Everybody hates liars. I have been spending a lot of time considering this point. What brought this idea to the forefront of my mind was a conversation I had recently. I mentioned to one of my non-christian friends some of the inconsistent action of my some of my Christian–specifically some of my friends in postions of leadership in the church. I had made my comment kind of off-hand and would not have thought much of it except the person I made the comment to became a bit exasperated and told me ”people like that were the reason she did not like church”. I realized at that point that I had made the comment to the wrong person, and should have been more careful with my words. It was this interaction that has had me thinking about the idea of hypocrisy for the last couple of weeks.
This is the conclusion I have come to. The problem with hypocrisy is not inconsistency. The problem with hypocrisy if the lie. You know the lie I’m referring to. Its the lie we all tell. It usually goes something like this “If they knew the real me, if they knew about my inconsistencies they wouldn’t ________ me”. You can fill in the blank with your own adjective: like, respect, admire, trust, etc… Perhaps what you tell yourself is you don’t want to let people know the truth about the inconsistencies of your life because they would think you a hypocrite. Yet I would submit that it is not the inconsistency that makes us a hypocrite its the lie. Somehow though I still convice myself that the best thing for everyone is the lie, the cover-up, the little thing that I do or say to make everyone believe I am as good as they think I am or better.
The reality is the lie is what ends up holding us back. We think the lie is the thing that will make sure we still look good but the lie is the thing that drives a wedge between me and you. It becomes an invisible barrier that never allows me to know you or you to know me and when that barrier falls–which it will–the wedge becomes an ocean too far to cross. Why? Because we all hate liars. The lie means you didn’t trust me and I can’t trust you. It makes true relationship impossible, and yet most of us do it.
The greatest thing about our faith is the one thing most of seem unable to accept. We no longer have to tell the lie–in fact telling the lie is not only a hinderance to our relationships with others it is also a hinderance to our faith. What we forget is the great heros of our faith are murderers ( Paul, David, Moses ), cheats ( Zaccheus, Issac, Matthew ), prostitutes ( Rahab, Mary), homeless (Jesus), prisoners (Paul), and all kinds of other social and religious outcasts. I think this is one of the great points ofthe Bible we often miss. God loves the underdog, He loves the outcast, but mostly he loves the honest–and here is the reality most people I have met are the same. We all love an underdog. We all appreciate an honest person. We find safety in honesty–who doesn’t want to feel safe?
Most of us do not mind that the people we know cannot live up to thier own high ideals. That is the reality of the human condition. I believe most of us believe the world and ourselves should be something that we are not. We believe in, or at least hope for something greater. Because without hope what is life? However, I know I fall short and you probably know you fall short. Until we drop the pretense and forget the lie we are stuck, we are hypocrites, lost, alone, far from faith and far from others. The challenge is to become honest. Become honest with ourselves, become honest with God, and become honest with others. Let the world know that we are fallen, broken, and inconsistent–even at the deepest levels. Most people will respect that, and we serve a God who has proven over and over again that he rewards that kind of honest–even in the face of the most heinous of sins. We serve a God that before he transforms the most henious of sinners forgives the most heinous of sinners. That plain and simple is the Gospel. Living honestly–not flawlessly–before God and man.
I often think about the relationship between truth and fact. I was raised with the belief that all things that were fact were truth, and all things that were truth were indeed fact.
Being raised in an excessively, obsessively Christian conservative home and church I was told that the Bible was truth, and that it was fact, cold, hard, fact.
We, or at least I, spent hours thinking of ways to defend the factuality of the scriptures. We had to defend against the secular humanism of the world, against the direct full frontal assault of evolution, and secular humanism on the things we held most dear.
The world in which I was raised was more extreme than that of most Christians I know, and living through that extreme has given me the gift/curse of seeing the evangelical world in caricature. Still though in every church and ministry I have been in I have seen the world painted in dichotomy, the Christians and the world.
In that dichotomization the battle lines are drawn and we as the Christians must defend ourselves against the world at any cost. We must fight against the liberals, the abortionist, the evolutionist, the secularist, the vileness of the world.
But, what if that is not the truth? What if the battle lines are not quite so clear? What if truth has less to do with fact than we have been led to believe? What if our enemies is not “the world”?
Is it possible that all of the “facts” that we hold so dear are indeed the real enemy? Is it possible that we, ourselves–the Christians–are our own greatest enemy?
I think to begin exploring this topic we must first ask ourselves what is fact? What is truth? Are they the same? Are they beautiful? Are they Gospel? What is “Gospel” anyways?
