The Incarnation

I was re-reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer recently, and I appreciated some of what he had to say on the topic of the incarnation.

"To be conformed to the image of Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as well as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarnate, crucified and glorified.

Christ took upon himself this human form of ours. He has become like a man, so that men should be like him. And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequences of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. ...that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. ...The 'philanthropy' of God revealed in the incarnation is the ground of Christian love towards all on earth that bears the name of man. The form of Christ incarnate makes the Church into the Body of Christ.

...It is only because he became like us that we can become like him. It is only because we are identified with him that we can become like him."

Immigration: What's your position?

Do you ever get the feeling that, in all of this discussion about immigration, we're talking about your neighbor, your co-worker, the person riding on the train next to you....?

That has recently happened to me. I've recently been struck with how personal all of this discussion about immigration must feel to millions of people living here in the U.S. Ultimately, the outcomes of these debates (perhaps even the debates themselves) may affect the lives of literally millions of immigrants in the U.S.

I'm not sure what to do with all of this. I appreciate that nations have a certain duty to protect and enforce their borders, but I'm also left feeling that, as a Christian, the discussion can't end there. Perhaps for a believer, in the end, the issue is ultimately about the person. In other words, no matter a person's opinion on the larger debate about immigration, they (we) can't forget that we are talking about people, like you and I, made in the image of God. It feels like that realization should bring a different perspective to these discussions for me.

I'm still processing these things and probably will for some time, but it's almost as if I can't (shouldn't) be drawn into the debate within the small box in which it usually exists. That, for those of us who are Christ followers, we are obligated, perhaps, to think about this with a different perspective.

Thankful for Jehovah Jirah...the Lord who provides

The title of the message we heard this weekend was, not coincidentally, Jehovah Jireh.

In our continuing effort to find a church home, we went to a new church this past weekend, and we were truly amazed at the community we experienced. Like nothing else we have experienced in the three previous (and very solid) churches we have spent many weeks at since we arrived here in June, from the time we walked into the church to the time we left, people were talking with us.

Not only did they talk with us, but we had a college student volunteer himself and 2 friends to help us move! (we close on a home on Dec. 3), and a father told us about one of his daughters who would be willing to babysit for us in the future!

A few other things that caught our attention at this church were solid Biblical teaching and cultural diversity--at least two things that are priorities for us.

In several specific ways this weekend, we saw some prayers answered. We are thankful for a God who provides.

Nursery rhymes or horror plots?

This has been a full and busy month, and I've not made much time for blogging. Some of the highlights from our month were visits from family, birthday parties, and the requisite cake, ice cream, and other goodies. A good full month.

Speaking of goodies, with Halloween right around the corner it seems appropriate to confess that I have been listening to some very strange, haunting even, nursery rhymes (those of you with young children may understand). As I've been paying attention to the lyrics more these days, I have begun to wonder what exactly the writers were thinking when they wrote these:

Rock a bye baby on the tree top....and when the bow breaks the cradle with fall and down will come baby cradle and all.

Sing a song of sixpence, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, when the pie was opened the birds began to sing....when down came a blackbird and peeked off her nose.

Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run, they all run after the farmer's wife, who cut off their tail with a carving knife...


Perhaps I'm just being too literal about these, but I find it funny each time I hear these sung (they are on a musical CD our kids enjoy hearing). A baby hurtling down from the treetops, birds pecking off a person's nose, a woman running after mice knife held high...somehow the words seem more appropriate for a Halloween plot than a bedtime song.

Hope your Autumn is going well.

For an old friend

RESURRECTION.
Moist with one drop of Thy blood, my dry soul
Shall—though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly—be
Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard or foul,
And life by this death abled shall control
Death, whom Thy death slew ; nor shall to me
Fear of first or last death bring misery,
If in thy life-book my name thou enroll.
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrified,
But made that there, of which, and for which it was ;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
May then sin's sleep and death soon from me pass,
That waked from both, I again risen may
Salute the last and everlasting day.

ASCENSION.
Salute the last and everlasting day,
Joy at th' uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye whose true tears, or tribulation
Have purely wash'd, or burnt your drossy clay.
Behold, the Highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which He treads upon ;
Nor doth He by ascending show alone,
But first He, and He first enters the way.
O strong Ram, which hast batter'd heaven for me !
Mild Lamb, which with Thy Blood hast mark'd the path !

Bright Torch, which shinest, that I the way may see !
O, with Thy own Blood quench Thy own just wrath ;
And if Thy Holy Spirit my Muse did raise,
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.

