I’ve heard some people say that they are worried about their kids, when they are told about the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and Jesus, that they might learn two of the three are a lie and assume the third is also.

That’s pretty silly, unless during family devotions you are praying to the Easter Bunny. Kids can tell the difference between something you devote your life to and something you talk about once a year.

If they believe Jesus is on the same level of relevance in your life as Santa Claus, it’s because you’ve lived like it.

I was driving today, listening to conservative talk radio (because it’s as funny as Jon Stewart during the Bush years) and all the flailing and panicking and minor-key interludes that accompany advertisements for reseeding packets and buying gold.  Then, I turned off the radio, and looked over the tops of the brilliantly colored red and yellow leaves to notice a hawk flying high on a background of white, wispy clouds.

Despite what is clearly an attack on our way of life, and the worst economic meltdown of the century, and the rise of fascist dictatorships, and eminent inflation, and the end of life as we have known it, and the rolling over of the founding fathers in their graves (according to the show I had just turned off), it was strangely peaceful.

Almost as if God is not worried.

Almost as if the designer of the beautiful leaves and amazing blue sky didn’t stop painting and creating long enough to fret about his kids worrying and thinking he’d left the throne.

God is so worried that he started painting.  Maybe we should take that hint.  We Christians ought to be so vexed and perplexed that we start singing.  The tomb is empty.

I am having a hard time figuring out your target audience.  Jesus providentially didn’t have me stop at that intersection, as I’d have probably gotten out and never made it where I was going, but the signs I got a glimpse of at 40 MPH were:

Christmas = Jesus, Easter = Jesus, Halloween = ???

and

Avoid any appearance of evil… (didn’t catch the rest of it)

It looks to me like you are trying to convince Christians to not celebrate Halloween.  Thus making the busy intersection on Patton Avenue a less than stellar place to have the conversation.

I’d love to defend why my son is going to be dressing up (like a overly-cute giraffe) and asking the neighbors for candy this weekend, but your condescending signs that have about a 5th grade level understanding of Scripture make it difficult for me to get into the conversation.  Honestly, I have to continually check myself not to just totally blast you in this conversation.  I’m trying to love you.

Because, after all, we’re family.

I’m not mad at the participants in your little protest.  This letter is not to them.  I’m talking to the guy who organized it.  The guy who came up with (or gave the thumbs-up to) the smug, arrogant slogans on the signs, and arranged the carpool.

What is your motive, brother?  Do you want people to meet Jesus, or just become irritating religious punks?  What would be “success” for your little rally yesterday?  If people closed their doors, turned out the lights, and went to church on the only night this year that dozens of their neighbors are going to willingly ring their doorbell?  Or would success be folks pulling over to join you in your crusade against candy?

Here’s the thing.  I know that Halloween has some dubious underpinnings, and there’s a lot of occult things associated with it.  I got that.  But, to my knowledge, none of the 6-year-olds that are going to come to my house are going to head back home to sacrifice a kitten on their front lawn, or participate in a seance.  And even if they did, I could never point to my own actions as anything better.  There are two teams in this contest: (1) Bad, twisted sinners and (2) Jesus.  I’ll let you guess which team you and I are on.  For me to pretend that my not participating in the occult ritual makes me any better of a person is to totally miss the gospel.

I should further clarify.  I am OK if you feel called not to celebrate Halloween (I too was that guy once.)  What I object to is your trying to enforce what is clearly a personal conviction on others as though it were a biblical mandate, and printing signs and yelling on a street corner.  If we’d put the same amount of time, energy, and money into really engaging the non-Christians in our neighborhoods with the gospel (that Jesus has conquered sin, death, and hell on our behalf), imagine the outcome!

As for us this weekend, as long as we’ve got neighbors coming to our house, we’re going to give them candy.  And we aren’t going to skimp on it either.  We’ve got Snickers.  I’d love it if some of my non-believing neighbors’ kids were to head back home and say “That house over there gives out the best candy!”  As Christians, we ought to have the reputation of being the sweetest.  After all, our sins have been paid for by the most loving act in the history of the world.

John 21:15

“Do you love me more than these?  These what?  Oh, these 153 fish that I just caught?  I sure do, Jesus.  I’d gladly give up fishing—my very livelihood—if it meant being with you.”

