Category Archives: Gospel in Action

The Church that Can Carry Any Burden

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Brothers, if someone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the Law of Christ. (Galatians 6:1-2)

Seriously – how epic. Jesus wants his church to be a place where people feel unburdened. It should be a building people are tearing off the roofs to enter – a refuge, a house of hope, a place for healing and companionship and peace. Imagine a forty-pound backpack coming off your shoulders after a hike. It’s wonderful; you feel immune to gravity, able to leap ten feet. That’s Jesus’ vision for the church!burden

Of course, that’s not what jumps to mind when many people hear the word “church”. They see it as a place where burdens are added, not lifted.

Part of this is not our fault as Christians. Folks feel their sin when God comes near (he’ll do that), and they resent that burden instead of casting it off through repentance. But we do play a role. Too many congregations view their church as a hospital that must be kept sterilized from any sullying influence, forgetting that the point of sterilization is to heal the sick (Luke 5:31). The result is a seeming allergy to anyone carrying sin or brokenness. Sometimes, honestly, it’s no more than irritation at the quirks and sharp edges of others (“Life would be so much easier without people” and all that).

I read a rather brilliant blog post the other day that included this quote: “You are not a burden. You HAVE a burden, which by definition is too heavy to carry on your own.” Yes. The sick cannot carry burdens. They need help. It reminded me of Galatians 6:2, and it got me thinking – what if we viewed the dirtiness and complications of other people, not as threats or inconveniences to ourselves, but as burdens to be carried? 

Seems obvious at first.

But have we missed some categories of burdens?

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Should Christians “Let Go” Of Toxic or Draining Relationships?

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18208764578_c5d99b67e4_bIf you’ve read my blog lately, you know I devote the occasional post to Reacting to Internet Memes™. I didn’t intend for that habit to happen. Like tofu, it just kinda did.

Today, it’s this (and a collection of similar meme quotes):

“When people walk away from you, let them go.”

“Run, my dear, from anything that may not strengthen your precious budding wings.”

“Letting go of negative people doesn’t mean you hate them. It just means that you love yourself.”

“Keep people in your life that truly love you, motivate you, encourage you, inspire you, enhance you, and make you happy. If you have people who do none of the above, let them go.”

You’ve probably seen that. It’s about knowing when to let go of people. (Do not sing Frozen songs at me. I will hit myself with a chair.)

On one hand, I understand. Life would be so much easier if it wasn’t for people. God does say “bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33). If your walk with God is threatened, we have Biblical basis to pull out of hard relationships. You owe God more than you owe anyone.

But the above collection of quotes – which is bombarding the “keep things positive” side of Facebook right now, I might add, and influencing an entire generation – is speaking of an entirely different motive: letting go of people simply because they are difficult. No character threat, just high-maintenance.

And absent anywhere in that line of thinking is the thought that it might actually not be about you at all.

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Why We Can’t Choose to Walk Away from Politics

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Prolife

I know. You don’t want to hear about it anymore.

It fills the airwaves. It dominates every newspaper and evening broadcast you watch. It’s creeping around every corner in the form of conversations amongst your co-workers. Your response is usually a weird, contradictory blend of “What could I do?” and “Don’t get me started”, and you keep quiet because you’re not sure which of those aftertastes you’ll walk away from an argument with.

Presidential politics.

Ugh.

Especially this election cycle. What a buzzkill.

It makes you wish desperately for the arrival of mid-November, so we can be done with it all for four years. Well, three. Like Christmas, the season seems to start earlier each time.

We each have a vote. But being one vote amongst three hundred million doesn’t exactly imbue us with a feeling of real power. Add the fact that our actual influence in Washington has been slowly sapped, and it’s understandable to feel not just helpless, but mad. An emotion that has either dominated the minds of some and frozen others out entirely.

Am I the only one who thinks we need a reorientation? Like, yesterday?

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-38)

Ah. Of course. You couldn’t ask for a better reorientation than the fact that God is our anchor. Nothing can separate us from his love – or from his hand.

