Different Religious Dictionary

Have you ever taken a comparative religion class? Or just a world religion class in general? There's Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and maybe even Zoroastrianism  but how often does Mormonism get thrown into that mix?

Think about this, all the terms you use to talk about Christianity, but with completely different meanings. You talk of atonement, they talk of atonement. You talk of God's love, they talk of God's love. You talk of God as your Father, they talk of Heavenly Father. Yet each of those means something different

Their idea of atonement is not the Evangelical Christ view of atonement, nor their idea of God's love the same, nor their view of God as their Father.

It all sounds the same but all the meanings are different. Apologetics with a Mormon are, I would guess, a waste of time. How can you move a conversation forward if you're both working from different dictionaries? (To add to this, they always come in twos and have "lying for the lord," as backup for getting into tricky conversations.) 

So what is the apologetic we use? Relationship.

We use the dictionary we both have in common, our humanity and need for community, to build a relationship wherein we can form trust and literally show 2 Peter 3:14-17 to those of another religious dictionary.

Friday Thoughts

1) Friday! I'm sleepy.

2) My friends from India are in town!

3) The book of Romans. Whoa.

4) Restarted Calvin's Institues of the Christian Religion, it's basically FREAKIN' AMAZING.

5) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Dear Sirus Black, you're my favorite.

6) 'Member that one time we lived in hell, I mean, Kansas?

7) Hung out in a dang cool church on Wednesday. (Look at da pichure)

8) I wanna see Brave. If you judge me I'll do something.

9) If you're not doing anything tomorrow night, be here.

10) Christianity shouldn't be man-centered. If it is, it's not Christian.

Atheist Paper

I’ve been working on a paper for a class quite a bit.

We were allowed to pick any topic (one we cared about) and use what we’ve learned in class to analyze a piece of rhetoric.

I picked Christopher Hitchens’ last public address from the Texas Free Thought Convention.

Little odd, I suppose.

But honestly we, as Christians, fail to reach most true atheists effectively. Sure there are some atheists who are just angry at God, the Church, and their parents, but there are others, ones who are, “free Thinkers,” in the, “Community of Reason.” Those ones are written off as lost.

And they may be, but someone, some believer, should try to befriend them, right?

I mean that’s the point of mission.

But more so they’re written off because we don’t know what we believe. More often than not we’re bickering over some menial issue, which doesn’t do or promote anything.

Christians are great at locking up in a convent all alone and leaving the world, those dirty sinners, to die… (Irony)

Yes, speaking freely is scary. Yes, not all are called to be evangelists. Yes, the mission still remains the exact same as it did 2000 years ago, but I’ll re-word it for us: Get to know some folks, make some friends in hope of one day telling them more about Jesus.

But on a completely different note: I saw two guys get arrested last night.

A Far Too Common Story

She walked into the bar. Tired, worn down and out. The bags under her eyes were obvious, the same clothes she had on yesterday cling to her skin. There’s a look of desperation in her face, of worry and torment.

Flopping into a seat near the bar she orders her drink. Huddling over it once it arrives she begins to gingerly milk it little sips here, little sips there. Tears, and possibly a scream seem to be close to bursting from her.

She’d been here last night, this bar. But then she was vibrant and happy, laughing at the stupid jokes and dancing the night away. But now she seems broken.

He’d been a nice enough guy. Seemed to genuinely care. He bought a few rounds for her and her friends and made polite small talk. After she’d denied his advances of becoming a little too physical he left. She thought nothing of it at all.

She’d parked too far away from the safety of the lights, she’d said goodbye to her friends, and she was alone.

He took her. He raped her.

Here she sits the next day weeping into a cup of coffee. Trying to find what she’d lost at the place she had it last.

It’s the story of far to many women.

It’s the fear they’ll never tell.

But it’s a travesty.

To believe the lie of being, ‘broken,’ and therefore unwanted. To remember the youth group teaching, “Who would want someone who’s not a virgin?” Yet that’s the lie.

God wants the broken. It’s the culmination of Christianity. That the destitute are redeemed, that the broken are made whole.

There’s a Redeemer who’s come to save. The righteous has no need of saving, it’s the sick that need the Doctor, and it’s the broken that need the Mender. It’s the raped that need the Healer.

So to Jesus she runs, to him, who'll treat her like the daughter she is, she clings. Away from the mire of the past and into the glory of the future. Because hope has come.

In all seriousness: If this story is you, don't let the boy who did this get away. There are many who will help. There are friends who'll listen. You, of all people, are not alone.

Outsiders

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, he world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:18-19



We don’t get a choice in being hated or not. As Christians we are naturally the outsiders, the misfits, the one’s that look different.