How quickly Peter answered.

Jesus is asking me lately whether I love him more than financial security, or even providing for my family.  He’s not, I think, asking me to forgo money (just as he wasn’t telling Peter to never fish again).  He’s simply asking what I trust in more.  At the end of the day, when all seems lost and I want to crawl in a hole, what do I trust more?  Who do I love more?

This is a quote that rocked me to the core last week.  It’s something Tim Keller references in his study Gospel Christianity 101 (which you should immediately purchase, read, and use as the curriculum at your small group)  He quoted Richard Hays from his book The Moral Vision of The New Testament:

God’s… invasion of the world has wrought an inversion: God has reversed the positions of insiders and outsiders.  Those who are in positions of authority and privilege reject Jesus and the message.  However, people of low or despised position in the social world of first-century Jewish culture receive the gospel gladly, for their need is great… Those familiar with the story should not  under-estimate the shock of this inversion.

It’s a great quote.  It’s not something terribly new to me, but what rocked me this time as I was reading it is the harsh realization that in my church, in my ministry, and in my life I consistently become an insider.  In fact, at times it is my primary goal. I get a new teaching, or a new way of doing things, and I make and “inside” and an “outside.”  I’m always an insider, scratching and clawing my way to be recognized, applauded, and accepted by the other “insiders.”

The gospel alone forces me to admit being an outsider.  But once I am out in the cold, with no way of saving myself, that same gospel shows me (and in some mysterious way gives me) a righteousness that is unshakable.

May God continue to push us out into the cold, lest we believe the compelling lie that there’s something we did (or can do) to save ourselves.

I love it because you don’t have to wear a mask.  I mean, I still do… I just don’t have to.  I see the pastors every week taking off their masks and allowing us to glimpse how the gospel is changing them.  Someday, I’ll take mine off, too.

My church isn’t perfect.  But the one to whom she is betrothed is.  I’m so thankful it’s HIM that the pastors and worship leaders strive to take me to each week.

It’s so easy to share even a message about Jesus and not share the message of Jesus.

Take Matthew 4:1-11 as an example.  It’s a fairly well known passage about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan.  Every single time I have ever talked or meditated on this passage I have made the action point something like, “and you, when you are tempted, can be like Jesus who answered the temptation with Scripture…” or some other vague encouragement to be a better person, like Jesus.  While that is partially true, in that scripture memory is important and beneficial, it totally misses the bigger point, and places the emphasis of an otherwise Ben-free passage on, well, me.

In fact, that’s a pagan point.  Pagans appease their god by doing enough good, and cleaning up their act, and memorizing enough mantras.

The bigger emphasis of this passage is that, as the writer of Hebrews says, we have a high priest who was tempted in every way just as we are, but didn’t cave.  Jesus fulfilled all of the law, even on the level of motive, so that sinners like me can have life.  In this passage Jesus is more than our example (because that would be an insurmountable load of pressure, now that we consider it), He’s our substitute.  Far from being a passage where I walk away feeling bad for not having memorized enough of the Bible, I am instead encouraged that Jesus memorized enough Bible, and followed all of it perfectly enough, to save me.

If you walk away from any sermon in any Christian church feeling like you need to work harder or do better in order to make God happy, you’ve either missed the point of the sermon, or the sermon was a pagan, non-gospel sermon.

The other night at the Derek Webb concert I had a blast. Very few artists can make me think like he can. His perspective on life is amazing.

I think my favorite song on his new album (which he plays ALL of at the show) is “The Spirit and the Kick Drum.” It is a resounding call to the church, all caught up in our sound and lights worship services, to remember that we are not the point. The three lines that stick out from the song, and form the frame onto which each verse is woven:

I don’t want the Spirit, I want a kick drum.

I don’t want the Son, I want a jury of peers.

don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine.

What is it that we want out of Christianity? Do we want God, so that he can give us something else, like health or money? Or do we see HIM as the blessing of the gospel?

How often, if I am honest, I look to what God is holding out in his hand to me, and miss the point that it is the sight of God’s hand at which I ought to marvel.

I was reading in the book of Ezekiel (as per the YouVersion “daily reading” plan which has regrettably looked for me more like an every-other-daily plan at best) recently and was struck by Ezekiel 20:12.

