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(I have not idea where this post went?!?!)

posted by chad at 7:01 am

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here’s a question…

Here’s a question that was raised at our small group study this Sunday. Do you have free will in Heaven? Interesting question, right? Because it seems that without free will we would cease to exist in some very essential way. But with human free will, it seems Heaven would not be a perfect place, but a place very much like Earth…where human free will messes everything up.

True freedom is living in perfect, unadulterated friendship with God and, as such, living as we are meant to live. In this way, our “will” is always pointed at the best, most beautiful, most loving, most ethical reality. Conversely, this side of heaven, when I exert my “free will” to do that which is contrary to the design God has for me, I’m not longer free; I’m bound in a hostile relationship with my Maker.

Therefore, I would answer your question by saying Yes and No! Yes, we will be truly free. No, in that freedom, we will not desire anything that is contrary to God.

Good questions!! All of that said, what about heaven? I’m willing to bet that most of the people in your Sunday group point to the sky when they think about heaven. Where is heaven? What is heaven? On that note, I’ll point you to Paul’s thoughts on new creation. And, for comments on that, N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope.

Here’s a question for you with regards to the church you attend, which qualifies as a Mega, Mega Church: Why the sprawling campus and buildings? It seems like, from one angle, that you could do SO MUCH MORE if the resources were reallocated. On the other hand, if you took away the big buildings and fancy stages (I don’t mean to sound pejorative) then less people would come and thus fewer resources would be available?

posted by chad at 12:52 pm

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for starters… who is who?

I have an unusual question that there may not be a good answer to. Here it is: What terminology is used to differentiate between “mature” or “sophisticated” Christians and “nominal” Christians? You know…like what would a Christian be called who is born a Christian, was baptized, believes in God in some vague way, but doesn’t really understand deeper concepts of Christianity. Or who hasn’t really felt the presence of Jesus in their lives? Maybe there are several different words to describe a Christian.

1. Like a Christian who believes, but reluctantly. He thinks there is a “higher power” but he is not really familiar with the trinity, dying to oneself, the whole metaphysical Christian transformation of the person. Is there a name or names to describe this kind of Christian?

2. Or the Christian who understands everything perfectly academically, but has never felt the presence of Jesus personally? Is there a word or words to describe such a Christian?

3. And then, conversely, the committed Christian or sophisticated Christian…the Christian who believes deeply and understands the principles of the faith. Is there a word for that kind of Christian?

4. I was hoping to find some appropriate words, or words maybe used in the “profession” to describe those different stages of Christianity, because it seems that 90% of Americans are “Christians” in some sense, but that is too vague to differentiate between serious Christians and secular or nominal Christians.

And none of this is meant to imply one group is “superior” to the other or that there are Christians who are “real” Christians and Christians who are just “playing” Christian, or that we mere mortals could in any way look inside the human heart and know who was who…but I just wondered if when Christian ministers or scholars get together how they distinguish between the groups.

[My repsponse]

Interesting questions… sorry for the delay. Things have been pretty busy sense being home from CO. Are you gone right now?? I can’t remember…

We are all on a journey as followers of Jesus Christ. Depending upon our background, our life circumstances, and a whole host of other variables, we move at different speeds and take different routes. Nonetheless, they are all part of God’s agenda in our life. That’s an important fact in my estimation: God’s agenda in our life. Being a Christian means that we are saved from sin and decay by grace through faith… no man can boast, Paul says.

So, that means that our real and truthful standing before God has nothing to do with our understanding or how it fits together or how well we know the Bible or anything on our part. But, Paul and others warn: faith alone saves but the faith that saves is never alone! There are deeds that pour out of our life that tip people off to God’s agenda at work in our life.

And, toward the heart of your question, there is no scale that we can REALLY apply to folks depending upon where they are “at.” You either are a Christian on God’s terms or you are not. As for you and I, the truth and authenticity of a person’s faith is ultimately hidden from us.

Here in America, especially in the Bible Belt Buckle, we have people who grew up in Christendom… that is, a sort of Western, American, quasi religious environment that tends to look a lot like Christianity. It is quite possible within this social environment to have atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, whatever but for them not be Christian.

Paul says in Romans, “If you believe in your heart that Christ rose from the dead and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.” That is a matter of faith, of a person’s heart turned toward the things of God by the grace of God.

