted the Jews to return to their Holy City and rebuild their temple. With the physical city back in their possession, Jerusalem entered into the age when it was both a physical city and a concept. Cities can be destroyed by battering rams and fire, but concepts are a lot harder to wipe out. The fact that Zionism exists to this day is a testament to the longevity of this concept. The Jews enjoyed about 500 years of intermittent free worship and fellowship with God before their sacred space was obliterated for the last time. During these 500 years, the Jerusalem concept was given the ability to incubate and grow to proportions that were much greater than the city ever was. This is the Jerusalem that John knew.

The story of Jerusalem has taken it from city, to concept, to both, and back to concept again, but according to John, the story does not end there. At the end of his apocalyptic visions, John sees Jerusalem returning as a physical city that embodies all of the concepts with which it has become associated with. In his vision, God creates a new Heaven and a new Earth, in complete perfection as it once was. In this new cosmos He only mentions creating one dwelling place, and that is Jerusalem. The new Holy City is the final consummation of every idea, desire, and intention that sacred space has symbolized throughout time. In this new city, God does not need to use the temple as a middle-man, and for the first time since Eden, Creator and Created are able to stand face to face. In fact, God’s presence will be so magnificent, there will be no need for the Sun, and night will not even exist.

The very architecture of the city itself is important to this idea. The angel in John’s vision takes out a measuring rod to demonstrate the dimensions of the city, and declares that it measures 12,000 stadia on every side. The perfect square is important because it mirrors the construction of the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple. The Holy of Holies was the one place on Earth where God regularly descended to dwell among His people, albeit behind a curtain. The new Jerusalem therefore, is also the new Holy of Holies, and all who enter the city are able to fellowship in His divine presence in a fashion not seen on Earth since the very beginning of time. All that was imperfect and segregational in the Earthly Jerusalem are complete and inclusive in the new Jerusalem.

It is interesting to note that in Christian eschatology, Jerusalem plays just as important a part as it does in Jewish history. John not only says that the Earth will be remade to its perfect form, but he specifically states that Jerusalem will also be made perfect. According to Eliade, “…the sanctity of the temple is proof against all earthly corruption, by virtue of the fact that the architectural plan of the temple is the work of the gods and hence exists in heaven, near the gods.” Since God dwelt in the Temple, they believed that He must have designed it, and therefore it follows that a perfect version of the Holy City has been created in the mind of God since the beginning. The physical city of Jerusalem was only a crude representation of the heavenly ideal which God had set aside until the ending of the age. This heavenly ideal has existed outside of time and so has not been corrupted as the earthly city has.

This makes the imagery of the bride approaching her groom in Rev. 21:3 all the more beautiful. Heavenly Jerusalem has been set apart in waiting for the day of consecration like a bride awaiting her wedding day. Images come to mind of a radiant woman adorned with the most beautiful jewelry, face aglow with exuberant anticipation, slowly walking down the aisle. Her eyes transfixed on nothing at all except her groom who is patiently waiting for the moment which he has been dreaming about for years. This is the image that John gives us when he sees the new Jerusalem. Jerusalem looks like hope and an end to turmoil. The Jews and Christians at this time had lived through about 500 years of watching the wicked triumph over God’s people and the only thing keeping them going was a working knowledge that in the end, God would make all things new.

Jerusalem is unique in that even when it was without a physical city; it managed to live on in spirit. The concepts which Jerusalem had become by the time it was destroyed in 70 AD had become more powerful than any of the great towers against foreign invaders. Jerusalem symbolized communion with God and stood as a physical reminder that God desires to be with His people. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 6:19 that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and His divine presence dwells in us as in the Holy of Holies. For Christians, the destruction of Jerusalem is not the end of the world because thanks to Jesus, fellowship with God is possible no matter where we are. With the Holy Spirit inside of us, everywhere we go becomes sacred space. We have become mobile sanctuaries with the Jerusalem concept inside of us in the same imperfect, corruptible way that it existed in brick and mortar. So just like John, we also long to see the new Jerusalem descending from the clouds. We long to see the completion of God’s work. We long to finally live perfectly with God as He intended. We long to see him who is seated on the throne saying, “Behold, I am making all things new!”

two thoughts on the temple

2007-03-21T21:14:00.001-06:00

I have two thoughts here about the same subject, so I suppose I'll smush them into one entry.

the temple.

