So, the guitarist for the band Korn has become a Christian. Very cool. But now he wants to make "Christian" clothes and stuff that's cool, because there's not a lot of cool Christian stuff out there. Hmm. I'm not too cool with Christian-cool. Sounds hokey. Sounds wannabe. Sounds irrelevant in the name of relevance.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1498045/20050311/story.jhtml
See also Head's website:
headtochrist.com
Lord, save us from hip and make us real. Save us from cool and make us alive. Save us from relevant and make us relational. Save us from Christian consumerism and sink us into Christian community.
Help us to stop snuggling with the world for our own sakes and get back to smuggling the gospel into the world for its sake.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
It's not about Me (it's about Us)
In the original stage play of The Sound of Music there’s a song that didn’t make it into more famous movie. It’s sung by Max (the family friend who arranges for the Von Trapp’s to sing in the festival at the end of the movie) and it’s a song of unabashed egotism. Part of it goes like this:
Every star and every whirling planet
Every constellation in the sky
Revolves around the center of the universe
A lovely thing called “I”
In other words, I am the center of the universe. My universe. If things don’t please royal Me, I’ll have nothing to do with them. If I’m not enriched in some way by you or God or church or the government or my next door neighbor or whatever, I reserve the right to turn my back, opt out, and do my own thing elsewhere. This is the essence of what many have come to call our “consumerist culture” in America. Everything is about Me.
But what happens when these divine, self-absorbed Me’s collide with each other?
A t-shirt I saw recently highlighted the clash: “It’s not you. It’s Me!” There can only be one center of the universe, and let me set you straight, you’re not it ... I am. But that only accentuates the clash of self-divine personalities, doesn’t it?
There’s an often-forgotten problem with placing myself at the center of the universe: It’s lonely. When everything is about me and I’m in the middle, I’m all alone. I will gladly have you around when you act how I want you to, but the only thing that ties us together is my good pleasure. When everything in my life is an opt-in/opt-out option—marriages, schools, worship services, jobs, friendships, prayer, whatever—the only one left over is me. I am a universe to myself.
But whenever I reduce it all to “me,” the “me” that I reduce it to is itself reduced. The less connected I am to others, the more adrift I am.
Christians refuse to think of ourselves as the center of the universe. I do not stand alone in the middle of things that revolve around me. No. God is at the center of all things. But even at the center of all things, God is not alone. As Christians, we believe that God is Trinity. So, at the center is not the biggest Ego of all, the biggest Me of all. At the center is God-in-relationship. At the center is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loving, serving, enjoying, giving, submitting, praying, making, saving, playing, sanctifying with each other, for each other, to each other.
At the center of all things is not a Me. It’s an Us.
As Christians in church communities, we need to get us-ness into our very bones. We need it to shape the way we talk and eat and work and worship and spend our money. We need it to shape absolutely everything about who we are! Nothing we do is ever really private; it is always done in the context of relationships, even when it’s done when we’re by ourselves, because we are always connected to others. Recognizing and honoring and growing on those connections is essential to our health as persons and as a community.
How would Sunday morning worship change if you realized that you are truly connected to the others gathered with you? That worship isn’t something that you do for yourself (and, heaven’s, it’s certainly not about something so ego-driven as “centering yourself”!), but something you do for you-and-God and you-and-the-community, for us?
How would things change if the actually existence of the church wasn’t for our own sakes, but for the sake of God and the larger local community?
How would your money-spending change if you knew that your bank account doesn’t belong to you alone, but to God and to the others you share this world with?
What if your car wasn’t yours alone? Your phone? Your television? The food on your table? (I just noticed that I wasn’t able to keep away from using the word “your” with each of those things. Me-ness is so ingrained in who we are.)
We belong to God. And we belong to each other. Our church belongs to God. And it exists for the sake of the local community. If we get that inside of ourselves, we will become a truly missional people, a people who actively extend the love of God to one another and our city in both word and deed.
Every star and every whirling planet
Every constellation in the sky
Revolves around the center of the universe
A lovely thing called “I”
In other words, I am the center of the universe. My universe. If things don’t please royal Me, I’ll have nothing to do with them. If I’m not enriched in some way by you or God or church or the government or my next door neighbor or whatever, I reserve the right to turn my back, opt out, and do my own thing elsewhere. This is the essence of what many have come to call our “consumerist culture” in America. Everything is about Me.