As for religion, which to me is a social construct, or, if you will, the social expression of faith, James, writes, “Religion that is true and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” There are many people who are not “saved” by Paul’s definition that care for orphans, widows and that live chaste lives. I think what James is saying to a Christian audience that tended to be too internally focused is that your faith must give way to something more than pious exercises. It better look like this!

If someone calls themselves a Christian but doesn’t confess Jesus as Lord and doesn’t believe that God rose Jesus from the dead…. well, according to Scripture, they are deceived. They may have grown up in a Christian culture or home, but they aren’t true followers of Jesus… not yet, at least! (This demarcation is God’s business, not mine; I shutter at even the expression of it!)

Here’s my recommendation for how to label folks, or not. My numbers correspond to your numbers in the email…

1. God may be at work in a person who is in this sort of place, but, they are yet to be followers of Jesus. Some folks have come up with catchy slogans like “pre-Christian” or “pre-believers” versus non-believers. The point is, who knows but God where this person is on the journey or where he or she will end up. It really doesn’t change the way I care and interact with them.

2. Feelings are a tricky way to measure true faith. But, a person who has a head full of facts without a heart full of passion is something akin to a Pharisee in Jesus’ day: sounds great, but there isn’t much there. Very dangerous!

3. Christian. Or, follower of Christ.

4. Secular Christians or nominal Christians are more of what I would consider American. I’m not comfortable using the word Christian to label folks in this category.

Finally, I’m not aware of ministers or scholars making decisions about these matters, but, this is my two cents… Hope that helps!! I’m not trying to be coy…

posted by chad at 2:49 pm

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this one friend…

After three plus months of no blogging, I am back! I’m back because I like to share. I like to hear what you are thinking (you, that is, reading along in otherwise total anonymity!) Don’t hold back.

I’ve got this one friend who asks good questions in his emails. His good questions provoke lengthy and thoughtful replies. You can decide whether or not they are helpful. I’ll be back over the next few days with some of these exchanges between us.

The conversation only gets more interesting if you comment. So fire away! Besides, the blog is all about the comments. Otherwise, I’d just stick with the emails and the Moleskine.

posted by chad at 3:24 pm

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romansxii

Throughout the first eleven chapters of his letter to Rome, Paul tells a story of God’s covenantal faithfulness to Abraham and the true Israel. It is the Gospel story. It is good; its rhythms interfere with an otherwise chaotic, a-rhythmic world. For this reason, at the very outset, Paul declares his unapologetic, unashamed love for this story: “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes… in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.”

By taking the time to tell this story and to wrestle with some of its doctrinal implications in the first eleven chapters, Paul arrives at a place of praise both in word and deed. First, his doxology at the close of chapter 11 (33-36) celebrates the greatness, holiness, and mercies of God. Indeed, the mercy of God, his kindness and severity (11:22), have been an important, underlying theme throughout the letter.

With that foundation, Paul makes his appeal to his brothers and sisters in Rome (and us!). God’s mercies (re)orient our life. In turn, we present ourselves to the merciful God as living sacrifices. As such, we are non-conformists, living a life transformed by renewed thinking and reasoning. Transformation, not conformity, is the path to real change. Conformity calls for things like tolerance. Transformation calls for genuine love!

In fact, the rest of this book, and this chapter in particular, go to great lengths to describe a living-sacrificial life transformed from the inside out. That is, it describes a life of true, authentic worship, life-giving relationships, and wise stewardship of all the resources God has given to us. N.T. Wright calls worship, stewardship, relationship our true human vocation. His shorthand for these is to say that we are made for God, sex, and gardening!

So, Paul is describing how the powerful and good Gospel story restores our humanity into something that God finds his pleasure and glory. What does it look like in real time? What does it look like today, Friday, April 11, 2008? Tomorrow? In the face the worlds joy and heartache? In your home and amongst strangers? What does it look like when you are in the company of people you don’t like or agree with?

Click on the comments and share your thoughts on non-conformity and living sacrifices!

posted by chad at 7:47 am

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a book review

The Reason for God: Belief in an age of skepticism
by Timothy Keller

I’m not a big fan of Christians trying to construct arguments that they think will prove to an otherwise unbelieving person that God exists. I’m even less tolerant of well meaning Christians proving the “reasonability” of deity of Jesus Christ and His atoning work on the cross. In other words, I don’t have much use for Christian apologetics. There are a few reasons for this.

