Others I know just follow their gut feeling. I usually fall into this category, as it seems every time I have not followed my gut I’ve gotten myself into big trouble regardless of the way I came to my decision.

Some follow this gut feeling only after intense prayer (if the decision is weighty enough, add fasting to this). This can be accompanied by requests of others for prayer, and the word “wisdom” usually pops into the prayer as the primary request.

Others will ask advice of nearly everyone they know, hoping someone will offer the perfect pearl of wisdom to make their path clear.

And probably nearly everyone uses a combination of the above in their decision-making process.

I recently had to make a very tough decision. While I don’t ask everyone in the world about different decisions, I do turn to a few close friends for advice. This situation reminded me how important it is to have people in your life who can speak to me the wisdom I pray for.

Your close relationships play a vital role in life decisions. In this instance, not one single person provided the end-all be-all answer to the question I faced, but each person I talked to helped paint the picture and reveal what was truly my gut feeling. I had strong desires which were trying to drown the inner voice telling me now was not the right time.

My girlfriend, having faced nearly the same situation just a couple of months ago, pointed out what I would be giving up if I tied up more of my income. A close friend simply noted he does not go forward with things if he has major unease about the issue. Yet another voice pointed out the difference between what I want and what I actually need.

Adding the wisdom of people who know me well helped me make the right decision. For me, when I want something badly enough, I am too selfish to hear the voice of wisdom on my own through prayer. God uses the people intertwined in my life to lead me down the right path.

There was a time when I just did whatever I wanted, and I believed I was listening to God’s voice (in spite of what those around me thought or said). That way of making decisions led to some of the most painful periods of my life.

Even now, the desire to do what I really want nags at me. But the community of people I live my life with helped me to see the timing is just not there right now. So I wait and believe when the timing is right, those same voices will help make that apparent to me as well.

I’ve already let my opinion on Legislating Morality be known, so I won’t rehash it now. The time has come for Christians to shift from talk and reliance on governance to take action and really make an impact on sin.
Our hope is not with the Republican Party, nor is it with the Democrats. But we have an opportunity with Barack Obama, a professed Christian whether you believe in his views or not, and a Democrat-controlled congress.

Opportunity to Reduce Abortions

While the Pro Life movement has focused on trying to reverse Roe v. Wade and enacting laws which push the limits of the High Court’s decision, many Pro Choice people have repeatedly emphasized a desire to reduce the number of abortions. Two of those persons would be Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But the Religious Right does not take any statement on reducing abortions seriously unless it is accompanied by effort to make abortion illegal. There is extreme mistrust whenever a pro choice person says they don’t like abortion but believe it should be a woman’s right to choose.

It is time to call them on it. But doing so requires setting aside the primary focus of the Pro Life movement to repeal Roe v. Wade and replacing it with assisting women in unwanted, unplanned pregnancies. I personally believe President-elect Obama and Mrs. Clinton when they say they do not like abortion but believe it should not be made illegal. If they are lying to try to lessen the impact of their pro choice position, we will find out if we try to team up with those who are pro choice and try to help women deal with their unwanted pregnancies in other ways.

One of the more liberal shows on network television, Boston Legal, recently had an episode nearly entirely about abortion. The power of the episode was in the lack of propaganda. It told a story which brilliantly displayed the complexity of the issue. A young teenage girl sought a court order to allow her to get an abortion. One of the liberal attorneys, Shirley Schmidt, did not want to represent her because she had an abortion when she was young.

When Shirley spoke of how it haunted her and stayed with her forever, you could not help but to feel her pain. Shirley is pro choice, but she did not want to interfere with the mother’s desire to refuse an abortion, because she believed there was no way a teen could fully understand the ramifications of having an abortion. And she strongly suggested that although she thought abortion should be legal, no woman, under normal circumstances, should choose to have an abortion for the horror will stay with her for her entire life.

There are many, MANY pro choice people (if not even a majority) who would work side by side with pro life Christians to help pregnant women who may desire to choose an abortion.

Will it be easy? NO! Of course the pro lifers will want to keep abortion completely off of the table and the pro choice persons would not. There would have to be compromise in both camps for a partnership to work. The issues are numerous, but the benefits are tremendous: fewer abortions.

