So an interesting thought occurred to me the other day: if you are alive and you identify with any kind of group, you are going to be hated. I started listing in my mind different groups of people and the other groups that hate them (Note I am definitely generalizing here. Not all people in these groups will hate the people in the other groups. But if any do, I counted it). Here's a partial list:
Christians: Atheists, Agnostics, Politicians
Atheists: Christians, Politicians
Agnostics: Christians, Atheists
Muslims: Christians, Atheists
African Americans: Any other race
White Americans: Any other race
Mexican Americans: Any other race
Those who breastfeed: Those who don't breastfeed
Those who formula feed: Those who breastfeed
Vegans: Meat eaters, Vegetarians
Vegetarians: Meat eaters, Vegans
Meat Eaters: Vegetarians, Vegans
You get the point. I could go on forever. This list is in no way exhaustive. Think of any group and there will be another group that hates them. And Christians, unfortunately, are not exempt from being on the hate bandwagon, whether on the giving or receiving end.
It's like somehow hate is part of human DNA, that we can't get away from it and are born hardwired to hate. Hum...Let's see. Perhaps that's because sin actually exists. Actually, there is no perhaps about it. Sin exists. And where sin exists, hate will, too.
When I teach about Genesis and the Fall, I have students list out what relationships broke down in the garden. We come up with five: God's relationship with man, man's relationship with man, man's relationship with himself, man's relationship with nature, nature's relationship with nature. When sin became entwined in the nature of man, man's relationship with man was broken. That means that hating each other is an inevitable result of sin. What is the next sin we see played out in the Bible after Adam and Eve disobeyed God? Cain getting jealous and killing Abel. In case we missed it, the Bible makes it clear: sin causes men to hate each other.
So what does this mean for Christians? Let's start with the receiving end. Christian, you will be hated. It shouldn't come as a shock that we are hated. Sin exists so we will be hated. Even Jesus made this fact clear: "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you" (John 15:18-20). Jesus was no stranger to being hated. Who hated him? Pharisees, Sadducees, Teachers of the Law, Romans, synagogue congregations, people of his hometown and more. We are not greater than our master. He was hated and we are hated.
So if we will be hated, what should we do about that? First, expect it. When the next news article denigrates Christians or that blog out there eviscerates us or a fellow believer is thrown in prison for belief or a martyr is murdered, don't be shocked. This is the way of the world. Peter says about being persecuted as Christians, "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you" (1 Peter 4:12-14). Peter actually tells us to stop being surprised by the hate since it isn't in any way strange and instead rejoice. Rejoice! Rejoice because you have so identified with Christ that people can't stand you because they can't stand him.
Second, be careful how you respond to being hated. Christians should not respond to hate by hating back. Let's turn to our hated master again. Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?" (Matthew 5:43-48). Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Our response to being hated should be to love the haters. Pray for the haters. Treat them with kindness (Matthew 5:38-42). Answer them with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). The Bible doesn't say to rage and yell and burn inside with hate in response to being hated. In fact, it says that those who hate live in the dark: "But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes" (1 John 2:11).
Some people might challenge this saying that Jesus lectured the Pharisees or took a whip to the money changers in the temple. Then how do you reconcile these facts with Jesus' words above? Was he lying? He wasn't lying. Jesus did lecture the Pharisees. But to what purpose? First, if you read Matthew 23, it is clear Jesus is confronting the Pharisees' hypocrisy. Before he launches into his lecture, he says, "So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." When the Pharisees preached scripture, guess what? They were right. Thus, Jesus says to do what they tell you. But he says you should not do what they do because they don't practice the scripture. They were religious hypocrites. They were leading the people astray by being bad examples of living out scripture. Jesus is addressing their hypocrisy. Second, Jesus wants them to be saved! "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town." Jesus is sending prophets and sages and teachers to provide an escape for the Pharisees from hell. And sadly, the Pharisees will reject those sent to save their very souls. Jesus doesn't lecture the Pharisees because he hates them. Jesus loved them. He wanted them to be saved. But they would not hear. They would not change their hypocritical ways and they destroyed those sent to help them. Jesus laments, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." How his heart longs to gather the Pharisees lovingly into his protective arms!