On the one hand I usually sense arrogance in the arguing that is incongruent with the original premise. If God truly exists in the way that you believe he does, be honest that you can’t explain His existence no more than you caused His existence. Secondly, the passion and mystery and beauty that are inherently part of authentic faith are betrayed by a wholesale commitment to play by the scientists or radical empiricists rules. Some things can’t be explained by rational, empirical arguments. Thirdly, in the end, faith in action and humility that resembles that of Jesus’ life is our most compelling apologetic and requires fewer words. It has been said that Christians should proclaim the Gospel and when needed use words. Relationships are more compelling than rational arguments.

For these reasons I cringed when I read the title of Keller’s new book. Being somewhat familiar with Pastor Keller’s work at Redeemer Church, however, moved me past my initial ambivalence. And I am glad I did! I strongly recommend this book. In every way that the modern Christian apologetic has been found lacking, Keller’s work is humble, courageous, strong, and convincing. Even for people of faith, this book will be a breath of fresh air from a pastoral voice of experience.

The Role of a Pastor
In an age where pastors seem to be more deeply committed to publishing as they are to the congregations in which they work, Keller’s sets a new standard. This book isn’t just his last sermon series typed out into manuscript and sent to press. These pages are born out of the trenches of pastoral work. Part of what makes them so compelling is that Keller’s pastoral work unfolds in a setting not known for influential evangelical pastors: Manhattan! Clearly, over the years, Keller has had to endure some of the most skeptical, postmodern, and cynical questions regarding faith in God and Jesus Christ. In fact, he tells us in the book, he holds Q&A sessions after his Sunday morning sermons!

If nothing else, this book shows pastors how to remain true to your work as a pastor and steadfast in your commitment to God. He writes, “[This book] is a distillation of the many conversations I’ve had with doubters over the years. In both preaching and personal interactions I’ve tried to respectfully help skeptics look at their own faith foundations while at the same time laying bare my own to their strongest criticisms.”

Necessary Doubt
Right away I knew I was in a new territory of apologetics when he writes, “A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it.” Asking hard questions of a deeply held faith only serves to make people of faith stronger. Just as believers should be open to wrestling with their doubts, so “skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning. All doubts… are really a set of alternate beliefs.” He then proceeds to show how doubt is more like a blind leap than Christian faith.

The main body of the book is divided into two sections.

The Faith of the Skeptic
The first seven chapters deal head-on with some of the classic challenges that people use against Orthodox, Biblical Christianity. Such items as the exclusive claims of Christianity, suffering in the world, the church’s guilt in social ills, hell, science, and biblical literalism are covered. In addition to a strong pastoral voice, Keller’s personal conviction of orthodox Christian doctrine is readily apparent.

Where Christianity flies in the face of a more nuanced, postmodern worldview and the two are in the end at odds, Keller is unapologetic about his faith. Moreover, Keller has himself been a student over the years. His endnotes and quotations and references reveal the posture of a student in the role of a pastor. Again, throughout, Keller remains humble and generous.

Clues of God
There is an intermission in the middle of the book. In it he writes, “Underlying all the doubts about Christianity are alternate beliefs, unprovable assumptions… So far I’ve examined [these beliefs] people in our culture have about the Christian faith. I respect much of the reasoning behind them but in the end I don’t believe…” that they discredit Christian belief. He goes on to say, “Christians do not claim that their faith gives them omniscience or absolute knowledge of reality. Only God has that. But they believe that the Christian account of things—creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—makes the most sense in the world.” We can’t prove God’s existence like we prove observable data in creation, Keller writes. Proving God’s existence as such is like staring into the sun; instead, we should look to what the sunlight reveals clues to his reality that he has written into the universe.

True Belief
With that said, the second half are the “Reasons for Faith.” He looks at the clues of God (“the mysterious bang”, rhythms in nature, and beauty). He also looks at what he calls the “clue killers” which are the radical evolutionary biologists like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. He even takes their rationalism into its advanced skeptical stages and shows how it turns on itself! It can’t survive its own critique.

