Justice? (Part 2)

So I have been reading the book of Habakkuk lately. At New Horizon we have been discussing God and the problem of evil (you know, why does God let bad things happen to good people?) and the prophet Habakkuk addresses this question to a certain degree. He just doesn't do so in a way that suits my western, post-enlightenment sensibilities.

What I mean is he doesn't articulate a logical, linear, apologetic for the problem. He simply records a somewhat oblique discussion of justice between himself and the God he assumes can/should do something about evil in the world.

The "can do/should do" component is important to me (being western, post-enlightenment and having a penchant for logical, linear apologetics). In my mind, the issue of God and evil can be reduced to the point that there are two possible solutions:

1) God is able to do something about evil, but not willing to.
2) God is willing to do something about evil, but is unable to.

Of course many of my fellow evangelicals look at the issue and offer up a third solution: God is able, but not willing to do something about it now, rather, he is in the process of doing something about it. I think this viewpoint is what Ivan is dismantling in The Brothers Karamazov (see previous post).

Maybe God's motives just don't make sense, in which case the discussion is futile, or at least not logical or linear.

Justice? (Part 1)

One of the more dazzling encounters with the dark side of God that I have ever had came the first time I tried to read "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Specifically that famous chapter in book five titled "The Grand Inquisitor."

What an absolute sucker punch.

For those of you who have never read it, part of the chapter is a poignant and somewhat disturbing discussion of God and the problem of evil. You know, why do so many BAD things happen if there is a God out there who supposedly loves us and has the power to do something about it?

It is a tough question to wrestle, especially if the tried and true Christian answers leave you wanting more. Things like "God doesn't want bad things to happen, he just chooses to allow bad things to happen."

That one doesn't work for me. The way I look at it, the difference between "allowing" and "wanting" is so small as to afford little or no moral absolution for a deity who is supposed to be all powerful. If God could stop children from starving to death, why doesn't he?

It makes you want to cry out along side the prophet Habakkuk. "Where's the Justice?"

Revolution #3

The more I think about Jesus and his revolution, the more I'm convinced I wouldn't like him. At the very least I wouldn't want him to attend too many elder meetings. He must have been very uncomfortable to be around at times. I mean, the kinds of things he was asking people to give up (money, possessions, friends, family, life itself) were drastic.

Who does that?

Which of us would be willing to "sell all we have" in order to be part of the revolution? Which of us would leave our families behind to follow Jesus as he taught us how to suffer and die for the betterment of people around us. Who would EVER sign up for that kind of sacrifice, that kind of self denial? It's hard for me to go without ice cream or sex for too long...let alone giving up EVERYTHING to follow my revolutionary leader.

Anyone having second thoughts?

I am.

I mean, come on, sex is fun! Ice cream is good! Maybe Jesus' teaching about self sacrifice was hyperbole. Maybe it was a metaphor. In fact, I am sure that it was.

I am now certain that when Jesus called his followers to practice self-sacrifice as a lifestyle, what he really meant was we should build enormous church buildings, and borrow millions of dollars so that these structures can have air conditioning and hi-def television screens. Yes! And a big projector screen up front so we can have Nooma videos on endless loop. We should also have big fluffy chairs so that our asses don't get sore as we sip our cappuccino and watch our worship bands rock out to another Jesus tune. Righteous!

Yes I'm convinced, Jesus was all about the comfy.

Now, don't you feel better? I sure do. I am going to go sip a latte and thank God I am not starving to death in Darfur.

Revolution #2

I've been reflecting on the Gospel of Mark. I especially like the way it begins. No nativity, no shepherds, no angels we have heard on high, no silent night, no roomless inn. All we have is a short, cryptic prophecy and it's fulfillment in a bug-eating nature-dweller.

John the baptist: wild man, holy man, pre-revolutionary. He is John the Barbarian, a guerrilla warrior, a slightly unhinged mouthpeice of the divine, calling his countrymen to repentance. Clad in camel-skin, rallying the people, preparing the way for the Annointed One.

Then we have Jesus joining a movement already in progress. Being baptised with the rest of the sinners, responding in like manner to John's call for departure from the status quo. Only Jesus' river experience is a little different. He comes up out of the water and (re)encounters the divine. As the Spirit of God decends on him he hears a message from God.

"You are my annointed. The chosen one, you are Messiah. You are my man!"

Jesus response to this epiphany is to be driven into the wilderness. The Spirit drives him out away from the crowd into the hinterlands of the Judean wilderness.

What a way to start a story.

Revolution

There's nothing like a good economic meltdown to help me come to my senses. Ever since this past week's message (at New Horizon) I have become increasingly aware of the fact that my primary allegiance is not to this country. I like this country and am thankful for the many opportunities afforded me here, but as a follower of Jesus I think my primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God.

