Sense

Question.  Does, or should, your faith help you make sense of the world in which you live?  I’ll see if I can pose a few more questions and maybe a couple thoughts to at least clear a path toward my thinking…

Here’s a basic question to start off.  Basic Christian thought is that since “the fall,” humanity has been in a continual downward spiral of destruction and is in need of a cosmic mechanic.  Now, does that make any sort of sense in the world we are living in today?  Don’t get me wrong, there are horrible atrocities that can be associated with human participation in evil, but I would venture to say there are just as many, if not more, amazing strides we’ve made in the human race.  I am partial to the idea that you’ll find what you’re looking for.  For example, if we constantly look for evil, sin and fault in everything, we’re sure to find it.  This is an especially frightening notion when we mirror this idea alongside conventional Christian thought.  What are we most known for?  Outside of a few token good deeds, we’re pretty good  at spreading guilt and judgement suffocatingly thick.  So, back to the original question, does this pitiful view of humanity we’ve traditionally held onto make any sense in the world we live in today?  My view, not particularly.

Here’s another thought.  We are living in a scientific age.  We have witnessed some pretty amazing discoveries and advances in technology in the past two or three decades.  Now, remember I still hold to the idea in scripture that the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God, but hear me out.  Most everything we understand about how the world works can be defined in scientific terms.  Isn’t it kind of ridiculous for us to try to use the Bible as a piece of science?  Here’s what I mean.  Science, as we know it, has really only been around for a couple hundred years (give or take… I’m not sure the exact number).  Regardless of the exact starting point of science, we must realize that the Bible was written long before anyone started thinking in scientific terms.  It was not written as a text book.  It was never meant to be used as a text to educate us on the fundamentals of the origins of life and the beginning of everything we know.  It’s an oral tradition of a narrative that just happened to get written down at some point along the line.  It’s a story that likely records actual events, but it’s foolish to use it to either prove or bash scientific theories.  In doing so, we are forgetting something Jesus said, “you must be as shrewd as serpents…”  Please don’t hear me saying the Bible is not important and it’s time to toss it out, what I am saying is that we’ve got to engage our brains, not just claim, “it’s the way we’ve always done it, and that’s final.”  That kind of thought makes no sense in the world that we now inhabit.

This was a question posted as one of our good friends’ status update on facebook: Is what is moral, moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it’s moral?  I think this is a great question.  My answer would be yes.  I think when we take time to pick away the residue of over 1500 years of christendom, morality is ultimately defined by God.  I would also argue that there are very moral people who don’t know or claim God.  Does that make them any less moral, I don’t think so.  I would agree with one ancient writer who offered that the Gentiles unknowingly follow God’s law because it’s been written on their hearts as fellow image bearers.  Some food for thought…

I say all this as a challenge, really to myself, to engage my brain.  It’s time to ask questions.  It’s time to participate for a better world now.  If our faith can’t help us make sense of the world we live in now, no one else is going to want anything to do with us or our phony religion that’s holding out for a mansion in the sky with a gold paved driveway.

Inspiration

I haven’t written anything in a while, so I thought I’d get back at it for a little bit.  Usually, when I pen thoughts on this blog, there is something in life that has stirred my thoughts.  Some might say I’m inspired, though I, myself, would venture more in the direction of reacting.  So, the unique element of this post is I’ve neither been inspired nor am I reacting.  This is new ground for me, yet I’ll venture on none-the-less.

It’s interesting how the seasons of life often go unnoticed.  And not only the seasons of life, but they rhythms of our existence carry on without us giving a second glance.  Here’s what I mean.  I apologize ahead of time that most of this is probably contained in earlier posts, but something in my gut prods me to think that the things that show up most often in our lives and our thoughts are probably higher on the scale of importance.

I spoke a moment ago about rhythms.  I’ve chosen this word carefully because rhythms, unlike other synonyms such as ruts, or routines, or normality invoke a much more positive tone.  That’s not to say that some of our rhythms aren’t negative or destructive, I just feel like in an effort to describe our existence and participation on, and apart of, this planet, it’s time we begin painting a bit more positive a picture with our words.  Specifically today, words that describe the structures and foundations of who we are as a people.

As the incoherence of this post continues to build, I’m just going to pretend I’m oblivious.  We’ve been having an ongoing conversation with the kids in our youth group about this idea that Christianity has become nothing more than a watered down, boring list of things we aren’t supposed to do.  We’ve been very hard pressed to find this mysterious list of things we aren’t supposed to do.  Here’s what we have found.  In the story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given the garden.  Everything in the garden was theirs, accept for one tree.  I fear that we’ve spent our entire Christian existence focusing on that one tree; the one thing we couldn’t have.

The folly of that narrow vision is we’ve totally forgotten about the entire rest of the garden.  I would argue the same is true today.  For those of us who label ourselves as Christians, without batting an eye, we could rattle off a whole list of things we are “forbidden” to take part in.  Here’s the crazy part; we’d have to sit down, labor and grit our teeth to come up with the things we can do.  With that in mind, we’ve been spending a good portion of our summer exploring some ways in which we can make a difference, right here, right now.  You’ll remember from earlier posts, I don’t believe the call of a Christian is to place all of our hope in the place we call heaven.  We participate with God in redeeming this world, alleviating suffering now, standing against injustice.  Jesus said, “blessed are the peace-MAKERS.”  We don’t sit around and wait for better things to happen, we are people get up off our tails and make better things happen.

This is not tooting our own horn, but here are some of the things we’ve been talking about and doing with our kids this summer.

• some youth groups get summer t-shirts.  We got our from Tom’s.  So, for every t-shirt we bought, Tom’s gave a pair of shoes to someone in Africa.  Check out their story at tomsshoes.com.

• check out the movie Food Inc. and King Korn for some interesting info about the food we eat.

• skirt over to takepart.com for more info on some of the issues that our world, this place where we live, participate in and plunder, is facing.

All this to say, it’s time for us to move past the energy-sucking practice of not doing things and move toward the life giving, life changing, God partnering work of living and making choices to create a better world now.  It’s time to live and breathe.  It’s time to embrace rhythms of change, of justice and of bearing the image of the ground, the foundation of all being, God, to a world that doesn’t want to know about him, but see him standing with and for those who suffer.