Why I’m over it and so should you

I should begin this post by saying I have never once watched an episode of Duck Dynasty nor do I intend to. Yes, I know what the show is about and know I do not need to prove it to you, and yes, I am still a Christ follower (just kidding, though for some of you I not kidding at all). The news of Phil Robertson’s comments came across my screen and left just as quickly as it appeared but I did understand what was coming next and I just braced myself. It is in these moments that I dread social media and its ability to give everyone a public voice (but this is a post for another day). After some of the Facebook posts I saw over the last few days, I have decided to say my 2 cents and then let the debate rage.

I wish [Christians]would care this much about poverty & abuse & slavery & caring for the marginalized and oppressed then the kingdom of God would be so much better reflected in this dark crazy world.

I am completely for anyone’s Constitutional right to free speech, people can say what they want to say and believe what they want. What makes me sad is that these moments represent Christians to the world. The internet is powerful, Social Media is powerful because it is distilled. The things we say and do reflect what we truly believe and from the looks of things we care more about:

Guns
Duck Dynasty
Gay Marriage
Conservative/ Republican/Libertarian “values”
the Constitution
the United States and so much more

Even though we make very concerted efforts at connecting these things to the Kingdom of God, though they can not be connected. I have met so many amazing people who live out their faith in such beautiful, humble, and brave ways. They are opening the doors to the kingdom of heaven for people instead of wasting time defending positions for millionaires who can take care of themselves or TV stations shooting themselves in the foot. They are outraged about things that Jesus is orphans, poverty, oppression, slavery, abuse, advance of His Kingdom and His Gospel, people dying and going to a real hell and the question is are willing to do something about these real issues. So many people commenting, writing letters, starting petitions, but can not articulate the last time they shared there faith. You might be fighting for the wrong kingdom. The amazing people I mentioned, they reflect the incarnation of Christ and that’s what we’re supposed to be celebrating this season.

This is the Advent season that affords us the reality that Christ came for us and in that truth we are supposed to be turning the world upside down, our lives are supposed to be centered around. It is for this reason [and others] I am over this “debate” and so should you too.

Let me know what you think by liking the post, commenting below, and/or sharing it and thinks for listening.

Blurred lines

The problem with drawing lines in the sand is that with a breath of air they disappear.

I remember driving around Kansas City with some friends while in college when I was first encountered this question that had plagued me for the entirety of my Christian life, “what is the difference between Christian and secular music?” You see on my radio I was listening to “secular” music and my friend was becoming continually and visibly agitated with it. When he asked me to change it, the question was raised by another friend. Although it seemed an initially obvious answer, I did not immediately know that answer. Actually, the more I thought about it the more I realized I am not sure. Was it that a Christian song had to mention Jesus or God? If that is true then what do we do with the books of Esther and Song of Songs (which do not mention either)?

Unfortunately, this is a dilemma that is not unique to the sphere of music. We live in a world where the divide between Secular and Sacred is constantly and adamantly being drawn by both Christians and non-Christians alike. We are frequently labeling things “Christian” that I suppose we fear otherwise might be confused for something else.

Christian schools
Christian groups
Christian movies
Christian books
Christian bands, etc.

If our music, our schools, our groups, our books, our actions do not point those around us to Jesus, and serve to redeem a broken world, then are they not indeed unchristian? Instead of creating clear bright line, like we would like, Christ blurred the lines between secular and sacred, seemingly implying that the division the ritualistic religion of the day had crested a false division. If All things are God’s, all things are in fact sacred? IS this going to o far? Why? Furthermore, He was criticized for almost everything he did because he acted as if things such as the purity and impurity, pious and impious, Jew and Gentile, powerful and weak, rich and poor did not exist as the world saw them. When Paul came on the scene he preached this as he proclaimed in Romans there is no division, but “all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Is it easier to know who is in or out? Is it that we wanted to be able to sit at the table with drunkards tax collectors and sinners, as long as we knew who was who? Honestly , I’m not really sure, so I put the question to you, is there a Sacred/ Secular divide?