Here is a re-write of an impromptu poem/reflection I read on Sunday. It's not quite the same, but it's close. It's called "You have heard"

You have heard that our country is on the brink of total economic meltdown, but that's not true.
You have heard that the political system of our country is totally corrupt, but that's not true either.
You have heard that the leader of our country is a feckless thug, an avaricious warmonger, but this is certainly not true.
These things aren't true because for those of us who have decided to follow Jesus, our citizenship does not belong to these United States of America. We are part of a revolutionary new Kingdom, one that was created to change the world, conquer death, and beat back the gates of hell.
We are not called to be loyal to a flawed system of human government. We are called to be part of a movement that started over two thousand years ago. A movement that transcends politics and is destined to reinvent the cosmos.
You may have heard that it is the end of the world as we know it. That our country is imploding, collapsing, falling apart at the seams.
But you have heard wrong.

Hang in there. The Revolution is just getting warmed up.

Focus > Hocus Pocus

In an attempt to preserve my sanity, I am trying to focus my efforts on those things that are most meaningful to me. To that end, I will be shifting the focus of my blog to my teaching ministry at New Horizon. It will save me some time, help focus my attention, and hopefully augment my ministry here in Northern Indiana.

But maybe not.

My Blog Sucks

I think my blog might really suck. Seriously. I try to be introspective, deep thinking, influential. But I come across as a pissy little whiner. I would like to think that I am trying to be spiritually formative, but I'm really not. I would like to tell you I have Jesus-oriented motives for blogging, but I don't. I really just want a little notoriety to soothe my blistered ego.

On top of that it really just causes me problems. I tend to be a bit too honest in this format and then people read it and think I'm a heretic. Who needs the stress. Not me.

Back in Black

After a month long blog hiatus, I am back. The hiatus was good. I spent time drawing, having beers with guys from church, trying to catch up on sermon prep, worrying about money, and stressing about my sex life. All in all, a good month.

I have been illustrating a lot lately, which is good for me. I study the Bible more effectively when I am working on some sort of design project at the same time. We have been working on our own children's discipleship curriculum at church, and I am heading up the illustrating efforts. It's good, clean fun.

Speaking of good clean fun, I did "Flaming Dr. Pepper" shots with my wife last week. Fantastic, plenty of flame, no burns. It was a good night. Though I feel guilty blogging about it, for some reason. I am sure that somewhere out there I am being judged as a second-rate pastor by a fellow Christ-follower. You know what? I am a second-rate pastor, get over it, I sure have.

The whole alcohol thing kinda hacks me off. Why can't I feel free to talk about having drinks with my wife? I'm sure there are plenty of first-rate pastors who have blogged about having dinner with their wives. Nothing wrong with that, right? What's the difference between eating and drinking? Isn't it true that what makes these activities sinful is how much we indulge? It seems to me it's not the substance, it is slavery to the substance that entraps us and damages our spiritual self. I am not a slave to bourbon, scotch, or beer...are you a slave to food?

On top of all of that, a couple of drinks usually lead to sex for my wife and me. a couple of cheeseburgers rarely accomplish the same.

iPuke

I was checking out some online promotional material from different organizations related to the association of churches to which I belong (www.fgbc.org). Apparently the theme for our fellowship this year is "iGo." Clever, eh? I'm certain no one has ever thought of making a Christian knock-off based on the catchy, somewhat trendy, but oh-so-tired Apple brand. I guess "Got Evangelism?" was a bit too cliché.

We also just had our annual youth conference "Momentum." The theme was caring for the poor, the title? You guessed it, "iCare."

Enough already.

I am soooooo sick of Christians regurgitating the creativity of others in hopes of finding some sort of cultural relevance. Do we not have creativity of our own? Can we not muster the ingenuity and wit to come up with our own marketing brands? Must everything be a half-baked, Christian parody of pop culture? We see "Dance, Dance Revolution," like it, consume it, throw in a little Jesus and spew out "Dance Praise." Show us a little Harry Potter, and we'll give you "Jesus Potter" or some other swill. It's pathetic.

So to all of you Christian creativity pirates out there, do us all a favor and stop your brand-plundering. It cheapens the message and makes us all look like hacks.

Cartoon Me > Real Me

I have always been a closeted fan of the Gorillaz, a cartoon virtual-band who were somewhat popular back in 2001 because of their song "Clint Eastwood." An interesting concept, performing music through a pseudo-identity. Of course the idea is not unique to the Gorillaz, Kiss did it, as did Alice Cooper, Buckethead, and Gwar (don't Google "Gwar," seriously...don't do it). But the idea of a group of cartoon musicians is such a neat idea, existing only in cartoon reality is an enviable existence, methinks.

I sometimes wish I could preach and theologize through a cartoon alter-ego. I could call him "The Reverend Horton Hooligan" and he could speak his mind without fear of consequences. He could question ANY aspect of Evangelical dogma without losing his job. He could be a full blown prophetic disonant, decrying the common consciousness with a Bible in one hand and an oversize ACME anvil in the other.

