Church Voices

Imagine a bleak world where disaster has struck. Call it the Haitian earthquake on a grand scale, only bigger than that. Disaster has engulfed the world, and the world we knew is never coming back because something has happened to the soil so that nothing grows. Everything is dead or dying, including humanity. Ten years out from the biggest one the landscape is filled with roving gangs of scavengers who will kill and consume anything and anyone they encounter. And in this bleak world is a father and son searching for something other than death. That is the plot for the book The Road. It was a powerful enough story that when I listened to the audio book on a long trip I realized that as I drove I had tensed up my entire body.

Recently, I’ve started watching a TV show called Supernatural. Its kind of like the X-Files, but not nearly as good, and far more dramatic (it is, after all, aired on noted purveyor of drama the CW Network). Its much lighter fare than The Road. At least on the surface. Its about two brothers who wander around the country fighting ghosts, demons, and other things that go bump in the night. Needless to say (though I’ll say it anyway) the brothers always win, everything ends up ok in the end, evil is vanquished, good is vindicated and we all learn something at the end of the show (usually what I learn is that the entire world is populated by beautiful, young people with skills beyond their years). But underneath the surface of the world of Supernatural it is at least as dark, and bleak as the Road. Throughout the show there is not just a belief, but a hard, unyielding truth that hell exists, and that most, if not all people are going there. There’s doubts about the existence of God, no mention of the kingdom of God generally, or heaven specifically. In fact, there’s the assumption in the show that pretty much everyone is going to end up in hell one way or another.

Now that’s bleak.

Unfortunately, many churches and many Christians mimic the world of Supernatural. On the surface everything looks ok. Everyone is smiley, everyone likes what they’re doing, and all is right with the world, even through the bumps of life. But underneath all the rhetoric, encouragement, writing, and speaking is hopelessness and bleakness. This happens when Christians become so focused on condemnation that there is nothing else.

When Christians see nothing but the bad things of this world, and can do nothing but focus on the condemnation of those sins, they create a spiritual wasteland that is as bleak as The Road, and as insidious as Supernatural. In fact, this mindset is far closer to Islam than it is the mind of Christ because ultimately, we are not people of bad news and condemnation. We are not people of hopelessness, and when we dwell on the small victories of sin it is possible to miss entirely the ultimate victory we share in through the resurrection of Christ.

Unfortunately, if you eavesdrop on services and conversations among Christians you’d think that Good Friday was never followed by Easter Sunday, you’d think God’s message to humanity is nothing but condemnation. Maybe its about time we live up to our billing as people bearing Good News that God has reconciled himself to his people, and that sin and hell have been defeated. Because if we don’t, we can make the world seem to be a bleak, hopeless place, far more so than any dystopia ever conceived of by any author or director.

I read an article a few years ago about a drill manufacturer that was on the leading edge of laser technology. One of the questions they were asked was how a company that made drills became a leader in this new field. The answer was a simple one, they discovered their mission. As they looked toward the future and possible growth they realized that they were not in the business of making drills, they were in the business of making holes.  This understanding allowed them to be innovative and more focused at the same time.

There’s a lot of confusion about what kind of business Christian’s are in.  We get caught up in the business of making churches, programs, ourselves comfortable and sometimes we find ourselves in the business of just keeping the business going.  We need to continually be reminded that we are in the business of making disciples, that is telling others about Jesus, immersing them into the Father, Son, and Spirit, and teaching them to follow Jesus.

Arthur: So what are we doing tonight? Going down to the docks to see the fights?
Doug looks at him blankly.
Arthur: Isn’t it Friday?
Doug: Yeah, just not in the year you think it is.

Boxing used to be one of the premier sports in the United States. It drew hundreds of thousands fans to arenas, newspaper coverage guaranteed front page headlines, the most talented athletes poured into gyms to try to make a name and a career. It was such a big deal that Muhammad Ali didn’t just become another great athlete in a long assembly line of athletes, he became an icon who’s words still ring out in minds.