First fact, facts are those things which we can observe and prove. The only facts I know are those things which I have seen and experienced, and at times even those are suspect. My name is David Smith, I reside in New York, I own a 17 year old vehicle. All facts, and none of them tell you much about me.
The facts about me have very little to do with me. Most of the relevant facts of my life are fit on a drivers license. However, the truth about me could fill volumes, as could the truth about you.
To me this is the greatest thing we often miss as Christians. The beauty of our faith does not reside in a series of facts that we need to set out to prove the veracity of. The beauty or our faith lies in truth.
Truth unlike fact is a living, breathing, thing. It cannot be carved into stone, written on a piece of paper, or subsumed into a scientific principle. It can only be experienced, felt, lived, and struggled through.
The truth is like a great river sometimes calm and peaceful pulling us gently toward the ocean, sometimes a great torrent flinging us about, dragging us under and causing us to gasp for air as we struggle against its awesome power.
Let us cease our striving to prove the facts of our faith–for those are only data, cold, hard, and lifeless. Let us instead strive to live and experience the truth of our faith–a living, vibrant, and beautiful truth. For it has been my observation that I become like that which I pursue. When I find myself pursuing the facts I become cold, calculating and lifeless. When I pursue the truth I become a little more like the truth, alive and vibrant finding the beauty in the world and those around me.
Jesus’ greatest victory was in that moment yet he didn’t claim the victory, and I for one, am not brave enough to suggest the Father scolded Jesus later for his negativity and lack if faith. Or maybe the Father told Jesus He needed to understand the truth that if course he had not forsaken him. But somehow I don’t think so… The reality of that moment is that Jesus felt forsaken and rejected, and he expressed that feeling to the Father and to the world.
To borrow a term from Henri Nouwen Jesus is the wounded healer. Our challenge is to also become wounded healers. What does it mean to be a wounded healer? It means doing the hard work of being with others in their woundedness.
I think most of the time when we give someone one of the easy “Christian answers” its because we are scared. It’s scary to be with people in their hurt and woundedness. It makes us feel vulnerable and possibly reminds us of our own wounds. It makes us have to deal with one of the hard realities of life–sometimes life sucks. Sometimes we have to recognize the unredeemededness of the world around us. We have to recognize that we live in the not yet.
So much of the Christian life is recognizing the tension between the already and the not yet. Do we have victory in Jesus–yes, we do, however it is not yet complete. We live in the tension. The reality may not be realized in this life. As followers of Christ it is part of our call not to offer easy satisfying answers but to recognize the unredeemed not yets of the world and learn to become comfortable living in that tension.
Today, as I was driving around town I noticed something that struck me pretty hard. It was a large church—probably one of the largest in the area. In front of this church was a large flagpole and on that flagpole—much as one might might expect—was an American flag, and under that flag, maybe half the size of the American flag, was a Christian flag. It struck me hard because as I looked at it, it represented to me one of the fundamental problems with Christianity in America today.
It represents the we, those who call ourselves Christians, have sold our souls, and sold them cheaply. Here is what I mean. As a church we have sold our souls to the American dream and placed the dreams and plans of God as secondary, or tertiary—or worse.
Just like that flag in front of a church that boldly and largely displayed their patriotic pride, and colors, then placed underneath it and smaller was their secondary allegiance to Christ and Christianity so has the church gone. Now I realize that nobody at that church probably thought that through and if confronted with the idea most people there would likely deny it. However, that in my experience is the unfortunate reality of many of our churches.
Controversial folk singer/songwriter Derek Webb puts it like this “I am so easily satisfied, by the call of lovers so less wild, that I would take a little cash over Your very flesh and blood”. As a church I think that we have done just that. We have sold our souls to brick, mortar, cash, and temporal patriotism.
We like the people of Israel have found our Egypt and would rather live as slaves in the land of plenty than become free people in the far off land that God has promised us. I intentionally use the inclusive “we” and “us” because as I write this it requires not only the prophetic pointing of the finger but also, an act of repentance on my own part.
I write this after a day consumed with “getting” a day in which I spent most of my day working to make money then running off to buy “stuff” with the money I just made. Then at the end of it all I sit down to write a scathing critique of the system of which I spend much of, if not most of, my time gladly partaking in.
However, I do believe that it is time for us, all of those that call ourselves Christians to take a stand against the gods of patriotism, but more than that a stand for Christ and His Kingdom. A kingdom that if we recall is not of this world. A kingdom that does not need brick and mortar, but that does need patriots that will stand up and declare their allegiance to something other.
Men and women that will live their lives consumed by the calling and Kingdom of a risen savior. That will see beyond national, political, racial, socioeconomic, and gender boundaries to what could be. Women and men that will dare to dream, people that will dare to let Christ give them dreams and then chase those dreams with great and abiding ferocity.
