Monthly Archives: September 2005

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That funny look.

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You ever get that uncomfortable feeling that people are looking at you funny? I felt that way today. I walked into a church to use the restroom. I was in shorts, t-shirt and sandals. I had a couple days worth of stuble and my eyes looked tired from not enough sleep.
I stepped out of the bathroom, and there was a lady at a reception desk and then two ladies chatting nearby. The lady at the reception desk ask me how I am, I say fine as I head out, then she says can “I help you with something?” That was polite, but the two other ladies stopped their talking and looked at me. I said I was just picking somebody up, and turned to leave. That was awkward. Then another guy comes out of his office and asks me if he can help me with something. Again, very polite, but it felt strange. Sort of that “what are you doing here?” undertone.
Obviously, a lot of it is probably my own perception, but Mindy had asked me if I felt that way ever, cause she had an experience where she felt like that recently. And then this happened.

How about you?

Blog, considering church

why a building?

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I think my intitial hesitation about the whole building thing came when the church building craze started my last year of high school. My church decided we need to add a $2.5 million addition on to our building. I didn’t realize we were outgrowing the original building in the first place, and now they wanted to add on. And in adding on they wanted it to look really nice, which is understandable since the current building looked quite nice. But I thought to myself $2.5 million is a whole lot of money, and it just doesn’t seem necessary.
Little did I know over the next few years practically every church I went to was doing a building campaign. Some of them really needed it, others I wasn’t so sure. We attended one church for a while and then they started a building campaign for a second building and they where putting an indoor waterfall in it. That was it, I was gone.

Then at some point I started thinking… Why the heck do we need a building anyways? I mean we all live somewhere, why don’t we meet in our homes? It seemed to me that’s mostly what the early church did. I mean, it’s true we couldn’t all pack in to hear the really good preachers, but since when is that what it’s all about? Some would say that’s what small groups are for, to meet in smaller communities in our homes and stuff (I’ll address this later).

I’m not saying church buildings don’t have a purpose, I’ve just started questioning if they are really necessary at all. I mean is it feasible to do the things we do in a church building in our homes instead? And what about bigger events? Is it possible to do those in a place other than our own building?

One of my main concerns about the building is that seems to be all we spend our money on, or talk about spending our money on. The main time you hear about making tithing pledges in most churches it seems is usually related to a building campaign. And then the church goes into debt to purchase the new building before they even have all the money.

That was just a rant of sorts, I really should fine tune it a bit, but there it is raw

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do not resist…

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(note: I’m skipping passages I’d like to come back to later, and trying to hit the ones that most affected me, and ones most people usually reference and want to talk about first).

38″You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'[g] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. -Matthew 5:38-42

The idea of not resisting an evil person has got to be the most counter cultural concept I had heard in a long time. We’d certainly heard the “turn the other cheek” passage, but usually it’d been flaunted as a weak and cowardly thing to do to avoid further punishment. Growing up I can only think of one example of this being carried out in real life: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. I later learned about Gandhi, Mandela, and others, but initially I had heard of nothing but the occasional reference to the Civil Rights movement. It’s no wonder I and many others didn’t take this passage seriously at all.

But, upon reading it one summer I was struck by the fact that a literal interpretation of it seems incredibly inline with what Christ message is. Self-sacrificial love seems like the only compelling force to this type of action. I later was enlightened by Walter Wink’s insight into this passage and I think it coincides with what I said. Christ calls us not to resist the person, but rather to show them love, and at the sametime maintain our humanity in the person’s eyes. Evil has no power over that kind of love.

(please let’s not discuss other things that Wink says in that article here. I’d rather just focus on the passage mentioned.).

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Beginning thoughts on Church

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Just a disclaimer to begin with: My reflections here are in no way a critique of the leadership or members of any church I’ve gone to in the past or currently go to. I don’t want anyone anywhere, pastor, leader, church member, etc. to feel like my reflections are an attack on them or anyone they know. These are just my reflections on church and they’ve been provoked by my reading of the scriptures.