-John Donne (1572-1631)

Throwing out the church with the "churchy"

It recently came to our attention that the church that we are attending (a different place than one I blogged about earlier--we are still searching for a church to call home) only offers communion two times per year--at Christmas and Easter. This was a very surprising discovery for us, because in many respects, there is a lot to like about the church--it's a place with great worship and solid Biblical teaching. So, hearing that communion was only offered twice per year was very odd.

This has had my mind thinking this week about "seeker-friendly" approaches to church, because my wife and I think that this drive to be seeker-sensitive may be partly the issue here--that communion perhaps is too "traditional" or "churchy" for this church. "Seeker-friendly" and "not the church your parents went to" are clear drivers of this church (not unlike what has guided many other churches in recent years).

Sometimes it feels as if we (the church) are chasing our tails in an effort to woo those "seekers" (arguably, a label that is not very helpful to anyone--aren't we all "seekers" in a certain sense?). Are we out-thinking ourselves? Are the changes we make to the look and feel of church truly based on what we know non-believers are attracted to? Or, are we reacting more to what we think they think about church? On the other hand, isn't there something a little odd to us basing our model of church on what non-church-goers think?? If that non-church-goer never goes to our church, should we be using their opinion to drive what we look like? And, if that non-church-goer does decide one day to attend our church, won't they want to see the church as it really should be??

I'm wondering this week if perhaps we sometimes throw out the church with the churchy. The Reformation of the 1500s, at least according to my reading, in many places and among many church leaders was about getting back to what they thought of as the Biblical church. Yet, in the end, it was more of a reaction against the Catholic church than a realignment with the Bible. Similarly, the Catholic counter-Reformation was a reaction to the changes made during the Protestant Reformation, rather than a realignment with the Bible. In both cases, the church was chasing its tail in that it was measuring itself against itself, rather than the Bible.

Perhaps churches that are driven primarily to be "seeker sensitive" are, similar to what happened during the Reformation, reacting to what they see in the church culture at large rather than carefully measuring themselves against the Bible. And it seems that the more we spend time reacting to ourselves (the way others do church), the less time we'll spend truly creating church the way it was meant to be. Besides, based on what we read throughout the Bible, it's hard to expect that "church the way it was meant to be" would always be easy or comfortable.

Back to what spawned all of this....if doing communion twice a year is a reaction against what other churches do in an effort to simply be less "traditional," that seems to be a mis-placed priority. Our priority, it seems, should be more about what will make the church more Biblical and less about what will distinguish one group (church) over another.

Wrestling with "the essentials"

"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity" -Peter Meiderlin (1600s), a Lutheran pastor.

The above quote always appeared on the bulletin of the church I attended during my college years, and I've often appreciated it. I was reminded of the quote today listening to a conversation at work. On the surface, like the discussion I heard, the quote sounds very agreeable, yet it also can be so trite and noncommittal.

Don't hear me wrongly, I still do like the quote, and I think it can remind me of some important principles. But, I'm afraid that a main reason I like the quote is that I so often settle for the non-confrontational approach--the easy way and the surface agreement. It's a great quote if agreeing on the essentials was easy, but, of course, that's the most difficult part. And, stretching the quote and the analogy a bit, as I enjoy friendships with others, will I be happy to simply quote the easy lines for surface agreement and shallow friendship, or will I challenge myself, and them, to wrestle with those essentials.

(I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I've been thinking about this all day and finally decided I just had to write it out.)

Art, pleasure, and purpose

There was a small news story last week highlighting that the coming fall TV schedule will contain more sexuality explicit scenes than in past seasons, and that in fact (no big surprise), TV shows and culture in general is significantly more explicit than it was 15 years ago. According to the story,

“This escalating emphasis on explicit scenes as well as themes is the result of seismic changes already rocking Hollywood and the larger society…the competition for market share in a spiraling world of entertainment choices, the mainstreaming of pornography, and the explosive growth of an unregulated Internet.”

Then, again later this week, as I’ve been mulling all this over, I saw another article similarly themed…

"I do think that general attitudes about nudity are becoming more relaxed, but these changes take time, which is why there's still mixed responses," said Paul Levinson, communication and media professor at Fordham University. “We as a society are finally growing up and it's a healthy thing," he said.

REALLY??