But…now what? What do we do with that holy strength that has been made ours?

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How You Can Have Jesus and Organized Religion

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organizedNice try.

I mean…I get it. You love Jesus, but you’ve had it up to here with organized religion. You’re tired of churches with lifeless doctrine, petty in-fighting, denominational quirks valued more than sinners, neglect for the poor, financial priorities so backwards that…I could go on. The reasons for rejecting organized religion are many.

So you walk away from the church. Jesus is still your Lord and master, and it’s not my place to say otherwise. But you’ve decided to be a “Christian at large”, to practice a “Christianity stripped down to its bare essence”, or however else you prefer to say it.

But what many people miss: Jesus didn’t want it that way.

I could talk about how Jesus (through Paul’s New Testament writings) sees organized religion…but I’m operating under the assumption that, for whatever reason, “God said to do it” just isn’t a good inroad with you right now. I wish it was.

Instead, I’ll talk about Jesus. We can all get on board with that.

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A Message to Unbelievers on “Keeping the Faith to Ourselves”

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messageI hear it all the time. “It’s fine to believe what you believe – just keep it to yourself,” you say. “Faith should be a personal thing.”

Or the more crass version: “Religion is like a [male body part]. Any guy can have one, but once you start waving it in people’s faces, it becomes a problem.”

Noted actor Denzel Washington is a Christian. He has been praised in certain circles for not “wearing his faith on his sleeve”. Apparently people see this as a sign of maturity and restraint on Mr. Washington’s part, a demonstration of how religion should be lived.

If you are one of those people, I come to you in friendship. But I honestly must question how much you really know about our faith.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Imagine for a moment that you had terminal cancer, but nobody told you. Your doctor withheld the diagnosis. Your family didn’t call attention to the warning signs. Your friends said they “didn’t want to upset you”. Would you be grateful and appreciative?

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What if You Could Be Part of Your Church’s Solution?

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The church needs you as much as you need them.I recently filled in teaching Sunday School (the usual guy was on mission in India). The topic for the weekend was the church – its role, its record, and how indispensable it is for the believer.

Suffice it to say I was blown away. The high school students in that group had solid, practical ideas about what a church should look like, how to evaluate one, and how much urgency we should place upon settling down in one.

Blown away because while these students knew the right answers, a lot of people my age find them hard to execute.

“I love Jesus, but not organized religion” has become millennial-code for rejection of the church. It’s not hard to see why. I could blame the media for doing its best to blackball the church by accentuating its faults. But I don’t have to. A lot of us have our own wounds to sport. We might have been judged. We might have been extorted. We might just be sick of gaudy sanctuaries, sermons resembling TED talks, and iPads handed out to retain newcomers. Or we might just feel that this or that church doesn’t “feed us” well.

But permit me to challenge. What if we shifted our view of the church from a service to an opportunity?

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We Have Some Enemies to Pray For, Christians

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Let our prayers for their salvation rise even if the bombs must fall.I stared numbly at my laptop this morning, watching reports of terrorist attacks in Paris Orlando fill the screen

Immediately the chatter began. Discussion of whether our nation’s leadership is doing enough, whether these acts truly represent Islam, how to respond going forward…all those arguments that you either want to flee or are all too eager to join.

Instead, I took refuge in praying for the families of the victims.

But later, I logged on to my Facebook account, hours after the tragedies…and was hit with an entirely new wave of grief.

At pictures.

Pictures of American military equipment assembled in rows with captions like “ISIS is doomed”…cartoons of American power symbols making their way overseas…snapshots of U.S. troops offering ominous proclamations to the Islamic State. The grim ill will echoing from the post-9/11 era, the hyper-patriotism that seems to go so naturally hand-in-hand with American Christianity.

Perhaps I have changed over the years, for I found myself aghast.

And struggling to reconcile it to the words of Jesus:

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4 Major Problems in our Response to “Persecution”

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Jesus calls us to grace, not outrage.I realize (and celebrate) that I’m not the first to address this ludicrousness. But I hope you will indulge me in digging a little deeper.