God help me to be that kind of man.
Some not so random thoughts on the nature of church and Christian leadership.
- Leadership is peacemaking
- Leadership is about extending grace
- Leadership is about being connected to God
- Leadership has nothing to do with your agenda
- Leadership has everything to do with the Kingdom
- Leadership does not give you power over but responsibility to
- Leadership is in front of NOT above.
- Leadership is not about power but about serving
- you lead the charge when it comes to having radical life-changing faith, you don’t get to throw people to the wolves.
- Submission is not to ‘leaders’ but to God and one another.
- The hierarchically most high person is submitted to the least high person as much as anyone.
- Spiritual authority is just that–spiritual. It does not mean you get to flaunt your power over others.
- As a Christian leader you are not in charge, Christ is.
- It is not about you, its about people whom Christ Jesus Loves.
Its time for the church to begin to live as the church. It is time for the church to stand against the heresy of the absolute power of any institution, any person, or any theology. Jesus Christ is the only absolute authority. It is time for the true church of Jesus Christ to rise up and declare their allegiance–not to any institution or person–but to a King and a Kingdom. It is time to recognize why we exist–not to make converts–but to love people, to represent Christ to each other and the world. To forgive as Christ forgave, to love as Christ loved, to declare with Christ freedom to the captive and liberty to those who are oppressed, the good news to the poor, and sight to the blind.
It is time to let go of the theologies of man and cling with ferocity to the cross and Kingdom of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is time to allow God to be God, to allow for the great paradoxes on which our faith rests. To become comfortable outside of the confines of the scientific rationalism of modernity. To step away from the religion of our fathers to the faith of The Fathers. The faith of men like Paul, Peter, John, and Jesus. The faith of Thomas who looked at Jesus and in one breathless moment declared with absolute certainty “My Lord and My God!” who let that moment lead to a lifetime commitment to the risen Saviour.
Let us recognize our God, let God be God, of our churches, of our lives, of our relationships. Let us quit trying to force God on the world; live our lives before Him; let His power work through us; watch the world come to us as we submit ourselves to Him. For leadership, or conversion, with the edge of the sword, fear, guilt, shame, manipulation, or power does not glorify God but man; it doesn’t grow God’s kingdom but ours; it doesn’t bring healing, it doesn’t bring freedom, it brings a new kind of prison. Therefore, let us change, let us glorify the Father with our lives, and the love of Christ.
This weekend it occurred to me that the message we too often send about what it means to be a Christian is dangerously close to being heretical. I will leave it up to you to decide whether it is truly a heresy or something else…here is the message:
Say a simple prayer.
Show up at some kind of church on occasion.
Be a good American.
Go to heaven.
Do we truly believe that this is what Christ had in mind when he died a painful and humiliating death? Was this the message that all of the disciples of Jesus were tortured for, and most killed for? A simple safe religion that allows you to do whatever you want as long as it “looks nice” and fits the American ideal? Are 2.5 kids a 3 car garage and white picket fence Christs’ answer for your life? Or is there something more?
Today we are studying Latin American Theology, primarily Liberation Theology, and Dr. Siu mentions how in Latin America their focus is on orthopraxy, or correct practice of Christianity, while in Western cultures (the US and western Europe) we are concerned with Orthodoxy, correct belief. Both are problematic.
If we focus on Orthopraxis without orthodoxy then how do we know it is orthopraxy? I think that orthopraxy is that which flows out of orthodoxy, but this also is a problem. In the West we know what to believe, we logically assent to orthodox formulations of the nine major doctrines which make up our systematic theology. However, we tend to state them in such a way that logical assent is both the beginning and the end of our theology. “if you just believe in Christ you will be saved”. However, Christ called us not just to “believe” he called us to be like Him. In fact in the very early church we know that the “Christians” were not then known as Christians but as “followers of the way”, we find the first reference to “Christians” in Acts 11:26. While I do not have a problem with the term itself, and in fact love the term, there is a reality that is brought out byt using the term “follower of the way”.
We do not follow a system of beliefs only, we follow the God-man Christ Jesus. It is our goal to be like Him. It is and should be our goal to have orthopraxis as well as orthodoxy. It is the system of doctrines and beliefs which help us to understand and govern how we live but the ultimate goal is orthopraxis, which flows from our orthodoxy.
I am often critical of the church and of pastors, and I believe there is much to be critical of. However, I want to be clear that because I spend a lot of time thinking about how pastoral and church ministry should be done and am not afraid to espouse my views I do so not with a heart to stand and point the finger or condemn, but to call us to a better way, God’s way to the very best of my understanding.