my first thought has to do with the final hours of Jesus' life and the role of the temple in it all. by the time that Jesus came around, herod the great had built the temple in jerusalem into the most spectacular piece of architecture in the entire known world. the romans were so impressed by it, that titus literally begged the jews to surrender during his siege in 70 ad, so that nothing would happen to it. the thing was a work of art that spoke to the magnitude and majesty of the God that dwelt in it. that God of course was also Jesus. we so often want to separate jewish worship of Yahweh and the christian worship of Jesus, and we forget that, as john puts it, "the word was with God, and the word was God". when the jewish people worshiped in the temple, they were worshiping the same Jesus that was in their very midst. it's striking then to look at his reaction to the place. he goes in and turns the place upside-down, ranting and raving about the house of prayer becoming a den of thieves. he has such high regard for the place because that is the place where he was dwelt with the jews for about a thousand years. this is his house. his way of reaching out to his people. his sacred space. no wonder he was so mad at the people who had turned it into a place of extortion and unfair treatment.

then, just a few days later, he is accused in front of the very temple that he flipped out in earlier. the jewish leaders march him in front of the sanhedrin which was next to the temple and accuse him of blaspheming the name of God and leading people astray. the pharisees in particular for pretty ticked off by him, and with good reason too. they believed that the reason that God hadn't saved them from the romans was because of the impiety of people like the prostitutes and tax collectors, and if they could only fix them, God would save them all. the fact that Jesus chilled with both groups made the pharisees see him as one of the main reasons why God hasn't sent the messiah.

ironic huh?

so they judged him guilty of leading people away from the real God right on the steps of his own temple. the irony is so thick, you could drown in the stuff at this point. i don't have a huge theological point to this. it just hit me the other day and i thought i'd share it.

second verse, shorter than the first...

in galations 3:28, paul states that there is no longer any distinction between jew, greek, male, or female. at first glance, this just seems like an statement saying that everyone is equal, but there is more to it. i mean, that's what it's saying, but that's not all it's saying. the temple was the main stage of worship for the first century jew. you were expected to make the trip down to jerusalem to worship in the temple. there was another temple in samaria, but the jews and the samaritans weren't on the best of terms since the assyrians gave northern israel to the neighboring tribes who intermixed with the remaining jews and created the samarian half-breed. so every good jew and God-fearing gentile would take a trip to the temple in jerusalem. because of this, the temple was split up into different stages of holiness. the outer court was for the gentiles, and that's where the opportunistic jews would set up their shops to offer to sacrifice overpriced doves for the gentiles at remarkably high prices. this is where Jesus flipped out and messed the place up. the second level of holiness was for the jewish women, then the jewish men, then the priests, and finally the holy of holies which only the high priest was allowed into. archaeologists have actually found plaques in the area saying that any gentile who entered the jewish court would be sentenced to death without a trial. this was serious business.

so what does Jesus do?

well first of all, when he dies, the curtain is torn in the holy of holies; symbolically separating the high priests from everyone else and allowing all who would wish to gaze into the holiest place on earth. so then when paul says that there is no jew, greek, male, or female; what he is saying is that there is no longer any levels of holiness. everyone has all the sudden become the same.

could you imagine the impact this would have on the minds of people? that's a total paradigm shift. that's NUTS. that's thousands of years of tradition gone in a flash. no wonder most of the jews found it hard to follow Jesus. if i were a first century jew, i would NOT have jumped on board right away, and maybe i never would have. who knows. we just need to remember to give the jews of that time a little slack. Jesus sorta popped outta nowhere and changed everything. that's pretty hard to adapt to. especially when the temple is all you've ever known.

it's not easy being jew

2007-02-20T14:14:00.000-06:00

i realized the other day that i've been reading the bible all wrong so far. i've been reading it like it was written by white people or at least by a victorious people. it would probably be better to think of the bible as being written by people like the southern slaves of the 17th century. it really helps to just look at the history of the people in plain english because let's be honest, the bible is a big book and it's kind of hard to read.