Starbucks’ simple red holiday coffee cups, devoid of any symbols or images that might imply embracing one Christmas “story” over another, have become the latest in a series of small things that American Christians find offensive. I guess our annoyance is better spent on that than, oh, I don’t know, human trafficking or the specter of abortion.

But while I could just say “this isn’t real persecution” (and I will), there are actually a variety of problems revealed when we react so strongly to things. (Like the final season of “Frasier”, I have saved the best for last.)

1. An Ignorance of our Orders

Never mind whether coffee cups without Christmas symbols is an actual sin. Jesus doesn’t tell us to point out sin and stop there. He tells us to spread the gospel. There’s a difference.

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Marketing the Unmarketable: The Gospel of Jesus Christ

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What if it's not my job to I’ve heard quite a few friends mourn the harshness of the Gospel.

“Why can’t it be about love, positivity, and inspiration?” they say. “That’s what’s missing in our lives.” Sounds great. It’s easy to swallow, not confrontational, and its hard to attack without looking like a jerk.

For a long time, I too had a habit of trying to “sell” the Gospel better. When I’d hear a Christian preacher speak fire-and-brimstone, I’d make a note to avoid recommending him to friends. Seriously. When a coworker would tromp around with a message of hellfire, I’d try to gently “rein him back in”. Tell them about the love of Jesus, I said. Make it about the benefits of his kingdom. Ask them why anyone would want to live without his love.

Without ever going to college to learn it, I had engaged in marketing. Soften the message. After all, nobody talked about hell anymore. It was corny and nobody wanted to hear it.

Then a cruise missile breached my arrogant thinking.

“The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” – Matthew 13:41-42

Oh shoot. Jesus talks about hell???

Hey, genius, I suddenly thought to myself. What if it’s not your job to decide what the Gospel is?

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Tipping and Grace: Do Christians Ever Have the Right to Stiff?

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jar2A former pastor once told of an experience as a caterer. He served two groups in the same day that could not have treated him more differently. The first was a gathering of homosexual folks; they were warm, friendly, and left a great tip. The other was impatient, grouchy, fault-finding, and left no tip at all.

The second group was a pastors’ luncheon.

Tipping has become a flashpoint in our social consciousness. I suppose it was inevitable that the smartphone age would allow us to capture and publicize everyone’s tips. (Here’s a montage of tips that would be hilarious if not for their rudeness.) But it’s worth talking about for Christians, because any question of generosity becomes a checkup on how we’re doing as the salt of the earth.

Some Christians respond to this call by leaving tracts for their waiters instead of tips.

200_s

It’s the worst thing ever.

Look, I get the reasoning. Tracts can potentially lead to salvation, and salvation is worth far more than few bucks.

But we Christians aren’t supposed to be operating on our own reasoning. We’re supposed to be operating on God’s. Here’s it is, if you’re interested:

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:15-17)

My friends, waiters and waitresses live off their tips. When I worked as a pizza delivery driver (a nice earner during football season, I would mention to the college folks), my tips usually amounted to two to three times my actual wage. It was still only marginally worth the wear and tear on my car (and my gas tank). Very rarely will eight or nine bucks an hour get anyone through college. So trust me, your waiter isn’t there for the joy of minimum wage.

 

God understands and appreciates the practical plane, and he ties the validity of our works to it with cords of Scripture. Jesus teaches that meeting worldly needs is a terrific opening to the Gospel (and not the other way around). Christians’ failure to meet these needs gives the world an easy opportunity to beat us at our own Christ-commissioned game: generosity.

Never offer a prayer to which you can be the answer.

But there is an even greater matter on my mind today. Suppose your waiter or driver gives you bad service. Drops food, rolls his eyes, or something. It is often our practice in that instance to withhold tips, in the hopes of “encouraging” better service next time.

I just want to ask one thing.

Is that anywhere close to the way Jesus handles us?

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