Preaching to the choir

So just the other day a member of my family approached me and hit me with a heavy statement. They said to me, "Yea, I do get tired of all the harsh things you say against Christians."  I sort of had it coming though (as you notice below at the end of my previous blog), and I presumed there may eventually be some people out there, yes even brothers and sisters in Christ, who may get riled up about topics I touch on now and again.

I made peace with the fact that if I was going to do this blog and start sharing my writing with the world, that if I was going to follow God's leading on my heart to speak what I believe is truth that He has revealed to me in my young life and through my experiences that reveal understanding that goes hand in hand with His word and the truth of Scripture, that I was going to say things from time to time that push people, that make them push back.

The truth is, I don't like or want to say that I'm "preaching" per say, because I don't claim to get everything right 100% of the time, as my interpretation of life and faith is my own... flawed and human. Though I guess I sort of am preaching in my own weird 'handling static' kind of way. And, perhaps, I may even be preaching to the choir from time to time. However, my purpose is not to preach TO or talk AT anyone, but rather to present my commentary on life in a way that welcomes healthy dialogue and honest discussion, and hopefully somewhere in all my ramblings some food for thought.

I get the feeling that it can be hard for my fellow Christ-followers to always read the things I'm saying, because I do take issue with things we Christians do. I don't always want to talk about flowers and daisies and that the world is made of marshmellows, and I certainly don't want to present that as a reality to my fellow believers who know that we as Christians are a dysfunctional family like every other family, except our need for change is more dyer and urgent than any other family therapy session that's every taken place anywhere else. So therefore, sometimes I feel the need to address the fact that the flowers and daisies smell like crap once in a while, and that certain petals may need to be replenished so they can grow beautiful again and give the oxygen of hope to a world that needs it.

If we as Christians are the hands and feet of Jesus, then our hands have to be washed on a regular basis and they can't have dirt underneath the fingernails. Our toenails need to be clipped and we have to tend to the blisters and bunions on the bottom of them so they can move towards a goal and accomplish what they need to for the church. Therefore, preaching to the choir is not always a bad thing as the famous phrase may like to propose. It can be a time for cleansing, for deciding what needs to be cleaned and what doesn't.

I think we as followers of Christ are absolutely vital to the hope of humanity because we hold the Truth and we know the hope we have, while others do not. Therefore, if we are missing opportunities to love and to care for the people we engage every day, I want to present obstacles and distractions I think we can work to remove from the picture so that people see Jesus again, see Love, see hope, rather than seeing us screwing up again on the world stage of misunderstood Christianity.

I love that I am a child of God, that Jesus is my Savior. I am glad that He created us to be in communion with one another, to need each other, to love and encourage each other, and to take care of one another.

I want to talk about as much good things as bad, but I do not want to ignore the bad. We as brothers and sisters in Christ are obligated to help one another and look out for each other. You wouldn't let someone walk up on a stage in front of thousands of people if their fly was down or if their blouse was tangled up in their dress, would you? In the same way, I want to (and I want you to do the same for me and everyone else) make sure you stand on the stage with the words of Jesus rather than the comfort of "staying safe" in a Christian bubble.

So with all that said, I hope that as my ramblings continue to be posted on this website, that you all may push back, challenge me as much as I challenge you, and together we can weather the storms of this world together with the shared hope and faith that gives all of our lives real, honest purpose.

Rock on all you cool cats, and God keep each of you safe as a new week begins!

The T-Shirt Deception

I have friends who are cynics, and I love them for it. You might ask, 'Why would anyone want to have cynical friends?' I would answer that it's because they help you sort through the fake crap in your life.

Now I should be clear when I say that these friends of mine aren't all-around cynical, nor are they typically negative or doubting people. They just happen to know that I am a Christian, and it makes them uneasy and defensive. It makes them resort to reluctantly categorizing me as the t-shirt slogan, watered-down, religious version of something never meant to be so misunderstood, so misrepresented, so hated.