Maybe even fewer pregnancies.

At some point, focusing on overturning a court decision for 35 years rather than engaging the issue at ground zero brings responsibility for abortions on those who are so opposed.

I really believe that. If the pro life movement had even split the efforts evenly between the legal solution and building a support network for women, the number of abortions which have taken place over the last few decades would be dramatically less in number.

When a group in Colorado Springs consulted a film production company for continuing their advertising and expanding into tv ads, they were convinced to steer from the “abortion is murder” mantra and move towards helping women. What happened? The number of abortions went down. I forget the exact numbers my friend told me, but my understanding is the number of abortions were more than cut in half.

Not just abortions

The opportunity with Obama goes far beyond the issue of abortion. He claims (and I, again, believe him) he wants to work with the 47% who did not vote for him. If evangelicals take the high road and team up on other issues, Christians will have the chance to shape the policy and programs enacted by the Obama administration.

That doesn’t mean they will look like conservative Republican plans, but the finger of Christ can be involved in deep ways as Christians humble themselves and shift from fighting for a legal system which exacts their morality to exemplifying the care for the oppressed, the fight against injustice, and the love for all people modeled by Jesus Christ.

This post is already longer than I planned. The opportunities are vast for the Church to shift from political agenda to getting their hands and feet dirty with the downtrodden, the castaways, the broken. The current political and cultural climate has yielded us a chance to get back to being Christ to the world. Will we take it?

This is the time where human sexuality, abortion, gay marriage, etc., rule the voting consciences of many Christians. It comes down to a simple principle:

The religious right believes you should legislate morality.

For many voters, this principle goes unquestioned. But is this compatible with the Christian faith? I personally don’t think so.

One simple question states my case pretty clearly. If over night, we were able to pass every single law the religious right would have enacted, would that make our country Christian?

Here are a few more questions to get your minds going: Would it change one single heart? Would it make one single person a follower of Jesus by the enactment of these laws of morality?

Or how about this different set of questions: Would it make those who do not follow Jesus hate his followers even more? Would it close the minds of those already hardened to the message of Christ? Could it possibly increase sin all the more?

Since Christians cannot simply enact all the laws they want over night, these questions could be written off as unnecessary fantasy. But if those questions apply to my fictitious scenario, they could also apply at varying levels to the actual situation.

When one “legal victory” is gained by the religious right, does it draw people closer to Christ or repel them for being forced to follow a morality they do not understand? Does it instill Christian grace in this country, or does it bolster a sense of legalism which both those in and outside of the church strongly sense in today’s evangelicalism?

The attention on legislating morality also hinders Christians from positive political activity which would be in line with their faith. Helping shape the government of the most powerful nation in the world in to a grace-giving, compassionate, force for good would be a real possibility if the religious right were not so obsessed with keeping gays from being married.

Assisting those in need and helping women most at risk for unwanted pregnancies would practically reduce the numbers of abortions. But instead, a war is waged which may never be won. It’s all or nothing for the religious right. How does this match up with what we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus? It doesn’t.

And what about ending corruption in our government? Why aren’t prominent Christians asking the difficult questions about why our civil liberties are vanishing before our very eyes and no one seems to be doing anything about it? Why aren’t our religious leaders questioning how oil companies have made record profits while the country is lead by an oil baron president? That fact isn’t enough to convict George W. Bush of any wrongdoing, but why aren’t they even asking the questions?

How is it I can cross the border and pay $2.83 a gallon for gas, but the cheapest station in my area has gas for $4.49? How does a company once run by the Vice President make billions off of a war most of the country no longer wants us to be in (and if we weren’t told it was unpatriotic wouldn’t have wanted us in in the first place)?

By now, you’ve already resonated with my questions and comments, or you probably aren’t reading any more. Let me just say, for the record, I am not a Democrat. I am no longer a Republican. I will most likely vote Democrat for the first time in my life for President (I voted Green Party last time because I could not respect either candidate from the major political parties), because Obama’s political concerns line up more closely (not anywhere close to perfectly) with my religious beliefs than John McCain’s. A part of my religious beliefs are that you should vote for the person who will do the most good for our country and our world. I am not interested in McCain’s stance on gay marriage, abortion, or any other moral issue a politician could seek to legislate. I am interested in both candidate’s ability to help those in need, respond compassionately to a world filled with strife, and to pursue the best path for the most powerful nation in the world.

Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has some great tongue-in-cheek sarcasm about the Gospels.

You could get a lot of wrong ideas reading the Gospels too much. You could start thinking that Jesus is in favor of some kind of social gospel where people give away lots of things, live in community, get in trouble for their radical compassion and stand outside of the religious establishment much of the time.

In fact, really….the Gospels have some good stories, but wouldn’t we be better off to study things like Romans 3 more often, so we really know what the Gospel is about?

Spending a lot of time in the Gospels could make you a person who is confused about discipleship as compared to grace. We should go to church, hear about grace, and leave much happier. If we read the Gospels too much, we’ll get the idea we’re supposed to do a lot of things that we really don’t have to do to be saved.

Let’s be careful with the Gospels. Don’t go overboard with them. They could mess up your whole religion.

I love it!

Update: Embedding has been turned on and off on this short, and it seems now it is back on. If you can’t get the video to play, click the link in the comments.

It appears that Van Nuys Superior Court Commissioner Martin Wegman thinks I deserve the chance to be innocent…

I posted earlier about the possibility that I could not afford to be “not guilty.” It was going to cost me $381 to have my day in court. Evidently, the L.A. Superior Court thinks it is okay to coerce you into pleading guilty by offering you six months to pay a reduced fine (almost always reduced when you go before a commissioner), but if you want to plead not guilty you have to pay the full amount of the fine within seven days and then you get it back if you win your case.

Innocent until proven guilty? Hmmm…

But when I went back to court, seriously considering pleading guilty because I felt I could not afford to tie up almost four hundred dollars until my trial (and then who knows how long it takes them to send me a check…), I asked to be allowed to come to the trial based on my own recognizance (they call the fine amount “bail” to justify taking the full amount before you even get to trial).

Commissioner Wegman said because I showed up to court the first time and the second time I was given a new date without problem, he didn’t feel I was a risk to not show up and granted my request for O.R.

I just did a web search for Martin Wegman, and he seems like a decent guy. Here’s Martin Wegman’s personality profile.

I went near the end, so I heard him deal with quite a few people. He kept the mood of the court light but still professional, and he was very fair. The only requests he denied were from people who had continually failed to appear for court dates or who had done some other stupid things which negated his normally generous demeanor.

I’m sure it’s a tough job being a superior court commissioner, and I’m glad Martin Wegman is on the job in Van Nuys. Still have issues with the system, but at least I know there’s a possibility of justice even if you don’t have the money.

A kind word, a smile from a stranger, the gentle breeze on a hot summer day.

What was once wonderful often sinks beneath the muddy waters of routine.

The faithfulness of a friend is too often forgotten even before the next trial begins.

But arising from the ruins of mistakes made manifest come wisdom, joy, and strength.

The past shines light on the present bringing hope for tomorrow.

Appreciation for each day grows stronger than yesterday’s sorrow.

Today means more than the next.

Tomorrow becomes today soon enough.

“Literalism is a false means of interpretation (hermenuetic) and is a vain attempt to democratize the Holy writings. If they can be read on a literal level, then everyone has equal access to them and everybody has equal authority to interpret them. Thus certain forms of Protestantism, caught up in the various modern theories of the Reformation, sought to do to the Scriptures what many sought to do with their governments. Kill the princes! Kill the priests! Everyone can be his own king, his own priest. Smash the images and any claim to authority. Of course these extreme forms always failed quickly, to be replaced by some version of moderation.

“Thus the Scriptures are not purely democratic – some interpreters are more equal than others.”

This touches on an issue for me, which is that all of our understanding is based on experience. All of our understanding about anythying is based on our experience. God speaks to us through the Scriptures, but it is not in a vacuum.

Justin Baeder makes this observation and shows how difficult it is to balance our own wants and desires with understanding the Bible in his post, Armchair Theology vs. Compromised Theology.

For example, Jesus criticized the man in his parable who tore down his barns to build bigger ones. If I move from an apartment to a house, or buy a nicer car, you could say I did the same thing. One you’ve done something, you tend to rationalize it, particularly if you benefit from it and enjoy it.