Some additional thoughts from this weekend

Most people don’t know but the amount of information that many pastors compile for one sermon is MASSIVE. We have researched, read, prayed for weeks on end and find ourselves to edit and cut that information to around 30 minutes (in our context). That being said I still wanted to share some thoughts that I wanted to share but were left on the editing room floor. I hope this additional information is fruitful you as it was with me.

How do you handle a victory? We said first of all,

I. With every great work, give glory to God (Neh. 6:15-16).

With every victory we have ultimately, all the credit goes to God. It is great to pray that in our lives, we pray for a God-thing. God loves to get all the glory! Nehemiah in Neh. 6:15 does give the glory to God as a token phrase (like you hear at an award show). God had birthed a burden in his heart, broke his heart with the burden, helped him persevere as he waited for God’s timing, answered prayer with the King, encouraged him when he arrived among opposition, gave him confidence and courage to rally God’s people, encouraged him in the midst of ridicule, the halfway hurdle, gave him boldness to confront sin and helped him focus among distractions.

So it is not unusual for the soul who has been dependent on God in everything to grant Him the glory when God accomplishes a great work. The more you abide with the Lord, invite him to every aspect of your life, the more you will see His fingerprints over everything. If God does a dozen things with every good work, we may see only two things. However, the more we have been with the Lord in the small things, the more we see Him working in the bigger things. Secondly we said:

II. Guard great victories, because they can be followed by great failure (Neh. 6:17-7:3)

How do you guard your victories? We said first of all, it requires us to:

1. Faithfulness (Neh. 7:2)

Hanani was Nehemiah’s literal brother (Neh. 1:2). Remember him? He was the one who told Nehemiah about the problem in the first place. Hananiah was a governor “of the castle charge.” This “was a fortress in the temple area, guarding the north wall of the city, which was especially vulnerable to attack.”[3]

Nehemiah says the reasons he picked Hananiah was because he was faithful and God-fearing. Faithfulness is “doing what you said you would do.” Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., often said, “The greatest ability is dependability.”[4] Can you be depended on? Paul says, “It is required of stewards that they be trustworthy” (1 Cor. 4:2). Pastor Steve Cole in Arizona provides four ways to develop faithfulness:[5]

Recognize and define the responsibilities that God has given you to do. If you are a husband and/or a father, you have to provide basic needs of your family. If you are part of a church body, you are responsible to serve God in some capacity. It is hard to be faithful if you are foggy about what you should be doing.
Start with and don’t neglect the small things. Pay your bills on time. Keep your appointments. Jesus said, if you are faithful in the little things, you will be entrusted with more (Luke 16:10).
Keep your relational priorities straight. This means your time with Jesus, your time with family, your accountability relationships and your relationship to others in the body of Christ.
Learn to use your time more effectively. This is huge. I need to write down my priorities down. Are you spending excessive amounts of time on the internet, video games and television? We all have the same number of hours entrusted with us and a good sign of faithfulness is how we use it.

2. Fear of God (Neh. 7:2)

The fear of God is the dread of displeasing Him. It is not to be afraid of God, but your desire to please Him takes precedence over everything else. We have talked about it a lot in the previous weeks, so I am not going to belabor the point. It comes out of knowledge of God. The more you know Him, the more you want to please Him. Solomon says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 1:7). Wisdom is the ability to make the most God-honoring decision in any situation. Anyone need that? I certainly do! The way it starts is to ask God to give you such a dread in hurting Him with the choices of your life. This is the fear of God. But it is interesting that he connects faithfulness and fear of God together. I believe the more you fear God, the more faithful you will be, because you will have wisdom to make the best choices in every situation.