You Googled "Gwar" didn't you? I told you not to, but you did anyway and now you are slightly less virginal then you were before. You should listen to Reverend Horton, I know of what I speak.

Springs > Bricks

I was thinking about that really hip book by that one famous preachy guy with the fabu hair. ("Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell). One of the premises put forward by fabu-haired guy was that theology ought to be more like springs than bricks. The idea, I think, was that if we treat all of our theological beliefs like bricks and use them to construct a big theological wall, we run the risk of becoming rigidly defensive about each brick in our wall. This, of course, is due to the fact that each brick is structurally necessariy for the long term viablity of our wall. And what kind of Christians would we be if we didn't have structurally sound walls?

If we treat our theology like springs in a trampolene, then we are able to value the theology while allows it to flex. I like that idea, flexible theology - theology that moves with the times, changes as our understanding of the world changes. Afterall, as a professor of mine once said, theology is our way of explaining our view of God in culturally relevant ways.

So, given my recent fluxuations, I was wondering which springs in my theological trampolene I would keep, which I needed to flex a bit, and which I ought to replace. So I made a list (isn't that nice?).

Keepers:
1) Deity of Christ
2) Humanity of Christ
3) Substitutionary Attonement
4) Authority of the Bible
5) Redemptive work of God
6) The Kingdom is alive and well
7) Love God love People
8) Concept of Incarnation

Flexers:
1) Hell
2) Second Coming
3) Nature/activity of the Holy Spirit
4) Covenant relationship with God
5) Satan
6) Concept of the "Word of God"
7) Homosexuality
8) Authority of the Community


Replacers:
1) Inerrancy of Scripture
2) Cosmology


Note: List is not exhaistive and can be changed at any time and without notice. I'm going to eat lunch.

Nora Jones > Icelandic Food

I have had two Nora Jones albums ("Come Away with Me" and "Feels like Home" ) playing in a never-ending loop in my office this morning. I like me some Nora. As I listen to the musical equivalent of manna from heaven, two thoughts doddle across the dimly lit transom of my mind:

1) I can't believe I spent so much time listening to "Green Jello" and "Breakfast with Amy" when I was in college. Did I ever really think THAT was good music? Good grief.

2) Nora Jones could smack me upside the cranium with an aluminum baseball bat...as long as she was singing while she did it. Hmmmmmm....*smack*.....ahhhhhh.

Icelandic Music > Icelandic Food

A friend of mine turned me on to a group of musicians from Iceland a few months back. They call themselves Sigur Rós and they make some of the best music I have ever heard. It is so emotive and image rich. I am listening ot their newst LP now, it's called "með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" ("with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly"). It is decidedly more upbeat than some of their past stuff, but absolutely a fantastic album so far. I recommend it, heavily. Buy it. While you're at it buy "Takk" and "()" as well. Both worth it.

The Other Problem with the Bible

The other problem with the Bible is it undeniably a product of human ingenuity, culture, and experience. It is certainly a book with divine power (2 Tim 3:16-17), but if you leaf through its pages it clear that this divine power is dripping in human perspiration.

The book is so human at times, that we almost can't stand it. Like when Jesus uses eating and defecating as a metaphor for true moral living, or when prophets run around naked and shave their pubic hair, or when Paul growls at those who were trying to reincorporate Jewish religious practices (circumcision) into the new community of faith (the church) by telling them to castrate themselves.

The Bible is riddled with starkly human elements that are at odds with our contemporary/evangelical/North American sensibilities. Elements that contradict the tidiness that we strive to impose on the text, defy our post-reformation hermeneutic, and belches rudely in the face of our theological systems.

We like to treat the Bible as a holy soothsayer, ethereal and refined, a genteel dispenser of starched and pressed theological pleasantries. But it seems to me the Bible acts much more like a eccentric uncle who laughs too loud, dresses too sloppily, and makes embarrassing bodily noises at totally inappropriate times.

The Problem with the Bible

The problem with the Bible, or at least "a" problem with the Bible (there are MANY problems with the Bible, but there is one specific problem that is problematic for me today), is that it is almost impossible to convince people who do not accept the authority of the Bible that it is, in fact, reasonable to do so.

That sentence sucked.

What I mean to say is I think it is reasonable to follow the teaching of the Bible, but so many people don't. This means that whenever I enter into a discussion with said nay-sayer, I have this 800-pound gorilla of an issue stinking up the conversation. I think the Bible contains wisdom, she doesn't. My appeal to the Bible as source of moral authority is futile.

The issue is compound by the fact that we Christians all claim the Bible contains "God's truth" yet none of us seem to agree about what that truth is. The Bible is tricky business. I had an atheist ask me this question once, "If the message of the Bible is so important, you know, like, you have to believe it or you are going to burn in hell forever, then why did God make it so hard to understand? It's like he wants it to be hard for people to avoid hell, why did he do that?"

I had no answer.

