I Wonder as I Wander

Right now on channel 45 there is a portly, well-dressed preacher pacing behind an expensive glass podium in a church building that is more of a Ryman Auditorium than a sanctuary. Stretched behind him is a massive mural with vivid images and words under each: "marriage Covenant", "Salt Covenant", "Blood Covenant" and "Israel Covenant." He tells the congregation (or is it just an audience?) that these are the subjects of the sermons he will be preaching over the next few weeks. He wears a bright yellow tie with an elegantly matching handkerchief, and as he speaks he gestures forcefully with his arms. From what I've listened to before deciding I've heard enough, this preacher is proclaiming that America was also founded on a covenant, and he mentions the Mayflower and the founders of America who he no doubt believes were all "good Christian men." He tells his hearers that God has blessed America more than any nation in the world and, as the Bible reads, God promises to continue doing so if America abides within the laws of this covenant. Unfortunately, the preacher goes on to lament that America is rejecting this covenant. His first example is that America has thrown out the Ten Commandments from the schools. He describes the breakdown in families. He mentions climbing divorce rates and something about Britney Spears which I think is meant to be well-placed humorous jab in the sermon ...

He, and I'm sure many people in the pews before him, are so very, very sure they are Christians. They are certain that they are heavenbound.
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It is a wonder we are alive at all, let alone have a God who loves us no matter who we are, what we do, or what we say.

Over this next week, I am going to be writing reflectively about salvation. Specifically, I am going to be mulling over the question of just who is saved, and how exactly does one become saved. Is it by simply saying (or reading or repeating) a prayer? Is there another way besides praying? Do "works" really have nothing to do with it? Do only the Christians get in?

I've wrestled with whether or not this is a subject I want to introduce to my blog - I'd much rather dwell on the lighter side of life, and leave controversy on the sidelines. However, I remember that I started this blog as a personal exercise to reflect on the wonders of God and the joy of life. I wanted to have a place where I could offer my meager comments on this beautiful story of redemption we all exist in, whether we have realized it or not. And I cannot imagine anything more integral to this story than the very rhythm of salvation itself. If it is a grand redemption we are meant to find, how then do we find it, and what does one have to do, essentially, to experience it?

I hope you who read this blog - there cannot be many of you - will be merciful with my wanderings. I also hope you will offer as many comments as possible. I don't plan to stumble upon any clear-cut answers, but reading what others think is one way for us all to sharpen our eyes and strengthen our limbs for the journey.

So, what do you think is essential for a person to find salvation - for a person to go to heaven? Or what have you always learned regarding such a question? This will be the first thought on which I'll post in a few days ...

Good News, Bad News

Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."
- Matthew 28:18

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God ...
Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."
- Mark 1:1, 14-15

Gerard Manley Hopkins famously wrote, "The earth is charged with the grandeur of God." Indeed, there is an amazing paradox in the world, that to sit back and ponder its delicate intricacies and fascinating phenomena, one begins to see both the simplicity and grand scope on which it is crafted. It is complex, yet it is anything but complicated. It is powerful, but it is also beautiful. To steal a line from C.S. Lewis, it is not definitely not safe, but it is good.

One would hope the message that is meant to revolutionize the world would be the very same way, both wonderfully simple and splendidly fulfilling.

Our English translations of Scripture use the words "gospel" or "good news" for the original Greek term euangelion. This word was almost always reserved for political reference to Caesar as the supreme, inspired power. Those who sang the praises of Rome often referred to "the euangelion of Caesar, chosen one of God." The writer of Mark subversively supplies a marvelous reconsideration of just what constitutes the "good news." In his and the early Christians' opinions, the good news was of "Jesus Christ, the son of God." It was an outlandish, dangerous belief, that in fact it was not Caesar who was divine but a lowly carpenter from Nazareth who, as far as most people were concerned if they ever heard about him, was nothing more than a two-bit agitator who died a criminal's death. But, to early Christians, this good news was the greatest of truths. It was everything. It was life. It was reality in its simplest, most certain form.