All at once I'm imagining some of you ready to pounce on me- 'Doesn't Jesus say that the world may hate us because it also hated Him?' Oh, but there is so much more to understand about why Jesus says this, why He says people would hate us, and the fact that He uses a very important word to start it off by saying "If".

We as Christians are very capable of making this mistake over and over again, where we hear this verse from John 15:18 and think that this gives us the right to be absolute nightmares to everyone around us; that somehow we are permitted to walk around, noses pointed up, thumbing through a Bible we constantly pick and choose from, separating ourselves from a world Christ explicitly calls us to love in spite of the hatred He warns us about.

There's a genuine dislike that my cynical friends, like so much of the rest of the world, have for Christians, but it's not for the righteous and unrelenting love we're showing the rest of the world. It's for something not so wonderful, something I like to call "The T-Shirt Deception".

There is this subculture of Christians, young and old, that have sort of marketed and sloganized Jesus (yes, I'm pretty ok with that fact that "sloganized" is not exactly a real word...ha ha!) in a way that has made Him distant, un-relatable, and exclusive. He's the "Jesus is my homeboy", "God hates fags", "God bless America", and "What Would Jesus Do" poster face of a group of people completely ruining Christianity for those who need it most. We marginalize, we segregate, we isolate, we judge, and we just plain old hate. It gets so bad that people in a pluralistic society like ours see nothing good about "T-Shirt Jesus", with all of His one-liner slogans and empty promises (man, he kinda sounds like a politician...ha!).

Meanwhile, those who are truly seeking to follow Jesus by living as He lived are being placed on an imaginary island to be completely forgotten. These people, these Christians, represent the real Jesus- the one who loved everybody, who saw through our faults and failures, who broke through the barriers we humans like to put up, who shows us mercy, who seeks justice for all, and who straight up died a brutal death for the very reason that He is madly in love with us and wants to make our empty lives whole again.

Some of you who read my blog have maybe gotten to a point where you say, 'Dang, Brad. You have a lot of harsh things to say to Christians and a whole lot less to say to non-Christians. Is there anything good about Christianity that you have to say?' My answer is yes, but it's not Christianity that does it for me. It's Jesus Christ Himself. We've become so obsessed with belonging to our exclusive group we affectionately named Christianity, and yet we've sort of forgotten about the group's founder (To flip-flop a famous saying, "there's too many indians and no chief").

We're so caught up in "being" Christianity that we're not doing enough "doing". We wear cool Christian t-shirts with catchy churchy phrases on them, we cling to our Bible on the train or bus into work every morning, we sing in the choir at church, we wage war in God's name, and we vote Republican. These are the things that make us Christian nowadays, and it's kind of sad. Is it any wonder why we have cynical friends?

Christ calls us to be love, to love others (even our enemies), to show mercy, to seek justice, and to build up the kingdom of God. Let's start doing those things, myself included, and watch the cynics vanish before our very eyes!

Track Treading

I want you to imagine a hypothetical situation with me for a few moments. Really think about this situation and put yourself in the midst.

Let’s say that on one particular day, you are standing at a train station. On days before this one, you were the kind of guy who would challenge danger and walk the line of risk. Every day prior, you would hop down onto the tracks and run 50 yards up the track and back. It was a fun thing you would do to display your sense of independence and the thrill of doing things that were risky, seeing as you had no idea when a train might be coming other than the light that would sometimes peer through the fog in the distance. Other people at the station would do this as well, only some would sit on the tracks instead, while others would ride their bikes the opposite way 40 yards, and still others would sit on the edge of the platform holding their legs out above the track, not willing to take the bigger risks like others; still unsure of the consequences. Many did this their own way, but most people at the station would partake in some form of “track treading”.

However, today as you are walking to the station, a man stops you on the sidewalk. He tells you that he, in fact, is the owner of the railways and the president of the transportation services.

He informs you that sometime today, though he won’t say when, a high-speed train traveling from San Francisco to Chicago is passing through the tracks at your station as a bypass, and that it will do so at some point before your regularly scheduled commuter train arrives.