3. Watchfulness (Neh. 7:3)

So character is built by faithfulness, fear of God and lastly, watchfulness. Knowing these guys feared God and were faithful, they were asked assigned the job of watchfulness (and to delegate it to others). What he is saying here is that they need to be vigilant. Lazy guards are no guards at all. The Hebrew is tricky here. But I think he means to be on watch, even in the hottest part of the day, right in the afternoon, around lunch time, when we can tend to be lax, we need to be on guard. Remember some people had worked on the wall near their homes (Neh. 3:10, 23, 28-30). Now Nehemiah wants them to realize that they need to protect what was accomplished.

I think the lesson here is that unless we protect what was accomplished for the Lord, the Enemy will come and take over. This is why Paul said, “After you done everything, stand” (Eph. 6:11). This is why so many schools which were once started on godly principles are now as secular as secular can be. Look at all the churches now once so solid in preaching the Gospel, now fill their pulpits with people preaching “another gospel.” Beloved, we are simply one generation away from destruction, and so need to be watchful. Living hope can easily be dead hope!

There is a fine line between watchfulness and compromise. The reason why compromise happens is because we are not watchful. It all comes down to a character issue. If Tobiah’s wife and family had been watchful in not having any relationship with Tobiah, the compromise that now resulted into the next generation, would have been avoided. Here are some things we need to guard:

Our heart (Prov. 4:23) Guard carefully what you allow in your life that will ultimately impact your heart and soul. Watch out for sharing intimate moments with people who are not your spouse.
False doctrine. Paul tells the church in Corinth that Satan comes like an angel of light, disguising himself as “servants of righteousness,” preaching a false gospel (2 Cor. 11:14-15). I have seen churches and people destroyed because this was not taken seriously.
Our private time. Guard your times when you are alone, tired, overwhelmed or bored.
Recreation and Media. Check with pluggedinonline.com or christiananswers.net before renting or watching a movie. Use an internet filter for your computers.

The point here is that we need to guard our victory times because it can be followed by great failure. But keeping our priorities straight (keep worship and the Word central), avoiding any small hints of compromise, and keep working on our character (like faithfulness, a growing fear of God and being ever so watchful) will help us. All of us know what it is to put our guards down when things are going well. Let us decide now and pray, “Lord help us protect what you have accomplished.”

We are fighting for the wrong kingdom!

“It frustrates me how church people discern truth using their politics instead of their Bibles, and it frustrates me that they don’t know the are doing it.”

– Reverend Dr. Derrick Lynch, Blue Valley Baptist Church

As an American and also as an evangelical Christian, I can hardly bear to watch this nightmare unfolding. It’s bad for Christianity, heck it’s bad for America. Here is my take on the sorry spectacle of Christian politics — and how to fix it.

Politicians continue to use and abuse the language and symbols of Christian faith in order to win political support. They speak of God, Jesus, Christian faith and Christian values. They bow their heads in prayer at a million chicken dinners. Then Christian voters — perhaps flattered, perhaps reassured — think that these evocations of Christian symbols and terms actually mean something. Living in the Midwest I I see and hear this kind of foolishness daily. This version of Christian politics is inherently corrupting to Christian faith, ethics and witness. It confuses the message of Christianity with that of the politician of the moment. I’m not sure about your baptism but I do not remember getting handed a card to a particular political party. This conflation damages the moral witness of Christians in culture, it makes it harder for millions to even consider the claims of historic Christian faith. It drives many away from God altogether. Don’t believe me? Let me give you an example.

The whole Obama rodeo clown debacle is repugnant. Some people at the fair see the rodeo incident in which a ringleader taunted a clown wearing a mask of President Obama, played with his lips as a bull charged after him was neither racist nor disrespectful. The hooting and hollering from the crowd that night was because of a fundamental dislike of the president. Immediately we had “Christians” on the Left and Right claiming a foul and I do not want to get into the details but there are somethings I want to point out:

“… but they did it to President Bush”. Again, I don’t know about you but my kids would get into trouble for making an asinine excuse like this.
“[Political Party] is just the lesser of two evils”. Just remember that you are still advocating for evil.
“[Political Party] is closer to my values”. Yes, and they are trying to setup there own [Political] kingdoms that compete with God’s.