Disclaimer

It has come to our attention that, contrary to what the staff here at scottbarger.com may think, people actually do read this blog. It has also come to our attention that some of our readers are not particularly pleased with the theological pitch and timbre of our posts. after a three day meeting with our legal team, we have decided to release the following disclaimer.

"The views and opinions expressed on scottbarger.com are strickly those held by our contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinons held by Scott Barger. Scott Barger is not responsible for items prepared and submitted by contributors to scottbarger.com. Scott Barger disclaims responsiblity for any theological abhorrences contained within these contributions, including those due to negligence."

Remember, Scott Barger is your firend and he really does love you. Really.

A Christian or an Atheist?

I had the opportunity to help out over at the A Christian and an Atheist podcast today. The topic: “Why is Scott Barger Still a Christian?” An interesting question. It seems I have significant doubts about many Christian doctrines these days and Emery was wondering why I am hanging on to something I consider to be so riddled with flaws.

It made for an interesting discussion, I thought, as I tried to justify why I believe what I believe when there are so many things I’m not sure I understand. If any of my loyal readership is interested you can search for the podcast on iTunes, or at achristianandanatheist.com

The Buzz

Today’s buzz-word is “emergence.” It’s all the rave. In the same way that “seeker sensitive” and “contemporary” were the catch phrases du jour in the 90’s, the “emerging church” and all things “emerging” have become the talk of the town. There are quite a few books on my shelf that sport the term somewhere on their cover. Emerging this, emerging that. I half-envision the Fad King from Wag the Dog off with some Hollywood producer somewhere coming up with catchy slogans, jingles, and t-shirt ideas that could be pandered to the eager masses of hip, young, twenty-something’s who have described themselves as the “emerging church.”

I am not sure to do with all the hype. I like most of what I hear in the emerging church conversation, but I have experienced something of an aversion to the subtle messiah complex that seems to be dancing behind the scenes. It is almost like some emergents (this is a noun coined to describe those who consider themselves part of that which is emerging) see themselves as able to deliver orthodox theology from the grasps of the modern, post-enlightenment oppressors who have held it hostage for the last three hundred years.

That being said, I stumbled across a great web site called opensourcetheology.net. What they are attempting does resonate with me, and I will probably be more on board once I have quelled my initial misgivings about the emerging church conversation.

Please don’t label me as a stick-in-the-mud. My thirty-something mind just needs some time to figure out which end is up.

Once more into the abyss

It is not news to any of you who know me or read this blog that I tend to wrestle with many of the pillars of Christian Orthodoxy, or more accurately, many of the hang-ups of North American Evangelicalism. I tend to take nothing for granted, enjoy questioning the establishment, and love to disassemble theological systems. It is a kind of cathartic vandalism for me.

A while back I wrote about some of my concerns with the doctrine of hell, or at least how the doctrine has been formulated and applied in the context of North American Evangelicalism. If you look at it in terms of how much we talk about hell and how much we have taken our Modern incarnation of the concept and made it an integral part of our gospel message, you would have to conclude that it is one of our favorite doctrines. We simply love the idea of hell.

When I was growing up most of my Christian experience was in a fairly conservative, traditional, and theologically even-keeled church. We believed in hell, no doubt about it. We had a somewhat friendly relationship with a like minded church in town who was into hell even more than we were. They had this big mansion on their church property, an old house that would fit the part in just about every haunted house story I had ever heard. Every Halloween they would transform this mansion into a kind of Christianized haunted house.

The theme was usually the apocalyptic judgment and eternal punishment of sinners, those who didn’t love Jesus like we did. It was scary stuff. Rooms would be dedicated to portraying the hellish reality of abortion clinics, drug users, porn watchers, rapists, and alcoholics and how they were all bound for the undying flames of hell. The end result was a brutal assault on the psyche of every teenager who walked through the halls of that house every Halloween, an all out barrage of hellfire and brimstone that motivated even the most pagan of us to turn away from our evil ways and embrace the Jesus who promised not to torture us as long as we loved him enough.

It seems a bizarre tactic when you consider the message and mission of Jesus Christ. “Go out and make disciples,” he said, “ teach them to live the way I taught you to live.” The part about scaring the bejebus outta people must be a text variant that was lost in transmission.

“Money, it’s a hit...

Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.” So says Pink Floyd in their classic sarcasm-laden critique of materialism (the song appears on their “Dark Side of the Moon” album, which is coincidentally the fourth highest selling album in history…nice bit-o-irony there).

Funny thing is, this lyric is pretty much the mantra of my life. I spend most of MY money on MYself while simultaneously not giving a damn about the poor and oppressed that are living in squalor all over God’s green earth (hey, wait a minute, it is HIS earth, why doesn’t HE do something about it…oops he did, he created the Church and told her to get off her ass and care for the poor…my bad).

I was just thinking of all the money I made last year, and how much of it was spent on me and my family. We bought a car, rent a nice house, bought a new TV, go out to eat A LOT, new clothes, toys, toys, toys. I claim to be a follower of Jesus, but my checkbook says I am a follower of Scott. I spent almost 90% of my money on me last year. This year will probably be the same.

