Jesus loves me, but he can't stand you!

If we boil it down, isn't that what we think, let's be honest!
Is the cross radical enough, or do I need something else?
This is an important question, because I believe that it should form and shape everything we think, then do. We as human beings are influenced easily, desiring to protect what is mine, maybe allowing others to some crumbs, but keeping the larger portions for myself. After all, God wants to bless me? Really, does he?
Will God bless anything that I do, simply because I do it? Isn't this recreating God in our image? There is a saying which goes, "God created us in his image, then we returned the favor."
The attitude of God bless us has profound ramifications, because first it creates an idea that whatever I do is God's will, secondly my will shapes God's will, not the vice-versa. We are supposed to be making disciples of Jesus, which means that a disciple follows Jesus, but where is Jesus going and what is Jesus doing? Well, Jesus is doing whatever I am doing? This is one of the reasons that we don't pray, because it really doesn't matter, because Jesus is blessing anything I do.
There was an argument recently involving the U.S. Government in saying that Chaplains could no longer pray in the name of Jesus, which incensed some Christians. Why would this affect Christians, I have no idea. The name of Jesus is not magic. First, the temple of God is not individual Christians, but the body of Christ himself. If we are brought into Christs body, what does this mean? It means that I as an individual make up a part, but not the whole of the body, therefore, I have to be participating with God, i.e. the body of Messiah to be doing, whatever it is that Christ is doing. If Christ is not fighting a war with Islam, then "I" as an individual believer have to make a decision to either participate with the structures and systems of the world, or participate with Christ, to redeem the structures and systems of the world, not through active participation with violence, but bearing the violence as the body of Christ, which will in the end bring liberation to the oppressed. I can not make Christ be whatever I want him to be.

Does this even need a title?

A picture is worth a thousand words, in my case maybe two thousand, but I think that this picture speaks clearly of what my blog represents. Participation!
This entry is actually a dialogue where I was attempting to explain why I appear sometimes to be critical of the existent systems.
--My critique of so many practices in the U.S. and the U.S. church is because there are sinful structures in need of redemption, which prevent people from knowing God and I think that is wrong. Whoever said, “Ignorance is bliss”, was right on cue. When I am ignorant, I live in a bubble, ignoring the pain and difficult circumstances which surround our everyday lives. Scripture speaks of humans perishing for lack of knowledge, which is defined as ignorance. People need creative outlet’s to use their giftedness to draw others unto themselves, and in the process drawing humans to God. That is what reconciliation is all about. There are hundreds of organizations that we can partner with to participate with God’s reconciliation of humanity. Humans need Christians to be able to truly love them and honor anothers’ giftedness and unique abilities. We need to honor others, for their dignity is human, because we know that they are created in God’s image, but that image has been twisted, perverted, but is still good. I don’t know many people who would say that Tiger Woods is not a gifted golfer, or that Mozart was not a gifted composer. I believe that ALL humans have this giftedness, the problem is that we as a culture only recognize gifts which suit our own perspectives, for our own entertainment. Most humans have gifts, which by our cultural standards do not fit a paradigm which is relevant to the context of our society, but I believe God sees things differently. I personally have a gift for creative poetry, usually exhibited in either poetic rap music or creative writing. How many people in the Church care about rap music? If I am a gifted expository teacher, I would be loved and embraced, because it fits a predetermined category of giftedness, which we say fits the paradigm of scripture. I believe that we must look LARGER and outward. Teaching, prophetic gifts, apostolic gifts are God given and desperately need to come to life in the context of the Missio Dei, i.e. the Mission of God in the world. We are all missionaries, calling structures, systems, people back to the original vocation for which God intended.

Sports is a great way to connect with people from diverse backgrounds. I don’t need anything but people, a basketball, and a hoop. WORD! PEACE!

Play the game called, "Where's Jesus?"