The stories bothered me because I was left wondering, where will this stop?” And, WILL it stop, or will TV and our culture simply become more and more explicit? As a man and as a father of children who are growing up in this world, I’m concerned. I feel strongly that this sex-hyped culture (it’s a worldwide-culture as far as I can tell) in which we live is wrong, yet I’m so often at a loss for how to put words to this.

There is a small book by Ravi Zacharias that I picked up several years ago, part of his “Great Conversations” series, that speaks to these issues of sensuality in culture. The book, titled, “Sense and Sensuality” is a (fictitious, need I say?) dialogue between Oscar Wilde, Jesus, and Blaise Pascal on the topic of art and the singular pursuit of pleasure.

As I re-read the short book, several quotations stood out clearly to me:

“Nothing profane can ever be beautiful”

“Beauty at its best is Holy”

“In seeking pleasure, you pursued the body and lost the person. You sought the sensation and sacrificed the individual. In pursuing the sacred, you exalt the person and the sensation will follow. In pursuing sensuality, you exalt the body and profane the person…

…living becomes senseless.”

A rich perspective....

This is a cross-post from the other blog that I keep (http://publichealth-faith.blogspot.com/). My apologies to those of you who read both, but since most do not and since this is relevant to this blog, I thought I'd paste this particular post here also. The post flows out of thoughts I have had that come from a recent series of messages I have heard at the church we attend....
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-Do you earn more than US$30 per month? In 2004, almost 1 billion people in the world lived below the international poverty line, earning less than US$1 per day ($365 per year). 19% of the people living in the world’s developing nations (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe) were living on 1$ per day or less.

-Approximately 85% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (some of the most populous places on the globe) earn less than US$32,000 per year. 90% earn less that US$42,000 per year. ($32,000 and $42,000 are the median income of women and men, respectively, in the US).

-Do you have health insurance? In 2004, the vast majority, 80%, of people living in developing countries had to pay for health care out of their own pocket.-Do you have regular access to safe water? In 2006, 1 billion people did not have access to safe water.

-Do you regularly use the Internet? In 2005, 9% of people in developing countries had access to the Internet—15% of people in the world (all countries) had access.

-Do you have 2 days off of work each week?

-Do you get paid, at times, for doing nothing? (paid holidays, vacation time, sick leave)

-Do you spray drinking water on your lawn?


Many of us do not feel rich, but we are indeed rich in comparison to many/most people in the world. As I have been recently challenged by messages in the church I attend, if we are rich (and if you are reading this, you probably are), we need to be rich. To be rich toward others and to be rich in doing good.

And then this final verse (from 1 Tim. 6), ...."in this way (that is, by doing, by being rich in good deeds, by being generous)....they may take hold of the life that is truly life."

(The data above come from the United Nations' recent global health report entitled, "The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007." It's a worthwhile read and is essentially a report card on how the United Nations, and their partners, are doing at improving the health and well-being of people globally.)

Missions, cultural influence, and the Bible

The latest edition of Scientific American Mind describes new research that points out the powerful and frequently hidden influence that culture has on the way our brains perceive the world around us. The study of culture and cross-cultural communication/interaction, especially as it relates to missions, is a topic I have long been interested in.

Certainly it's nothing new to learn that culture impacts the way we interact with the people around us, but I have been thinking more on this topic lately with a new book that I recently finished, recommended to me, titled "Postmission." The book is a collection of essays written by Gen-Xers who are leaders in various mission organizations. And, through their essays, the book attempts to provide a vision or perspective of what missions could look like in a postmodern world.

It's the central premise of the book that I find so interesting, and compelling at times, even if I'm not sold completely on their perspective. But, the central premise of the book is that missions today has been heavily influenced by Modernism and that many of the "classic" values (even central tenets) of missions today are more cultural than Biblical. This certainly is not the first book on the subject, but it's the first that I have read specifically authored by Xers, and it's the first I have read to cast such a wide culturally-influenced net over missions. (Not a great sentence, but hoping you understand it). The book also spends many pages describing the differences between Gen-Xers, Boomers, etc, and how the two can learn to work better with each other, specifically in the context of missions--there are some helpful and very practical examples.

Overall, the book is a useful read, although my one negative critique of it is that the authors tend to focus heavily on the positive aspects that Postmodernism can lend to missions and conversely, a negative outlook on what Modernism has done for missions. They do not provide much of a balanced and thoughtful response on the strengths and weaknesses of the two and their contributions and limitations to missions-thinking.

Nonetheless, asking how Modernism has affected missions is a valid and intriguing question. A few observations made by the authors (actually, points they take from other missiologists, but find compelling to what they are also arguing):

"Reason supplanted faith as a beginning point for Christians and for missionaries."