Did you catch that?  (mouse over the verse to read it)  God gave us the sabbath (a day of rest at the end of the week) to be a sign that he is the one that sanctifies us (makes us holy)!  What a profound thought, that the sabbath, as opposed to being a religious formality where we stop working for fear of God punishing us, is in fact supposed to remind us that all of our striving and work could never save us.

God longs for us to come and sit at His feet, and cultivate a relationship.  He’ll do all the fixing, the working, the chipping away of the old self.  All we have to do is rest.

Can I be honest?

The past week has been a struggle.  We are facing an elephant-sized amount of financial support to raise, and despite having been off campus working full-time on developing additional support, we have a net gain of around (negative) 100 bucks per month this month.  It has felt insurmountable at times, and we have struggled with trusting God.

But as I was driving back from Fall Getaway (the only on-campus activity of the semester), I was confronted—no, accosted—by a strong sense of hope.  See, I’m more sure than ever that I am called to be on staff with this organization.  I am so excited about what God is doing on campus, and how He is continually, relentlessly, mercifully taking me to the gospel.  I have a clear vision for where we are going, just not how we are getting there.

These economic times (a phrase I wish were retired, or at least made past tense) have meant a sense of panic in America.  To compound that, the predominantly fiscally conservative culture in which I have most of my doings has reached fever pitch over the national transfer of power to the left-minded.  People are terrified, if that’s a strong enough word.  And the news media is loving it.  The more they stir up the blood pressure, the more their advertisers pay to put their logo just to the left of the “Meltdown” graphic.  (This segment of panicked rhetoric and over-dramatization is brought to you by Sears.  “Come experience the softer side of Sears.”)

Listening to conservative talk radio is baffling to the point of humorous, as you’ll hear minor-key melodramatic advertisements urging investors to buy gold, or seed packets, or underground bunkers.

What drives the panic?  Lack of perspective.

When I panic over how we are going to stay on staff in light of our current financial support, it means I’ve lost perspective on who is in charge.

When you panic because you fear the ramifications of a liberal policy (or a conservative policy), or because your 401(k) is looking more like a 200.5(k), it means the same thing: you’ve lost perspective on who is in charge.

Despite what some politicians (or marketers) might have you believe, the office of the presidency was never designed to save you.  Free market capitalism governed by personal moral restraint, though I think it’s biblical, is not designed to save you.

A full bank account, and a surplus of money coming in each month is not designed to save me.  As soon as we give saving power to anyone or anything in our lives, we’ve missed the gospel.

Let me be clear and say I am not suggesting a carefree, naive approach to what are certainly weighty issues.  I am not suggesting that I should stop aggressively pursuing raising support, or that you should ignore the politicians and what’s going on in the country.  Issues like public healthcare are worth discussing and debating.  They are just not worth panicking over.  Panic indicates that you are trusting in that subject to be your salvation.

As Christians, we should only panic if God is in danger of no longer being sovereign.  Hope, for the believer, is not some wishful thinking where we cross our fingers and think positive thoughts.  Hope (that force that accosted me on the road back from Lake Wylie) is based on who God is, and what he has done.  Jesus didn’t say “it is almost finished, except for that part that will be finished once _____________ happens” (fill in the blank with things like a full bank account, your particular brand of legislation making it through congress, your kid turning out to be a preacher, or doctor, or fisherman…)  He said “It is finished.”  As believers, we can be assured that, no matter what happens in the meantime, it is all going to be all right in the end.  This life is as close to hell as we will ever get.

When we have weeks that are a struggle to latch onto God, we can rest assured that it wasn’t his grip that loosened.  He’s never let go.  And praise the Lord his saving me isn’t based on my ability to keep my grasp on it.

I’ve seen many of these types of bumper stickers and signs, lately.  And I agree, we should work toward peace, now.  But what these stickers and the sentiments behind them fail to take into account is that, essentially, all of the war-mongers out there are thinking the same thing.

“There would be peace, if everybody shared the same worldview, (mine.)”

So the ones who aggressively push for peace and the reconciliation of the different worldviews are doing the same thing as the radical fundamentalists.  Pushing their worldview (that no worldview is more correct than another and that all of us need to pursue coexistence above all else) on others.

One problem is that the peace-mongers have the elevator music of worldviews.  Take out anything that could be potentially offensive, and ignore the fact that only a very small minority of people like what you are left with.