But what happens when these divine, self-absorbed Me’s collide with each other?
A t-shirt I saw recently highlighted the clash: “It’s not you. It’s Me!” There can only be one center of the universe, and let me set you straight, you’re not it ... I am. But that only accentuates the clash of self-divine personalities, doesn’t it?
There’s an often-forgotten problem with placing myself at the center of the universe: It’s lonely. When everything is about me and I’m in the middle, I’m all alone. I will gladly have you around when you act how I want you to, but the only thing that ties us together is my good pleasure. When everything in my life is an opt-in/opt-out option—marriages, schools, worship services, jobs, friendships, prayer, whatever—the only one left over is me. I am a universe to myself.
But whenever I reduce it all to “me,” the “me” that I reduce it to is itself reduced. The less connected I am to others, the more adrift I am.
Christians refuse to think of ourselves as the center of the universe. I do not stand alone in the middle of things that revolve around me. No. God is at the center of all things. But even at the center of all things, God is not alone. As Christians, we believe that God is Trinity. So, at the center is not the biggest Ego of all, the biggest Me of all. At the center is God-in-relationship. At the center is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loving, serving, enjoying, giving, submitting, praying, making, saving, playing, sanctifying with each other, for each other, to each other.
At the center of all things is not a Me. It’s an Us.
As Christians in church communities, we need to get us-ness into our very bones. We need it to shape the way we talk and eat and work and worship and spend our money. We need it to shape absolutely everything about who we are! Nothing we do is ever really private; it is always done in the context of relationships, even when it’s done when we’re by ourselves, because we are always connected to others. Recognizing and honoring and growing on those connections is essential to our health as persons and as a community.
How would Sunday morning worship change if you realized that you are truly connected to the others gathered with you? That worship isn’t something that you do for yourself (and, heaven’s, it’s certainly not about something so ego-driven as “centering yourself”!), but something you do for you-and-God and you-and-the-community, for us?
How would things change if the actually existence of the church wasn’t for our own sakes, but for the sake of God and the larger local community?
How would your money-spending change if you knew that your bank account doesn’t belong to you alone, but to God and to the others you share this world with?
What if your car wasn’t yours alone? Your phone? Your television? The food on your table? (I just noticed that I wasn’t able to keep away from using the word “your” with each of those things. Me-ness is so ingrained in who we are.)
We belong to God. And we belong to each other. Our church belongs to God. And it exists for the sake of the local community. If we get that inside of ourselves, we will become a truly missional people, a people who actively extend the love of God to one another and our city in both word and deed.
God's smuggler
I came across the following quote by movie director Danny Boyle at http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/dannyboyle.html:
"... you've got to be, like Scorsese says, 'cunning.' You've got to smuggle good ideas into something that attracts that person to the Friday or Saturday night film. That way they get a bigger kick out of it than they do from those films you're talking about. That's the job. It's not like you've got to ban the bad films. You've just got to make better films more entertaining."
Danny Boyle (Danny Boy? Hmm) is referring to all of the junk movies that are tossed out there all the time. And he says that they're OK because they give people who need a laugh to make it through the day something to laugh at. Because people will always need to be entertained, those movies will always be around. But we need to "smuggle good ideas into something that attracts" as well.
It makes me wonder if this has something to do with the proclamation of the gospel.
Part of me says, "Absolutely!" and another part says, "Never!" Is this compromise or is it, in the words of Eugene Peterson, "telling it slant," telling the gospel in a way that it doesn't get rejected out of hand but gets inside of people by being "smuggled" around their barriers?
There is a time and a place for direct speech. Sermons are those (though not always, since people need to have ideas "smuggled" into them in sermons as well). In our info-glut society, there's a need for speech that is recognizably true and to the point. But there's also a need for speech that it parable-like, that sneaks its way into us by not activating our defense shields. And in our info-glut, we've got pretty good at activating those shields.
So, actually, I think that Boyle's comment is almost always true, but with occasional exceptions. We've got to be God's smugglers, importing the gospel into people's lives without their even knowing it.
"... you've got to be, like Scorsese says, 'cunning.' You've got to smuggle good ideas into something that attracts that person to the Friday or Saturday night film. That way they get a bigger kick out of it than they do from those films you're talking about. That's the job. It's not like you've got to ban the bad films. You've just got to make better films more entertaining."