Christian, is this what you long for in regards to the haters? Do you want to bring them into your arms as a brother or sister? Do you long for their salvation and escape from sin? Or are you just affronted and angry about being hated? Jesus longs for the reconciliation of those who hate him and our heart should reflect his heart.
What about the temple? "Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 'It is written,' he said to them, 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a den of robbers'" (Matthew 21:12-13). Nothing here says that Jesus hated the merchants. Nothing here says that the merchants hated Jesus and since they hated him he decided to hate them back. That is not what is happening here. This is Jesus in his own house. His house has been personally invaded. And interestingly, it's been invaded by hypocrisy, the same problem of the Pharisees. A place meant for prayer and worship had been turned into a place to make money. Money was being drained from worshippers in the guise of religious obedience. This is Jesus cleaning out his house and making it clear that the temple is not a place to worship money or to extort worshippers but a place to come to God Almighty no matter how rich or poor you are. Jesus cleaning out the temple is not about hating those who hated him.
Finally, 1 Peter 4 goes on to say, "If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler." We are blessed when hated because we identify with Christ. We are not blessed if we suffer for being criminal--including meddling! Peter actually says we shouldn't consider suffering for getting involved in affairs not belonging to us to be suffering for Christ. We are not blessed if we suffer for ranting about the haters, insulting them, or laughing derisively at them. If these actions cause us suffering, it is suffering deserved.
My favorite movie about Jesus is Ben-Hur. It's a unique movie because its subtitle is A Tale of the Christ. Yet we never see Jesus' face and the majority of the movie follows Ben-Hur. How is it about the Christ? Because it is a story of how Jesus transforms us. It's about how he takes our hate and replaces it with a heart of love. Ben-Hur is a man eaten up by hate. Esther, his love interest, laments this at one point saying, "It was Judah Ben-Hur I loved. What has become of him? You seem to be now
the very thing you set out to destroy. Giving evil for evil. Hatred is
turning you to stone." Christian, are you the very thing you claim to hate? Are you a hater hating your haters? Esther says as well, "I know there is a law in life, that blood begets more blood as dog begets
dog. Death generates death, as the vulture breeds the vulture! But the
voice I heard today on the hill said, 'Love your enemy. Do good to those
who do spitefully use you.'" Hate begets hate. Hate doesn't turn into love. Hating your enemies will not expose them to the love of God.
What happens to Ben-Hur? He sees the cross and speaks a line that causes me to tear up every time: "Almost at the moment He died, I heard Him say, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'...And I felt His voice take the sword out of my hand." Let us look to our master, he who asked his father to forgive those who hated him, those who in their ignorance killed the one sent to save them. Let us let his voice take the swords out of our hands.
For more on this, including what we should hate, check out this link: What Does the Bible Say About Hate?
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Christians, Social Media and the Loss of Grace
To begin, please take time to read this story from our Lord:
"Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, 'Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?'
Jesus answered, 'I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
'Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
'But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
'Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
'This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.'"
My heart has been heavy for a long time. It's heavy because I see such a lack of grace from many Christians in our society. And where I see it most on display is in the realm of social media.
We live in a difficult time. We live in a time where it is so easy to fail publicly. Our sin isn't dealt with just between those we have hurt and God anymore; no, the whole world gets to weigh in on it.
We live in a time where people's sense of justice is often doled out on everyone they hate, even if the person they hate is someone they have never met, never talked to, never walked with.
I can take that kind of justice from secular people. I don't like it, but I get it. What I can't take is the absolute hate coming from Christians. Christians who seem to have forgotten how much debt they have been forgiven. In social media, we get the opportunity to not only make people pay who have personally offended us but people who have offended others. We insert ourselves into the issue and decide to make the lives of the offenders living hell so we feel a sense of personal justice.
Maybe that's the problem with social media. We somehow feel when someone is revealed to have committed a sin or made a mistake that this action was taken against us even though it wasn't.
Now before you think I am more holier than thou, I struggle with this tendency in myself. There are times I feel just like Jonah. I don't want Ninevah to repent. I don't want people to be forgiven because I can say right along with Jonah, "Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." Sometimes I want to see justice. I don't want God's grace to fall on sinners.
Think of someone who has done something you consider so awful, so heinous. Now, think of Jesus sitting down and eating with that person, getting to know them and treating them with respect. Now we know how the Pharisees felt. "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
God's grace doesn't make sense to us. Our capacity for grace is so small. It doesn't matter that our large debt was paid, we want everyone else to pay their debts back to us. We even want people to pay debts back to us that never even offended us personally.