Justin surmises,

I say this to point out that we can’t depend entirely on ourselves to judge our own actions, and we can’t just judge others and expect our judgment to be fair. We need to make these determinations in community.

I’ve felt for quite awhile that our understanding of Scripture must be lived out with others striving to follow Christ. Jason brings up a good point in the comments of his post,

Many in the emerging church have argued for the local faith-community as the center of theological reflection and life. But my experiences over the past several years have left me feeling disconnected from anything larger or historical. I feel my attempts have contributed to splintering further Christ’s Body. In many ways, it’s simply been hyper-individualism in a small group form.

Alan, while I am wrestling with some of the Orthodox Church’s claims, your comment raises the question for me about the practical nature of living and experiencing the Bible’s content. If the Scriptures are the Church’s Scriptures, then experiencing and living the Scriptures must be the Church’s reality as a community, not as individuals. The more I think about it, while there is definitely a personal (not necessarily an individual) aspect of living Scripture, it must be in the greater context of the Church’s reality with Scripture. And this has to be more than just a local church’s or denomination’s reading, studying and interpretation of Scripture. And yet, the idea of the Church universal is too vague. The Church universal is too fractured to provide any real context for life in the Scritpures.

On the one hand, I see the need for a greater body of believers for being the community of understanding. Small groups are still easily swayed by shared interests which can jade them in their understanding of the Scriptures.

But that isn’t to say that large groups do not share the same flaw. For me, it is the willingness to learn from the interpretations of those who are not like us that help us better understand the Scriptures. So embracing a large, historical church for the sake of Biblical understanding could discount other communities. Unless the Church honestly should have always existed as the institutional structures we see in Eastern Orthodoxy, we should not expect to find a more perfect understanding by only looking at one segment of the Church.

There are aspects to the Scriptures, especially as it applies to living day to day in the Kingdom of God, which I think are best learned in small groups, while deeper theological questions are best understood within the context of the varying interpretations of the Church universal.

Technorati Tags:
church structure, ecclesiology, emerging church, bible study

Definitely worth a look for those of you who use projection for your times of community worship.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” – Ephesians 2:8

There’s a disconnect in the common Evangelical doctrine of salvation between faith and works. Perhaps disconnect is not the right word, but there’s a one-sided view of “works.” While we are saved by grace through faith and not by “good works,” there’s certainly a belief, whether stated or not, that bad works can definitely cost you your salvation. Or perhaps, that if you do bad works, that’s a sign that you really don’t have any faith at all.

So perhaps a better way to describe the doctrine of salvation in the Evangelical church is that you are “saved by faith and what you don’t do.”

A confession of belief becomes quickly called into question if you do certain things which are deemed unacceptable by most Evangelicals. Drinking to the point of drunkenness – even on an irregular basis, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, supporting a candidate who wants to keep abortion legal (even if said candidate does more for women in troubled pregnancies and practically reduces the number of abortions by their compassion rather than legislation), or divorcing a spouse without biblical grounds (or in many circles even with biblical grounds).

You can’t have it both ways. Either you are saved by faith and your actions have nothing to do with it, or our actions are central to our faith, both good and bad. Yeah, that’s where things get sticky, don’t you think?

I take issue with those who put all the weight on actions as well, because they seem to put all the weight on the good works and neglect the bad. If someone is actively involved in service to the poor and oppressed, who cares what sins they may be enslaved to? I know that’s an oversimplification. I really do.

The tension really comes into play when defining salvation. It has been so ingrained in us that salvation is eternal life (meaning when we physically die we go to heaven and live eternally), we only give passing consideration to another element in our salvation: empowerment to live and move in the divine image.

The empowerment we receive by the Holy Spirit does not mean total and complete victory. Sin is not a sign we have not accepted Jesus’ invitation to enter the Kingdom of God. At the same time, the fact that we will sin is no excuse for that sin. We are to put to death our sinful desires, progressively, as we are transformed into the image of Christ from one empowering moment to the next.

Our faith is an active faith. Works have everything to do with salvation, but not necessarily prior to salvation. Certainly, our actions and choices prior to following Jesus factor in our development as persons, but we are not earning or rejecting salvation in those actions. In the same way, our works are not earning or rejecting salvation after following Christ.