I also just want to say that I have had quite a good experience in the churches I have been in. My parents started going to Crosstowne Community Church when I was little because of the children’s ministry. I guess we had a really good time there and we stayed through middle school. [Let me take a moment to say my parent’s are amazing and sacrificial. When I think about the choices they’ve made in life, so often it is clear the top priority has been what is best for us kids. You couldn’t ask for better parents.] When I got to high school I had gone to an FCA (Fellowship of Christian Atheletes) camp and really been challenged to actually live out my faith. Somewhere my freshman year I started going to High Point Church because of their rocking youth group. It was a place of amazing spiritual growth for me. In fact that is where my faith really began and flourished. After that I left for college and have had a hard time plugging in anywhere for much time. I have enjoyed my brief involvement at 1027 church in Atlanta, The Church in Lombard, and currently at Mosaic and Edgehill UMC in Nashville. And don’t worry, I’m not leaving.

Now that you got that intro, stay tuned for thoughts on Church…

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Discretion in giving?

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It appears that though we as a nation have been more generous with the recent disasters, a close look at giving trends shows that we are also becoming more discretionary. It seems we are more interested in giving to those we deem “worthy” of receiving our help. Mostly we want to help those who are innocent in their situation.
Is this the type of giving God has called us to? Does Jesus call us to give, but with stipulations? I’ll have to check my Bible on that one.

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Biking to work

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I’m about to leave for my first day of biking to work. I’m a little nervous, mainly on the awkwardness of having to shower once I get to work, but I think I worked that out okay.

Anyone have any suggestions? I have a route that is mostly bike lanes, but I’m still gonna be biking home in the dark.

So, just a note to all you Nashville folks, be careful driving down the roads this evening.

SHARE THE ROAD!

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Starting with Jesus

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I’m not exactly sure where to start, so I hope this works. As a Christian, my faith, my belief system, is centered around Jesus. Without question, the Old Testament and the rest of the New Testament are valuable and also God’s Word, but without Christ and his teachings, our faith is meaningless. My journey began the summer before my freshman year of college. I was reading through the gospels and also happened to be reading C.S. Lewis’ ‘Why I’m not a Pacifist’ essay in The Weight of Glory at the same time. I’ll be honest with you, Lewis’ essay was compelling, and had I not gotten a large amount of grant money to pay for my tuition, I probably would have joined the ROTC program. I had just cracked open Matthew at the same time and I ran across the Beatitudes.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Well, that didn’t seem to conflict too much, I mean we would say our military in a time of war are there to do exactly that, to bring peace. But do this with me for a moment a little visual lesson. We are going to read through the beatitudes and I want you to picture in your mind what that person looks like:

3″Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I don’t know about you, but the song, “One of these things is not like the others,” starts to run through my head when I picture a soldier decked out in military gear and a gun in his/her arms. I start to wonder if maybe a Gandhi like figure doesn’t make a little more sense.

(Please remember, I’m going one thing at a time. This isn’t my whole case for why I’m a pacifist or anything like that. If you want to comment please limit it to addressing this passage only. Thanks for understanding).

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A discussion of means, not ends.

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As Christians, the discussion of war and pacifism is not a discussion of ends. We are not to choose are course of action based on what we think the possible or hypothetical ends of an action are (there are probably situations where you can do this, but I don’t believe this is one of them). Certainly if I was not a Christian, not some one who believed in the Word of God and the person of Jesus Christ who walked the earth, I would more then likely Primarily consider the ends to choose my course. This discussion though is amongst Christians.

We see numerous examples in the Bible where a choice was made based on means (as they saw God had called them to) rather then the ends that seemed likely. Daniel in the Lions den, Moses going to Pharaoh, Abraham venturing out, Stephen who was stoned, Jesus being crucified, and Paul going to prison. The most clear example probably is Rack, Shack and Benny (care of VeggieTales), when they refuse to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s God. The ends seemed quite obvious even to them: They’d be burned up in the furnace. But they knew clearly they needed to follow what God had clearly called them to regardless of the outcome; and we were all quite surprised at the outcome.

This is my point: If pacifism is what God clearly calls us to in His word, then we must follow it, regardless of how irrational it might be from our worldly (and even historical) perspective. If you are going to dialog with me on this topic as a Christian, we are going to need to come to a consensus on this point. This is an important point to deal with before we move on.

For example, you are not going to convince me that pacifism is not what Christians are supposed to do by logically arguing that war was the only possible option to defeat Hitler. A political argument that war was the only option to oust Saddam is not what we are focusing on. If you show me that war is a Biblical Christian response to Hitler and Saddam then I’ll be happy to agree with you.

Are we in agreement that this is not to be a discussion of ends? (we can have that conversation later if you want).