Reasons Why You Should Read Your Bible

• It's either that or watch Dancing With the Stars.
  
• Jesus read his Bible (or course he had it memorized, and, technically, he wrote it...and it was probably the NIV).
• Bono wants you to.
• George Bush reads his and he's a good, wise Christian.
• You can't find your copy of Joel Osteen's book Your Best Life Now so the Bible will have to do.
• You aren't getting into heaven unless you read it EVERY SINGLE DAY.
• Playstation is broke.
• What Would Kirk Cameron Do? (WWKCD)
• Because Kim Golden is more spiritual than you are now.
• Lost your copy of the Bhagavad Gita and/or can't read Sanskrit.
• Song of Solomon.
• Book of Leviticus is a good cure for insomnia.
• Look up theme verses for your Christian punk band.
• Need answers to life's questions and your Magic 8-ball is broken.
• Helpful tips on crucifying your annoying sibling.
• Donated to John Hagee Ministries and you need to kill time until Hagee's new book (your "free" gift) on Israel and the end times arrives.
• Because someone sunk your battleship.
• Two words: talking donkey (think Shrek but without the voice of Eddie Murphy).
• After 12 hours of making butt wipes anything would be a good distraction.
• Because, in some mysterious, incomprehensible way it puts us into a posture of attentive listening (if we let it), where the Spirit of Christ can speak life-change into us (if we let Him), transforming us into citizens of a kingdom-here-yet-coming, whose only prayer is "Your will be done."

shalom, matt

Mystery and More Mystery

There is always something more beyond, well, nearly everything. There’s always a deeper level (or levels) sitting patiently below the surface, resting on their haunches, silently breathing in and out, waiting to be released. Behind every sin is a deeper problem. Behind every crisis is a legion of smaller difficulties that are at the real root of what is going on.

It is the mystery beyond the mystery.

Too often it seems like when we try and help people through crises by listening and offering wisdom, as well intentioned as our advice may be, we never quite seem to get at the root of the weed. So while we may certainly deal with our friend’s crisis of the moment and send them merrily on their way, we have only led them down a path toward a new, perhaps more tumultuous and destructive crisis event.

I’ve counseled a number of students from 12-20 years of age and so many of them, if you are listening for the story behind the story, are saying something completely different than the simple words coming out of their mouth. Behind the anger is a deeply rooted bitterness that started 3 years ago with a judgmental comment made by a parent, a friend, a sibling, a teacher. Behind the foul language or hateful words is a powerful, controlling fear of intimacy.

This is why relationships are so important in the context of Christian community, or really, just in life as a whole. Until you know a person’s true story you will have difficulty recognizing the roots of their struggle—and the more difficult it becomes for you to enter into that struggle with them, standing at the foot of the cross, and praying for their freedom.

And freedom is what it’s all about, isn’t it?

shalom, matt

Similarities That Make You Sick

Header from Oprah's official website:

Oprah.com: Live Your Best Life

Joel Osteen's first book (and basically the subject of every sermon he preaches):

Your Best Life Now

And, as an added bonus, for those who didn't live your best life now, there's Joel's new book:

Become a Better You

I'll let all of you draw your own conclusions. Make sure you are sitting next to a toilet or wastebasket because the scary similarities will make you vomit.

shalom, matt

"It's Not Meant to Be Racial"

Except that it actually is. What a freaking idiot! I hate getting lumped into the same category as redneck racists like this.

Read and be amused...or saddened...or angered...or whatever...

"Look their names are one letter different. They must be related. He's going to bomb the White House. It's a conspiracy. Vote McCain! Vote McCain! Hurry before it's too late!"

shalom, matt

Melody

I’m just trying to find a decent melody… __from U2’s album All That You Can’t Leave Behind__

(Caution Dad: Metaphor ahead)

I was listening to U2 the other day, during what was one of those warm, sunny, window-down-in-the-car, listening-to-U2-even-though-Bono-is-overly-pompous kind of days. For whatever reason this line struck a chord in me. Maybe it’s because Bono is an amazing Irish wordsmith (sort of…); maybe it’s because U2 rights compelling rock songs that speak about something more than what they speak about (except for songs that end with the lyrics, Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya…); or, perhaps, it’s because my life is decidedly disordered and that line spoke about something that I would like to find.