"Christians came to believe that all problems were solvable, pushing God to the margin."

"Missionary outlook and practice has become infused with rationalism--pragmatic thinking...and reasoning through which methods and techniques have come to drive mission theology and strategy."

"The church and mission became captive to the philosophy of progress--to the idea of the imminent global triumph of Christianity."

Most people would agree that our own culture affects the way we interact with others, but that fact takes on a whole new, deeper, and personal meaning when I begin to more closely examine how what I think and how I think has been affected by Modernism and by the culture in which I live. The book even describes that how I understand and interpret the Bible is affected by my culture (read "Honor and Shame" by Roland Muller for an excellent and more academic treatment of that subject--a book I highly recommend), which I, in the past several years, have only begun to consider.

I'm not sure the best way to end this. I suppose I simply wanted to write these thoughts down because, as one who has been and remains personally involved in missions work, they are things that intrigue and challenge me. The more I consider it, the more I realize how my cultures (the secular American culture and the Christian culture) affect, even in nearly imperceptible ways, how I view and think about the world around me. Yet, those nearly invisible influences can have a profound affect on my own faith, on my ability to connect with others, and on the lives and faith of those I meet.

Getting lost and then....well....

huhh????



We passed this church cemetery as we were lost one recent weekend looking for a library in our new town and we did a double-take. Seems like a fairly stern warning....

Is Diversity Worth It?

In case you have not yet heard the latest about Harvard professor and noted political scientist Robert Putnam, his newest research on diversity is not optimistic. I have not actually read the study, but here is how the Wall Street Journal reports it today....
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"Now comes word that diversity as an ideology may be dead, or not worth saving. Robert Putnam, the Harvard don who in the controversial bestseller "Bowling Alone" announced the decline of communal-mindedness amid the rise of home-alone couch potatoes, has completed a mammoth study of the effects of ethnic diversity on communities. His researchers did 30,000 interviews in 41 U.S. communities. Short version: People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. "Social capital" erodes. Diversity has a downside.

Prof. Putnam isn't exactly hiding these volatile conclusions, though he did introduce them in a journal called Scandinavian Political Studies. A great believer in the efficacy of what social scientists call "reciprocity," he wasn't happy with what he found but didn't mince words describing the results:

"Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." The diversity nightmare gets worse: They have little confidence in the "local news media." This after all we've done for them.

Colleagues and diversity advocates, disturbed at what was emerging from the study, suggested alternative explanations. Prof. Putnam and his team re-ran the data every which way from Sunday and the result was always the same: Diverse communities may be yeasty and even creative, but trust, altruism and community cooperation fall. He calls it "hunkering down."
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(that was only a short excerpt, but you can see a similar story here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c4ac4a74-570f-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html (as of 8/16/07)

The finding are really not all that surprising--human nature is to want to be with those who are similar to us. We want to stay in our comfort zones. Getting to know the person down the street who looks different or talks different or lives differently is not easy, is not comfortable, and is sometimes not even very popular. But God knows (I don't mean that lightly) that sometimes we are not our very best until we live differently, until we go against the flow, until we do what feels at first strange.

Perhaps it is up to us, those with a Biblical faith, to show the world that diversity in community is possible, is needed, and is even essential. It's clear that it won't be easy, but ease is not what we are called to.

Many months, many changes....

I have decided to pick this up again after 7 months....2,600 miles, new state, new culture, new job, new church, new climate....

There have been a lot of changes in my family's life since I last wrote, but we are doing well. We are learning to make the South our home. We sure miss the Northwest and our friends and church there, but God has shown us, on more than one occasion, that this has been the right move for us.

One of the tougher aspects of the move has been getting to know people...

If you have ever walking into a church and walked back out (for 5 weeks) without having one person say something other that a quick "hello" to you, I understand how you feel. We think we may have found a church, and after 5 weeks there is a lot we like. But, it bothers me that, after 5 weeks, we still have not had anyone ask if we are new or strike up a conversation. We've been thinking we may just need to be the initiators. But, something about that bothers me. It bothers me that there may have been people sitting just behind or to my side in my previous church that I did not take the time to stop and take an interest in. Whether it's right or not, having friends at church and feeling like people there care about me/my family is important. We hope to meet someone at this church soon. And, I hope to not ever forget these first few weeks, and to make sure I take a personal interest in the "strangers" I see around me at church in the future.