Here is a wake-up call:

Rush Limbaugh hates Jesus.
Sean Hannity hates Jesus.
Rachel Maddow hates Jesus.
Mark Levin hates Jesus.
Kieth Olbermann hates Jesus.
Piers Morgan hates Jesus.
Anderson Cooper hates Jesus
Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and whomever else I missed all hates Jesus.
Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and [fill in your political party if it was not mentioned] parties are ALL antithetical to the Kingdom of God.

I know you agreed with some of the list and others you disagreed but I want to ask you this, What kingdom are they fighting for? When you listen to them talk/ advocate for their position who are they talking about? A Political party, an ideology, or Christ? Better yet if someone were to listen to you talk/ advocate who would they say you are talking about? Unfortunately, we have sold out to these fiefdoms while the Kingdom of God (you know the one that Christ died in establishing) loses ground. Do not allow your voice to be co-opted by your allegiance to an earthly kingdom or party. We have prostituted ourselves out so much that the outside world does not know the difference between Christ many political parties and that is a shame.

We are fighting for the wrong kingdom, let’s start fighting for the right one because all of the other ones are just [really] ghetto idols. It’s not that much different than when my son puts on my shoes and marches around the house trying to be me. Though its cute, he is a far cry from filling the shoes he’s trying so hard to handle.

Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church: A Response to Rachel Held Evans

Recently, I was given a recent CNN article “Why Millennials Are Leaving The Church” by Rachel Held Evans. When reading the post it becomes evident that (in my opinion) she is not talking about the “holy catholic church,” but a narrow subculture of conservative American evangelicals but the conversation is afoot none the less. Unfortunately, her post does not [seem to] address why young adults in America are leaving the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, broad evangelical, nor mainline churches. I must admit that her post has struck a chord with a larger swath of readers (see the thousands of comments below her post). She is addressing a perennial topic of conversation among church leaders and church goers: what will happen to the next generation.

Like Rachel, I’m in my early 30’s, right on the border of the millennials, and many of the questions and doubts I hear from the millennial generation resonate with me too, but the analysis offered from Trevin Wax below differs somewhat from Rachel’s.

I guess the questions is simple, If you are below 30 why are you leaving (staying) in the church? I look forward to your comments below.

Rachel’s Analysis

Rachel thinks millennials are leaving the church due to the perception that evangelicals are

“… too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

She’s right to decry a vision of Christianity that reduces repentance to a list of do’s and don’ts. I too have noticed that many millennials desire to be involved in mercy ministry and support justice causes. And I couldn’t agree more when she says “we want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.”

The Church’s Response.

How has the church responded? Rachel sees church leaders trying to update their music or preaching style, and thereby running up against the “highly sensitive BS meters” we millennials have. We’re not fooled by consumerism or performances when churches cater to what they think we want.

Rachel writes:

“What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.”

I agree with that sentence for the most part, although I would tweak the last line to say “What millennials really want from the church is substance.” Not a change in substance, necessarily, just substance will do.

Too often, our churches have offered a sanitized, spiritualized version of self-help therapy, and Jesus has been missing. And that’s the problem. Like every generation, she says, “deep down we long for Jesus.”

Here’s where Rachel and I part ways – on what communities following Jesus look like in our culture.

Read the rest of the article here…

Saying “N****r” shouldn’t get Paula Deen fired

**I try hard not to speak about current events as anything but an observer, but this one has just become out of control. So this week I want to comment on the Paula Deen debacle and lend some clarity.

