General

Where has Jesus Gone?

Jul 14th

The other day as I drove by a church I noticed one of the clever and witty signs that they love to put out front these days. It said something to the effect of “The Company You Keep Determines The Trouble You Reap“. At first glance, I thought “stupid but, sure, that makes sense”. About a second later it hit me like a ton of bricks: Didn’t the Pharisees say almost the exact same thing to Jesus, accusing him of hanging around with ’sinners’? Didn’t they demonize him and call him dirty and unGodly because of the company he kept?

The longer I think about who Jesus was and the harder I look at the Christianity that surrounds me here in America, the more I think the church is starting to look a whole lot more like the Pharisees than Christ.

When Did It Change?

I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m an anti-establishment soul. Red tape, processes, and administrative boards make me incredibly angry. So, maybe it’s this fact that causes me to view Jesus different than others might, but the more I look, the harder it is for me to believe that I’m seeing Him through a personal bias.

I’m just as tired as anyone of these “Radical Jesus” books and ministries and view points. There’s been a recent surge in pop-Christianity that has emphasized this Hippie Jesus, turning Him more and more into a drug-free Jim Morrison. So, don’t hear me supporting that movement with what I say here….but….

Jesus was a Radical. Jesus was anti-establishment. Jesus loved the unlovable and helped the untouchable. Jesus was angry with the traditions that prevented ‘regular people’ from worshiping God, and rejected the dogma of The Church at the time. Jesus derided the ‘personal improvement’ piety of the establishment and forgave those who were a miserable mess (telling them to simply be forgiven and go sin no more).

Where has this Jesus gone?

These days, I can’t pass by a church without hearing a message of self-improvement shouted from the pulpit. Many try and mask it by making them ’spiritual improvements’ or simply calling them something else. Improve your marriage. Improve your prayer life. Improve your financial situation. Improve your connections with people. Stop drinking. Stop doing drugs. Stop being gay. Stop having abortions. Stop voting for baby killers. Stop hating your job. Stop, basically, sucking at being human. You can be a good person. You can live up to our invisible standard. You can do it if you just stop sinning.

I hope we all understand how asinine that last paragraph really is. Because, guess what? We CAN’T stop sinning. We CAN’T improve ourselves. And we CAN’T be anything but a broken mess. All of us. Pastors. Homosexuals. Bible Teachers. Abortion Doctors. Small Group Leaders. Rapists. And everyone in between. We’re all broken and we’re all helpless…there’s nothing we can do to improve ourselves.

What does this mean? We need to stop thinking about ourselves so damn much. It’s not about us. Jesus made that clear. When he preached a message of “Lean on God because you can’t save yourself” that was pretty radical. That was pretty anti-establishment. Where has that message gone?

If I were a church

So, here’s the segment where I talk about how churches should change.

They need to start being honest with their messages. They need to honestly identify these sermons of self-help (which they call by many ’spiritual’ names) and jettison them.
They need to start preaching brokenness (see previous blog entry)
They need to start preaching the REAL Jesus. They need to stop preaching “suit and tie, Leave it to Beaver, become a better person” Christianity and start preaching “insane John the Baptist, congregating with sinners, knocking over tables in the temple, homeless, mystical, irrational loving, anti-establishment” Christianity. A Christianity that looks foolish because of it’s over abundance of grace, love, and trust, even when others don’t ‘deserve’ it.

But I’m not a Church. And I don’t want to be.

The problem is, I’m not a church. I’m not an institution. And I’m not going to get tangled up in the structure to try and change it. The structure IS the problem…we don’t know how to live as Christians outside of that structure. So, if I can’t/won’t change the structure, I’ll continue to chip away at it. Hopefully, as an archeologist does when uncovering history encased in rock, I’ll be able to destroy the rock without the treasure inside. Hopefully I’ll be able to slowly destroy the structure of American church while preserving the precious faith encased (and paralyzed) inside.

How?

The other day I saw a news report about The Tea Party Movement. (I’m going to offend people’s politics here, I’m sure, but…whatever.) They were described as a movement based on anger and backlash without any substance of their own. A politician (believe it or not) made a wise statement when he said “Anger is fine, but a government RUN by anger (if they were elected) is not a healthy thing”.

I immediately thought of my constant attack on the church. Are these blog posts and my frequent rants Tea-Party-esque in the sense that it’s a lot of anger without much substance? If I could actually change the structure, would I have any ideas based, not on anger, but on positive progress? If I could be a local church would I be more like the Radical Jesus or would I simply continue reacting negatively to the old ways that angered me so much?

I think it’s hard for me to answer because I see things more complicated than that. I think my solution would be to destroy the system completely and continue to work outside of it as an individual. The following of Christ shouldn’t be a systematic thing. If there’s anything that the Lost Radical Jesus showed us this is it. We should be striving, not to be a ‘good person part of a good system’ but to be a broken person leaning on God and trying to do our best to heal those around us. We should be more like that individual Jesus I see in the bible and less like the systematic church I see in America.