The withdrawal at the mention of what you are, “Christian.” The hesitation in their eyes at the mention of that name, his name, “Jesus.” The eagerness to die for the Gospel and willingness to let everything go to see the shadow of everything pass away.

But Jesus is the one who picks us out of the world to be outsiders and misfits.
He is the one who saves us so it should be that he is the one who chooses us.

As Christians we’ll be hated, things won’t ever be in our favor because we believe, we’ll suffer, we’ll die, and we’ll be abandoned and cold. Yet we expect things to be fine and dandy, happy clappy fluffy fun for all of life.

If that’s your reason for being Christian then don’t stick around.

Last I saw the word hated doesn’t mean fine and dandy, it means to be passionately disliked, you know the kind of dislike with a bullet not a teddy bear.

Out of the world he chose us to be castaways in a far land, outsiders in our own communities.

Because as outsiders we are insiders, we’re in the favor of God the salvation of Jesus. As misfits of the world we are suited quite nicely for the wardrobe as sons and daughters of the King.

2011's Favorites

In chronological order:

This Must be Dealt With
I’ve used this one to end two different sermons. The power in it has been captivating to me. There are a few who want me to read it for a poetic reading (that’s a big maybe). I wrote it one cold January night when it was snowing. Looking up all the passages for this one was particularly fun.

I Believe, Help My Unbelief
Written in 2010 for a friend this post kept punching me in the brain. I finally posted it at the end of January and it’s one that still is running through my thoughts.

Quite Frankly
This one was a tough write for me. I’ve thought this for a while, but never voiced it until I wrote this post.

The Armor of God (Sermon)
This one is a favorite because it was the first time I’d ever had a manuscript for my sermon. It worked well for two or three, now I’m back to a half-note-half-manuscript deal.

Letting Go of the Faded Memory
Inception & C.S. Lewis collide. Enough said.

Getting Ahold of Happiness
I wrote this puppy after “AFTERdark” a Christian pep-rally some WSU students put on in early spring.

Common Error pts 1, 2, &3 & A Response to Myself pts 1,2, 3 & 4
These were quite literally me thinking out loud for the world to read. I had always had an issue with the term ‘common grace’ and if you read these you’ll see my reasons plus my own response to, well, me! O and these were written and posted in 2 days.

He is Here
This one is my hand at poetry. You have to be kind to read it. It’s a wee rough.

What is Joy?
The church I work for (Journey the Way) did a sermons series through Philippians and it was titled the ‘Pursuit of Joy.’ This was the ending of a sermon I had preached over the summer, which I thought applied rather nicely.

The Thinker's Thoughts on Thinking
This one still kills me.

A Little Spilled Coffee
This was the first of what I hope to be continuing posts. It’s observation with my own speculation. Watching people is apart of what I do and my mind tends to write a story for each person I never get to talk to. Others like this one are: A Coffee Shop Scene, Tragedy and Two Pairs One Table

Final Stress
This one was good for my heart to write, and my head. Ugh finals.

Christopher Hitchens
I really will miss this guy’s whit and cynicism.

The most popular posts of year:
1. The Hidden Hide
2. Christopher Hitchens
3. A Coffee Shop Scene

Christopher Hitchens

“Christopher Hitchens died today, he was 62.” This is what will be published in articles across the world. Many know him as a scathing writer. His books against the existence of God are well known; his speeches are all over YouTube. His calling Mother Theresa a, “Fraudulent fanatic,” is remembered well.

Cancer is what killed him. The incurable disease, the one science can’t fully fix. Irony, for the man who put his ‘faith’ in science to be killed by its failure at the end.

But to damn the man in a blog post is to affect nothing. Sure I could rant at his open disbelief in God, but I think that cowardly since he can’t offer a rebuttal.

No, I will call him a well-written man and a wonderful rhetorician. Causing all kinds of people to think and consider. Whether they were Atheist or Christian. I will pity his death; for I rather enjoyed listening to him speak.

But I will also say, there is more to life then being well written and a beautiful speaker. There is more to life than making people think. There’s more to life than all this life and death and tragedy and comedy. There’s love

Not the blind love of youth. Nor the love I have for Oreos. But the love of a Savior for his people, which causes faith in what is unseen.

‘Cause that’s all faith really is, believing what you can’t see to be. Hitchens’ had it in the power of words and our modern sciences; I have it in the power of words and the work of Jesus. While science astounds me it cannot redeem me.

But see, that’s just it; I feel the need of being redeemed from my sins. I feel the need for a Savior. Hitchens never did. It can’t be because his brain was more evolved than mine. Nor can it be that his studies revealed more to him than the studies of C.S. Lewis or Sir Isaac Newton.