the jews as a people group actually developed as slaves. the descendants of jacob were getting too numerous, so pharaoh decided to enslave them. he did his very best to make their very existence meaningless and painful so that they wouldn't even think of rebelling. when moses lead them out, they were actually free for one of the only times in their history. they wandered around for 40 years trying their best to believe that moses and aaron were actually telling the truth about this Yahweh fella who was actually going to lead them to peace and stability. when they finally got to the land that Yahweh gave them, they weren't welcomed there. there were already too many people groups there, and they have to kill and be killed in every place they came. after this time came the period of the confederacy. this is when each of the 12 tribes took a piece of land and they all shared a loose bond of common heritage and worship. this is the time of the judges when they were frequently attacked and sometimes overrun by neighboring peoples. life was never stable and they were living under the constant threat of being conquered, but the people always held out for hope that Yahweh was going to come and make them the greatest nation in the earth. that's when they decided they needed a king. what followed was the very very brief, 3 king, united monarchy in which all 12 tribes were united under one king and unprecedented prosperity ensued. for the first time in history, it seemed like Yahweh's promise to make them a great nation had finally come true. that's when solomon's son, rehoboam screwed everything up by treating the northern 10 tribes like they were inferior. a period of civil war broke out that ended with the assyrian empire sweeping down and completely annihilating all of israel (the 10 northern tribes). when i say that they annihilated them, i really mean it. the people that Yahweh had blessed among the nations was completely wiped off the map. all of their cities were burned to the ground, their land was given away, and the 10 tribes themselves were literally never heard from again. all the while, the southern kingdom of judah sat by and watched their brothers being completely erased from the history books. when the king of judah, hezekiah, saw this, he fortified jerusalem and his other main cities like never before. the king of assyria swept down into judah and inflicted similar destruction to it. according to the assyrian records, they sieged 46 walled cities and took away 200,150 men women and children into assyria as the spoils of war. had Yahweh not spared the city of jerusalem, we would not even know that the jews existed.

so there they sat. defeated, scared, trapped like a bird in a cage. all of the promises of Yahweh must have either seemed like fairy tales or like the only thing keeping you sane. time went by and eventually the assyrians were conquered by the babylonians under the tyrannical reign of nebuchadnezzar. for the jews at this time, the only thing keeping them together was jerusalem and the temple. the entire promise of Yahweh and the continuation of their people was riding on the holy city and the holy temple.

enter nebuchadnezzar.

after a series of 3 sieges and 2 puppet kings, nebuchadnezzar finally had enough of the troublesome jews who always tried to rebel. he sent a gigantic force that swept through all of judah and just massacred any city that was still standing. the king of judah, zedekiah, sent for help from his allies the egyptians who showed up about the same time as the babylonians. nebuchadnezzar easily wiped out the egyptians and then focused on jerusalem. zedekiah must have prayed for Yahweh to intervene like he did with the assyrians, but alas, he didnt. nebuchadnezzar took the city, tore down the walls, burned down the temple and the palace, and carried off andyone who was anyone back to babylon. and as punishment for standing up to him, he killed zedekiah's sons right in front of him and then ripped out his eyes, so that the last thing that he'd ever see would be the death of his sons.

the babylonians used the jews as slaves and servants throughout their empire becuase of their rebellion. after the babylonians came the persians who allowed the jews to return to jerusalem, but not as a free nation. they were later taken over by ptolemy and the greeks. after a brief rebellion and a tiny period of independence, they were captured again by the romans. this is point that Jesus comes in. he's preaching of the coming of the kingdom of Yahweh to a people who have been waiting for it since they were slaves in egypt. to them, the coming of the Lord and the judgment of all people was the only thing that kept them going.

then from 66-70 AD, a group of zealots revolted against the romans and the tides actually seemed to be turning. that's when emperor titus came down and completely leveled the city once again. after almost 400 years, the second temple was ripped down and never reconstructed. after a lengthy siege, the entire city was laid to ruins. a pitiful excuse of the city it once was, 50 years later the emperor hadrian decided to rebuild it and rename it. the jews left in the city staged yet another rebellion known as the bar-kokhba revolt which annoyed hadrian so much that after crushing the rebellion, he expelled all jews from jerusalem for good.

what could be worse? imagine being a jew in this time period. the world is ending, the beast has won, Yahweh has let him run loose amongst the world. this is the apocalypse. this is it. game over man. game over.

the authors of the bible were not white people. they were not a people who won a lot. they were not a people who had stability, strength, or a position in the world. they were a beaten, enslaved, minimalized, starved, and broken people. all they lived for was hope for the day of the Lord. the day that the Lord would come back and show the world for what it is. they day that he would come and reward the good and punish the bad. this is what jewish apocalyptic literature is for. reading revelation like a timeline is completely missing the point. the point is hope, the point is the character of Yahweh, the point is justice, the point is a breath of fresh air for a people who haven't seen extended peace since joseph first went to egypt.

it's no wonder that so many jews gave up their faith after the holocaust. there doesn't exist on earth a more persecuted, marginalized people group in history.

remember this when you read the bible. these are the people who wrote it.

what's dispensationalism got to do, got to do with it

2007-02-15T14:14:00.000-06:00

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

1Th 4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
1Th 4:14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
1Th 4:15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
1Th 4:16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
1Th 4:17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
1Th 4:18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

when it comes to rapture talk, this little section of 1 thessalonians is quoted more than any other, with maybe an exception to luke 17:34. for those of you who aren't majoring in bibley things, i'll lay out the popular, dispensationalist perspective on the end times right quick...