Unfortunately, the good news of Jesus Christ is slowly being abandoned for a more manageable message - our message. If I were to attempt to include all the recent decisions and restrictions incorporated into the Church - and that just in America - in regards to both the message proclaimed as well as its proclaimers, I suspect this blog entry would swell to a size through which no one would be interested in plodding. However, as an example, I mention one of the most recent - and baffling - decisions. The Southern Baptist Convention, which has undergone one stumbling after another in regards to the who, what, and how of the Church and the gospel of Christ, has recently taken another step in replacing the good news with its own bad news. The board of trustees for the International Mission Board, the SBC's foreign missions sending agency, have restricted its approved missionaries beyond the requirement of signing the "new" Baptist Faith and Message document. Now, no one can serve as an IMB missionary if they were not baptized (or re-baptized) in a Southern Baptist Church; this is in keeping with their belief that true baptism can come only from a denomination that holds to "believer's baptism." What is more, also newly restricted are missionaries who claim to have a "private prayer language," which is another way of stating that they speak in tongues while they are in solitary, personal prayer. Though "tongues" has been a divisive issue for years, newly rejected missionaries have no intention of incorporating this private gift in their public proclamation of the gospel. However, the very fact that a person believes the gift of tongues is just that, a gift (and not a tool of the devil), still doesn't qualify them to be fit for missional service in the kingdom of God, according to the Southern Baptist Convention.

I mean not to pick solely on the SBC; there are a thousand more examples of "church leaders" asserting false teachings and requirements across denominational lines, both to local congregations and out on the vast, vast mission field. Not only have we fallen short of the glory of God, we have fallen short of the very meaning and intention of his gospel. His simple and wonderful gospel.

It is a gospel over which he has all authority, in keeping with the Scripture that begins what we refer to as "the Great Commission." We have instead begun to arrogantly brandish our authority over this message. "Will a person rob God?" (Mal. 3:8). We do it intricately with our own complicated theologies. We do it on a grand scale when we stack up rule after rule about who can preach and who can't, who can serve and who can't. We contort the gospel into an agenda-bowing, human construction. It is complicated, oppressive, and safe; it is no longer the wondrous, good news of Christ.

Where is the wonder? Where is the mystery? Where is the beauty? Where is the freedom of the message that once solely defined the Church? It is the only thing that will give us lasting hope. It is the only thing that will give us life.

Peace, Be Still

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise." - Psalm 111:10

I am amazed that I did not develop a massive ulcer while I was in college, and not because of my academic schedule. That I did without much effort. Papers were written the morning before and still garnered superior grades. Classes and tests about which I cared little I studied only enough to grab a passing grade and nary another thought was paid it. All in all, I did not struggle to obtain my degree. No, the stress and frustration came from my striving to attain the felt presence of God. At this, I considered myself a colossal failure.

What perpetuates both our frustration with, and our coming back to, personal worship times with God is the spiritual payoff we fill must be attained before we close our bibles and unfold our hands. So often it does not come, there is no feeling like we have been filled with some great new movement of the Spirit, and therefore we suspect perhaps we are seeking God incorrectly or half-heartedly. And so we nervously reach for new devotionals, new Bible studies, Christian living books, many of which are marketed as assurances that they contain the secret of truly bringing the reader to an encounter with the presence of God. And as far as the prayer aspect (for strangely, the contemporary view of what a personal time with God constitutes is normally a short devotional study coupled with a segment of prayer wherein is begged both inspiration and intercession for others), it is often the desire to hear God "speak" to us concerning his will. Absurdly, most of this desire is communicated not by our falling silent to heed God by slowing ourselves down, but instead by making our prayers grandiose and lengthy - after all, the longer the prayer, obviously the more faith is being displayed.

Today in a staff meeting, someone commented that the praise chorus, "The Heart of Worship" should perhaps be sung differently by many people - if they are being real with themselves and what they are wanting to gain from worship - as "I'm coming back to the heart of worship, and it's all about me, it's all about me, Jesus." In other words, we judge the genuity of our times with God on how much we get out of it, how inspired we feel after we have finished. We are self-centered and sorely mistaken people.

My pastor included a quote in our afternoon prayer guide yesterday. "You are a child of God ... in union. There is nothing to prove. Nothing to attain. Everything is already there. It is simply a matter of recognizing and honoring and trusting" (Richard Rohr). Likewise, during our time of prayer, instead of expounding relentlessly on the physical and spiritual condition of each and every person we interceded for, we simply spoke their name quietly and the group prayed in unison, "Peace. Be still." Could we want any more for a person, spiritually speaking, than that?

Perhaps it is this simple truth that all of us who strive and scrape for an epiphanal experience with God need to remember. Instead of gaining some grand, inspirational word from our Savior and Redeemer, we should instead hear him inaudibly whisper to our souls, "Peace, be still. Where is your faith? Peace, be still. Do not be afraid."