I have a friend who wakes up most mornings angry and disappointed.  Because life is not in order.  Because she is not who she expected she would be, at least not at this stage of her life.  Because yesterday her to-do-list was twelve items long and three of those items are still unchecked.  Because her efforts toward achieving her desires, simple desires, are all undone.  Not every morning, some days she wakes up in serenity.  You’d think that these days would be celebrated, and sometimes they are, but often they serve as reminders of the other days, the undone days.  Did I mention that she is a “list person?” 

I once suggested to a group of Christian leaders that we should embrace contentment as a value.  You’d have thought that I proposed streaming Saw II behind their Sunday morning worship lyrics.  The reigning idea within Christendom is simple: “Contentment breeds complacency.”  If people feel quieted and peaceful, there’s a good chance they won’t change.  Maybe there is more than one accepted definition of content.  Maybe that’s the problem…

Contentment is such a huge biblical idea, you find it everywhere throughout scripture.  It starts showing up early

I haven’t forgotten about you.  I haven’t stopped writing.  I’ve been working over-nights and taking care of my children, so my writing time has been devoted to a personal thing that I am working on.  Sorry.  But here we go…

I’ve roughed out several posts for one ongoing thought.  I think that you’ll like it.  Or maybe you’ll really hate it.  I pray that you’ll have some strong reaction.  Beginning this Friday I will resume my Tuesday/Friday blogging regimen.  <Everyone cheers!>

Below is a sampling of my forthcoming thoughts, though I have withheld the word that ties them all together.  Consider it a teaser; my gift to you.  We’ll see you on Friday…

No one ever talks about it because it’s just not popular; and it gives the impression of a kind of resignation, unacceptable to the people grasping for control, those who are earning their way in and proving their value.  Should you embrace it like wine before bedtime; you best keep it to yourself.  Because if you find it, if it finds you; many will not understand.  It’s hard to fit in when you’ve learned to stop seizing upon the opinions of others.  You still care, but with a palm instead of a fist.

Recessions, depressions, traffic congestion – you learn to live around them.  You sing your sad songs with a tilted grin.  Truth, it exists, and you can study her contents.  It’s okay to mourn if you’ve got to.  And by the way, “okay” means okay.

This certain grace is trying to find you.  To accept it, you lay down your undying quest for happiness.  Don’t worry, you’ll get something better, not fleeting.  You’ll work and you’ll dance.  You’ll eat and you’ll pray.  You’ll know something.  Not a lot.  Not everything.  Just enough for this day, and probably the beginnings of tomorrow.  You won’t appear wise to everyone, but you’ll forget to care.

Vision and history will line up in perspective as hope and informant for the unfurling present.  The op-ed pages will cease to make as much sense as they once did.  Newsprint looks like a coloring book, all black and white, waiting for some child to scribble over the lines.  Youthful Ideals have peace talks with Aging Disappointment.  They decide they are both right about certain things, neither of them change their ways; they just become friendlier and reside in their familiar places.

Lying down on your bed you think, “To eat, and to drink and to find satisfaction in your work… this too I see is from the hand of God.”  Rest as if your faith has been proven, “become sight,” as an old hymn says.

Language and Epistemology of Grace

There is this woman in the Bible, if I were talking about her behind her back I might be inclined to call her “that filthy whore!”  This woman was caught in the act!  “We have laws for this kind of behavior,” cried the behaviorists.  So the behaviorists, doing what moral theorists should do, appealed to Jesus.  To whom else would you turn?  Certainly Jesus, filled with the Spirit and moral clarity with settle this one.  The moral lawyers cited Moses vs. the People of Israel

Responding to Newsweek’s Eulogy

Earlier in the week RoP addressed why cultural American Christianity is fading, citing a recent Newsweek article that reported a substantial 10% decline in adherents.  After opining as to a few of the possible “why’s,” the next set of questions that are begging to be answered sound a bit like, “If this is true; now what?”

What does a believer or group of believers do when the larger culture has filled them with embalming fluids?  It is difficult to gain an audience to listen to one speak about the falling sky when the orator has been placed in a closed coffin.  This might leave some to believe that it really is the End (capital E).  It could be, but Christians should remember that every generation since the resurrection of Jesus has assumed the End.  That isn’t wrong or bad, but in light of James’ reminder that “you do not know what tomorrow will bring,” announcing the End may be a bit premature.  Perhaps believers ought to think of this point in history as a new beginning rather than a predicted end.