Super-size me, Jesus, make me bigger.

For me, one of the more devilish aspects of small church ministry is how often my lack of resources causes me to covet the resources of other churches. It is very difficult for me to read a book by a mega-church pastor, I usually only make it about two-thirds through the prologue before I start coveting that pastor's ministry.

It is almost impossible for me to watch a Rob Bell video the whole way through without coveting. Right about the time I hear the familiar "Noooo-ma" sound blurb at the beginning I start feeling a tightening in my gut, that all-too-familiar rumbling of steeple envy that I experience when I look at what Rob has (big church, national speaking ministry, hair) and wish it belonged to me instead. After all, I did win the preaching award in seminary.

This sinful thought cycle tends to get more intense whenever the church where I work encounters a financial crunch which, as luck would have it (or as God would have it, depending on your theological bias), is happening as I type. We are out of money. If we don't come up enough money this week, something won't be paid. I hope that this "something" won't be my pay check. That would not be good.

So I find myself constantly waging war against my steeple envy, telling myself over and over again that I am not in it to grow a mega church. However, if I was honest, I would have to admit that if the pharmaceutical companies came up with a pill that helped enlarge my steeple, I would buy it...in a New York minute.

I love my Jesus, mostly becasue he's mine.

I have been thinking a lot lately of the concept of Jesus as "personal savior."

I grew up in a context where a personal relationship with Jesus Christ was the primary focus of all evangelism and discipleship efforts. When we wanted to ask someone if they followed Jesus, we asked them if they had a "personal relationship" with him. This is the way we figured out whether or not they were going to hell.

I have difficulty with this approach to the "divine relationship" because it takes a very complex thing (human relationships) with transcendent implications (the God of the universe is involved) and makes it a simple binary mechanism. Do you or do you not have a personal relationship with Jesus?

What if you do one day, but don't the next? I mean, this seems to be the way most human relationships work, they are constantly in process, in a sate of flux. Sometimes they are good sometimes they are bad. They are very meaningful some days, and almost meaningless other days. Relationship undulations are a normal part of the human condition.

And then theres the reality that Jesus was/is much more than my personal savior. We forget that the biblical Jesus was a prophet, priest, king, rabbi, radical, Jew, and human. He is the Savior of the cosmos, the Redeemer of all that is. This is a magnificent reality that is almost ignored in our obsession with our own personal Jesus (queue the Depeche Mode riff). We have taken the Creator-God, the Redeemer of the Universe, and made him our "Buddy Christ."

Yay for us.

It’s not you, it’s me…well ok, it’s you.

I had a person approach me on Sunday to inform me that they were leaving our church. I am not sure I can recall the exact reason given, but I am fairly confident that it was some version of the reason I have been given many times before, “I kinda don’t like it here anymore.”

I have become more comfortable with the inevitable departure that accompanies change within a church community. Things change, people leave. To be honest, many people have left our church over the past two years. Fortunately they have been replaced by others. The problem with this kind of dramatic and accelerated turnover is that the more people leave, the more things change, and the more things change, the more people tend to leave. At last count almost 95% of our church family has left since I showed up a little over two years ago.

I must have slept through the “church growth” class in seminary.

Thankfully, I have a bunch of good friends in our church who assure me that God is working in our small group, and that this kind of “changing of the guard” is quite natural. I tend to agree with them. I just don’t like what has become of our concept of community. How can you go from being a committed member of a family to “you know, this just isn’t working out” without ever really trying to work through the situation?

I think one of the most painful things is when people compose a kind of “Dear John” letter to explain their grievances while they slip out the back door. When people leave because they don’t like something about our church, or agree with me, or whatever and never make an attempt to work it out, it shows me that they value comfort more than they value the relationship they have with me or the church. It is just too uncomfortable to stay or try to work it out.

It makes me wonder if people are excluding themselves from the kind of relationships made possible by working through tough issues with your church family. I guess they’ll never know.

What the Hell?

It's St. Valentine's Day, which means that I am in my office thinking about eternal punishment. Not that I think being married is equivalent to damnation, not at all. It's just that sarcasm and melancholy are like love languages to me.

I have been thinking a lot about hell over the past few weeks. I have been wondering why I believe in a place called "hell," a place where all those who don't love Jesus go to be tortured by the God who "so loved the world." It seems a strange doctrine to me. Sorry, but it does.

I also wander why the concept of hell has been elevated to such prominence in the modern day evangelical message. We have made hell one of the most significant pillars of the Gospel message. We run around telling people that the key to eternal bliss is to have a "personal relationship with Jesus." The consequences for not beleiving in that relationship, or not accepting it, or not understanding it, or having never heard about it is to be burned alive for all of eternity in a lake of fire. What does that make Jesus? It makes him sound like he isn't so much a savior as he is an abusive bully.