1.) rapture - Jesus comes down from the clouds with a horn section like a heavenly ska band and snatches up all the christians both living and dead. He brings them to heaven for the next 7 years where they all have really big houses that have a bunch of rooms.
2.) tribulation - while all the christians are gone, those who were "left behind" chill on earth and are totally screwed. there's a whole bunch of plagues and it basically sucks to be alive.
3.) the antichrist - so this really bad dude comes along and unites everyone under the guise of peace, but really he's satan's buddy and he persecutes anyone who doesn't think he's awesome.
4.) armageddon - 7 years are up and God is pissed. He comes down with all us who he took away in the rapture and we wreck shop on the anti-christ, satan, and all the bad dudes who were left behind.
5.) everything is awesome again.

this is the basic premise of dispensationalist theology. you may have read about it in the left behind series or heard it preached at many churches. it's a really popular belief system that apparently didn't even exist until the early 1800's when a woman in a scottish church began prophesying something of this sort. now i'm not here to say whether or not it's right. there are plenty of really learned people on either side of the issue. honestly, whether or not it's true, God is gonna do what God is gonna do, and i'm involved in whatever that may be. so..... high five for God!

but back to the topic at hand. this little section of thessalonians perfectly matches the common letter-writing formula of consolation that was readily understood by the people of the day. this section is basically akin to the religious sympathy cards you find at hallmark. no lie. that's not to say that it's not true, but certain things were expected in them. things like "he's in a better place" "you'll see him again" "he will be honored again". in fact, honor for the dead was so important to them that paul goes out of his way to say that those who are dead will come up to meet Jesus first. when someone important comes to visit, who is the first to greet them? the big shots, the important people, the honorable ones.

which brings me to my next point. the terms παρουσια (parousia - coming) and απαντησις (apantesis - meet) are technical terms. the parousia was not just any normal coming, it was the coming of an emperor or of a god. it was special, it was rare, it was celebrated. it was also normally accompanied with an apantesis. we do the same thing today. if the president is making a visit to a city, the mayor of that city with his dignitaries goes to the airport to meet the president and to welcome him. (the most honorable people go first). the important thing to note is that when the mayor greets the president, they don't hop back on air force 1. no, they go back. that's what they did back then too. the people would go out to welcome the emperor out of respect and adoration and then they would escort him into their city. Jesus isn't planning on taking us away from the earth (at least not in this passage). this is a triumphant return! this is Jesus restoring life and honor to the dead as well as coming down to earth to finally have the fellowship with us that he originally intended.

if you'll note, at the end of revelation, we don't all chill in heaven for ever. heaven isn't a literal location like plato would have liked. heaven is being in the presence of God. at the end of revelation, we are all chilling on earth. this place. the literal planet. right here. God isn't in the business of shaking the etch-a-sketch and starting over. he's been about restoration and renewal since day 8.

so i can't disprove everything that left behind says with this one part of thessalonians, but it's just so much fun to ask questions and talk about stuff that no one has to answers to.

here be monsters

2007-02-07T14:38:00.000-06:00

did you know that there are actually primordial sea monsters in the bible? i don't know if there is any theological significance to it, i'll let you decide. so basically, there is this hebrew legend that predates david in which God destroys this primordial sea monster named "rahab" before he can create the world. it's important to note that in ancient hebrew thought, the literal creation of matter was not nearly as important as assigning purpose to it. so while we may ask the question "well who made rahab and all the water that it was living in?" the hebrews would see rahab as unruly chaos and by killing it, God was able to assign purpose to the world as we know it. and therein lies the basic purpose of mythology. most of the ancient jews didn't believe in a literal sea monster that God fought with, but they did believe in a primordial chaos that God separated, partitioned, and gave purpose to.

what does this mean for genesis 1?

