Dealing with Idolatry--ideology

"...fidelity to the gospel lies not in repeating its slogans but in plunging the prevailing idolatries into its corrosive acids. We must learn to address the spirituality of institutions, as well as their visible manifestations with the ultimate claim of the Ultimate Human." Walter Wink

The Real history of the Church

Myth and lack of historical fact checking often lead to a misreading and a misunderstanding of history. One of those places we've believed myth over reality is in the crusades. In his book God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades Rodney Stark takes on the myths that have been passed down through the centuries. Scholar Thomas Madden does a similar debunking in his article on the Inquisition. Here is a bit of the article:

"The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training — something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.

The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community."

On Being Safe and Culturally insignficant

I was looking back at some work I'd done in the book of Proverbs and came across the following words. I don't remember if I wrote them or if they came from another source, nevertheless they reflect a reality that many of us in the Christian community live in.

On the surface, cultural separation masks itself as a form of godliness, but a closer look reveals an enterprise driven more by self-preservation than anything. “We may bemoan a moral decline in the country. Our actual concern, if truth be known, is not to see a vital Christianity flourish, but rather to secure a more orderly and less violent society in which to live out our comfortable and self-satisfied lives.” In other words, we want a safer world. We are not as concerned about the salvation of those in the world as much as we want them to behave better around us for our comfort.

This is where so much of our current attitude and approach to the world differs from God’s will as expressed in the prayer of Jesus in John 17. We want to be safe in a safer world; God wants us safe in an unsafe world. We want to protect ourselves by removing ourselves from danger; God wants to protect us in the middle of danger. These differences may seem insignificant on the surface, but in fact they are huge, involving entirely different worldviews and ramifications.

This theory of safety through removing ourselves from the world could be one of the most dangerous doctrines to invade the church in recent years. It is now thought to be more spiritual to be safe from the world than to interact with it.

What would it look like if we traded in a doctrine of safety for a doctrine of engaging the world? What impact would it have on the way we raise our kids?

America: The Founding Fathers

There is a debate that seems to rage continually about whether the U.S. was founded by Christians or by secularists who used some Christian language. Both sides of this debate have much invested in their view since if their view wins the day, they can appeal to it to set directions and disenfranchise the other side. I've done some reading on this whole issue and have always been leery of the "Christian America" idea. At the same time it is clear that there some type of religious roots in the founding of the U.S. A recent article by Alissa Wilkinson helped me sort through a lot of the fog.

If this is something you've wondered about or fought for one side or the other it is worth the read.

The good of law

One of the struggles faced by developing nations is building a base of good laws that are enforced so wealth can be developed. We often miss this as a central ingredient in defeating poverty. A recent article talks about a rather creative way to bring such law to developing nations. Enjoy the read.

What's going on in 1 Corinthians 11

Every once in a while someone asks me about the passage in 1 Corinthians 11 that deals with the Lord's supper. There is that verse that can is very disquieting, 1Cor. 11:27 "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself." What does one do with this verse and who can dares to take communion in the light of eating and drinking judgment on yourself, after all, even the most committed and faithful of us never gets the faith completely right. Knowing this I've talked to some from very conservative traditions who have never taken communion for fear that they will eat and drink judgment on themselves.

So how do we take these verses? The first is we have to take them in context. The problem in Corinth is that people are coming to the Lord's Supper and focusing only on themselves while ignoring the needs of the body of Christ (the church). The rich are coming, eating, and getting drunk while the poor, who have to work first, come to the worship service hoping to get their one good meal of the week and find the food gone and their "fellow" Christians fully sated. What this tells us is that the people in Corinth are missing out on the body of Christ in two ways. The first way is they are missing the reality that Christ has sacrificed his body, given his body so that they can be reconciled to God. In the supper they come face-to-face with this wonder and it should floor them in such a way that they desire to imitate the sacrificial heart of Christ. As Christ's heart was broken for their need so their hearts should be broken for the needs of those in their community who are poor. As Paul will say in 2 Corinthians 8 concerning the need to give to the poor, 2Cor. 8:9 "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that sthough he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." The second way they miss the reality of the body of Christ is that the church is the body of Christ and they are dishonoring this body when the rich ignore the needs of the poor in their community.

The important thing to get here is that "not discerning the body of Christ" is not that these people didn't know who Jesus was or didn't understand that the bread represented his body (that's easy to get, a couple of seconds of instruction and a person can tell you the bread represents the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ), no the problem is much deeper than that: these people didn't get that bread in their hand was a call to be like Jesus, to act in a Christ-like, self-sacrificing manner for others in the community. We would say that these people didn't get depth of the second greatest commandment, "love your neighbor as yourself" or as John will says in 1 John 4.19 "We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother."