He then proceeds with the knowledge of God, sin, the difference between religion and the Gospel, the story of the Cross of Jesus, the resurrection, and the final chapter in which he writes about the “The Dance with God.” These final six or so chapters takes the assumption of God’s creative, redemptive existence and shows how Christian faith leads a person to live their true and liberated humanity.

While this book was written with the skeptic in mind, I found that this believing soul was uplifted and encouraged and I suspect I won’t be the last! This is a book I could easily hand a friend who was not in the faith or who was struggling in their faith. These pages and the discussion therein would provide countless jumping-off points not just for debate but in which relationship would be forged.

posted by chad at 12:54 am

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from Roatan

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life…. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. (The Moviegoer, Walker Percy)

Brett and I leaned on the railing looking out at the dark blue sea. The clouds overhead made the usually turquoise water appear darker blue, even gray. The sun was darting in and out between heavy clouds. There was a ceiling overhead. Our conversation moved me. I was seeing myself rightly – without, searching, and grateful.

Very few of the kids who lived in the home were still around on this day. They were enjoying time away from the home with friends and relatives. Two of them were playing in the large, red dirt field below Brett and I. Our attention was diverted away from the sea and to the two boys.

“That’s the way little boys are suppose to play – getting dirty, building, without a care in the world,” Brett said to me as we looked at them. I suspected that Brett was that kind of boy growing up. If so, he was a lot like me. I had the luxury of being able to a boy. These two were shaping something out of the iron-red mud in the filed. It was a circle. The mud they were using was a darker red than the dry dirt. When they dug below the surface, the field looked scarred, like it was bleeding. The circle they made stood out; it was nearly perfectly formed.

Most people equate the label “orphans” with children whose parents are no longer alive or able to care for them. But, the Latin root of the word orphan means something more; it means to be bereaved.

Their busy, carefree play in the mud notwithstanding, these two little boys’ hearts was bereaved. It was not uncommon to see one of them fly into a rage, picking a fight at some point during the day, or ignoring the instructions of the adults in charge. The disappointment and resentment in their hearts sometimes got the best of them. But now, beneath a heavy sky on this Good Friday, they were at play in the dirt fields. They were searching, building, exploring. If for only an hour or two, they were being the boys God created them to be without thinking of the hurt they had already endured at eight, nine years old.

The resentment was gone. The bitterness was nowhere to be found. They weren’t angry. Their hands scooped the mud, packed it, and formed it as they saw best.

I imagined God handling my heart similarly.

In the aftermath of my time in Roatan, the Friend has shown me unresolved bitterness and resentment in my heart. It has shaped my perspective, my thoughts, and my view of the world. It influences the way I act and react; especially with those I love most. In so far as I allow myself to be influenced by it, unchecked, I’m acting the part of an orphan though I am a son of God.

Your mercies, God, are before me! I move, act, live, love, search in view of God’s mercy shown to me in Christ.

posted by chad at 9:05 am

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a redemptive voice of reason

I’ve not written in a while. Then this came in the mail! There is hope! There is light in the darkness! There is a city on the hill!

How often are we all so sick and tired of the bantering that goes on in the public square?! I know that I am. No one of faith seems to be will or able to risk the political capital to give voice to the voice of redemption. No one can seem to find the way of Jesus amidst the storms of words and opinions. No one can seem to figure out a way to speak truth, to risk the back lash for the sake of understanding and compassion. This is the way of Jesus.

Then, today in my Sojourners email, this bright spot from Governor Huckabee! Beautiful! Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done…

As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, “That’s a terrible statement,” I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I’m going to be probably the only conservative in America who’s going to say something like this, but I’m just telling you: We’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, “You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus.” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had … more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
Mike Huckabee, offering his perspective on the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Source: MSNBC)

I hope this gives you hope and reminds you that something better will come from the Bride of Christ.

posted by chad at 2:57 pm

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…to love

Those who lead must believe.
Those who believe must live.
Those who live must love.

p

:: GoingOutside.org ::

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

wall e

Thursday, July 31, 2008

here’s a question…

Thursday, July 24, 2008

for starters… who is who?

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

this one friend…

Friday, April 11, 2008

romansxii

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

a book review

Friday, March 28, 2008

from Roatan

Thursday, March 27, 2008

a redemptive voice of reason

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

…to love