Melodies are based on structure. Notes, chords, rests, and the like are brought together into an ordered pattern that (hopefully) form a beautiful tune.

So. If I’m trying to find a decent melody then I must not have a decent melody already. Or, worse, I have a crappy melody, something written by Mariah Carey or R. Kelly perhaps, that has little structure or is simply just unbearable to listen to aurally, something piercing and irritating.

I don’t have much structure or discipline in my life. In fact, it’s kind of a mess, like someone vomited a bunch of music notes onto a sheet, handed it to the conductor and said, “Play it.” It sounds awful. The challenge of finding and a constructing a decent melody is so massive that it borders on overwhelming. I don’t know where to start writing the melody. What note do I start with? Where do I put the chords? How about the rests? How many? How far apart? What key is it in? Where do I begin finding discipline? Where is my starting point? How do I learn to pray again? When you haven’t red Scripture in months where do you start? How do you learn to do it again?

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Sigh.

Like I said, I’m just trying to find a decent melody. Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got a song to write.

shalom, matt

Paradox

All the most profound truths lie in paradox—and death itself is a paradox, the end yet the beginning, all quite indescribable but all utterly real—another paradox—and in the end the ultimate reality…lies beyond myth, beyond metaphor, beyond symbol, beyond analogy, beyond words, beyond the breath of life itself…and where there’s paradox there’s eternity, because beyond all the paradoxes lies the eternal truth.

__From the novel Ultimate Prizes, by Susan Howatch

(More on this a little later. I'll let you chew on it for awhile.)

shalom, matt

Put the War in Perspective

Never mind the human cost of the war in terms of soldiers and Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives, let's put that aside for a moment because it's too tragic to even comprehend. Let's look for a moment at the economic impact, or lack of impact, that the cost of the war is foisting upon the rest of the world. I found this article on the net and thought it worth sharing. 

_______________________________

In war, things are rarely what they seem.

Back in 2003, in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon adamantly insisted that the war would be a relatively cheap one. Roughly $50 billion is all it would take to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, it said.

We now know this turned out to be the first of many miscalculations. Approaching its fifth year, the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion, according to the non-partisan U.S.-based research group National Priorities Project. That number is growing every day.

But it's still not even close to the true cost of the war. As the invasion's price tag balloons, economists and analysts are examining the entire financial burden of the Iraq campaign, including indirect expenses that Americans will be paying long after the troops come home. What they've come up with is staggering. Calculations by Harvard's Linda Bilmes and Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remain most prominent. They determined that, once you factor in things like medical costs for injured troops, higher oil prices and replenishing the military, the war will cost America upwards of $2 trillion. That doesn't include any of the costs incurred by Iraq, or America's coalition partners.

"Would the American people have had a different attitude toward going to war had they known the total cost?" Bilmes and Stiglitz ask in their report. "We might have conducted the war in a manner different from the way we did."

It's hard to comprehend just how much money $2 trillion is. Even Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, would marvel at this amount. But, once you begin to look at what that money could buy, the worldwide impact of fighting this largely unpopular war becomes clear.

Consider that, according to sources like Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the United Nations, with that same money the world could:

Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015.)

Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year.)

Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year.)

Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year.)

In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone—less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget—we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives.

Then the remaining money could be put toward the $40 billion to $60 billion annually that the World Bank says is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, established by world leaders in 2000, to tackle everything from gender inequality to environmental sustainability.

The implications of this cannot be underestimated. It means that a better and more just world is far from within reach, if we are willing to shift our priorities.

If America and other nations were to spend as much on peace as they do on war, that would help root out the poverty, hopelessness and anti-Western sentiment that can fuel terrorism—exactly what the Iraq war was supposed to do.

So as candidates spend much of this year vying to be the next U.S. president, what better way to repair its image abroad, tarnished by years of war, than by becoming a leader in global development? It may be too late to turn back the clock to the past and rethink going to war, but it's not too late for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest in the future.