Allow me to preach for the shortest minute.  Check out Psalm 126.  It begins by saying,

“When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.  Our mouths were filled with laughter; our tongues with shouts of joy.”

This sounds like a happy time, yes?  But restored fortunes always come after the previous fortunes have disappeared or been pronounced dead by a major media outlet like Newsweek.  And Newsweek is right.  The Psalm we’ve begun reading concludes with the state of Zion before it’s fortunes had been restored.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!  He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

There is much uncertainty when a farmer sows seed.  Will it rain enough or too much?  Will their be hail?  Planting is always an act of faith.  Who knows what harvest will bring?  But then again, unless a seed dies it cannot come to life.

Let’s call this period winter.  There is nothing being planted or tended or harvested.  Everyone is sitting around waiting for the changing of the seasons and reading Newsweek.  The last harvest is over.  The cultural esteem once held by American Christianity is being remembered around a hearth fire.  It was a bumper crop to be sure, with great strides and towards the end, some not-so-great.  Another planting season will begin by turning over the old soil to begin the whole growing process again.

The culture war is over.  Newsweek is right: Western and especially American Christianity as we know it, is waning.  Certain groups will put her on life support and proclaim her alive and well.  They’ll do so loudly, even louder than before; like farmers carrying bales of dead hay around town to prove their farming abilities.  I believe this to be the most wrong course of actions imaginable. There are no resurrections for cultural versions of Christianity.  God reserved that for Jesus, and at some point in the future, for his followers, according to scripture.

The second worst course of action would be to believe that Christians are to recreate that which has passed away, an even greater moral majority.  It is a comedy of foolishness when the morality of people is touted as the savior of a society; or as the scripture says, “when they compare themselves to themselves they are not wise.”  Stating that one is a moral superior from God’s supposed vantage point is like determining which slug in your garden is your favorite.  Both will be salted apart from your grace.

In this weird time of winter Christians ought to gain wisdom from Psalm 126.  The fortunes of cultural Zion have been laid to waste.  Tears are appropriate.  That’s right, it’s okay to cry.  Let it out.  Mourning is a reminder that something has passed and, let’s be honest, that hurts.  Even when Christians begin planting in a new season the residual tears will run.

As this cycle of planting, tending and harvesting begins Christians must embrace a bit of crop failure in the last season.  Let’s allow ourselves some grace and chalk the loss up to say, hail.  Sure, mistakes were made, but which one of us is in control of the hearts and opinions of others?  This season’s crop will be barley and not wheat.  Both grains; similar, but not the same.  The results of this season will be slightly different.  At least in the upcoming spring of this new season, the believer’s goal will not be to out-produce one’s farming neighbor.  The goal will be to just get on with the work involved in the Kingdom of Heaven.  They say this kingdom can grow like a mustard seed, uncontainable and kind of ugly; not big enough to build a house from its branches, just ever-expanding.

Yes, as this season begins, winning will be the last thing on the minds of the farmers.  A hymn of faithfulness and rememberance will grace their lips.  The singers will “be like those who dreamed.”  I bet the dreamers will be allowed shouts of joy in the midst of those carrying the aforementioned hay bales.

There has been much ado about a recent issue of Newsweek which pronounced the decline of American Christianity.  Conservative Christian media outlets and bloggers have taken to chastising editor Jon Meacham, dismissing the Episcopalian’s editorial treatment of a study by the American Religious Identification Survey, which cited a 10 percent drop in Americans who claim to be Christians.  Rather than damning Mr. Meacham to that old Christian woodshed somewhere below the earth’s crust, why not consider the subject of the study?  Though lopping off the ear of the messenger is temporarily enjoyable it is rarely fruitful.  If a man has one hundred sheep and ten of them go missing, the good shepherd asks why.

Now I’d rather crank up my iPod listening to a band that sounds like Modest Mouse with positive lyrics and pretend that someone just found the LORD through a Christian t-shirt I was wearing.  Avoidance is a helpful tool.  The cultural version of American Christianity has been visibly suffering for two decades.  Signs are everywhere.  If your local Christian bookstore still exists, for example, congratulations.  Pick up a pack of “Testa-mints” from the checkout area and mail them to me.  For the rest of us: let’s list the why’s…