Warning, there maybe some language in this post that could be considered offensive.**

I have a guilty pleasure, cooking shows. I love “the Food Network (FN)”, “Top Chef” and others. I have learned so much that has served to advance my cooking skills. Paula Deen has been among the host that have given me a better understanding of Southern culture and cooking. I was initially surprised as the next person to hear of Mrs. Deen’s comments, use of the word “Nigger” and subsequent firing by the FN and other sponsors. What further concerned me was the instant “I support Paula Deen” Facebook pages and multiple post showing support for a women who used a word that, as a society, we have considered repugnant for many decades (though in my humble opinion not long enough). Additionally, I began to laugh when I read post from my friends comparing Deen’s situation to movies that say “Nigger” or “nigga (not that this word is much better)” a ridiculous amount of times (e.g. Django Unchained). I truly believe that Paula Deen should not be fired for admitting that she called someone a nigger 30 years ago but you should really read the deposition for yourself. The whole thing is now out and it is a pretty long read and damning read, here are some of the highlights (lowlights) and why I believe she was really fired.

She was accused (in a lawsuit) of only hiring only Caucasians to work in the front of the restaurant:

“Bubba [her brother] and I, neither one of us, care what the color of your skin is or what is between your legs, it’s what’s in your heart and in your head that matters to us.”

The transcript mentions employee complaints about Deen’s brother looking at pornography at the restaurant during operating hours and forcing other employees to look at it as well. In direct response to questions about this, Deen said:

“I know all men in my family at one time or another, they’ll tell each other, ‘look what so and so sent me on my phone,’ you know. It’s just men being men.”

In response to questions about whether or not she’d have a problem with her brother looking at porn at work, Deen said:

“If somebody sent him something and he pulled it up and looked at it, no, I would not persecute him for that. … Bubba, I don’t think, would ever do that if he thought there was somebody in the room that he — it would insult.”

She did respond to a question about when it’s acceptable to use the N-word and Deen said:

“We hear a lot of things in the kitchen. Things that they — that black people will say to each other. If we are relaying something that was said, a problem that we’re discussing, that’s not said in a mean way. What about jokes, if somebody is telling a joke that’s got —It’s just what they are, they’re jokes.”

The continuation of this line of questioning is rather disturbing. Even Macklemore and Eminem understand that in today’s America there is not a nice way to call a African American a nigger, yet Deen proceeded to find that medium. This her response to the lawyer asking her to give and example of how to use the word nigger in a nice, joking way after she state that she could:

“That’s — that’s kind of hard. Most — most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks. Most jokes target — I don’t know. I didn’t make up the joke, I don’t know. I can’t — I don’t know.”

There is not a nice way to tell a joke with the word “nigger” in it, trust me I have heard my fair share and not one of them is funny.

The most repugnant part of the deposition was Deen’s description of a “[pre] Civil Wars style Southern plantation wedding” she wanted for her brother. She was reportedly inspired by a restaurant with nicely dressed, middle-aged black waiters dressed up as slave caricatures. When asked by the questioner in the deposition whether the race of the waiters mattered, Deen said, “Well, that’s what made it.” the very suggest that slaves could be a quaint scenic touch at a wedding is deplorable to say the least.

Listen, if you really want to please go and read the whole deposition . After i did I came to the to the conclusion that as a private company I would not want someone who acts in the manner that she has and continues to defend it to represent my company. What about forgiving and forgetting? Honestly, I am all for forgiving but I also understand that we all must deal with the consequences of our actions (good or bad) and unfortunately we must let Mrs. Deen and her brother walk that path. She is a public figure and she has to deal with this publicly. If you want to talk about the numbers of celebrities, actors, pastors, politicians of all races that make stupid comments I will submit that you are deflecting from the real reason for her release and ask you to please read the deposition.

As I began I really meant what I said, I do not think she should be fired for calling a robber a nigger 30+ years ago while working at a bank but I the more I dig I see a national and cultural conversation that need to happen, especially within the church. I think another blogger said it the best when she said, “If our country ever wants to heal from the racism of our past, [we have] to stop denying that it’s still an issue. We need to own it. To step up and start a national conversation about race. That starts by being honest.”

Honestly, these are just my thoughts and opinions, what say you? I look for ward to the conversation!

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