Since then boxing has dried up and blown away. The occasional big money fight still pops up from time to time, but there’s no sense of a future for the sport. There’s no excitement around. Fans don’t argue about it, it never makes the front page, hype doesn’t drive water cooler talk anymore. The conventional wisdom is that the rise of UFC and mixed martial arts in general pushed down boxing and took its lunch money. But the truth is that UFC didn’t kill boxing, it just filled the void left by a suicide victim.

The collective boxing powers that be decided at some point or another that the business model was to put everything on pay per view (PPV). If you wanted to see boxing you had to throw down $50 or more. And for awhile it paid off. A lot of people got very rich. But in the end the only people who will buy a PPV are the dyed in the wool, sold out, and paid up fan. Every casual fan left the sport, and no new fans were made. The walls that were put up around boxing to benefit the sport ultimately choked it to death.

Churches can learn something from boxing’s impending death. When you put up walls, the only people you will influence are those willing to climb those walls. You can forget about impacting, influencing or gaining the chance to be listened to by anyone who won’t go to the effort to overcome the obstacles put up by churches. Churches don’t put up the same sort of obvious, hard walls as boxing did. There isn’t a ticket sold at the door, or a PPV to buy, but make no mistake, there are subtle walls that churches put up that are just as real. It includes church-language that only those that are in with the in crowd understand, an unspoken dress code, a failure to communicate how and why we worship on Sunday morning, a failure to communicate where the coffee is and that we’re glad you’re here, and whole lot of other things that seem petty and small to those willing to climb the walls but seem huge and insurmountable to those who aren’t.

UFC was in a desperate situation in the 90s. They had been condemned as a vicious, uncivilized sport and had been kicked off of PPV. Part of this was self-inflicted as they advertised their PPVs as being extreme tests of athletes skill. Then new management took over, fought to get back onto PPV and then took the opposite strategy of boxing and put their product in front of as many eye balls as they could. They went so far as to put entire fight nights on basic cable (and likely would have put it on network TV if they could have) in a PPV format with commercials, and this attitude eventually culminated in an annual UFC reality show where contestants competed for a contract on weekly TV. The end result is that UFC filled the void that boxing left behind. They were able to create superstars out of their fighters, sell massive amounts of PPVs and create a generation of fans where there had been nothing before.

So the question I have is are our churches like boxing or UFC? Are we putting up walls that cuts us off, or are we putting ourselves, our ideas, and the gospel out there in front of as many eyeballs as possible in order to influence, and communicate to as many people as possible?

If you had told me that a couple of brothers from Columbus who were published by Goatee Records and went after an explicitly Christian market would produce an artistically competent CD I’d have laughed at you.

Luckily my ignorance of their pedigree allowed me to give House of Heroes a legitimate listen (sometimes ignorance really is bliss).

I really enjoyed this spoken bit of monologue from their song Voices

your greatest sin, is not the abortion that you’ve asked forgiveness for, or the adultery, or whatever it is that you did in your life, in a past that you’re ashamed of, that keeps hounding you… your greatest sin is not that, your greatest sin in not believing God’s word when God says you’re forgiven! your greatest sin is unbelief. you want to repent of something, friend? stop repenting of sins you’ve already repented of, and repent of your unbelief.”

From here.

USC has self-imposed* major penalties for infractions involving former player O.J. Mayo. According to this article, an events promoter funneled cash and goods to Mayo while Mayo was at USC. As penalty, USC will have to forfeit all its wins from the 2007-08 season, it must return the NCAA tournament money it received when Mayo was on the team, and it won’t be able to participate in post-season tournaments this year.

Mayo currently plays in the NBA and Tim Floyd, the USC coach during the period in question, resigned last spring. While you can’t say those two get away scot-free (Tim Floyd’s reputation is damaged, for instance), the people who arguably bear the brunt of these sanctions – current coach Kevin O’Neill, his staff, and the current USC players – had little to do with what apparently went down with Mayo. If a man knows that a third party will have to pay the penalty if he breaks the rules, he’s more likely to break the rules. Tails, I win. Heads, you lose.

Its no longer even an interesting question to consider whether or not talented college players at big time athletic programs are receiving benefits for their services because so many are. A more interesting question is whether or not this is a moral or ethical breach. Before taking that question on, its necessary to take a little bit broader look at the situation.