_______________________

War: always a good investment. Right? Right? Who's with me? (note dripping sarcasm as I end this article)

shalom, matt

Secular Stuff, or What Could Be My Own Personal Highway to Hell (but only if I'm wrong, which I don't think I am)

I like Harry Potter. I’ve read all the books and seen all the movies. I had the last book on the day it came out. I read it in two days.

Strangely, they didn’t turn me into a warlock, I’ve never tried to cast a spell on someone or perform “the killing curse” on my next-door neighbor.

I like music that you won’t find in a store labeled “Christian” (how can a building made of lifeless stone, wood or metal be “Christian”?). I like Radiohead, Band of Horses, Stereolab, Sigur Ros, Joseph Arthur, The Shins, and I even enjoy some Ozzy Osbourne, Guns-n-Roses, and Metallica on occasion. I generally avoid music that is labeled “Christian” because I generally want to attach another label to it—“crappy” (with the exception of David Crowder Band, Waterdeep, and a couple other random artists).  

Strangely, I have not turned into a wife-beating, alcoholic, socio-path who punches random people because he is angry all the time.

I watch movies that have profanity and violence in them, mostly because I like them, and, well, because I can. Movies like The Big Lebowski, Hi Fidelity, and Office Space top my list of desert-island, all-time top five movies.

Strangely, I haven’t turned into a lazy, foul-mouthed, philandering, crazy Vietnam veteran who hangs out in bowling alleys (see those movies and you’ll get my references).

There is an attitude prevalent today that has survived mainly because of evangelical fear and ignorance (funny how those two usually end up together…) that says we should avoid all forms of “secular” entertainment. The rationale being that all of these things are bad and will lead us, to quote AC/DC (another band I listen to on occasion, as does my 5-year old), down “a highway to hell.” I only briefly bought into this attitude, but then I realized something: no matter how many times I watched, listened to, or read “secular” entertainment nothing ever really changed in who I was.

I think fundamentalism has vastly overplayed their collective hand when it comes to the influence of secular entertainment on our “spiritual” lives (by the way the word “spiritual” never appears in Scripture; all of life is “spiritual”). It’s not that these things can’t influence to some degree, but what I think you’ll find is that where there has been influence there will be a whole catalog of problems lurking underneath the surface. When two kids shot up a Colorado high school several years ago everyone started blaming violent video games. Folks, violent video games were only the tip of the iceberg. Video games don’t make people kill other people. Depression, being cast off to the side by classmates, bullying—these lead people to kill other people.

Most people when they watch a movie, read a book, listen to a band, or attend a concert, immediately forget whatever “message” the respective artist, writer, etc. was trying to get across. Most Americans are influenced by ever-changing fads to the extent that nothing is able to take root for any length of time. This is why I think “Christians” are not in nearly as much danger from secular entertainment as "fundies" tend to think they are. There isn’t time to be influenced negatively; something else is coming down the pike before the message is even into your brain. Further, most people, especially teenagers, don’t even realize that there is a message that is being presented to them. How can there be negative influence if there is not even an awareness of the negative influence? You have to let negative influence in. If you aren’t looking for it, then you can’t find it. 

Additionally, if you are influenced by this stuff then you already had major problems running through you like an underground river. On the surface it looks like the movie or the music was the problem, when all along there has been a wellspring of hatred, bitterness, anger, malice, rage, depression, anxiety, fear and a legion of other inhabitants from Pandora’s box.

So here’s the thing: I’m not telling you to go out and just go hog-wild watching, listening to, reading, etc. everything and anything that comes into your radar. You aren’t a sponge. Don’t just soak in everything. Discern. Turn your radar on. Know your own weaknesses and avoid what may prey upon those weaknesses. But remember that you are free to enjoy life and that truth can be found in some of the strangest places, places you might never look if you don’t stop watching Left Behind or step foot outside the doors of your local Christian bookstore.

shalom, matt

 

Jesus and the Imperial Order

I’ve been reading Shane Claiborne’s new book “Jesus For President” and in one particular section he is dealing with the amazing similarities between the imperial language used by the Roman Empire and the account of Jesus’ birth in Luke. I thought it worth sharing. Claiborne’s point is that Jesus’ life, even his birth, was a revolution and a challenge to the Roman imperial order. But the challenge didn’t stop with the death of the Roman Empire. Jesus’ life and message is a challenge to all empires.