i don't know if the author of genesis 1 was meaning to actually give a historical, scientific account of the creation of all matter. my gut instinct is hesitant to assign modern historical motives to ancient people who operated in a completely different system, but who knows. the place i've ended up is that God may have created the world in 7 days, He may have done it in 7 million years, He may have allowed it to evolve from microbes and breathed his spirit into homosapiens, He may have even whooped up on a big nasty dragon thing before creating the world. whatever ends up being the case, my faith isn't shaken. i see God in all of these options.

back to monsters.

rahab is not to be confused with behemoth (job 40:15) or leviathan (job 41:1). these appear to be actual animals that either still exist or existed in that time. some people think that behemoth could be a hippo or even a brachiosaurus. personally i've always preferred to think that dinosaurs and people lived together at some point, so i like the second option. the leviathan is probably a reference to either the crocodile or one of its extinct relatives. again, i really hope that it's the dinosaur option again. i just like dinosaurs that's all.

rahab, on the other hand, becomes legend. all things chaotic, uncontrollable, or undeveloped are attributed to rahab. also, when describing things that are very powerful but that God has ultimate dominion over are attributed to rahab. we see this in isiah 30:7 where egypt is called rahab.

the temple mount in jerusalem was not only the site of the jewish temples, but it was also the portal to the untamed, chaotic waters that churned underneath the crust of the earth. in these dark waters still swims rahab and other monsters like it.

so every time you read something in the bible about a monster or about the sea, they are really pointing to this same idea. the sea and its creatures represent something that is untamed, uninhabited by God, uncontrollable, threatening, and malicious. kinda puts a new spin on jonah and the whale, jesus calming the sea, or the red sea swallowing pharaoh's army doesn't it?

all this to say:

DUDE! THERE ARE TOTALLY MONSTERS IN THE BIBLE!!!

Psa 87:4 Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush-- "This one was born there," they say.
Psa 89:10 You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
Isa 30:7 Egypt's help is worthless and empty; therefore I have called her "Rahab who sits still."
Isa 51:9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon?

i'm tired of cliches

2006-12-08T00:26:00.000-06:00

my entire life i have struggled with one question.

how can i be saved?

i've gotten to the point where i don't even ask it anymore because i am tired of feeling like a bad christian for not understanding the basic fundamentals of my faith. i'm tired of hearing "you must accept jesus into your heart as your personal savior and be born again". is it possible to put something as important and central to the will of God into a formula like that? the second that God has to obey a formula, he stops being God. God is above our formulas and equations that we cling to so dearly.

in fact, the phrase "personal savior" or anything even close to it does not appear even once in the entire bible. the entire concept of a "personal savior" is more closely akin to our consumerist, solitary ipod generation who would rather have it their way then settle for what someone else wants. jesus was never a personal savior, he was always the savior of entire people groups, entire families, entire races. just look at acts 10:2 when it talks about cornelius the centurion. he was the head of the household, and so the rest of his family shared his same values. there isn't even room for a personal savior in their worldview.

that's not to say that we should all adopt a first century, middle-eastern worldview. i'm just pointing out that our way of seeing God isn't the first way anyone has seen God and will not be the last. already, the formulaic equation of salvation is weakening.

now to the second part; "you must be born again".

this little overused statement comes from a conversation jesus had with a pharisee named nicodemus in john 3. nicodemus was an educated man of God who wanted to know more about the crazy things jesus was teaching. this is where we draw the paradigm for salvation. beware of anytime anyone tries to draw a paradigm from scripture. the bible is not a math book, history book, science book, or answer book. if you think that you can tie God down with language, formulas, and logic, you are sorely mistaken. that's what always bothered me about the pentecostal church. they say that a person has to be filled with the holy spirit to be truly saved and the evidence of that is speaking in tongues. when in reality, it only happened 3 out of the 5 times someone was filled with the spirit in the new testament. scientifically, that is not enough to make it a law.

in fact, the one time with nicodemus was the only time jesus said the phrase "born again". in mark 2, a paralytic man was lowered through the roof where jesus was and jesus tells the man that because of the faith of his friends, his sins were forgiven. not because of his faith, but because of the faith of his friends. when was the last time a preacher told you that you need to have faithful friends to be saved? an then in luke 18:18, a rich young ruler asked jesus how he could be saved and jesus told him to sell everything he had and follow him. when was the last time you heard a televangelist tell you to sell everything you had in order to be saved? Or how about luke 19:8 when zacchaeus sells half of his belongings to the poor and jesus forgives his sins? then there is the prostitute in luke 7:44 who anoints jesus' feet with perfume and he declares her sins forgiven. or luke 23:42 where the thief on the cross just asks jesus to save him a spot in heaven and jesus agreed.