But…

There’s always a “but” when trying to work out theology.

Continually rejecting the empowerment to overcome our sins and strive to become like Christ could certainly deaden our faith. Our development can be stunted or even reversed by a continual insistence on living in the filth of sin.

In the same way, continually striving to overcome and be developed into the image of Christ will strengthen us and draw us closer to God.

So, I guess I’m saying you aren’t saved by what you do. You aren’t damned for what you do. But salvation for us in the here and now is all about what we do.

This may seem like an awful post on Christmas Eve, but as I read this post from Boing Boing (which they picked up on from Danny who picked up on it from The Straight Dope), I can’t help but to think about those who are experiencing this for their Christmas. Of course, many of those don’t give a rip about Christmas, but as I’m anxiously awaiting my first Christmas celebration with my girlfriend’s family, our government thinks this treatment of human beings is perfectly okay.

What waterboarding feels like:

The water fills the hole in the saran wrap so that there is either water or vaccum in your mouth. The water pours into your sinuses and throat. You struggle to expel water periodically by building enough pressure in your lungs. With the saran wrap though each time I expelled water, I was able to draw in less air. Finally the lungs can no longer expel water and you begin to draw it up into your respiratory tract.

It seems that there is a point that is hardwired in us. When we draw water into our respiratory tract to this point we are no longer in control. All hell breaks loose. Instinct tells us we are dying.

I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You [b]know[b] you are dead and it’s too late. Involuntary and total panic…

So, is it torture?

I’ll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I’d take the fingers, no question.

It’s horrible, terrible, inhuman torture. I can hardly imagine worse. I’d prefer permanent damage and disability to experiencing it again. I’d give up anything, say anything, do anything.

Link

(Thanks, Danny!)

(Via Boing Boing.)

These are all issues we must be concerned about.

Do you feel a “but” coming?

But…

There’s a danger in big ideas. The danger is we transfer one cause for another. This is especially dangerous in the emerging church. Many of us have come out of church situations where we the primary focus has been the exaltation of ideas. For many, the danger to switch one big idea for another is too much to overcome.

I see that working in a lot of emerging churches today, at least how they are described by those running them (let’s be honest, very FEW of us have actually experienced most of the emerging churches we are familiar with, it all comes from personal conversation or what we read on the internet or emerging literature). The big ideas of theological reconstruction, focusing on the poor and the oppressed, care for the world we live in–these things can become just big ideas.

In a nation where free speech is touted as one of our greatest freedoms, we have become inclined as individuals to think we are actually doing something when we exercise that freedom. When we associate with others who are talking about the environment, talking about poverty, talking about corruption in politics, talking about (insert big idea here), we feel as though we are doing something. Simply by identifying with the big ideas which often are extremely important, we find an identity which justifies, to the big ideas’ detriment, just being passionate about something without actually doing something related to the big idea.

Even as I write this, I think, well, I recycle! I also drive a Z3 which doesn’t get quite the gas mileage I thought it would…

I do look the homeless persons in the eye when talking to them or passing them on the street, whether I give or not, but I don’t do near what I am able. I could truly help, but I don’t. Somehow, being amongst people who care about the poor makes it easier for me to shirk my responsibility to actually help them.

I don’t want to discredit the ministries which are talking about the big ideas, that is not my intent at all. Being aware, however, of the danger big ideas present, is necessary to overcome the very real possibility (or even probability) that our churches are more about talking up the big ideas than dedicating resources towards them.

And to beat a dead horse for long-time readers of this blog… as long as our primary focus for church life is a meeting with a half-hour or more sermon, big ideas will always be our focus rather than actually doing something about them.

She brings up a reasonable observation that it seems both pastors and politicians have an aversion to admitting they’ve changed their minds about something. I, for one, am not so worried about what Huckabee preached, as I am concerned with his political views. Having been a pastor myself, I wouldn’t want my sermons to be a factor on which acting gig I get or which website I develop. He has entered a different career.

Decisions about Huckabee should mostly be based on his political views and not his religious beliefs. Certainly, we cannot compartmentalize to the point where we do not consider something as important as religious faith, but it would be very easy to pull the focus on what matters most for politicians… how they vote and what they plan to vote for or against.