6 reasons why cultural Christianity is declining

1. Cultural Christianity has easily definable enemies. The reason the Bible is so darn long, has something to do with the fact that it is an ongoing story about a God who loves his creation.  Much of it deals with how followers of Christ are to treat their enemies.  People who oppose school prayer.  People who are pro-choice.  People who are gay.  People who were born in the Middle East.  People who believe in evolution.  Clearly enemies, right?  Clearly bound for judgment and destruction, right?  Love those that hate you.  Bless them that curse you.  Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.  Romans speaks of God’s kindness drawing all of us to repentance; even those of us who assume we’ve sinned a great deal less than the next guy.  How does anyone learn that God is kind in a world of constant brokenness?  Through grace demonstrated by others.  Be slow in choosing your enemies.
2. Cultural Christianity hopes for judgment. When you have a list of enemies, you must have an intended purpose for them.  The book of Amos says: “Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!  Why would you have the day of the LORD?  It is darkness, and not light.”  God does intend to judge the righteous and the wicked.  Those desiring judgment to fall quickly may find themselves in the latter group.  The target audience of the Hebrew prophets was God’s chosen people, Israel.  It was their culture that God detested and rejected.  When the prophets of scripture spoke against Israel’s enemies, it was done in passing.  “Babylon will get theirs, don’t worry about them.  Vengeance belongs to someone else.  What about you?”  Israel was promised liberation, not victory.
3. Cultural Christianity embraces escapism. Rapture theology allows Christians to say, “we”re outta here!”  This theological idea is less than 200 years old and is a peculiar position in light of Jesus teaching his followers to pray that God’s kingdom would be experienced on earth.  Cultural Christians live with the idea that they won’t be here for long.  The bible of course tells us the exact opposite.  We will be here on the earth forever as God redeems his creation and establishes a holy city on the earth.  Vastly different than being given wings of ignorance and a harpsichord.  Imagine eternity spent in the exact same location where you refused to love your neighbor.  Not a very heavenly feeling, is it?  Because Christians believe in a kingdom not built with hands that extends for eternity, we should embrace every opportunity to demonstrate that belief.
4. Cultural Christianity is too political. Theologian and pop singer John Mayer asks, “Is there anyone who can remember changing their mind from some paint on a sign… or someone yelled real loud one time?”  I have a friend who lives near a Planned Parenthood.  When I meet up with him for morning coffee there is a group of people standing outside holding protest signs.  I wonder if anyone has driven by and thought, “Gee, I guess abortion is wrong.  I just changed my mind.”  If anything this has an opposite effect, further strengthening the belief that Christians only care about winning a cultural battle for conservatism.  Perhaps you’ve noticed that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction recently.  It’s not uncommon to hear Christians with a liberal bent berating those who are more politically conservative.  “Good morning” to believers who must attach a political adjective to your Christianity, you’re actions are exactly as offensive to the other side as the actions of the other sideare to you!  The tactics are the same, only the sound bites are different.  The false dichotomy of American politics is being exposed, hence the tension in our country.  Followers of Jesus embrace the sanctity of life, all of life, from unborn to the feudalist peasant, to the  minority, to women, to the dying elderly.  They recognize all injustice and work to lovingly correct it, regardless of which party claims the injustice as “their issue.”
   

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5. Cultural Christianity has a graven image problem. According to the book, unChristian, by Dave Kinnaman, the negative effects of Christian marketing are up to ten times greater than positive outcomes.  If a mass mailing produces one new Christian there are ten people who have been moved further from faith in Christ.  If you’re a pastor, I know what you’re thinking: “Those marketers don’t have my graphics guy!  They don’t have my clever phrasing.”  I know this because that’s what we all think.  Mass marketing of Christianity through mailings produces one half of one percent return.  20 thousand fliers = 100 people who might check out the Jesus you’re selling.  Potentially 1000 people who will decide to permanently ignore your message.  Save your money.  Forget your image.  Sit down and pray with someone instead.  Christians should consider prayer their greatest marketing tool.  Jesus doesn’t need to be cooler.  He just needs to be seen.
6. Cultural Christianity “sees that hand.”I remember listening to an evangelist’s sermon when I was a kid.  It ended typically, “You don’t know when the last trump will sound.  With every head bowed and every eye closed… (then there was a dramatic pause)… (still pausing)…”  With the church keyboard turned up to 11, the trump did sound, thanks to the keyboard player.  Hearts all across the auditorium stopped beating.  Old people died.  Many of us were audibly impaired for about a week.  Additionally there was a certain odor coming from the hind section of people’s Sunday Bests.  Becoming a disciple has very little to do with a repeat-after-me-prayer.  Loving one another as believers is the absolute best form of evangelism, or so taught Jesus.  When Christians care for other Christians everyone notices.  When we work together to make ourselves and one another look more like Christ, we’ll “see a lot more hands” in a figurative sense of course.