A field of opium poppies in Myanmar (formerly Burma)

I just finished the class, Reactivating the Missional Church taught by Alan Hirsch this past week. He wrote The Shaping of Things to Come and The Forgotten Ways.
Hirsch continually spoke of the statement, which I believe was Karl Marx who said that "Christianity is the opiate of the masses." For all those familiar with Opium this is a powerful statement, which I believe seriously needs to be re-examined. Opium is a powerful narcotic, with 90% of the worlds supply being cultivated in Afghanistan, by Opium Poppy farmers. Opium is used in pain killers, such as Percocet, Oxycontin, and numerous other Codeine like drugs. Opium is also used for Morphine and illegal drugs such as Heroin.
With that said, this illustration is not pretty. When Hirsch was talking about this many of us studying theology in Seminary immediately wanted to ask questions, such as "Does this mean that we don't call ourselves Christians?" I personally think the term Christian is dynamic, because, first of all it is not mainstream, and secondly it immediately begs the question, "What does that mean?"
What does the term Christian mean? In the early Church it, as Hirsch was attempting to explain it meant something radical, subversive, exciting, dynamic. It meant that the promises of the covenant with and to Israel were now fulfilled in one Jewish man from Nazareth, crucified on a Roman Cross, yet proclaimed as risen from the dead. Hirsch was saying that somehow in our Church life, this proclamation has gotten buried in traditions and rituals.
Hirsch believes that our Christology, (Christ centered existance) determined our Missional existance, which then determines of Ecclesiology (our Church existance). The Missional aspect is what is lacking in our lives. To be a Christian means that we are 'sent people', living in and among people, declaring in everything we do that Jesus is alive and Lord over ALL things.
The Western Industrialized Church has forgotten this message, because it has spiritualized everything so that people can not contextualize the message that God is in Christ reconciling, and Christ is in us reconciling. We therefore must live and embody the gospel to those whom Christ was sent. We can no longer hide in our jobs, our churches, our suburbs, pretending everything is completed.
I believe that in the U.S., our suburban, individualized, family centered lives have worked against the message of Jesus, because, "HOW can I learn to engage the culture if I only am speaking with family or close friends?" It will never happen if we continue to live separated.
It was an amazing week long discussion and I wanted to let you in on the dialogue.

CATHOLIC or catholic?

I thought that studying the mission of the church was appropriate for responding to the Pope's comments this week. He basically said that humans are saved through baptism into the Church, the one Holy Catholic Church. He is going backwards from Vatican II, going against the liberal strains of Catholicism and becoming less ecumenical, by reasserting the Apostolic Succession, which is said to directly form the Catholic Church. (Jesus to Apostles to Bishops form the Catholic Church) Catholic of course means universal, with Christ as the cornerstone, forming the temple, i.e. one universal body of Christ. It was never intended to be a reassertion of the institutional structures which existed before the death and resurrection of Christ, but a community of followers of Jesus. Jesus' teachings seem to be clear about this formation. The Church of course should look different in various cultures, but need to remain true to its vocation as 'sent people', i.e. people participating in the Mission of God, who is already at work.

These next quotes are from a class called, Reactivating the Missional Church with Alan Hirsch.

What the Catholic Church is saying is, “bow down before us and this is the only place for you to be saved.”

Coming to Jesus is not an opiate, but it should make us come alive, make us start to think, feel, reason, love…………..It should make us excited. The Church must not though work to subvert our imaginations and bring us captive to its model, its authority, its leadership, not necessarily though bringing us closer to Christ; it can and should, but we need to de-construct as leaders the presuppositions, i.e. those things which we have assumed in our traditions for so long. Then people will be able to connect incarnationally with the gospel message. We must live the Word of God, which is not the Bible, but the message of the gospel, the "good news" that God has taken on human flesh and lives with and among us. We do not need to become something, before God dwells with me. That to me seems as good news.

“Poverty of imagination”-we can not think of new ways of reaching community, reaching people beyond ourselves. We are going to have to do things differently. Church will look differently for people. There is not one model.