The first thing to note is that the system is rigged against the player. For some reason the NBA (which is a union shop) has been allowed to keep players who have reached the age of majority from seeking employment. If God happens to have gifted you with extraordinary athletic prowess you are not allowed to work in the NBA for one year after high school graduation. That means you spend a year working for nothing at the NCAA level while schools make millions off your work. What’s more the NCAA regulations work against athletes in favor of schools at every turn. Scholarships are no longer 4 year affairs, rather they’re 1 year renewable contracts so if a new coach comes in and doesn’t like a player he’s out with no guarantee of tuition, or if a player hurts himself badly enough he can no longer play no he loses the ability to pay for school as well as the prospect of a pro career.

Also, keep in mind, so long as a player doesn’t do something like lie under oath about benefits received (I’m looking at you Chris Webber) receiving these benefits aren’t illegal.

The question here isn’t one of fairness (it isn’t fair) or legality (it isn’t illegal), but one of morality. Is it wrong for an athletically gifted player to be paid for his work?

From here:

It’s easy to get into a discussion about what sanctification looks like, and how works are a requirement of faith, and so on. I don’t disagree, but sometimes — some years — it’s all I can do to keep myself from denying Jesus as loudly as I can, trying to climb out of His arms, and joining the buddhists. If I’ve got to demonstrate proper sanctification on a weekly basis, or my salvation is dependent on good works (*or* good doctrine), I’m screwed.

If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred….That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither (Mere Christianity [New York: MacMillian, 1967], 94-95).

Is still surprised that so much of the church struggles far more with being Pharisees than being libertines.

And I think, I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, to see ourselves as ultimately bestial as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity, ugly and unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps, in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all. I think it finally is matter of love, of accepting the possibility that God could love us… long ago I despaired of ever loving my neighbor. Certain people… repelled me. How could I love them? I thought. It tormented me, it led me to despair of myself… and from that, very soon, to despair of my God. My faith was shattered

At last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible, that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion at all. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love that I do unto others and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.

I know that all of this must seem very obvious, Damien. I know. But at the time I could not see It. Strange blindness. How many husbands and wives must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds! Ah, dear God! There it lies, I think, possession not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very seldom in extraordinary interventions such as here… this girl… this poor child. No, I see it most often in the little things in the senseless, petty spites the misunderstandings the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves.

- Father Merrin, The Exorcist

Only amnesiacs and casual fans like clip shows. To a legitimate fan a clip show is a slap in the face, because they all know its just a way to fill out a season with an episode that takes very little work, and leaves the viewer wholly unsatisfied. Its just left overs disguised as a new meal.

I had a professor who, in reference to preaching, told my class, “the hard part of my job [as preacher, not professor] is that I preach the same thing every week, I just re-package it”. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I thought he was referring to it on a grand scale, as in, if you preach long enough sooner or later you’ll be preaching the same passages of scripture. Looking back, I realize he meant it on a micro level, not on a macro level. That every single week he preached the same messaged, re-packaged to look a little bit different. His preaching was, and mine has become, in a nut shell, a clip show.

But, here’s the thing, while recycled television scripts are wholly unsatisfying, recycled gospel preaching is not. At least part of the reason for it is that virtually every joke told by actors on the small screen are nothing more than conventions we’ve seen played out a million times, not just on TV, but in the world at large. When a character has a bad day, in which the world keeps piling indignity on top of inconvenience, on top of discomfort, we relate because whether its played for tragedy or comedy we’ve all been there.

On the other hand, the gospel isn’t played out on a everyday basis. We live in a world in which everything costs something. We live in a world where everyone understand the phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. We live in a world where old people get ripped off by fake contractors, and supposed princes of Nigeria email me on a daily basis. In every business deal, personal interaction, and with every breath we are reminded this is a world with a quid pro quo ethos at its very core.

And that’s why teachings, sermons, churches, and services should be gospel clip shows. The message that the mercy of God has been made available through faith in the resurrection is alien to this world, and so its one that needs to be heard both by those who have never heard it, as well as by those who have lived it their entire lives.