Perhaps we've forgotten who and what God forgives...
A prophet who runs away from a God-commissioned mission...
A disciple who denies he knows the Messiah when he swore he wouldn't....
A patriarch who deceives his father to steal his brother's inheritance...
A king who gets another man's wife pregnant then kills him to cover it up...
And many more. God's capacity for grace is boundless. There is no one that is beyond his grace.
Christian, you know what, we can get that. Maybe we're okay with God's grace, probably because we have received it. But giving grace to others as a representation of Christ to the world, that is hard. Especially when the whole world is slamming someone else on social media. It's so easy to join the crowd throwing stones, or at the least hold their coats while they do it.
What was Jesus' response to the Pharisees? "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Mercy, not sacrifice. Not righteous, but sinners.
If we are ever to reflect our savior then we must desire mercy, not sacrifice. We must declare the grace of God for sinners. We must pray that our stone hearts become hearts of flesh. That our way would be the way of forgiveness.
Pray. Pray. Pray. Sometimes, that is all we can manage. Our anger may be so rich, our hearts so stirred up, we must pray if that is all we can do. Pray for hearts of mercy. Pray for hearts of grace. Pray for the ability to see sinners through his eyes. Pray that somehow forgiveness will take the place of anger. Pray for that person we cannot see but with hate. Pray. And sometime, somehow, in someway, forgive.
(Caveat: I have been working on this blog long before the Josh Duggar incident. I have never watched the Duggars. This blog is not a blog written in response to that incident. Although the issues may fall within the scope of this blog, it was not the impetus for writing this blog).
(Caveat the second: God gives governments the hand of justice. They can punish and do punish. Actions are punishable. But earthly punishment still does not negate forgiveness, whether from God or from man).
"Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, 'Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?'
Jesus answered, 'I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
'Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
'But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
'Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
'This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.'"
My heart has been heavy for a long time. It's heavy because I see such a lack of grace from many Christians in our society. And where I see it most on display is in the realm of social media.
We live in a difficult time. We live in a time where it is so easy to fail publicly. Our sin isn't dealt with just between those we have hurt and God anymore; no, the whole world gets to weigh in on it.
We live in a time where people's sense of justice is often doled out on everyone they hate, even if the person they hate is someone they have never met, never talked to, never walked with.
I can take that kind of justice from secular people. I don't like it, but I get it. What I can't take is the absolute hate coming from Christians. Christians who seem to have forgotten how much debt they have been forgiven. In social media, we get the opportunity to not only make people pay who have personally offended us but people who have offended others. We insert ourselves into the issue and decide to make the lives of the offenders living hell so we feel a sense of personal justice.
Maybe that's the problem with social media. We somehow feel when someone is revealed to have committed a sin or made a mistake that this action was taken against us even though it wasn't.
Now before you think I am more holier than thou, I struggle with this tendency in myself. There are times I feel just like Jonah. I don't want Ninevah to repent. I don't want people to be forgiven because I can say right along with Jonah, "Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." Sometimes I want to see justice. I don't want God's grace to fall on sinners.
Think of someone who has done something you consider so awful, so heinous. Now, think of Jesus sitting down and eating with that person, getting to know them and treating them with respect. Now we know how the Pharisees felt. "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
God's grace doesn't make sense to us. Our capacity for grace is so small. It doesn't matter that our large debt was paid, we want everyone else to pay their debts back to us. We even want people to pay debts back to us that never even offended us personally.
Perhaps we've forgotten who and what God forgives...
A prophet who runs away from a God-commissioned mission...
A disciple who denies he knows the Messiah when he swore he wouldn't....
A patriarch who deceives his father to steal his brother's inheritance...
A king who gets another man's wife pregnant then kills him to cover it up...
And many more. God's capacity for grace is boundless. There is no one that is beyond his grace.
Christian, you know what, we can get that. Maybe we're okay with God's grace, probably because we have received it. But giving grace to others as a representation of Christ to the world, that is hard. Especially when the whole world is slamming someone else on social media. It's so easy to join the crowd throwing stones, or at the least hold their coats while they do it.