I have been in ministry and have felt the burden of ministry, and at this point in my life I have the opportunity to stop and reflect on the mistakes and successes of those ministries and it is my hope that in my future ministries I do it better.
In the ministries in which I have worked I often found myself exhausted and yet the pace of ministry refused to slow down for me to find rest. This seemed a never ending problem and one that I often did not deal with well.
I think that one of the biggest issues for the minister is to try to be the superstar and take on everything. We take on so many burdens that I do not know Jesus ever intended us to take on. We are all familiar with Matthew 11:28-30 where Jesus tells “all who are weary and heavy laden” to come to Him. It is a favorite passage for Pastors and ministers to teach to others, but I would suggest that it may be one of the most important passages for the minister to take to heart.
Good ministers are often overcome with the great responsibility of their position. We take on the burdens of others and tend to be hard on ourselves for our failures and our fundamental inability to make people change. We feel the burden for the souls that have been placed under our care and want to represent the Word of God faithfully. The demands of ministry are seemingly never ending; truly the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. We often have a tendency to take this burden on truly believing we have to do everything, and in fact that may be the expectation of many of the people whom surround us.
When we as ministers feel that burden then maybe it is time for us to take pause and recognize that it is time for our souls to find rest in Jesus. Hand over the heavy burdens of ministry and allow Jesus to replace them with His burden which is light.
We “westerners” (the US and much of Europe) have spent a considerable amount of time in working out our theology we have built all of these very logical categories for theology. We have committed ourselves to the propagation of those categories such as harmatology, soteriology, anthropology, eschatology, etc… and while there is nothing wrong with those categories in general their is a tendency in the use of these very categorized logical theological concepts to become myopic and dogmatic in our understanding of God and our relationship with Him.
I think it is time not for so much a new theology but a larger theology. Our theology tends to answer lots of head questions about God, we should be answering heart questions. We talk about the soul in our theology and its salvation or damnation, but do we have a theology of soul care?? or is our soul only need to be saved, and not cared for? We talk about the church as a community in our ecclesiology but do we have a theology of community? We talk about salvation and Christianity and say that it is a relationship not religion, but do we have a theology of relationship?
It seems to me that not only are these questions that we need to answer but they may be the more important questions. It is time for us to build a theology that is bigger, one that informs the way we live on a daily basis. The Bible never gives categorized theological statements, it deals with the lives of the followers of God. It is God revealing himself to His people and answering questions about what I should do here and now. It is God interacting with His people, and through looking at that interaction He intends us to learn how to interact with Him and with each other.
Today I sat at lunch with Pastor Chris and his wife, and as we discussed ministry and Jesus and we poured out our desire, our passion even, to see people come into and grow in relationship with Jesus Christ it hit me. We are calling people into a love relationship we are wooing the world not to us, not to a church, not to a system of beliefs, but to a love relationship with the Creator of the world.
Five or six years ago I was part of a young adults ministry and we had this friend, we’ll call him Craig (I honestly don’t remember his real name). Craig was a well educated and very intelligent man in his early twenties and Craig was a staunch atheist. However, Craig was in desperate need of friends, and he knew it so through a mutual acquaintance he started coming to our young adults group. At first he would just come to events if we were going out to eat or to hang out at someones house but after some time of loving Craig and caring for him as a person, and not judging him Craig would even come to church services and even about half participate. Now I wish I could tell you that Craig fell madly in love with Jesus and is a pastor today-I can’t-I lost track of him several years ago and to my knowledge he is still an atheist. However, what I can tell you is this because we were willing to love Craig and not judge him he experienced a little bit of the love of Christ and I know that despite his objections to Christianity that when he walked away from that group Craig had something to consider. I know that a seed was planted and I think it was something like this “I still don’t know about this whole Christianity thing but these Christians are different, they actually care. I know that Craig walked away with something to think about and I hope that one day I will stand before Jesus side by side with Craig.
This love relationship with Jesus is not so different really than the relationship you may have with another person, except it is with the only true God. I always knew God was relational and I have always considered that relational aspect of life with God to be extremely important, but there was something new in this though that I think God brought to my mind, and it was this; If we are calling people into a love relationship the ONLY way to do that is in love. We must not attempt to guilt or shame people into relationship with Christ, we must not attempt to reason people into relationship with Christ we must love them the way that Christ loves so that they will fall deeply in Love with Him.
|
|
|
Recent Comments
Barbara Smith on Patriotism
I am so amazed by you. Thank you so much for sharing. You're a great writer.I love you and...Wendy Fang on Orthodoxy and Orthopraxry
Amen!