"Love me, or else."

Now there's some good news that'll get 'em running down the isle at our next revival service. Amen, brother. Amen.

Riddle me this, Batman...

I tend to to reject the idea of "the Bible is my Answer Book." True, I believe the Bible offers many answers, but not ALL answers. It never even claims to be the Answer Book. This is what it claims:

"You, however, must continue in the things you have learned and are confident about. You know who taught you and how from infancy you have known the holy writings, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 3:17 that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:14-17 (The NET Bible)

In a nutshell, the Bible claims to be two things: 1) God-powered or inspired by God; 2) useful for teaching, training, etc. The ultimate purpose for the Bible's God-empowerment and usefulness is to help the person dedicated to God live a good life. I think the Bible can be these things (inspired and useful) and accomplish this purpose (equipping people to live good lives) and not offer answers to every question.

If you think about it, it is somewhat narcissistic to demand that the Bible offer up answers to all my questions. I think it is naive for Christians to claim that it can do so. If anything the Bible answers SOME questions, helps us cope with ambivalence and mystery, and gives us the raw material necessary to live good lives in an ever-changing world.

Goodness Gracious

Here is a post that I contributed to a discussion over at achristianandanatheist.com. I thought I would share it here as well...

I have been thinking about the "God is good" thing and have formulated some thoughts, nothing earth-shattering, just observations.

First, it seems to me that goodness is not transcendent, meaning, it is not something that exists outside our reality and is self-sufficient or self-defined. Human context defines goodness. Moral goodness is culturally defined, as is aesthetic goodness (beauty), etc. To a large extent our cultures have told us what is good or bad (it's good to help the elderly, bad to kick your dog), beautiful or ugly (it is beautiful to be slender, ugly to be obese), and so on. Now there are certainly people who deviate from these culturally derived ideals, but most people do not. For most of us we have come to accept a culturally derived system of goodness.

Second, since cultures vary widely, the concept of goodness will also vary. What is good for me may be bad for you (I like Pink Floyd, you do not). Broadening the cultural context a bit, what may be good in my home state of Pennsylvania (sour kraut, scrapple, and polish sausage) may be distasteful to someone from the south. To a larger extent what may be good in the USA (savings accounts and retirement plans) may be seen as immoral in other countries (people from Central Africa Republic would view such behavior as greedy).

Third, since our culture is very different from the culture of the biblical world, we would expect our concepts of goodness to vary to a certain degree, and they do (dietary laws, how women should dress, etc.)

Fourth, there is a kind of "continuity of goodness" that actually does transcend cultural differences. This continuity is probably impossible to see at the micro level (what kind of music I prefer, or how I dress) but easier to see at the macro level (generally speaking, it is good to care for your family, children, the poor, etc.)

Fifth, and this is pure speculation, what if this broader concept of goodness is a mark of the divine? If we encountered a being who was generous, helpful, loving, sacrificial, beautiful, etc. is it possible that such a being would appeal to this continuity of goodness and be viewed as good by many people across many cultures?

What if redemption wasn't as much about fixing our sin as enlightening our perception of goodness?

Male Pattern Baldness

Not all churches can be sexy.

I was sitting in my pastor’s office for a meeting of the minds. I was a part time youth pastor at the church where I grew up, my pastor had just come on board after the untimely demise (figuratively speaking) of his predecessor. We were having a meeting with his son, who was an up and coming pastor within our denomination. A rising star., to be sure.

I am not sure what we were meeting about, I think it was to plan an event, or develop a new strategy, or mission statement, or purpose statement, or value statement. Whatever. The thing I do remember is the advice that the rising star had for the two of us in the room who were something less than star material. This is what he said, “It is important to do things with excellence. Whatever you do for Jesus should be excellent.”

Good advice. Do things well, no, do them excellently. Jesus is our Savior, he deserves the best we have to offer, no short-changing the Son of Man, to do so would not be theologically prudent.

I have come to realize that the star’s advice was a bit off kilter, primarily because what he meant by the word “excellence” was something that we could never achieve, and what we meant by the word “excellence” was a bit second rate in his eyes. You’ve got to understand, our church had no digital projector, no praise and worship band, no drums or guitars. Our auditorium was a bit bland, our lighting was bad, our building a bit musty. Our budget was tight, our congregation timid, and our leaders were tired. Excellence for us meant paying our bills, anything else was a bonus.

Since that meeting I have encountered the idea of excellence in many different ways and in different places. There are churchasaurs out there who are excellent examples of excellence. What they do they do very well, and they will tell you so. They write books promoting the idea of excellence in ministry. They will talk about the importance of excellent visuals, making an excellent first impression, excellently exceeding expectations, excellent atmosphere in our facilities and so on. Excellence is a prized commodity within the context of expanding churchasaurism.