The other (more fundamental) problem is that the peace-mongers have something to lose.  If people don’t reconcile, and come to their way of thinking, they have failed.  Their personal peace (especially in the primarily-agnostic worldview in which they live) is inextricably tied into the proliferation of their philosophy.

Jesus came with a worldview that, though unpopular, actually works toward bringing about real—no strings attached—peace.  His worldview?  That God is King (not president) of all kings, and that all of us have actively and passively rebelled against his kingdom and authority.  Instead of executing justice (something along the lines of a universal flood, minus the ark) he sent his Son, the second person of the eternal trinity, to substitute himself for the rebels, and take our penalty, by dying a gruesome death, and raising from the dead. As Christians we call the content of this paragraph the “gospel” or good news of what Jesus has done.

Now, instead of having to earn God’s favor (and therefore ultimate peace with Him), we are gifted it.  And therefore we no longer have to fight to be right, or to protect our cause (though many well-meaning “Christians” have fought and continue to—because they don’t understand the gospel I just shared above).  One of the things that marked early Christianity was the care for the poor, and not just the Christian poor, but all of the poor.  Pagan kings were flabbergasted that the Christians would even take care of the pagan poor and hungry.

Only in the gospel do we find a true reason to not be selfish (the beginning of peace).  In the gospel we see that we are the rebel, the outcast, who was brought into the family, by grace.  We have all the acceptance, hope, love, and joy that we’ll ever need—in Christ.  That means that we can truly work toward peace, with nothing in it for us.

I am stuck on the thought that what I witnessed yesterday over at Stuff Christians Like, though good, is not confession.  I did a quick perusal of the words translated as “confess” in our English Bibles (thanks to my Logos Bible Software, it took all of 5 minutes) and found out that Christian confession, from a biblical standpoint, is almost always viewed as positive, joyful, and beneficial.  What I also deduced is that “anonymous confession” is an impossible contradiction of terms, biblically.

See, though it may be therapeutic to give voice to the things you would never tell a soul as an anonymous comment on a blog, you have not yet confessed your sin.  You’re close, but you’re not there yet.

My heart broke as I read through the comments on that site, for the fact that we don’t understand the gospel if there is nobody in our lives with whom we can share the darkest parts of us.  There was a part of me that wanted to shout, “Is that all you’ve got?” after reading those “confessions.”

See, having walked with Christ for somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 years, I’ve begun to notice a pattern.  Every time I think “there’s nobody that struggles with this particular sin…” and then I share it with a group of guys, about half of them struggle in the same ways with the same things. And I am increasingly unsurprised by the depths to which my heart can go.  I think some of the most hateful things, on a very regular basis.  My heart resonated with many of the things I saw “confessed” in those comments.  But my heart also deeply resonates with the fact that Christ has freed me from myself.

The thing we need most, as ministers, is to resist the lie that says our people are not bad people.  There are two categories of people.  (1) Bad, crooked, depraved people in need of redemption; and (2) Jesus.

That’s not to say that God doesn’t give us a new heart with new motives and new direction, as He certainly does; just that we ought not to think that our old heart dies when our new one is born.

The other thing we need to take from the “confessions” is that people need the gospel.  Over and Over and Over.  Daily, hourly, minute-by-minute.  We all need to constantly remember the gospel, or good news that Jesus has become sin for us (even the ugliest sin we can think of) so that, in Him, we might become the righteousness of God (by GRACE).

My favorite word in 1 John 1:9 is “just.”  It doesn’t say God is “faithful and merciful” (which would make sense) but that he is faithful and JUST.  Because Christ died for all of my wickedness (some of which is ongoing), it is his justice that is satisfied by my confessing (joyfully, and without reservation) that wickedness.  He would be unjust to condemn me for something for which Christ already died.

Yesterday on SCL, Jon asked what we’d be afraid to confess/admit at our church. I think that as ministers it’s time we stop assuming that our church is the exception to the rule, and start focusing less on sin and more on the one who came to seek and save sinners. This ought to be a sobering reminder for us that, as I said in my comment over there, the gospel is NEWS as opposed to instruction. Stop telling your people how to stop sinning and clean up their act. Tell them of the one whose act was clean, who offers his record in exchange for their broken, ugly one.