What was Jesus' response to the Pharisees? "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Mercy, not sacrifice. Not righteous, but sinners.
If we are ever to reflect our savior then we must desire mercy, not sacrifice. We must declare the grace of God for sinners. We must pray that our stone hearts become hearts of flesh. That our way would be the way of forgiveness.
Pray. Pray. Pray. Sometimes, that is all we can manage. Our anger may be so rich, our hearts so stirred up, we must pray if that is all we can do. Pray for hearts of mercy. Pray for hearts of grace. Pray for the ability to see sinners through his eyes. Pray that somehow forgiveness will take the place of anger. Pray for that person we cannot see but with hate. Pray. And sometime, somehow, in someway, forgive.
(Caveat: I have been working on this blog long before the Josh Duggar incident. I have never watched the Duggars. This blog is not a blog written in response to that incident. Although the issues may fall within the scope of this blog, it was not the impetus for writing this blog).
(Caveat the second: God gives governments the hand of justice. They can punish and do punish. Actions are punishable. But earthly punishment still does not negate forgiveness, whether from God or from man).
Sunday, May 10, 2015
What Living Overseas Does to You
I recently had a conversation with a friend currently overseas and we discussed the fact that once you live for an extended time overseas you are ruined forever. That is, you can't belong to either your own culture or your adopted one anymore. You see the world from a unique perspective and you will often feel like a fish out of water wherever you go. As I thought more about our conversation I came up with a list of six things that living overseas does to you:
1. You realize the world is far bigger than you knew. When you live overseas you experience a larger world. When you lived in your home culture you heard about other cultures, but you didn't experience them (high school culture fairs don't count :-D). When you live overseas you all of a sudden come to understand that the world is really more than your home corner of it.
2. You begin to see foreigners as complex instead of simplistic. It's easy to see foreign people as one dimensional when you don't get to know them. It's easy to paint a whole culture one way and assume you know exactly what the think and why they think it. But when you actually begin to make foreign friends and go deep, all your preconceptions are challenged. You find people really are individuals no matter what culture they are from.
3. You stop seeing America as the answer to all the world's problems. Not all, but a lot of Americans think Americans have all the answers. I get that. My guess is most cultures would claim their culture has all the answers since that is all they know. So since my culture is American, it was America I realized wasn't sovereign when I lived overseas. There were things the culture I lived in did better than America. There were ideas they had and ways they acted that showed me they had something to contribute to the world just as much as Americans did.
4. You appreciate some of your own culture more. The culture I lived in did do some things better than America, but America does some things better than the culture. I appreciated America had provided me with security and a freedom that was not necessarily apparent in my host culture.
5. You experience the universal nature of the church. Best of all, you get to worship with people of another culture. You get to see the Bible and God's word through their lens. You start to realize there are ways to see scripture that differ from yours and that's okay (I am not talking about fundamental basics here. I am talking about something like how the famine in the Joseph story impresses your students from poor farming families who farm with implements from the 1800s far more than you who never worked on a farm in your life). And as you view Christianity through a different lens you start to see the cultural trappings of the way you do Christianity, those things that are not biblical, but cultural. They aren't necessarily wrong either, but they aren't necessarily right. You learn Christianity is far broader than you knew and, indeed, is a religion for anyone.
6. When you come home, you struggle with your home culture and your home church. Because of #1-5, you feel odd in your home culture. You feel odd in church, too. It takes time to reorient and you'll never reorient completely. You'll think things no one else thinks. You'll say things people don't get. Maybe you'll be labeled as odd, not with it, wrong thinking. When I have friends coming back to the States, I often tell them to be patient with themselves and their home culture. Remember that people here haven't had your experience. There is now a gap in experience, but that is okay. Just as we went overseas with the desire to understand the people in our host culture, we need to desire to understand the people in our home culture. And hang in there. You'll meet people who have lived overseas, too, and then you can commiserate together :-D
Actually, I think you can have all the above experiences within your own culture, too. For example, the United States isn't uniform. If you ever live in another part of the country than you grew up in you will experience this. Even if you just minister to a different socioeconomic group in your own area you can experience this. I think it's good to experience people in other places whether overseas or at home. It helps us to see the world more broadly and to sympathize with those different from ourselves. And above all, it makes us appreciate the image of God in all people everywhere.
