Church Voices

Wordle is this cool web thingie that’ll take a text and then create a graphic that displays how many times a particular word is used.

Here it is for this website:

George Carlin is dead. I don’t really know much about him. Other than having a college roommate who quoted him from time to time and watching about 1/2 an episode of the failed George Carlin show I have no connection with him. At least not until seeing the reactions to his death.

What I’ve seen has been, in many cases, anti-gospel. What I’ve seen has been an almost somber glee that George Carlin is now facing the wrath of God. It seems many Christians classified George Carlin as their enemy. So much so that his life is viewed as, at best, a cautionary tale, and at worst, a vanquished enemy who is reaping what he has sown.

And its this view of Carlin that makes me say that the church, or at least the vocal parts of it found in the blogosphere are devoid of living out the gospel. Jesus’ admonitions to love our enemy, as well as the writings of John, and Peter, that God loves the world and wishes none to perish leaves absolutely no room whatsoever for this attitude.

If we believe the gospel, and the scriptures, then we know, and admit the difference between ourselves and Carlin is Christ. Lets make this a little more personal. What separates me from Carlin is not the seven words you can’t say on television, and what separates me from Carlin is not the contempt he has for many Christians (many who don’t look a thing like Christ, lets be honest we gave him the ammunition he shot at us). In fact, what separates me from Carlin isn’t even the blasphemous things he said about Jesus Himself, because if we’re completely honest the attitudes we hold, and the things we say probably cross into blasphemy even when we don’t intend them to. No, what separates us who are a part of the kingdom of God is Jesus Christ himself. Its not that we don’t say seven specific words, or that we’re somehow inherently more moral than George Carlin. It is Jesus Christ.

So please, just save all the words that explain just how terrible he really was, and pretend for at least a second that if Carlin is found outside of Christ, and if he is separated from God that its worth mourning, or at least worth something a little more like Christ than somber glee. Instead of seeing Carlin as an enemy, maybe try thinking of him as the lost son who never came back, or the lamb that wandered off and the shepherd didn’t find him.

If Jesus can weep over Jerusalem who murders the prophets it might be time to adopt a slightly different attitude.

“I’ll take one of everything”, many customers say to me as they laugh at their own joke. I understand that it’s a joke, but you know, I think a lot of people go through life with a similar attitude. “I’ll try one of everything.”

The problem with this approach is its failure to realize that not everything goes together. The man who eats everything doesn’t consider how some things don’t taste or settle well with others. Before long, he will get a stomach ache and, eventually, throw up. Consequently, the man who eats everything winds up eating nothing.

On the other hand, the man who eats little of what goes together will not only be pleased with his meal, but well nourished as well.

While they were at Lystra, Paul and Barnabas came upon a man with crippled feet. He had been that way from birth, so he had never walked. He was sitting and listening as Paul preached. Looking straight at him, Paul realized he had faith to be healed. So Paul called to him in a loud voice, “Stand up!” And the man jumped to his feet and started walking.

When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in their local dialect, “These men are gods in human form!” They decided that Barnabas was the Greek god Zeus and that Paul was Hermes, since he was the chief speaker. Now the temple of Zeus was located just outside the town. So the priest of the temple and the crowd brought bulls and wreaths of flowers to the town gates, and they prepared to offer sacrifices to the apostles.
Acts 14.8-13

In Lystra Paul continued to preach the gospel, while there a man was healed because he had faith, the response of the Lystrans is interesting. Instead of turning to praise the Living God and leaving behind their previous beliefs they instead integrate what they have just seen into what they already believed. In fact, as they go to worship Paul and Barnabus, Paul continues to explicitly tell them what they believe about the two of them is wrong. The scriptures record, that despite this brute force approach it was still difficult to stop the people from worshiping them.

Quite a bit of noise has been made from certain segments of Christianity about the certainty of belief, they have attacked any theology that allows for any re-assessment of belief in any portion of any of our theological positions. These segments of Christianity have much in common with the Lystrans who despite Paul’s clear preaching and the demonstration of the power of the Living God still integrated Paul and Barnabas into their wrongly held beliefs.

As followers of Christ we are called to the truth, but we are also keenly aware of our own shortcomings in terms of both sin and ability (if the two can even be separated). As such we need to find ourselves in the delicate high wire act of clinging to orthodoxy, yet open to rebuke and correction by the Spirit through the scriptures. If our first reaction to anything we disagree with is to condemn the advocate of such a position as a damnable heretic of the most idiotic kind and then to complain to those who agree with us that this is nothing more than “itching ear” false preaching, it may be that we find ourselves in Lystra, instead of reality, and bending our knees to our particular culture, or intellect instead of Christ.

If we don’t do what we are taught in scripture, does it have any value for our lives?  What does it take for us to love our neighbors?

Being in the middle of a high impact natural disaster (I live in a small town on the Mississippi river that will flood most of the buildins on Main St. by next week), I’ve been thinking a lot about questions like the above.  After the second day of sandbagging, I finally had to quit early and so I got some time to finally watch Rambo (the new one) which we’ve had from Netflix for days.  I was surprised at how intensely the film dealt with similar issues and questions I have been thinking on. 

I was surprised to very quickly learn that this Rambo wasn’t really about John Rambo, is about the suffering of the people of Burma.  Stalone often likes to say something meaningful in his films, and for this one he found out about the awful situation (pre-natural disaster, so you can imagine how much worse it is now) of the Burmese under the rule of the military.  Of course, there’s lots of gory action, but I’d still recommend any adult to see it, partly because the gore is not out of place.  In fact, you’ll find some tame pictures on the sites listed below that provide the evidence for the brutatlity visualized for you in Rambo. 

The most convicting part of the film was the dedication to action of the Christians in the film.  One thing that gets me, both locally for our flood, and globally for situations like Burma, is how churches and christians can sit around and do nothing yet people who do not know the grace of God through Jesus Christ do everything from helping to fill sandbags to save a few homes to struggling for the lives of people half a world away.

Father, forgive us for walking on the other side of the street pretending not to see the need of our neighbor.  Create in us a heart of compassion.  Use us in your work to transform us into little Christs.

Watch the movie if you haven’t seen it yet.  In the mean time, check out these websites:

www.uscampaignforburma.org

www.freeburmarangers.org

I found this pasted into an old Bible of mine I opened up this week:

Over and above particular prophecies, the New Testament sees in Jesus Christ the climax and comprehensive fulfillment of the entire Old Testament. It is not simply in a few scattered texts that the ancient witness to Christ is to be discovered; the Old Testament in its entirety testifies to the truth…”
- Carl Henry, God Revelation and Authority, Vol. III, pg. 135