Constantine is still the Emperor of our imaginations

The Pantheon in Rome meant: they would conquer another nation: and if a nation defeated another, they would say, “My God is stronger than yours”: I will take your god and put it in the pantheon which is Rome: I will acknowledge your god, but mine is stronger: Constantine still did this, but he simply thought that the "Christian god" was the god who was strongest. Do we still do this today? My God is the true God, therefore I will conquer your god, make him subservient, then we will be able to live together, as long as you acknowledge my God is the strongest God.

Forgiveness, who knew?

Ah, the joys of self-reflection.
I have never shy ed away from constantly reflecting about myself, my personality, the way that I interact with others. One of my bosses at my previous job said to me, "I have never met someone who took personal responsibility for decisions that they made like you have." He said, "Most of the people I know constantly blame someone else." I believe in self-reflection, but here is a dilemma, what to do when I am the only one admitting fault? This will not stop me from admitting fault, but I have been confronted with more and more situations, where I am told, "Ya, you're right, it is your fault." I was labeled a scape goat at my previous job, because I made myself vulnerable with people and because of evil, some exploited that vulnerability for their own benefit. People that do that end up never being able to truly live, because they find fault in everyone but themselves, always blaming others. (In my own experience, the church desperately needs to forgive, not necessarily forget, but forgive and become an inclusive community, in the midst of an exclusive world.)
In most human interactions there is this dilemma, between offending and being the offender, Jesus even spoke of it a few times. In the U.S. I think that we stop talking with people, or we are never close to those whom we have found fault, but this separates us from the midst of community. There will always be shortfalls, dilemma's, and outright "sins" committed against one another. How we handle the results of these "sins" will determine what is inside of us.
Initially in my life, I believe that God showed me to "repent" as an individual, to "own" the destructive pattern of my own sinful existence, not to hide from it, but give to God the "evil" and the "good" which lay inside me. Through this experience I was allowed to further understand that there were other factors, which contributed to the dynamic of sin, which came from "outside" of my personal nature, contained within the world. Dismantling our presuppositions about what we think everything should be or should look like, allows a greater freedom to accept shortcomings and failures in ourselves and others.
When I first told someone that I was a Christian they said, "You people are the losers of the world!" I thought to myself, I can tell working here is going to be easy. ;) Living in the midst of a community where we are given a language to communicate and articulate, is what living the gospel is about. This would have made it easier to face the difficult situations. The gospel is a message of "good news", but communicating with each other without being vulnerable, I believe is impossible. Anyways, food for thought?

"What ya' gonna' do when they come for you?..."

Hot, isn't the word, sweltering heat, humidity, sweat soaking through my vest, the last defense against a bullet tearing through my skin. Thank goodness it stopped raining though, but it is completely dark at 10:00 p.m. Where is this guy, he can't run all night, I am a sitting duck out here, if he has a gun he could kill me before I could react? All the thoughts, not conscious, barely unconscious resonating in my brain as we search the woods behind the house where he had yet again beat his girlfriend. We were here two days ago for the same complaint; why does she keep calling us? She never learns, her last boyfriend did the same thing until finally he went to jail. So jail is the only way that she will leave him, no wonder her daughter was smoking crack by sixteen.
This guy is gone, every time he runs, we do an arrest warrant for him, I think he has five outstanding warrants right now. I hate to admit that I am a little scared; "suppress it, deny it, do not let anyone know that you are scared"! If I find him it will be about a minute of all out fighting until the other units can find me. At 6'4, 280 lbs, this guy is not going down very quickly. Plus, since he has run before, what does he have to lose by trying everything to get away? That means I have to use as much force as I possibly can, what if I have to shoot him? I will definitely resign if I have to shoot him, I have anxiety right now; there is no way that he is going to win this fight! Did he ever hurt a cop,? No, never, nor would he, but the thoughts of fear overpower rational logic.
Early in my career I would have been so excited to do this, the adrenaline would be coursing through my veins, I would be so eager to find this guy. I no longer am excited, because I realize that it doesn't really matter if we find him or not. Sooner or later someone will find him and arrest him.
This is a real scenario, including the continuous thoughts, which eventually remade me into the image of that which I was fighting against, violence. Fear encompassed so much of my existence that I usually reacted, which was in all actuality an over-reaction to situations. I learned that through dialogue almost all situations of violence could be averted, yet whenever fear crept back in, I found that I would revert back to the way of the sword, over against the way of the cross.
The lack of compassion felt in the scenario for the girlfriend was because we thought in individual terms, i.e. she caused this situation, she is at fault for doing this, she "deserved" it, because she wouldn't leave him. Personal responsibility is important, but corporate responsibility in my opinion is equal in the eyes of God. Will we embrace the weak, the lost, and even those who are individually guilty of causing the mess in their lives? Dorothee Soelle in her book, "Suffering" has said that 'humans despise those that are suffering and afflicted, because every inch of our being can not identify with anothers' suffering'.