1. You realize the world is far bigger than you knew. When you live overseas you experience a larger world. When you lived in your home culture you heard about other cultures, but you didn't experience them (high school culture fairs don't count :-D). When you live overseas you all of a sudden come to understand that the world is really more than your home corner of it.
2. You begin to see foreigners as complex instead of simplistic. It's easy to see foreign people as one dimensional when you don't get to know them. It's easy to paint a whole culture one way and assume you know exactly what the think and why they think it. But when you actually begin to make foreign friends and go deep, all your preconceptions are challenged. You find people really are individuals no matter what culture they are from.
3. You stop seeing America as the answer to all the world's problems. Not all, but a lot of Americans think Americans have all the answers. I get that. My guess is most cultures would claim their culture has all the answers since that is all they know. So since my culture is American, it was America I realized wasn't sovereign when I lived overseas. There were things the culture I lived in did better than America. There were ideas they had and ways they acted that showed me they had something to contribute to the world just as much as Americans did.
4. You appreciate some of your own culture more. The culture I lived in did do some things better than America, but America does some things better than the culture. I appreciated America had provided me with security and a freedom that was not necessarily apparent in my host culture.
5. You experience the universal nature of the church. Best of all, you get to worship with people of another culture. You get to see the Bible and God's word through their lens. You start to realize there are ways to see scripture that differ from yours and that's okay (I am not talking about fundamental basics here. I am talking about something like how the famine in the Joseph story impresses your students from poor farming families who farm with implements from the 1800s far more than you who never worked on a farm in your life). And as you view Christianity through a different lens you start to see the cultural trappings of the way you do Christianity, those things that are not biblical, but cultural. They aren't necessarily wrong either, but they aren't necessarily right. You learn Christianity is far broader than you knew and, indeed, is a religion for anyone.
6. When you come home, you struggle with your home culture and your home church. Because of #1-5, you feel odd in your home culture. You feel odd in church, too. It takes time to reorient and you'll never reorient completely. You'll think things no one else thinks. You'll say things people don't get. Maybe you'll be labeled as odd, not with it, wrong thinking. When I have friends coming back to the States, I often tell them to be patient with themselves and their home culture. Remember that people here haven't had your experience. There is now a gap in experience, but that is okay. Just as we went overseas with the desire to understand the people in our host culture, we need to desire to understand the people in our home culture. And hang in there. You'll meet people who have lived overseas, too, and then you can commiserate together :-D
Actually, I think you can have all the above experiences within your own culture, too. For example, the United States isn't uniform. If you ever live in another part of the country than you grew up in you will experience this. Even if you just minister to a different socioeconomic group in your own area you can experience this. I think it's good to experience people in other places whether overseas or at home. It helps us to see the world more broadly and to sympathize with those different from ourselves. And above all, it makes us appreciate the image of God in all people everywhere.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
When Christians Hate
If there is one thing that saddens me more than any other these days it is observing Christian hate. As I watch the flow of social media, I am depressed when I see Christians at the least insulting and at the worst slandering people they don't agree with. Before you read any further, let me clarify a couple things. I am not saying you can't make judgments about someone's policies or actions. Jesus said we know people by their fruit and we do. I am also not saying that we shouldn't take a stand on truth. We should. I'm not writing about taking a stance and arguing it cogently or combating lies with truth. I'm writing about the descent into angry pettiness.
Why are so many Christians so angry these days? Not all are. I think many Christians are very nice people that love others, even those they disagree with. But there are definitely some that seem to have rooted their identity in hating people they don't agree with. I see it in articles and websites, on social media sites and on TV. It is pervasive in our culture today.
What does this anger look like? These Christians seem to feel the need to jump on every aspect of a person and denigrate him. There is an assumption that this person they disagree with has no redeeming qualities and isn't worthy of kindness or love. Some make up taunting, juvenile names for the person they disagree with. Some, not content with going after the person, insult his spouse and children. But the worst thing of all? This is often done under the guise of "saving Christianity," as if God won't be able to stand against falsehood and needs us to do the insulting and undermining of a person's life and character to expose untruth. And sadly, I have found that Christians that do this are also ready and willing to take a lie about the person they disagree with and run with it, just because they don't like the person so much they'll believe anything about him.