In my mind they are talking about giving our churches a bit of sex appeal. Not in a bad way, but in a utilitarian way. Sex appeal motivates people, it works. Our culture values sex appeal, or more accurately the appearance of sex appeal. We seek it out in our cars, our spouses, and our houses. The later of which is an excellent example of valuing the appearance of sex appeal, especially when you look at current building trends in newer developments across our country. They build these houses that look like brick houses from the front, but on the less visible sides of the house they use vinyl siding because it’s less expensive. It’s not really a brick house, it just looks like one from the right angle. Like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is dating the girl who is either really attractive or really unattractive depending on the lighting. People seem to be motivated by sex appeal. And savvy, culturally relevant churchasaurs know that they can capitalize on this value.

The problem is, not all churches can be sexy. Moreover, some churches shouldn’t even try. Now, some are very sexy that’s for sure, they are the pin up models in the gas station of American Christianity. But many of us more closely resemble the slack-trousered and greasy-handed mechanic who works there. We can try to be sexier, but we are likely genetically predisposed to embarrassing failure in this arena. We just don’t have the raw material to be sexy. Blame your shortcomings on God, if you must, after all he’s the one who gave you the frumpiness genes, the male pattern baldness. Blame him if you want to, shake your fist at heaven in pimply faced defiance if you think it will help you feel better. It might, actually, but it probably won’t make you any sexier.

Or you can try to appear sexier. Buy a toupee or a sports car, join the Hair Club for Men and dress like a twenty something. That’s what many churches do. We try to be a sexy church, we have been told that we should try, God deserves excellence and apparently isn’t all that in to wallflowers. So we get a new hairstyle that distracts the casual observer from our bald spot. We buy worship presentation software, or a drum kit, maybe start showing videos. We try drama, or guitar solos, more flash, more bang, more pizzazz. We start calling our bulletins “programs” and start wearing jeans when we preach.

It’s seems sad to me, to try to be something you’re not. I’m not talking about improvement, I am talking about being convinced that you ought to become something you’re not, because what you are isn’t good enough. It’s fake to me, inauthentic. And here’s the good news, some women like bald men. Some people like small, frumpy churches. If you try to appear sexier than what you are, you will come off as inauthentic, like you’re having some clichéd mid-life crisis. Be what you are.

Dangerous Waters

The following is a little article I wrote about a year ago and posted on another website, it is part of a writing project I am currently working on that has to do with the difficulties of small church ministry. I thought it was interesting, maybe you will too...

Warsaw, Indiana is a vicious little pond for those of us who eek out livings as small fish. It is hard to compete with the polished and well funded churches that lumber about our neck of the woods. I know we’re not supposed to compete; we are all on the same team, serving the same Master, fighting the same fight. But the reality is that we do compete, and while we’re technically on the same team, we are still jockeying for the coveted positions on the starting line up. Some of us are the star quarterbacks, others the heavy-lifting linesmen, others still the inconsequential water boys scurrying about the sidelines passing out libation and trying not to get squashed.

Added to this friendly competition is the fact that the resource pool is rather limited in communities like ours, regardless of what we preach about God’s relationship to the cattle on a thousand hills. There seems to be a finite supply of giving units out there and we need a certain number of them to survive as a church. It takes resources to sustain a local church, all kinds of resources; money, energy, time, vision, spiritual maturity, etc. If a church doesn’t have enough resources it is impossible to grow, or even survive.

I am well acquainted with the frustrating task of resource management within small church ministry, especially in terms of money. Fiscal triage is a weekly occurrence in our ministry, as we wait nervously for the giving report from the previous Sunday, our minds fluttering around the uncomfortable questions of which must-have items will be axed this week. Will we have enough for the mortgage? The electric bill? Will I get paid?

The cold, unflinching reality of church resource management is that people bring the resources. They bring the money. They bring the talent, the vision, and the muscle. Without people, there will be no resources. Without resources, my church will dissolve. Without my church, I will lose my job. Talk about pressure. If a pastor claims to be unmotivated by the numbers, he is lying, delusional, or independently wealthy.

Interestingly enough, the statement “I’m not doing it for the numbers” has often been offered as a kind of half hearted rationalization for something we don’t like about our church. Big church pastors will use the statement to assuage the guilt they feel for having siphoned off hundreds of people from other, less relevant churches in the same community. “God brings the growth,” they argue, “I’m not in it for the numbers.” At the same time pastors of small, struggling churches will excuse their lack of growth by claiming that they “weren’t in it for the numbers in the first place.” Let’s face it, we are all in it for the numbers, to some degree or another.

The importance of these numbers can make it brutally difficult to look favorably on the efforts of burgeoning churches in your community, the ones with the meteoric spike in weekly attendance…especially when you are losing families to that very same church. What are we supposed to say as yet another resource-holder leaves our church and upgrades to Church XXL? “Congratulations on the promotion”?

Hardly.

If you are like me, you probably wish them well to their faces but secretly curse them behind closed doors, all the while sitting in your cluttered office with no running water, wondering what it’s like to be a pastor of a mega-church, a church with the “right kinds of problems.”