At one level this levels a lot of people who come with confidence to the table and declare they get that the bread is the body of Christ. These people are not discerning the depth of what Paul is after. He's not looking for some intellectual assent (certainly he wants us to believe rightly, but right belief doesn't get us into the core of his desire), he is looking for a people whose hearts are breaking over the poor, the struggling, and broken in their midst. He is looking for people who really to love their neighbor as themselves and as they take the bread are overwhelmed with a God who loved them, so overwhelmed they can't help but bring his love to others, can't help but be those who though they are rich become poor for the sake of others.

Each of us who have come to the table know that we are basically lousy at this becoming poor deal. We are self-absorbed, watching out for ourselves, we want people to care for us because we deserve it. But it is just here that the table does two things: first it confronts us with the body of Christ and we are laid low with our failure to love others; Second, it reminds us that the table is both a place where we see the grace of God in the bread and the cup and a place where the only way we can come it by God's grace. We come asking his forgiveness for failing to discern the body of Christ. For fail to discern it we do, over and over again. The simply truth is that without grace we can't get to the table for our failure to discern the body plagues us. The failure to act in a Christ-like, sacrificial manner walks with us like an unwanted shadow.

But this raises another question. As I mentioned earlier, it is easy to understand that the bread is the body and the wine is the blood of Christ. This concept of the bread is a call to see the sacrifice of Christ and to act in accord with that sacrifice is a harder thing to grasp. It is harder to think through the implications of whether I am loving my neighbor as myself, if my life really does reflect becoming poor so that others may become rich. Given how difficult this can be who can take part in the supper? Can a 30 year old downs syndrome person take part in the supper? Can an 80 year old who has alzheimer's? Can a 50 year old who has never been overly self-reflective come to the table? Can a 10 year old who knows they love Jesus but can't wrap their mind around the fullness of what it means to discern the body?

My take is that the supper is open to all of these people. Open not because they get the fullness of what it means to discern the body (after all, which one of us does, which of us really gets the fullness of Christ's sacrifice and then has it so impact our lives that it shapes and molds every move we make?), but because rightly taught and led they, and indeed all of us, can discern the body at the level of understanding that God has given us at any particular moment in our lives. God does not asks that down's syndrome child or the person with Alzheimer's to be more than they are, only to be what he has made them to be. With a child or a 50 year old we want to help them think more deeply, grow more in discerning the body, but we don't withhold the gift and grace of the supper from them until they get it all right. We withhold the supper only if they don't believe or for a child, if the community and particularly the parents discerns the child is not yet ready--so their faith is a mere mimic of the parent's and doesn't yet have a voice of its own or if it's clear the child wants to take part because taking part looks cool or their faith is childish rather than child-like.

In the Christian Reformed Church, of which I am a part, the way we do this discerning with children and young people is a process called, Profession of Faith. A child or young person stands before the community and declares their faith publicly. We are in the process of asking whether children should be at the supper as a matter of course and not only after they stand before the community and make a public profession. Some hold that a child's inability to discern the body disqualifies them from taking the supper. We don't, after all, want them to eat and drink judgment onto themselves. Wherever this ends up it seems to me that we have less to worry about children failing to discern the body i.e. knowing that because Jesus loves them they need to love others, than we do with adults failing to discern the body since many of us as we have become adults have also put up our guard against loving others and have far less willingness to become poor so that others might become rich.

The bottom line for both children and adults is that we come to the table only by God's grace and each time we hold the bread in our hand we both celebrate that grace and are reminded how much we need it because we look so little like Christ who on the night he was betrayed took bread and said...

Seeing the whole picture

"...the very point of salvation is the reweaving, enriching, and renewal of creation! The Spirit of God is not only a preacher but also an artist, a gardener, and a banker..."

Tim Keller Pastor and Author

I love this reminder by Keller of the fullness of the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is about the renewal of the cosmos, not only individual souls (and one of the ways he renews the cosmos is by the renewal of individual souls). This reality shapes our own view of our work. When we are involved in the "reweaving, enriching, and renewal of creation" through our work we join with the Spirit in God's grand master plan. The challenge before us is to know how to take part in this rather than just sliding through life assuming it's happening because we are going about our day-to-day tasks. The question before us is, "Who do I have in my life who I think through, struggle with, have honest conversations with about whether how I do all of life reflects the fullness of the work of the Spirit.