how then can you draw an absolute paradigm on how to be saved when there are so many different examples of it? the answer is that you can't. god is above all and ruling above all formulas and equations. if God were restrained by a formula, then the formula would be God. how then can someone be saved?

i think the common theme here is sacrifice. nicodemus thought he knew everything he needed to know about God and jesus told him that he needed to be born again like a child and learn everything all over again before he could truly be saved. he had to sacrifice his knowledge in order to truly live according to the spirit. the rich young ruler loved his money and needed to sacrifice it in order to allow his soul to be free. the prostitute sacrificed a year's wages on his feet. God can work however he wants to do whatever he wants with whoever he wants any time that he wants, and so the method he choses to forgive people of their sins is completely dependent on the individual person. God knows that no one is the same, so for some it may look like a rebirth and for others it may look more like death; for some it is a pouring out and for some it is a pouring in.

how then is a person saved?

a person seems to be saved when they give up that which they stand themselves up on and replace it with jesus. whether that be intellect, money, popularity, logic, physical prowess, or whatever. the process that the person takes will look different and unique from everyone around them, so there is no way to draw a concrete formula for how it will pan out. suffice it to say, if jesus is your crutch, you're doing ok.

freedom scares me

2006-12-01T15:12:00.000-06:00

this is one of the scariest bit of verses in all of the bible...

Galations 3:23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
Galations 3:24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
Galations 3:25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

the church in galatia was only a couple decades old when this was written and the christian church was just about as new. they didn't have the advantage of a new testament or volumes of theology that we have now. they were basically playing this whole church thing by ear. among them was a very vocal group of christians called "judaizers" who believed that non-jewish christians needed to follow the jewish ceremonial laws in order to recieve God's promise. the biggest issue was circumcision, which as you can imagine was probably not very well received among the males in the church. they felt that this new faith that paul was spreading around was way too lenient and seemed more like a club than a religion. they were worried about moral anarchy and felt a lot more comfortable with their rules and rituals.

as a response, paul comes out and says that the law stopped being binding when jesus burst out of the tomb. he goes on to say that the law was like training wheels that kept us on the right track before jesus/the holy spirit came and gave us the ability to balance on our own. so many times i feel like the kid who just got his training wheels off, and his dad is holding on to him as he starts pedaling down the sidewalk. when all of the sudden his dad lets go, and the kid all of the sudden doesn't trust his balance and prays for training wheels as he crashes into the bushes.

4 wheels are a lot less scary than 2.

but there are a lot of things that you can't do with 4 wheels. mountain biking, speed biking, bmx biking. in order to be able to do greater things with God, i need to learn to quit thinking about those training wheels and trust in the balance that the holy spirit gives me.

how do i know i won't fall?

i always had a hard time with jesus saying, "i did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it". i always wanted to write a letter to the editor and say, "ummmm... yes. this is exactly what you are doing. you are getting rid of it. why can't you just admit it?". i hated that verse. but i'm seeing now more and more what he meant. the law was never about blind obedience. the law was training wheels for the heart. it was always the heart that mattered, and jesus was letting people know that this was the case all along. when moses brought the law to the people, it was to get their hearts in the right place.

jesus teaches that if you want to follow the law or help the poor for selfish reason, you might as well not do it at all.

it's all about the heart.

this scares me.

lord help me not to fall into the pits of legalism or moral relativism. both of them are wicked and both of them feel so safe and comfortable.
lord please don't give me back my training wheels, but please don't let me crash into any bushes along the way.

new arena, same game

2006-12-01T02:25:00.000-06:00

welcome one and all to my little swirling pool of theological wanderings. i've tried a number of times to do something like this over at xanga, but i'm the kind of guy who needs a new window's view to really be able to really think in a new way.

basically, i'm a 20 year old greek student who is just now realizing that i don't really know as much as i thought i did. i'm starting to see that life is a journey whose destination doesn't matter quite as much as the journey itself.

everything in this life is a journey.

that's what this is for me. i suppose instead of thinking of this as a journal or a blog or whatever you kids are calling it these days, i should think of it as a travel log. this is just my little attempts to understand the constantly moving world around me and make sense of how God fits into it. i don't want to try to give any grand, mystical truths here or suggest that i know the answers to all of the problems that the church is facing. i'm just entering the conversation and praying that i don't fall flat on my face in the process.

i'm pretty sure that would hurt.