As I write this our church is about five families away from financial viability. I say this because in our community five families translate to about $25,000 a year in giving, which is the amount we need to not only meet our budget, but also make some necessary upgrades to our facility. The leaders in our church feel that our current congregation is giving generously and probably cannot be asked to give more. This means that if we don’t get five more families in the next couple months, we will not be able to maintain our facilities and we will also need to slash certain budget items.

The darker side to all this is that we have lost more than five families over the last couple of years to our local Churchasaurus. In my position, it is hard not to view that church as an adversary. They have plundered our little village, albeit unintentionally, and stolen our resources. Since we presently lack the resources needed to provide the kinds of services the savvy church consumer demands, we must rely entirely on “outreach” if we hope to grow. Of course, we have no money for that, either.

This is one of the most frustrating struggles of small church ministry, fighting for survival, not against Satan and his dark hordes, but against the well groomed, white toothed Pastor of the amply resourced juggernaut we affectionately call the “mega-church.” It is a battle for the resource-holders, the people who can give of their time, energy, and finances to our ministries. They have ‘em, and we often don’t. If we don’t get ‘em, we simply will not survive.

If the past decade of the resource battle between our church and the local Churchasaurus were immortalized in film, I imagine it would it would be a kind of macabre and less than inspiring version of Rocky III. They would be Clubber Lang, and we would be, well, not Rocky Balboa, but probably his trainer, Mickey. It’s round three, Clubber has hardly broken a sweat pummeling us in to oblivion and we are wondering why our legs feel so funny as we fight the irresistible urge to walk in to the light. “It’s sooooo beautiful!” Yes, it has been that bad.

I will often pull myself up by the bootstraps and try to take a more positive course of action, be proactive in the struggle for ministerial significance, do what it takes to attract the kinds of resource-holders my small congregation needs. I’ll buy up an armful of books by the who’s who in local church ministry. A book by Hybels, a couple by Stanley, oh and here’s one by Rob Bell, he’s hip, and a bit younger than me, but I could pull it off, I know I could. I am a dead ringer for Mr. Bell, really, except for my pasty complexion, lumpy frame and male pattern baldness, of course.

The problem with these books is they are all written with a certain set of presuppositions, assumptions about reality that don’t always hold true for the small church. The assumption that we have discretionary money, for example. It is rare that I read a book by a Churchasaurus pastor who addresses the resource gap between their existence and my own. When they do it is usually a limp acknowledgement of churches on my side of the fence, “…and this is an idea that you can do on a small budget” they claim, not realizing that churches like mine have no expendable monies at hand. At all. Period. At the end of each month there is nothing left over to try any idea that costs more than what I can dig out of my couch (which is typically about $2.73, after tithing).

This resource gap is the catalyst for the angst that many pastors like myself experience when coping with the ferociously bleak paradigm of big church versus small church. The big churches have the resources, the small churches don’t. The big churches are able to impact large numbers of people, the small churches are not. The big churches have significance, the small churches are, well, not-so-significant.

Ah, significance. The American dream is really all about significance. It is about achieving, accomplishment. I know it is not entirely true from the vantage point of a Christ-follower. After all, we ought to have a more eternal perspective, a more sanctified paradigm for evaluating the significance of our lives. But blood runs thicker than spirit, and I am an American by blood, my DNA predisposes me to the angst of anticipating the birth pangs of my inevitable mid-life crisis. It will most likely be a dark, dark day when I finally make my peace with ministerial insignificance.

A C and an A

So I am getting ready to do a podcast with a complete stranger. The podcast is called "A Chrstian and an Atheist" and you can check it out over at, well, achristianandanatheist.com, they have a discussion forum and everything.

It is an interesting idea, purposefully throwing theists and atheist into a room and asking them not only to discuss their ideas about God, but not to pummel each other in the process. Disagree but get along. What a novel approach to civility.

Anyway, I hope you check out the site, I have and am enjoying the dialog so far.

Blooooooog

So I'm back, for those of you who have been reading, my commitment to blogging as been waning in the last few months. Small church ministry has a way of throwing unexpected little “surprises” at you every now and again. Long story short…I had neither the time and the energy to tippity-tap on my keyboard over the last two months. Such is life.

But now I am back with a healthy dose of vim and vigor as well as a new perspective on blogging. What is that perspective? Well, I used to blog for therapy. You know, exorcise my demons in cyberspace. A kind of private conversation with myself, with only the random, unknown person ever reading what I typed.

But apparently there are quite a few people who read what I write, and want to read more. They actually care about what I say. I had one person tell me that he learns from me on a regular basis. Imagine that…someone learning from me. This is a new experience for me, one that I am trying to handle gracefully. It just blows my mind that I would actually be able to influence the spiritual lives of other people.

That is why I am blogging again, not as much for therapy (though I think I still need a bunch), but for other people. Maybe you will be one of them.

But I doubt it.