Perhaps I’ve believed the lie. Perhaps he believed the lie. I won’t damn him, that’s not my place nor my job and he won’t damn me.

All I know is this; I will die for this Gospel, this Savior, this Jesus. Willingly and lovingly die. I proclaim until then His worth and Excellency and work. As Hitchens wrote so I shall write, as he spoke I shall speak. Yet the difference shall be this one thing: there is a God and He’s knowable.

So, I thank Christopher Hitchens for who he was, for his devotion to his faith and his bold proclamation of it. And I say this meaningfully, he will be missed.

Deism

Deism is not Christian. This is something I’m rather forceful about. Deism is not Christian. The happy-clappy huffy-fluffy religion associated with Christianity is not Christian. Let me explain the main major difference between what most would call “Christian” and what actually is Christian.

Deism has nothing to do with Jesus. That is the difference. Deism is the idea of a god creating all things and then actively (or passively) having no part of it. But somehow this idea of deism has been married with Christianity and there are many who don't realize that deism has absolutely no power to save.

Christians stake their hope on Jesus, not a list of good morals or the therapeutic idea of one’s own worth (moralistic deism).

Christians understand this life will be a continually war against their own natural depravity, not thinking themselves as naturally good people (thereapuetic deism).

Christians know God who is present in failure as well as victory, not some god who is disinterested in the lives of his creation (deism).

Christianity is nothing like deism. In Christianity God is vastly more beautiful and powerful than the apathetic god of the deist.

So what am I saying? I’m saying this heresy of moralistic therapeutic deism should be done away with. I’ll agree with Martin Luther, “I feel indignation against the matter also, that such unworthy stuff should be borne about in ornaments of eloquence so rare; which is as if rubbish, or dung, should be carried in vessels of gold or silver." So do away with speaking of a god who has no strength, grace or mercy and come to know the God who is devestatingly exqusite.

Obligatory Duty.

“He died for me why wouldn’t I live for him.” I hate this statement. Not only because it’s cliché but also because it is filled with bad Theology. But this mindset is a very difficult thing to get away from.

The mindset is this: To live in such a manner that is either 1) attempting at paying God back for saving one's soul or 2) attempting at making God love one more by doing or not doing a prescribed list. The affect of this is to kill the Christian, to choke out the newly forming plant because there is no air for it to be itself.

(We’ve this idea in our brains that all Christians should look exactly alike… I'm gonna go ahead and completely disagree. Will there be similarities, for sure, but will we all look just like each other, no, thank God. Because, quite frankly, I don’t want to be another Billy Graham or John Piper.)

The issue with the above (dumb) cliché is this: The Christian life is lived out of gratitude not duty. To hold to the above statement is to simply say that because someone did something for me now I’ll pay him or her back. Do you see the nonsense here? If there ever were a love for the one who redeemed one there would be an understanding of the great incapableness to even attempt at paying him back.

It must be understood to live for Christ is to do so gratefully as a since of love toward him, an overflow, if you will. To love him as a sense of duty would be like buying something for someone you love and telling them, “I got you this because I have to.”

Plateau-ing

Recently I was chilling in one of my favorite coffee shops working on a few thing when I over heard this statement, “I like my Christianity just the way it is.” Needless to say I dropped eves for the rest of their conversation – I know wrong, somehow.

But it got me to thinking, how many Christians live in this same mindset, “I like my belief just the way it is.” It seems ridiculous to me. To think where your faith is now is where you'll want it to be for the rest of your life. Quite frankly, I don’t think that is the point of faith.

Oughtn’t our faith to be growing and changing? Morphing us from who we were to who we are to who we’ll be. And as our faith grows oughtn’t our capacity to love increase as well? To see those we once held in contempt as either dear brothers or people in need of friends.

To think oneself of having arrived in the perfect position of faith is to not have faith in the least. For if, “you’ve arrived,” then you’ve done everything that is possible leaving nothing more to be done and that’s not faith, it’s legalism.

It’s a dangerous thought – the plateau – killing what little faith might have been present (The Parable of the Sower Matthew 13:1-9). But the thing with the Gospel is it leaves little room for, “arriving,” or, “plateauing,” in fact it leaves little room at all for anything you’ve done (Isa 64:6). The beauty of grace is it makes life unfair and the wonder of Jesus is he makes you good enough.

So in a sense the plateau is real, for Jesus is the plateau and on him we stand. But in the sense of growing faith the plateau is dangerous and ought not be trifled with, for we simply will never arrive at needing Christianity just the way we like it.