Why does this make me sad? Because it isn't Christ to the world. Because if I weren't a Christian and I saw the petty attacks and the outrageous anger that come from some Christians, I'd probably pass on the Christian God, too. I am lucky that I have been a part of the body for a long time so that I know not all Christians are like this.
So why am I writing this? Because all Christians should be evaluating the way we approach those we disagree with. First, we should evaluate the way we relate to people we disagree with. We should ask: "Do my actions reveal I hate this person?" Because if we've done any of the pettiness above, we are hating. If so, we need to pray that we can live out Jesus' words, "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). We should go to our knees in prayer, not go on social media with a clever hate-name and a tirade of spewing anger. Second, we should evaluate our words and attitudes. Peter admonishes us to, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander" (1 Peter 3:15-16). People aren't going to be ashamed of their slander when we slander them back. We need to ask ourselves, "Are my words and actions done with gentleness and respect?" If not, we need to change. And finally, we should ask "Am I overreacting?" Sometimes we get so embroiled in our hate that we turn molehills into mountains. We hate everything about a person we disagree with and we huff and stomp any time anything positive is said or revealed about that person. Are we making a person worse than he really is? C. S. Lewis wisely wrote,
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."
Christians are not meant to exist in a universe of pure hatred. If every time you see a certain person and hatred springs up in you, it is time to evaluate the state of your words and heart.
Jesus said Christians would be known by their love (John 13:35). If so, then we cannot turn disagreement into petty and hurtful insult. The world needs to see gentleness and respect towards those we consider enemies and hearts of love and prayer. That will draw the world to God, not the hypocrisy of Christian hate.
Why are so many Christians so angry these days? Not all are. I think many Christians are very nice people that love others, even those they disagree with. But there are definitely some that seem to have rooted their identity in hating people they don't agree with. I see it in articles and websites, on social media sites and on TV. It is pervasive in our culture today.
What does this anger look like? These Christians seem to feel the need to jump on every aspect of a person and denigrate him. There is an assumption that this person they disagree with has no redeeming qualities and isn't worthy of kindness or love. Some make up taunting, juvenile names for the person they disagree with. Some, not content with going after the person, insult his spouse and children. But the worst thing of all? This is often done under the guise of "saving Christianity," as if God won't be able to stand against falsehood and needs us to do the insulting and undermining of a person's life and character to expose untruth. And sadly, I have found that Christians that do this are also ready and willing to take a lie about the person they disagree with and run with it, just because they don't like the person so much they'll believe anything about him.
Why does this make me sad? Because it isn't Christ to the world. Because if I weren't a Christian and I saw the petty attacks and the outrageous anger that come from some Christians, I'd probably pass on the Christian God, too. I am lucky that I have been a part of the body for a long time so that I know not all Christians are like this.
So why am I writing this? Because all Christians should be evaluating the way we approach those we disagree with. First, we should evaluate the way we relate to people we disagree with. We should ask: "Do my actions reveal I hate this person?" Because if we've done any of the pettiness above, we are hating. If so, we need to pray that we can live out Jesus' words, "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). We should go to our knees in prayer, not go on social media with a clever hate-name and a tirade of spewing anger. Second, we should evaluate our words and attitudes. Peter admonishes us to, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander" (1 Peter 3:15-16). People aren't going to be ashamed of their slander when we slander them back. We need to ask ourselves, "Are my words and actions done with gentleness and respect?" If not, we need to change. And finally, we should ask "Am I overreacting?" Sometimes we get so embroiled in our hate that we turn molehills into mountains. We hate everything about a person we disagree with and we huff and stomp any time anything positive is said or revealed about that person. Are we making a person worse than he really is? C. S. Lewis wisely wrote,
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."
Christians are not meant to exist in a universe of pure hatred. If every time you see a certain person and hatred springs up in you, it is time to evaluate the state of your words and heart.
Jesus said Christians would be known by their love (John 13:35). If so, then we cannot turn disagreement into petty and hurtful insult. The world needs to see gentleness and respect towards those we consider enemies and hearts of love and prayer. That will draw the world to God, not the hypocrisy of Christian hate.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Resurrected
John Donne is my favorite poet. I offered his poem "Crucifying" from La Corona for Good Friday. The poem I share today is personal: It links Jesus' resurrection to our own. What joy we have and will have on Resurrection Day!
