Head in the Heart

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart – intelligence and goodness – shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.

- Martin Luther King Jr.,
from Strength to Love, a collection of Dr. King's sermons.

God is slippery

One of the things the dawn of post-modernism is teaching us in the church is that truth is slippery; that although God has most certainly made himself known to us, He has not placed Himself in a neat, gift-wrapped box that we can take home and open on Christmas day. This is most certainly not what the incarnation is about. Remember Jesus only ever answered 2 direct questions in his time on earth.

This is not to say that there are no absolutes. This part of post-modernism cannot and should not be swallowed whole, but we do need to distance ourselves from the belief that complete knowledge of God is attainable instantaneously or at all. We won't get that kind of knowledge this side of the resurrection of all things. God is mysterious, He is bigger than any mind could contain. If you think you've got Him down then you've already missed Him. If there aren't any unanswered questions in your life then you don't have enough faith.

If truth can be read off the tin, as it were, I would suggest we are not discovering God but merely the projection we are most comfortable with. This is a challenge to the 'enlightened' and mainstream protestant tradition that I come from.

The Personal God as Holy Spirit

It matters that God as Holy Spirit is a personality rather than an object not merely for doctrinal reasons, but for practical ones too. In John 14 Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit with the personal pronoun and in doing so broke the rules of greek grammar - the 'spirit' in greek should be neuter - so it must matter!

When we treat the Spirit as an object we fall into some equal but opposite heresy. Either we fear the influence of the Holy Spirit or we concentrate too much on His benefits, loving the power instead of the Person. Both the fascination with the power of God in the charismatic church and the relegation of the Holy Spirit to less than God is in the conservative church are unhealthy and unbalanced. 

They arguably come from the same place too; a failure to recognise that the Holy Spirit is a Personality who is God Himself.

Interesting picture

Have a vision bigger than your life

I just read something which made me think about how I live my life. Here it is:

"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth." Hebrews 11.13

'These all' refers to people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah. In other words biblical heroes. These were people who acted on faith, which is here defined as the assurance of things unseen. What that means is that they lived their lives based on what they thought God was leading them into. They didn't know for sure but they followed their best instinct and relied on it for their lives. So often we describe faith as something we know, but it would seem that it actually has far more to do with what we don't know and how we live in that place of unknowing.

More than that though, these people had a big vision. In fact that vision for life was so big that none of them lived to see it happen. It says instead that they died 'not having received the things promised'. I live the majority of my life for such small things and with such small vision. How different it would be if I lived for something bigger than I could ever achieve within my lifetime. What would that something even be? I would certainly need a different perspective to even imagine it.

These people recognise in their lives more than their words that they are 'strangers and exiles in the earth'. That is to say that they're able to live for something bigger than themselves because they know that they were made for something bigger than they would ever be able to experience in their lifetime.

Jesus says that to live like this is to 'store up our treasure in heaven'.

War and Peace

"Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come"

Carl Sandburg

Fishermen

"Follow me and I will make you fish for people..."

Is this word given to Peter an absolute command or a personal one? In other words is Jesus saying something directly to us here or is this word uniquely tailored to Peter? I would venture to suggest we should be taking this as a direct command to us, a statement on the way things are, rather than just bait to get Peter on the hook (pun intended).

This means that if we follow Jesus we should naturally find ourselves fishing for people. We all fish in different waters of course, but we fish nonetheless. There are even different ways and means to fish. Some of us are deep sea fishers, others are restricted to rock pools. But we all fish. 

If we're not fishing in some way we must ask ourselves this question; how well are we following?

Barriers to faith

I have a hunch that the greatest barriers to faith are not what we think they are. From what you read in the press and hear in your churches you would think that sexual preference was the greatest barrier to knowing God in a transformative way. I happen to think that's a false assumption, one that Jesus would happily disabuse us of if we would allow him.

The greatest malaise towards God is to be found within the middle classes, who would prefer to consume than be transformed. This is my group so I know this by looking within myself. It's so hard for those of us with 'everything' to recognise our need for anything. But I would suggest we have become slaves to comfort and a misrepresentation of freedom. We think we are free but really we are more enslaved than ever.

I pray that God would set me free from the need to pursue comfort and security anywhere other than from Him. I encourage you to do the same.

Consumption

Consumption and discipleship don't mix. They're like oil and water. You can't get from one to the other. If you attend church to 'get fed', you will get sick. If you spend your time critiquing the 'worship experience' then you've missed the point. You've become a consumer. The tragedy is that the vast majority of the churches I have seen have been set up to point you in this direction. Why? Because they were set up by consumers who were happy to be the ones doing the feeding. That's the position of power after all. It's how I have spent almost all of my Christian life.