Danny Boyle (Danny Boy? Hmm) is referring to all of the junk movies that are tossed out there all the time. And he says that they're OK because they give people who need a laugh to make it through the day something to laugh at. Because people will always need to be entertained, those movies will always be around. But we need to "smuggle good ideas into something that attracts" as well.
It makes me wonder if this has something to do with the proclamation of the gospel.
Part of me says, "Absolutely!" and another part says, "Never!" Is this compromise or is it, in the words of Eugene Peterson, "telling it slant," telling the gospel in a way that it doesn't get rejected out of hand but gets inside of people by being "smuggled" around their barriers?
There is a time and a place for direct speech. Sermons are those (though not always, since people need to have ideas "smuggled" into them in sermons as well). In our info-glut society, there's a need for speech that is recognizably true and to the point. But there's also a need for speech that it parable-like, that sneaks its way into us by not activating our defense shields. And in our info-glut, we've got pretty good at activating those shields.
So, actually, I think that Boyle's comment is almost always true, but with occasional exceptions. We've got to be God's smugglers, importing the gospel into people's lives without their even knowing it.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
i Heart Huckabee's
I just watched "I Heart Huckabee's" last night and had it bouning around in my head all night. The basic idea is of a team of existential detectives who examine people's lives, which was quite hilarious. At the same time, it made me think about what I do as a pastor. I try to look at all sorts of pieces of people's lives in order to make them make sense, similar to these detectives. But instead of talking about a big sheet of existence that all of time and space are a part of, I talk about God.
The existentialists in the movie were a sort of twisted Trinity, with one member being more like the devil, tempting to sin and dispair and emphasizing brokenness over unity, and there being no real savior at all. Other than that, there was no God at all. In fact, Dustin Hoffman's character's emphasis on a single "sheet" of existence that includes all of time and space excludes any kind of a God other than an ambivalent panentheism (everything that is exists within God).
Probably the best performance of Mark Wahlberg's career to date.
The existentialists in the movie were a sort of twisted Trinity, with one member being more like the devil, tempting to sin and dispair and emphasizing brokenness over unity, and there being no real savior at all. Other than that, there was no God at all. In fact, Dustin Hoffman's character's emphasis on a single "sheet" of existence that includes all of time and space excludes any kind of a God other than an ambivalent panentheism (everything that is exists within God).
Probably the best performance of Mark Wahlberg's career to date.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Any error about creation
"Any error about creation also leads to an error about God." -Thomas Aquinas
If God is the Creator, then thinking badly about and acting badly toward his creation is directly related with thinking badly about him and acting badly toward him, for the Creator is related to the creation.
If we believe that the creation exists around us merely to be used by us, then might it not also be true that we live and act and pray and worship as if God exists merely to be used by us as well?
If we believe, as many ancients did, that the creation is a wild and chaotic and terrible and unknowable thing around us that we need flee from into our safe and orderly cities, might we also believe the same of God and likewise flee from him? By the way, it's not just the ancients who believed this. Most city-dweller do, too. How many city-dwellers spend real time in the wild? Mostly, time is spent in houses and on paved roads, those life-lines of civilization.
What other errors about creation are we currently making right now? How are they affecting the way we approach God?
If God is the Creator, then thinking badly about and acting badly toward his creation is directly related with thinking badly about him and acting badly toward him, for the Creator is related to the creation.
If we believe that the creation exists around us merely to be used by us, then might it not also be true that we live and act and pray and worship as if God exists merely to be used by us as well?
If we believe, as many ancients did, that the creation is a wild and chaotic and terrible and unknowable thing around us that we need flee from into our safe and orderly cities, might we also believe the same of God and likewise flee from him? By the way, it's not just the ancients who believed this. Most city-dweller do, too. How many city-dwellers spend real time in the wild? Mostly, time is spent in houses and on paved roads, those life-lines of civilization.
What other errors about creation are we currently making right now? How are they affecting the way we approach God?
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Is it OK to love myself?
St. Augustine's basic prayer with which he began his Confessions was "May I know Thee, O Lord, and also know myself." Dr. James Houston calls this the double-knowledge. He says that you can't know one without knowing the other. I don't really know myself unless I know God, and I don't really know God unless I know myself—both kinds of knowing are intertwined. I'd extrapolate from this that you can't love one without loving the other.
How can you love the one that loves you first unless you first know yourself as lovable?
