So...Christmas, Eh?

So I’m standing here at work, amidst the insipid clatter and clang of machinery, conveyors and saw blades, on the 23rd of December, realizing that I’ve given little thought to Christmas, true Christmas to be exact, not the manufactured, Hallmark-cliché of rampant materialism that we sold from Thanksgiving onward. I’m talking about Christ’s Mass, the celebration and worship of the birth of Emmanual. Somehow I’ve missed Advent, spending negligible amounts of time preparing my heart to celebrate the Christ child. Part of the fault—okay, most of the fault—lay in my own laziness concerning my soul. For whatever reason I just seem to have a blasé attitude toward Christmas this year. It just snuck up on me, and I never really prepared myself for it. This is troubling. I like Christmas. I like to think about Christmas and anticipate it. I like to think about Christmas and Advent and their relationship to the 2nd Coming. Somehow I missed it all. I wonder what Christmas Eve will be like for me in my unprepared state…

There are few events in history more engorged with significance than the Incarnation, every aspect of it bleeding the miraculous and declaring the culmination of God’s plan for humanity—He would take on flesh. And I stand here in my factory having given little thought to this grand event. How has it come to this? How have I slipped so far as to miss entirely the celebration of God-with-man?

But all is not lost. On Christmas morning my wife, 5-year-old son, and I will be serving Christmas breakfast in the community where my brother works. Perhaps the greatest way to celebrate the Word-made-flesh is to become Christ in the flesh for our fellow man.

Merry Christmas

Neighbor Next Door

Marius almost reproached himself with the fact that he had been so absorbed in his reveries and passion that he had not until now cast a glance upon his neighbors. Paying their rent was a mechanical impulse; everybody would have had that impulse; but, Marius, should have done better. What! a mere wall separated him from these abandoned beings, who lived by groping in the night without the pale of the living; he came in contact with them, he was in some sort the last link of the human race which they touched, he heard them live or rather breathe beside him, and he took no notice of them! every day at every moment, he heard them through the wall, walking, going, coming, talking, and he did not lend his ear! and  in these words there were groans, and he did not even listen, his thoughts were elsewhere, upon dreams, upon impossible glimmerings, upon loves in the sky, upon infatuations; and all the while human beings, his brothers in Jesus Christ, his brothers in the people, were suffering death agonies beside him! agonizing uselessly; he even caused a portion of their suffering and aggravated it. For had they had another neighbor, a less chimerical and more observant neighbor, an ordinary and charitable man, it was clear that their poverty would have been noticed, their signals of distress would have been see, and long ago perhaps they would have gathered up and saved! Undoubtedly they seemed very depraved, very corrupt, very vile, very hateful, even, but those are rare who fall without becoming degraded… And then, is it not when the fall is lowest that charity ought to be greatest? __from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo__

Quality Products

I'm not even sure how to make fun of this. It just screams for some sort of mockery, but I can't even begin to find a place to start on it.


shalom, matt

Really?

I need to rant for a minute here. Since I don’t work in a church anymore I don’t have much motive to rant and rave, like a petulant child in need of a “bah-bah” and a “blanky.” But when I hear about something heretical being taught to students I still love, well, it just raises my fur, flattens my ears against my head, and makes my tail swing wildly to and fro (yes, in this metaphor I am a cat).

A former student of mine told me that in Sunday School class at “church” they were told that they should be only hanging out with Christians. As far as non-Christians go they are to “say ‘hi’ to ‘them’ in the hallways and invite ‘them’ to church but that’s all.” The justification for this thinking was Paul’s discourse in 2 Corinthians about believers and unbelievers being unequally yoked together. You shouldn’t be friends with non-Christians because it yokes you together with them. Now aside from the asinine interpretation of this passage, this idea is dangerous, fundamentalist, anti-Christian, anti-kingdom, and—dare I say it (Dare! Dare!)?—anti-Christ theology.

Say “hi” to them? Invite them to church? Nothing else? No relationship? Are you freaking kidding me? Are we even reading the same Bible or talking about the same Jesus? Think about the damaging implications of such a way of thinking and living. How has this “church’s” theology sunk so low?

So many thoughts and questions race through my mind:

What about the entire ministry of Jesus? He hung out with everyone but religious people, and when he did end up around them he usually rubbed their faces in their own hypocrisy.

What about “I came to seek and save the lost”? Doesn’t the act of “seeking” imply some sort of relational effort and involvement? Saying “hi” isn’t relational involvement anymore than video games are athletic (with the exception of Wii Fit maybe). And don’t get me started on “invite them to church.” Never does Christ ask us to invite people to “church.” Invite them into a Kingdom life, yes, to church, no (and “church” doesn’t always equal Kingdom).

So when Jesus ate with 1st century IRS agents, whores, low-lifes, the diseased and ordinary, the forgotten and corrupt he did that because Burger King was closed and he had nowhere else to eat? He did it just to be nice? How do you get around him eating with Zaccheus?

So where were the elders when this was being taught, or the youth minister?

Hey, elders, wanna know why your “church is dying? It’s because of this kind of thinking.

Putting myself into that situation as a youth minister I think I would have an awfully hard time not speaking out against that kind of thinking during class. I know it would create a crap storm later on but that kind of destruction can’t go unchecked.

Churches that allow that brand of fear-driven thinking to be taught need to collapse and die for the good of the kingdom. If you attend a church that teaches you to fear and avoid the world—RUN! Get out with your soul in tact before you are brainwashed with anti-Kingdom thinking. Find a church that teaches about the Jesus who said, “Go into the world;” “Do not be afraid for I have overcome the world;” “[the Spirit] will guide you.” Find a church that teaches about a Jesus who chose to eat with the lowly and sinful and expected us to do the same, who called these very people “blessed,” and who shoed them a new way, the True Way, to be fully human, whole and complete. Find a church that values people, not for what they can add (money and higher attendance), but simply because they are, despite the outward exterior actions, language or beliefs, at their core God-breathed bearers of the Image of God.

Jesus’ harshest words were for the uber-religious who looked down upon “those sinners” with snobbish contempt and arrogant pride, not even deigning to associate with “them.” 

They accused Jesus of dining with tax collectors and sinners.

May we be accused of the same thing?

shalom, matt

A Nominal Post

I'll post something of relevance in the next day or so, but until then I would like to pose this query:


Who is more overrated:

A. Elvis
B. The Beatles

Discuss.