Jesus was the ultimate anti-consumer. He NEVER consumed in the way we do. Mark puts it this way.

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10.45)

If he didn't come to be served then why do we? Think of the way your church is physically arranged. I bet all the chairs point to the front where the experts put on the show. You may even be familiar with seeing their faces on the screen. Is this not a tragic symptom of consumerism gone mad? You come, get what you are given and then you leave. This format does not promote engagement with God or with the world. It's no surprise that the institution has grown fat, lazy and irrelevant.

Jesus calls us all to action, to a specific kind of action called service. This is where we recognise that church is not somewhere I go to receive, but the community I give myself away to. It's not a place I get fed but a group where I continually die for others.

Most churches aren't really serious about creating such communities - or at least they don't know how to - and so the quantity of people being discipled is at an all time low in both the UK and the USA. A new form is required, centred around service and a corporate expression of faith. 'More of the same' just won't work, neither will 'the same but better'.

Entrepreneurial spirit is required to re-birth the church and catapult it into the next generation. People need to be sought out and discipled where they are. The church as we know it may not survive for more than one generation, so we had better get finding some solutions, and fast.

Organisation or Transformation?

Organisation is OK, but it's not the goal of the Church that Jesus came to build. He set his life on transformation. I'm not even sure he gave much thought to how his band of merry men would be organised at the outset. In the gospel accounts it seems more like he just got on his way and collected people as he went. It's a beautifully uncomplicated way to live.

I'm not against organisation. I would rather have it than chaos, which I don't think is a particularly good thing, but I also see that there is no life in a clean stable. I'd rather have some mess around and lots of transformation going on. After all, transformed lives are what this is all about.

This perspective is a challenge to many churches, which pride themselves on excellence. Once again I think excellence is a wonderful value to aim for. We should seek to glorify God by doing our best in all things, but if we are squeezing out life as we do it we have utterly missed the point and we need to go back to square one again.

On Christ the solid rock I stand...

...all other ground in sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

One thing that moving to the USA is teaching Amy and me is that it is so easy to try and play the game of desperately scrambling for some identity, something to hide the nakedness with and cover up under. But the trick is to recognise that the only truly safe place to find who we are is in God and in who he says we are, rather than who the world would have us be.

For once I am not talking about theory but about practice. We're really doing this and it is so freeing.

MLK otra vez

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

Martin Luther King Jr...who else?

Conflict of interests

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."

Freya Stark - The Lycian Shor

Bob Dylan - To Ramona

Ramona, come closer,

Shut softly your watery eyes.

The pangs of your sadness

Shall pass as your senses will rise.

The flowers of the city

Though breathlike, get deathlike at times.

And there's no use in tryin'

T' deal with the dyin',

Though I cannot explain that in lines.

Your cracked country lips,

I still wish to kiss,

As to be under the strength of your skin.

Your magnetic movements

Still capture the minutes I'm in.

But it grieves my heart, love,

To see you tryin' to be a part of

A world that just don't exist.

It's all just a dream, babe,

A vacuum, a scheme, babe,

That sucks you into feelin' like this.

I can see that your head

Has been twisted and fed

By worthless foam from the mouth.

I can tell you are torn

Between stayin' and returnin'

On back to the South.

You've been fooled into thinking

That the finishin' end is at hand.

Yet there's no one to beat you,

No one t' defeat you,

'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad.

I've heard you say many times

That you're better 'n no one

And no one is better 'n you.

If you really believe that,

You know you got

Nothing to win and nothing to lose.

From fixtures and forces and friends,

Your sorrow does stem,

That hype you and type you,

Making you feel

That you must be exactly like them.

I'd forever talk to you,

But soon my words,

They would turn into a meaningless ring.

For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring.

Everything passes,
Everything changes,

Just do what you think you should do.

And someday maybe,

Who knows, baby,
I'll come and be cryin' to you.
Copyright ©1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music

Bring down the walls

"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

In the light of the above, I wonder why we maintain so many of the false boundaries we do. Questions such as 'can women serve in the church?' seem to me to be totally ignorant of the meaning of this passage. Here we are TOLD that now that we are in Christ Jesus, all the things that once made us distinct have been ameliorated. Our only identity is now in him. The self we once laid claim to has been crucified with him and he now lives in and through us.

So, women in leadership? Heck yes. Taking this issue specifically, I have heard it said that men are to be the leaders of the household/churches in the same way Christ is to be head of the Church. Yes, but in Christ leadership looks completely different. You want to lead like Jesus did? Then give your life up, be crucified, lay down your life for the others who have no life. Serve and don't look to be served. Can women lead in this way? I would suggest they are naturally better predisposed to it than men are!