La Corona: Resurrection
by John Donne
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.
La Corona: Resurrection
by John Donne
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.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Crucified
La Corona: Crucifying
by John Donne
By miracles exceeding power of man,
He faith in some, envy in some begat,
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate:
In both affections many to Him ran.
But O! the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas! and do, unto th' Immaculate,
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,
Measuring self-life's infinity to span,
Nay to an inch. Lo! where condemned He
Bears His own cross, with pain, yet by and by
When it bears him, He must bear more and die.
Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.
He faith in some, envy in some begat,
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate:
In both affections many to Him ran.
But O! the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas! and do, unto th' Immaculate,
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,
Measuring self-life's infinity to span,
Nay to an inch. Lo! where condemned He
Bears His own cross, with pain, yet by and by
When it bears him, He must bear more and die.
Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Happy Epiphany: The Wise Men and Their Gifts
This year I am including my daughter in the event and for that reason I am focusing on the concrete wise men story from the Bible. (To see exactly what I am going to do, check out this post on my other blog). I did a little research on the wise men and their gifts so I could talk to my daughter about them. I wanted to answer the question, "So, why is the story of the wise men significant?"
The Bible doesn't directly tell us why the wise men matter. But I think there are definitely hints concerning the reason these men showed up. First, the wise men were "from the East." This means they probably came from Persia. This explains why they might be interested in a prophecy from the Hebrew Bible. Approximately 500 years before Jesus' birth, Daniel had served in the Persian court as a high official. Daniel had prophesied the coming of an anointed ruler in Israel. For whatever reason, these wise men connected the Hebrew prophecy with a stellar event, a bright star appearing in the sky. They left their home and traveled around 800 miles to find this ruler that would be born. To me it is significant that not only Jews sought Christ. The wise men were Gentiles. For this reason, Epiphany has celebrated the fact that Jesus came for all peoples, not just the Israelite nation. In the movie The Nativity Story, Mary says "He is for all men." It's a good statement in the movie because I believe it is pointing to the truth that Jesus is the Savior of all.
Are the gifts the wise men bring significant? Well, just like the wise men themselves, the Bible doesn't directly assign any meaning to the gifts. Over the years, various people have suggested various symbolic meanings. I think at the least we can talk about how these gifts were used in the time of Christ. Gold, of course, was valuable, and used to decorate the homes and palaces of the rich as well as temples for the gods. If the wise men were seeking a king, it makes sense they would bring gold. Practically, this gift of gold would be useful to Mary and Joseph when they fled to Egypt. To me, the wise men's gift of gold is acknowledgement that they are coming to find someone valuable who deserves a costly gift appropriate to his station. Ironic considering he appears to be born of poor parentage and is placed in a manger.
Frankincense is a resin that is fragrant when burned. Exodus mentions frankincense being burned to God. Did the wise men know about this? Possibly if they had more than Daniel's prophecy to study. If so, maybe they understood that bringing this gift would point to the deity or divine involvement in the birth of this child. Or perhaps they thought this aromatic gift also appropriate for a king. Whatever their reason, Jesus is presented with frankincense just as God is in the tabernacle and temple. He is not just a child, but God in a man.
Myrrh is also a resin and aromatic. It was used in purification rituals, in embalming and also added to medicinal drinks. It is listed as an ingredient in Exodus as well as part of the anointing oil used to purify the tabernacle, to make it holy. This then could point to Jesus again as divine and perhaps as one who purifies. But myrrh makes another appearance in Jesus' life. Mark 15:23 mentions that the drink Jesus is given at his crucifixion is wine mixed with myrrh. He refuses to drink it, however, not allowing a lessening of pain on the cross. Combine this with the fact that myrrh may have been used in his embalming after he had died and myrrh seems to point to the fact that Jesus came to die.
It is not clear if the wise men meant their gifts to symbolize anything more than appropriate gifts for a king, gold and anointing incense. However, whether they meant to or not, we living in the future can look back to the past and see that the way these gifts were used holds significance for us who understand the impact and purpose of Jesus' life on earth. Taken together, the gifts of the wise men make a statement that is the crux of the celebration of Epiphany: Jesus is a ruler, a prince of heaven, God himself in a man, who came to sacrifice his life for all men. This is a truth and joy to celebrate!
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