So, do I have a solution? I think I do. But it’s a solution that exists outside of the local church. It’s wholy dependent on people disconnecting from the system and learning to Live Christ as individuals…so that solution looks different for everyone.

I hope, in some way, you’ll join me in this. Call out your local church on it’s self-help messages. Reject ‘button down’ Christianity. Embrace irrational love of your neighbors and personal responsibility for faith. As the famously over-used quote from Gandhi says: Be The Change You Want To See In The World (and, I’d add, ‘dont wait for the church to be that change). That’s the best I can do, in my own broken way, each and every day.

Learning not Leaning

Jun 10th

Posted by Bob in General

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Learn, Don't Lean.

no time to proof read, spelling errors abound…enjoy!

As you may have guessed (it’s no secret), these blogs are born out of frustrating conversations. Conversations which just make me smack my forehead and, after a second or two of resistance, give up because debate is obviously pointless. I’m talking about conversations / discussions / debates where I just can’t respect the other point of view because it’s asserting a point of view that has, quite obviously, been pulled from elsewhere. The tell tale signs to me are:

They are one sided, not willing to even look at the other side
They use the exact same examples I’ve heard on TV, radio, read in the news, or heard thrown around in the local coffee shop
They rely on ‘common sense’. They have a “well, everyone knows…” attitude about them without any actual facts or specifics

These conversations are frustrating not because I disagree with a point being made (sometimes I don’t) but because they smack of ignorance. They are full of popular thinking which was handed down to the person by someone else. There’s no fact checking. No critical thinking. No honest debate. They’re beliefs without basis, assertions without learning.

One Side Learns, The Other Side Leans

Normally, there’s 2 (or more) sides to a conversation like this. There’s a belief or point being debated. We live in a world where ‘everyone is entitled to their own ideas’, but we never stop to consider the fact that some people’s ‘ideas’ are uneducated. They’re talking points. They’re never researched or investigated. They’re easy to assert (maybe because they’re simple) but aren’t based on fact (sounds like sound-byte TV to me!).

For most issues I encounter, there is pretty obviously a side of the discussion which educates itself (usually endlessly) and one that doesn’t. Now, it seems obvious that logic dictates that the side who is actively educating themselves on the issue is going to be closer to the truth, doesn’t it? But in this ‘everyone has an right’ society, we overlook this point. We think that, ignorant or not, everyone can be right. Guess what? That’s crap.

One side is usually learning and the other side is ‘leaning’ on someone else’s ideas without actually fact checking or learning anything for themselves.

An Example

Let’s take an example of the learning vs. leaning idea: Ever since Food Inc. I hear lots of discussions about eating meat. Some people are against it, some people want to be against it, and some people defend their God given right to devour corn fed flesh. But did you ever notice something? How many books are there about how great it is to eat meat? How many scientists are out there saying “eating factory meat is great for our environment!”? None, that’s how many. On the other hand, how many people are writing books about the way meat-eating is wreaking havoc on our planet? How many news articles are there about what factory farms do to their workers? Generally, how many ‘for’ arguments vs. ‘against’ arguments are there?

This should tell you something: The people defending meat eating, to their death, aren’t out there reading book after book about how great it is. They aren’t pouring over the studies that show it’s great for our world and economy. They’re not because these things don’t exist. Yet, those out there against eating meat are sucking up book after book, study after study, learning all they can about the issue. They devour newspapers, news reports, and expert (and amateur) testimony on the subject.

Who here is learning and who is leaning? Who, is a more reliably source of fact and information?

We didn’t deal with those who want to be meat eaters. These are the folks who saw Food Inc. and think they understand the whole situation. They’re almost as bad as those defending meat in the sense that they’re simply taking pop culture thinking (and a single source) at it’s word, regurgitating everything they heard. They don’t continue study, they don’t dive deeper. They’re leaning (not learning) on a single film. Better..but still leaning.

Learn to Say “I don’t know”

If we could all learn to say “I don’t know” more often, we’d be in better shape. If you’re in a converation about food, or government, or politics, and you haven’t actually studied it, dove in, learned about it…just admit you don’t know. There’s no shame in that. Owning up to ignorance keeps it at bay.

On the other hand, next time you’re talking about how bad the president is, or how bad the economy is, make sure you’re basing it on concrete information. Make sure you haven’t taken Rush Limbaugh’s word for it. Make sure you aren’t just believing everything the New York Times spouts off. Read books & newspapers….LOTS of them. Once you feel like you actually understand what’s going on (and can defend that with FACT instead of gut feelings) then converse.

But until then, stop leaning. It’s really annoying (and embarasses you even if you don’t know it)