She is leading the way...

Tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic: Does this sound familiar to you?

It does to me every Sunday night at 7:00 p.m. Oh, the sound of 60 Minutes. When I was younger, my father used to watch 60 Minutes and it drove me absolutely crazy. It was so boring, I couldn't stand to watch it. Now that I have grown taller, I appreciate this news cast for their informative journalism. Plus, Andy Rooney is always funny. Kelly has begun to appreciate the stories which 60 Minutes portrays to us every Sunday night also. This past Sunday there was a story about an African woman caught in the genocide of Rwanda. She and six other women were hidden for 91 days inside a small bathroom in a pastor's house. She and the other women were Tutsi, but the pastor who hid them was Hutu, yet considered what was happening to be atrocious. In case you did not know, the Hutu viciously attacked the Tutsi, because the Tutsi held the power with the Belgian colonization of Rwanda. When the Belgians left, the Hutu wanted to regain some power by completely eliminating the Tutsi. This is similar in scope to the British colonization of China in the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in China's development of a Nationalistic state. The Tutsi were favored by Catholic Missionaries over the Hutu, giving rise to Hutu resentment.
Although this story contained vivid images about the mass murder of approx. 800,000 innocent people, I was absolutely struck and convicted about how forgiving this woman was.
Her entire family: father, mother, two brothers, cousins were slaughtered and her father's dead body was used at a roadblock. Remember that this only happened 13 years ago. This woman's name was Immaculee and as correspondent Bob Simon was asking her questions, the question of forgiveness came up.
He asked her, "Don't you want to smash their (the Hutu's) heads against a brick wall for what they did?" With sadness in her eyes, she looked at Bob Simon and stated, "I know that Rwandans can never forget, but they MUST forgive." "And I don’t want it. I don’t want them after killing my family to give me this luggage in my heart, in my belly, you know, to hold this anger," she says. Bob Simon then said to her, "But it might feel good to retaliate," where she calmly responded, "No, I know it won't." Immaculee also has embraced a Hutu, who served 11 years for killing Tutsis, and confessed that he had killed members of Immaculee's family.
Many times on these blogs I speak of the victims of oppression, because in many ways I too have been a victim, so I identify with oppression. Forgiveness and repentance is something which Jesus preached, not because he did not care about oppression, but because he thought that the victims of oppression would be enslaved all over again by anger and hatred. (Miroslav Volf)
Only after we have forgiven can I then confront the oppression, confront what it was that attempted to kill me, and be reconciled.
Immaculee has written a book entitled, "Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust", which at some point I am looking forward to reading. Violence strips another of innocence to the violence, remaking the victim into the image of the violent, but forgiveness can soften the heart of the victim, allowing them to be remade into the image of God instead. To those who do not have the ability to forgive, we as Christians walk beside and lead to the path of healing. I know it sounds fluffy, but good God it is true.