Look at these stats which I just came across in the Winter 2005 issue of Leadership Journal:
Total funds needed worldwide for unmet basic human needs—food, clean water, shelter, immunizations: $80 billion
Total if all U.S. church member increased giving to 10% of their income: $86 billion
I’m assuming that the $86 billion is in excess of the monies already gathered, meaning that we could take care of every human need on the planet just with monies raised by church-going Christians in the U.S.
If those numbers aren’t compelling, go to the website that Leadership Journal got the info from, emptytomb.org. It shows a count of the number of children around the world who have already died in 2005. The number was at 1,596,409 when I checked it at posting time.
Lord have mercy.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Got silence?
The fruit of silence is prayer;
The fruit of prayer is faith;
The fruit of faith is love;
The fruit of love is service;
The fruit of service is peace.
—Mother Theresa
These are the words that Mother Theresa had printed on her “business” card that she handed to people when they met her. There was no personal info on the card, just this. That tells me that not only did this sum up her approach to life, it summed up who she saw herself as a person.
The fruit of prayer is faith;
The fruit of faith is love;
The fruit of love is service;
The fruit of service is peace.
—Mother Theresa
These are the words that Mother Theresa had printed on her “business” card that she handed to people when they met her. There was no personal info on the card, just this. That tells me that not only did this sum up her approach to life, it summed up who she saw herself as a person.
Being the Church, Living the Kingdom
American Christians suffer from a terribly debilitating lack of imagination. And our eyesight it horribly shoddy, too.
Our imagination is poor because we have no picture in our minds, in our hearts of what God desires for us as individual Christians and as a church community. We simply take the salvation and forgiveness that is offered to us and go merrily on our way. But the image that Jesus painted (which is very similar to that painted by Moses and the prophets before him) was of the kingdom of God, of the reign of God in the world through transformed lives and a new way of living that transforms the world through the way we live.
Our eyesight is poor not because we can’t see what others are doing, but because we can’t see what we ourselves are doing. What would we see if we could see ourselves through the eyes of our dog or bank teller or next door neighbor or co-worker or fellow committee member or even of God himself? Does the idea of really seeing you as you actually are make you shiver? Should it?
Perhaps the first step toward an adequate imagination is better eyesight. In order to get anywhere, you first need to know where you are and where you’re going. Knowing where you are requires good eyesight, enabling you to see yourself as you really are; and knowing where you’re going requires good imagination (or “vision” as some people call it).
Sadly, whenever the pollsters examine the way that Christians live, they come up with devastating statistics. George Gallup talks about an “ethics gap—the difference between the way people think of themselves and the way they act.” Also responding to the data, Michael Horton says, “Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.”
Here’s some of the evidence against us:
• Only 8% of devout Christians tithe, with the more money we make resulting in smaller gifts.
• Annually, the average church member gives $20 to global outreach (social concerns and evangelism) but spends $164 on soft drinks and more than $1,000 on recreation. Meanwhile, more than a billion people worldwide survive on $1 a day.
• The most devout spend seven times as much time watching TV as we do praying, reading the Bible, and in worship.
• We still haven’t gotten over our racism, preferring not to have black neighbors.
• Our sexual practices are a mess, both before and during marriage.
There’s more. But I’m depressed enough already.
So, what’s to be done? If the promise of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit point to a whole new way of living that changes the way we act in the world, not just an individualized salvation, then something has to change. Otherwise, we’re frauds living a fraudulent faith.
Ron Sider makes some suggestions: “We need to recover the biblical truth that God is blazing holiness as well as overwhelming love. We need to recover the biblical teaching on the awfulness of sin and the necessity of repentance and sanctification. We need to turn away from American individualism and recover the New Testament understanding of mutual accountability. We need to bring all our people into small discipleship groups of genuine accountability so we can, as John Wesley said, ‘watch over one another in love.’ We need to rediscover the almost totally neglected biblical teaching on church discipline” (Ronald J. Sider, Prism, Jan-Feb 2004).
We need to make more than cosmetic changes to our churches and ourselves. I pray that the desire for transformation through the powerful love of Jesus will be a constant desire for ourselves, our churches, our cities, our country, our world. Then we will truly live the kingdom and be the church God dreams of. (This entry was inspired by a column by Ron Sider which can be found at: http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=174)
Our imagination is poor because we have no picture in our minds, in our hearts of what God desires for us as individual Christians and as a church community. We simply take the salvation and forgiveness that is offered to us and go merrily on our way. But the image that Jesus painted (which is very similar to that painted by Moses and the prophets before him) was of the kingdom of God, of the reign of God in the world through transformed lives and a new way of living that transforms the world through the way we live.
Our eyesight is poor not because we can’t see what others are doing, but because we can’t see what we ourselves are doing. What would we see if we could see ourselves through the eyes of our dog or bank teller or next door neighbor or co-worker or fellow committee member or even of God himself? Does the idea of really seeing you as you actually are make you shiver? Should it?