Within the Christian subculture opinions are flying like ravens sent from an ark.  According to subculture pundits, some churches have been preaching a false gospel, some don’t talk about sin enough, some are too stuffy, some aren’t relevant, some have signs with cute slogans and some don’t.  Some believe that the Newsweek article is leftist propaganda to undo Christianity.  Some believe it’s a call to arms.  Maybe we should say, “It is what it is.”  Maybe we should notice that the article says very little about authentic Christianity; it is largely about the subculture of Christianity and its unraveling. 

Missionaries take their message to the culture into which they have been called.  That is, they strip themselves of the culture they know in order to present a greater message to a culture they must learn.

Grace.

Part 2 Friday: “Responding to the Eulogy.”

Give me History Channel documentaries, baseball, football and Hell’s Kitchen, (and this thermos – name that movie) and that’s all I need.  At least as far as TV goes.  My wife has been DVR-ing the Biggest Loser this season, and by-and-by, I am getting sucked into the show like back-fat into a lypo wand.  Not completely, I usually am asleep by the time they measure the contestants’ progress.

Sleepiness aside, there is something important that happens on this show.  I cannot speak for every season as this is the only one to which I have paid any sort of attention.  So far, most of the votes have been cast to keep the contestant “who needs to be here the most.”  Call it: survival of the fattest, the anti-Darwin.

A few years back I read (listened to on my iPod) a book that suggested the first step towards greatness was getting the right people on the bus.  This absolutely makes sense from a motivational and leadership perspective.  This leaves us with an increasing amount of the “wrong people” (go Darwinian Theory!), while we search out the “right people.”  No one wants to sit on a proverbial bus next to the real Biggest Loser, the lazy guy with cheese sauce smeared across his belly and a notebook filled with gripes.  I get it.  I think we all do.

The idea goes: in order to get the right people on the bus, you have to create a seat for them by getting the wrong people off the bus.  This begs the question, “Is the bus moving when its riders are forcibly expelled?”  I guess, “Who cares,” is the correct answer, at least according to the book about buses.  The dead-weight is gone.  “I’m sorry; you’re not the Biggest Loser.”  Now, for you TV execs who will read this blog, and there are many of you, I’m not suggesting you create a reality TV called Slowest Metabolism, an attempt to bulk up the morbidly thin, starring Torii Spelling and Lionel Richie’s daughter – what’s-her-name.

Life is about survival of the fittest.  Cultures have always stuck the right people on the bus and gotten rid of the wrong people, though they’ve not always written books about the process.  Nature’s food-chain has never ceased to demonstrate this reality, not even for one day.  Not even at your local, ultra-humane zoo.  Lions are still fed lesser animals.

On the Biggest Loser you see a group of society’s outcasts voting in favor of the worst of their kind.  Fattism is very acceptable in our culture.  I’ll confess.  When I think of how great I am because I am not a racist, and that some of my friends are gay, poor, type ‘b’, some of them are even from Wisconsin, I am confronted with the reality that on this particular issue, I, too frequently, would cast my vote to eliminate the fat guy.  Confession is good for the soul!  I feel better already.

Imagine a society that kept the wrong people on the bus, provided they wanted to stay on the bus.  This bus is large enough for all who would choose to ride it.  The bus conductor boots only those who don’t want to be on the bus, and of course, those who enter the bus with the knowledge that they are the “right people” to turn this bus around.  The riders of this bus acknowledge their own need and are enveloped in a community who acknowledge it too.  It’s not a co-dependent bus; “You’re not fat, you’re just big boned!  Lots of fat people live long, healthy lives!” No, this bus is filled with riders who KNOW they all have a similar set of problems.  They know they are not the fittest and therefore they probably won’t survive.

Instead of discharging the biggest loser, they provide safety and community.  His or her growth (pun unintentional) becomes the reason the bus exists.  The Fat Bus.  The Addicted Bus.  The Rejected Bus.  The Bus filled with victims of sex crimes.  The Bus filled with Perpetrators.  The Klepto Bus (without seats and a radio, of course).  The Disabled Bus.  The Bus with a Collection of People who should be on other Buses.  The Bus filled with people who formerly wanted to control every bus on the city streets.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a bus whose conductor begs one question: “Who needs to be here the most?”  Thanks Biggest Loser!  Now someone tell me who got voted off last night.  I was sleeping.