One of the main problems I see today is the emphasis on "self-esteem," which has nothing to do with an accurate "self estimate." If we were to have an accurate self-estimate, we would see ourselves as sinners who are even so entirely lovable because we are loved by our heavenly Father. Instead, we opt for trying to think of ourselves as not-sinners. But since the evidence is very much to the contrary, we can't believe the real good stuff about ourselves. How can I be truly be lovable if I'm not the good person I try to think that I am? It doesn't work that way.
So, while our culture tries to love itself and fails, Christians try to think of themselves as above self-love.
It's reflected in our church slogans. So many of them say that what we're on about, in essence, is "Loving God. Loving People." Three churches I've come across this past week have that as their slogan. One church adds place to its love by adding the third phrase "Loving Corvallis" which is a good step forward. But none of them have the guts or even the inclination to put "Loving Ourselves." They'd probably think that that'd come across as narcissists instead of as honest Christians.
Our slogan at our church is "Meeting Jesus and Discovering Real Community, Real Worship, Real Life" -- the community part has to do with loving others; the worship part has to do with loving God; and the life part has to do with loving ourselves.
Is it true that we are loved by the Great Lover? If it is true, whatever we've done or not done, we are each entirely lovable because God in Christ has gone to the utmost in loving us. And that's something to build a life on.
How can you love the one that loves you first unless you first know yourself as lovable?
One of the main problems I see today is the emphasis on "self-esteem," which has nothing to do with an accurate "self estimate." If we were to have an accurate self-estimate, we would see ourselves as sinners who are even so entirely lovable because we are loved by our heavenly Father. Instead, we opt for trying to think of ourselves as not-sinners. But since the evidence is very much to the contrary, we can't believe the real good stuff about ourselves. How can I be truly be lovable if I'm not the good person I try to think that I am? It doesn't work that way.
So, while our culture tries to love itself and fails, Christians try to think of themselves as above self-love.
It's reflected in our church slogans. So many of them say that what we're on about, in essence, is "Loving God. Loving People." Three churches I've come across this past week have that as their slogan. One church adds place to its love by adding the third phrase "Loving Corvallis" which is a good step forward. But none of them have the guts or even the inclination to put "Loving Ourselves." They'd probably think that that'd come across as narcissists instead of as honest Christians.
Our slogan at our church is "Meeting Jesus and Discovering Real Community, Real Worship, Real Life" -- the community part has to do with loving others; the worship part has to do with loving God; and the life part has to do with loving ourselves.
Is it true that we are loved by the Great Lover? If it is true, whatever we've done or not done, we are each entirely lovable because God in Christ has gone to the utmost in loving us. And that's something to build a life on.
238 miles of abba
It took him more than five hours to drive to Chicago, during which time he listened to "Dancing Queen" by ABBA more than 100 times in a row, stopping only for gas and other essential duties. The monotony was life-draining. (See http://www.coudal.com/abbavideo.php)
Genesis 1 reminds us that God is first and foremost the Creator. He is always creative and always creating. Although he may do things similarly from time to time, he doesn't like to repeat himself.
In an review of Wilco's Grammy-winning album "A Ghost is Born" which had its mixed reviews (by people other than me; I think it's brilliant), one reviewer wrote these words: “All of this carping about Jeff Tweedy -- what he should do, or whether he is on the decline, or whatever, illustrates the essential difference between fans and, say, friends. How would you like it if a friend said, ‘You were much better before, why don't you try to be like you used to be?’ or ‘I like this part of you, please repeat it endlessly for the rest of your working life.’ Fans are like leeches when they demand an artist continue to please them, like Tweedy is an organ grinder’s monkey or something."
Don't we do that to God, too? We want God to reproduce the same thing over and over and over again. That's what our technological society does. Machines are good at doing the same thing over and over again. They're not creative. But we are. And as Dorothy Sayers writes in her book The Mind of the Maker that creativity in us is directly related to our being created in God's image. We're the creative image of the Creator.
So, what does that say about salvation in Jesus and sanctification (holy-making) in the Holy Spirit? They are both creative acts. Both are acts whereby God takes his broken creation and makes something more from it than there was even before it was broken. The cracks and jagged edges get worked into something new and different and beautiful. And it's never, ever the same. There are no copyrights on any of us creations for none of us could ever be copied. Monotony, repetition, assembly lines, cookie cutter -- none of them have anything to do with who God is. And that's why we find them so deadening.