Imperial Language

Basilea (“empire” or “kingdom”): Term used for the Roman Empire. At the head: Caesar

Gospel (evangelion: “good news”): An imperial pronouncement, usually accompanied by flags and political ceremony, that an heir to the empire’s throne had been born or that a distant battle had been won.

Christ (Greek translation of Hebrew messiah): Known by the Romans as the name Jews used for their ruler, anointed by God and the people. The King of the Jews job title had already been granted to Herod, hence the problem when Jesus was also considered to be a King of the Jews. Only one person at a time can fit on a throne; expression of being commissioned or appointed, especially by divine authority—precisely how folks thought of the Roman emperors (literally means “dripped on by the gods,” as in anointed with oil).

Son of God: A popular title for kings and emperors. Name taken up by Alexander the Great (also used King of Kings) and Octavian, later known as Augustus, in the lineage of Julius Caesar.

Ekklesia: A local public assembly within the greater Roman Empire, much like a town meeting. These assemblies bestowed citizenship, discussed local political concerns, assigned “elders,” and offered prayer and worship to Caesar. There was no separation of religion (cultic sacrifices, etc.) and secular political business.

Parousia (literally, “presence”): The return of Caesar to visit a town.

Savior (soter: literally, “healer” or “preserver”): Caesar Augustus, as Savior, was seen as the one who healed the chaos of Rome and brought it into a new golden age.

Faith: A term used for trust in, allegiance to, and hope in the Pax Romana. It had much to do with loyalty, as with a faithful husband.

Lord (kyrios): Name for a ruler, particularly a supreme ruler.

Emmanuel (dues praesens): The manifestation of the presence and will of the gods; a title claimed by emperors like Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Domitian.

Worship (proskynesis): A practice involving the act of prostration or bowing in submission before a ruler or emperor; an act of submission.

Jesus’ Language

Basilea: Jesus’ most common topic of conversation: the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the heavens. At the head: YHWH, who liberated the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.

Gospel: Jesus’ good news that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Messiah: Divinely anointed ruler over Israel who would fulfill the scriptural promises of saving the Israelites from oppression (and from themselves). While a primary title for Jesus, this is also the name used for David and other rulers. Messiah does not mean, as it is commonly mistaken to mean, that God beamed down to earth and squeezed into human flesh, but a “divinely mandated royal man.” (We might understand Jesus as the incarnate deity, but Messiah had a very different political connotation and historical role.)

Son of God: Name given to Jesus, though he more commonly spoke of himself as the Son of Man (or “the human one,” a term borrowed from the prophet Daniel). Used by the Tempter in the desert in reference to tempting a king.

Ekklesia: Word used for the early church, “Emphasizes that the followers of Jesus were called to participate in their world as ‘local communities of an alternative society to the Roman imperial order.’” Bestowed alternative citizenship and assigned elders. Though it discussed its own political  and religious concerns, it was understood as separate from, and in contrast to, the state and the other ekklesia, their politics, and their religion.

Parousia: The second coming of Jesus, seen in contrast to the parousia of Caesar.

Savior: A title for Jesus.

Faith: A term used for trust in, allegiance to, and hope in Jesus.

Lord: A much more international acclamation for Jesus than the term Christ/Messiah.

Emmanuel: Means “God with us” and is the name prophesied in Hebrew Scripture for the Messiah, later proclaimed by the angel to Mary as one of the names for Jesus.

Worship (proskyneo): Bowing before God in praise and adoration. For example, this word is used when the magi bowed down before the baby Jesus in the manger.

Well, there you have it. Now do you understand why Herod, Rome and the Jewish authorities wanted Jesus dead from the moment he was born?

shalom, matt

 

God as He and Him

This is a good article from ysmarko.com on his view, which tends to mirror my view, on the use of male pronouns in reference to God. He traces the progression of his different views and I found that they generally follow the same progression I went through. 

shalom, matt