Perhaps the first step toward an adequate imagination is better eyesight. In order to get anywhere, you first need to know where you are and where you’re going. Knowing where you are requires good eyesight, enabling you to see yourself as you really are; and knowing where you’re going requires good imagination (or “vision” as some people call it).
Sadly, whenever the pollsters examine the way that Christians live, they come up with devastating statistics. George Gallup talks about an “ethics gap—the difference between the way people think of themselves and the way they act.” Also responding to the data, Michael Horton says, “Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.”
Here’s some of the evidence against us:
• Only 8% of devout Christians tithe, with the more money we make resulting in smaller gifts.
• Annually, the average church member gives $20 to global outreach (social concerns and evangelism) but spends $164 on soft drinks and more than $1,000 on recreation. Meanwhile, more than a billion people worldwide survive on $1 a day.
• The most devout spend seven times as much time watching TV as we do praying, reading the Bible, and in worship.
• We still haven’t gotten over our racism, preferring not to have black neighbors.
• Our sexual practices are a mess, both before and during marriage.
There’s more. But I’m depressed enough already.
So, what’s to be done? If the promise of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit point to a whole new way of living that changes the way we act in the world, not just an individualized salvation, then something has to change. Otherwise, we’re frauds living a fraudulent faith.
Ron Sider makes some suggestions: “We need to recover the biblical truth that God is blazing holiness as well as overwhelming love. We need to recover the biblical teaching on the awfulness of sin and the necessity of repentance and sanctification. We need to turn away from American individualism and recover the New Testament understanding of mutual accountability. We need to bring all our people into small discipleship groups of genuine accountability so we can, as John Wesley said, ‘watch over one another in love.’ We need to rediscover the almost totally neglected biblical teaching on church discipline” (Ronald J. Sider, Prism, Jan-Feb 2004).
We need to make more than cosmetic changes to our churches and ourselves. I pray that the desire for transformation through the powerful love of Jesus will be a constant desire for ourselves, our churches, our cities, our country, our world. Then we will truly live the kingdom and be the church God dreams of. (This entry was inspired by a column by Ron Sider which can be found at: http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=174)
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Lump
I just watched the newest Nooma video called Lump. Rob Bell has done another outstanding job, bringing together video and sermon. See Nooma.com and buy all ten videos!
Anyhow, in Lump, Bell's older boy gets caught, having stolen a little white ball. He runs upstairs and hides for two hours under the covers of his parents' bed, fearful and full of shame. When Bell goes upstairs, he uncovers the lump in the bed, holds him, and tells him that he'll never love him any less, no matter what he's done. Never.
Forgiveness is essential to living imago trinitas. It recognizes relationship is at the center of who God is and who we are as the image of the Trinity. It therefore recognizes that maintaining relational wholeness is the key to who we are. So, when sin breaks relationship, it's essential that we do what is necessary for reconciliation.
Anyhow, in Lump, Bell's older boy gets caught, having stolen a little white ball. He runs upstairs and hides for two hours under the covers of his parents' bed, fearful and full of shame. When Bell goes upstairs, he uncovers the lump in the bed, holds him, and tells him that he'll never love him any less, no matter what he's done. Never.
Forgiveness is essential to living imago trinitas. It recognizes relationship is at the center of who God is and who we are as the image of the Trinity. It therefore recognizes that maintaining relational wholeness is the key to who we are. So, when sin breaks relationship, it's essential that we do what is necessary for reconciliation.
Trading plastic for plastic?
I just got a brochure from Aquire the Fire, the pump-'em-up teen event that tours around the nation. Being event-based, it's just about as cookie-cutter as you can get. It's ironic, then, that their brochure says, "Don't you just hate plastic Christianity? So do we." It has a bobble-head Jesus in between the question and the claim that "so do we." But isn't this just a trading of one kind of plastic for another?
What is "imago trinitas"?
The Latin phrase "imago dei" means "image of God." It refers to all of the ramifications of being created as the image of God in the world. The Latin phrase "imago trinitas" means "image of the Trinity" and takes that idea of being created in the image of God and considers what it means to be created in the image of a God who is Trinity.
If God is Trinity, then there are some things about God that aren't true (e.g. God is not individualistic), because other things about God are in fact true (e.g. God always has existed and always will exist as Community). If these things are not true or true about God and we are created in the image of God, then they are correspondingly not true or true of us as well.
That is what I want to explore and would love to have you explore with me.
If God is Trinity, then there are some things about God that aren't true (e.g. God is not individualistic), because other things about God are in fact true (e.g. God always has existed and always will exist as Community). If these things are not true or true about God and we are created in the image of God, then they are correspondingly not true or true of us as well.
That is what I want to explore and would love to have you explore with me.
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