I hope no copies of Huckabee’s sermons come to the surface. I don’t want them to be torn apart, taken out of context, and abused by the media and his opponents. As far as whether he still believes them or not, I don’t really care a whole lot. I’m not voting for him, any way, and if I were, I’d be concerned with other things first.

I’ve listed to old sermons I’ve preached… let’s just say time changes a man.

I found this video via the One for Truth blog.

So I recently subscribed to Lainie Petersen’s blog, and this post: Walking the Underdog, or The One Ring (Another Missive from my Atheist Husband) presented an idea had never really considered. Or at least I can’t remember thinking anything remotely like this.

Her husband wrote the post, evidently, and if I can summarize in a nutshell it would be that when a religion with such a strong rooting in persecution throughout its history becomes the predominant religion in the area, the adherents of the religion will divide themselves to be different and draw the ire of others… to feel persecuted.

That’s a very simple way to explain an eloquent post. So go read the whole thing here.

John MacArthur on The Emergent Church:

“This gives us the chance to say that we are so committed to unity in the Body of Christ that we are willing to hang with MacArthur, even when he thinks we are part of a different story. Rather than stooping to divisive rhetoric, we can help interpret the message of Christ by claiming MacArthur in our family, even if he is our crazy Uncle Phil.”

(Via willzhead.)

One of the most difficult things for me in leaving any type of established church is the feeling of being disconnected from the Church universal. Mostly, it’s a game in my mind, as I was no more connected to the church universal by attending an institutional type church than I am gathering with like-minded house-church types. But in a very real sense, I am disconnected in that they no longer see me as a healthy member of the body of Christ. I used to be able to reach out to even MacArthur’s students (I was a pastor in the city where the Master’s College is), and most of them would at least acknowledge I was a Christian (though certainly misguided ). Now, I feel like I can’t even engage them on a level where my faith is recognized as genuine.

And that does break my heart. Sure, I can explain how hyper-fundamentalists divide and tear down those who don’t fall in line, and I can tell others they are poor models of Jesus (though I don’t think I’d want my own life put under a microscope in that regard), but if I truly believe in the gracious God I love and serve, I must see them as family. Family who are not just the “crazy Uncle Phil” types, but the type of family who have disowned me, don’t want to speak to me, and put all of their effort into making sure no one else does either.

I love the Church. I wish I liked her a little more right now than I do. And I wish most of her liked me more than right now, too.

Jesus Creed does Politics — Democrats:

“At the inspiration of Eugene Cho, I’m trying something perhaps risky. We’ve addressed other controversial topics on this blog in a civil manner and now I’m trying something new: the elections. So, today, I’m asking those who are voting Democrat to announce who they are voting for and provide the positive reasons why they are making their choice”

(Via Jesus Creed.)

“Now-hear what I’m saying and don’t hear what I’m not saying. The Gospel has serious claims on our lives on the ways we treat others, on our relationship to sex, to money, to power- and sometimes those claims are going to be offensive.

But the point is, if anything about us is going to be offensive, it darn well better be the Gospel, and not our marriages, and so the church better give some serious thought as to how we treat our wives and even women in general.”

(Via bob.blog.)

Bob Hyatt’s been running a series of blog posts about wives submitting to husbands. You really should check it out, starting with the first one.

I’ll be officiating a wedding ceremony within the next couple of weeks (exact date not set yet… very small ceremony), and so I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to say. Normally, especially in a context where those in attendance will comprise mostly of nonchristians, I would avoid the submission wordage. It’s too hard to explain, at least I’ve thought before, the fullness of that passage to a group of people who see the church as an ancient, patriarchal, demeaning to women system.

With Bob articulating the issue so well, I’m seriously considering the wedding message to come directly from the submission passage. Really, what Paul writes is redeeming in its context. And, of course, we often forget that Paul admonishes both husband and wife to submit to one another.

I’m thinking the short sermonette for the wedding would focus on the uniting and care for the other person. In marriage, husband and wife are united in such a way that each person must consider the other, submitting not necessarily to each other’s every whim, but possibly submitting to their every need.