Genesis 1 reminds us that God is first and foremost the Creator. He is always creative and always creating. Although he may do things similarly from time to time, he doesn't like to repeat himself.
In an review of Wilco's Grammy-winning album "A Ghost is Born" which had its mixed reviews (by people other than me; I think it's brilliant), one reviewer wrote these words: “All of this carping about Jeff Tweedy -- what he should do, or whether he is on the decline, or whatever, illustrates the essential difference between fans and, say, friends. How would you like it if a friend said, ‘You were much better before, why don't you try to be like you used to be?’ or ‘I like this part of you, please repeat it endlessly for the rest of your working life.’ Fans are like leeches when they demand an artist continue to please them, like Tweedy is an organ grinder’s monkey or something."
Don't we do that to God, too? We want God to reproduce the same thing over and over and over again. That's what our technological society does. Machines are good at doing the same thing over and over again. They're not creative. But we are. And as Dorothy Sayers writes in her book The Mind of the Maker that creativity in us is directly related to our being created in God's image. We're the creative image of the Creator.
So, what does that say about salvation in Jesus and sanctification (holy-making) in the Holy Spirit? They are both creative acts. Both are acts whereby God takes his broken creation and makes something more from it than there was even before it was broken. The cracks and jagged edges get worked into something new and different and beautiful. And it's never, ever the same. There are no copyrights on any of us creations for none of us could ever be copied. Monotony, repetition, assembly lines, cookie cutter -- none of them have anything to do with who God is. And that's why we find them so deadening.
What tools to use
As we consider what it means to be church, dynamically moving forward the plot of God's great story of redemption, one of the things we need to consider and reconsider over and over again is the question: Why do we do what we do? A similar question is: Why aren't we doing something else?
There are many good reasons why we do what we do. And "because we always have" isn't as bad an answer as it has been made out to be. There is something to be said for tradition, for continuing something that has had value for many years even if we don't percieve that value at this very moment in time. Sometimes, neither the baby nor the bathwater should be tossed.
At the same time, "because it's new" isn't as bad an answer as it has been made out to be, either. Newer doesn't always mean improved, despite the commercials. But it can mean that. In fact, there are plenty of times when things that we've been doing recently have been more transitional than lasting. Is anyone nostalgic for the way radiation was used to treat cancer 30 years ago compared to the way treatments are done today? Is anyone completely satisfied with the way treatments are done today? Hopefully, newer will be better with cancer treatments. But we may have some pretty painful ground to traverse in the meantime.
When it comes to worship, art, music, liturgy, preaching styles, architecture, and other trappings must be considered to be what they in fact are: tools. None of them is the goal of worship. They are all means toward a goal, a goal which has far more to do with God than with the tools we use to connect with him. But the tools we use shape the way we worship. There can be no question about that at all.
When it comes to mission, we also need to consider and reconsider the tools we use. But in both cases we need to make sure that we know what we're on about before we get too caught up in the acquisition and admiration of tools.
One of the guys I like who things pretty well about tools that are both new and ancient in the context of worship is Jonny Baker. His blog site is http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/.
There are many good reasons why we do what we do. And "because we always have" isn't as bad an answer as it has been made out to be. There is something to be said for tradition, for continuing something that has had value for many years even if we don't percieve that value at this very moment in time. Sometimes, neither the baby nor the bathwater should be tossed.
At the same time, "because it's new" isn't as bad an answer as it has been made out to be, either. Newer doesn't always mean improved, despite the commercials. But it can mean that. In fact, there are plenty of times when things that we've been doing recently have been more transitional than lasting. Is anyone nostalgic for the way radiation was used to treat cancer 30 years ago compared to the way treatments are done today? Is anyone completely satisfied with the way treatments are done today? Hopefully, newer will be better with cancer treatments. But we may have some pretty painful ground to traverse in the meantime.
When it comes to worship, art, music, liturgy, preaching styles, architecture, and other trappings must be considered to be what they in fact are: tools. None of them is the goal of worship. They are all means toward a goal, a goal which has far more to do with God than with the tools we use to connect with him. But the tools we use shape the way we worship. There can be no question about that at all.
When it comes to mission, we also need to consider and reconsider the tools we use. But in both cases we need to make sure that we know what we're on about before we get too caught up in the acquisition and admiration of tools.
One of the guys I like who things pretty well about tools that are both new and ancient in the context of worship is Jonny Baker. His blog site is http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/.
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