As you continue conversing, he lets you know that one time before, a long time ago, this same train was bypassing through the station. An entire community of people were standing on the tracks. They were not aware of the fast approaching train, and in a last stitch effort to rescue them, the man threw himself under the train and caused an emergency stop, saving the lives of all the people. However, the train had stopped so far away from the station that no one who was on the tracks had seen the heroic act of this brave man, who just happened to also be president of the transportation service. Miraculously he survived. As he stood there telling you this story, you began to realize how incredible this man truly is, and how much love he must have had for people that didn’t even know him. As you depart from the man and continue heading for the station, he yells out to you from a distance that he has scheduled this train personally, that he himself will be driving this train, and that it will be right on time and will be passing through on schedule going 180 miles per hour. This time, however, it will not be stopping, even if people are on the tracks.

As you arrive to the tracks, you see people dancing and walking along the track as usual, carelessly treading the lines of safety and completely unaware of the fast train approaching.

The rest of this imaginary story is in your hands, and you decide what happens to these people. Do you tell them about the man you spoke to, how he warned about the train coming, and what he had done before to save a group of people? Do you keep it to yourself and keep off the tracks regardless of what others are doing at the moment the fast train passes through?

The right answer seems so obvious, so urgent, and so important. We would all warn these people and tell them that a train is approaching and that their lives are at risk. I’m pretty sure none of us would just let a bunch of people get hit by a train we knew was approaching.

Is this not how our Christian faith story goes as well? Have we not been given an important insight to truth that much of our world has forgotten, or even possibly never heard? Jesus came to this earth to save all of us from an impending and tragic death, a death we deserve for “treading the tracks” of life. Instead, He threw Himself in front of us and took the penalty for our irresponsibility and sin. He did it because He loves us.

Do you know anyone else who would die for you just because of things you’ve done wrong, someone Who would be executed for all the bad things you did simply because He loves You even though so many of us don’t even know Him? If we had been saved from the oncoming train because we knew the truth, would we not also want everyone else on the tracks to be saved?

That is what Christianity is rooted in- the Truth that Christ loved us so much He died for us, and that if we’d just accept it and step off “the tracks”, we’d be saved. If we are so adamant about our faith and so in love with Jesus, then we should love His people enough to want to save them from the inevitable death that this world brings to each of us. All we have to do is open our mouths, open our lives, open our hearts to love, and tell people to “get off the tracks because a train is coming” and that we care for their safety and well-being.

So many of us are so busy yelling at people to get off the tracks and criticizing them for being on them in the first place that we forget we once walked on the tracks as well. We forget that we need to be telling them WHY they need to get off the tracks rather than stating the obvious.

The thing about static...

I’m not that fond of static. Whether it’s spending hours adjusting the rabbit ears on my television so that the picture is clear or carefully reaching for a metal doorknob after rubbing my socks across a carpet, the dreary anticipation of the “shock” and unfriendly welcome of static electricity is enough to make a sane man go mad. In fact, I confess that sometimes I let the trivial nature of static ruin more of my happiness than the bravado of it all really deserves. (on a side note going back to the issue of rabbit ears- I’ve actually come to appreciate them more since the invention of digital TV. I didn’t think it could get worse then rabbit ears…I was wrong. :))

I currently live in a house that’s owned by our church right next door, and for some odd reason, the inside of the house is really attracted to the rush of static electricity. I’m not kidding, I’ve gotten shocked on my tongue from drinking water and once while I was brushing my teeth. You don’t know the frictional power of static until you’ve stepped one sock or wool sleeve into my front door. It’s insane.

What I’ve come to realize about static though is this- I give it way more power over me than it deserves, and I even let it dictate my happiness on occasion. I actually woke up the other day mad at my bed post because I knew, tangled up in my sheets, it was going to get the best of me as I reached to pull myself out of bed.

But isn’t that kind of how we cooky human beings can be sometimes with the “static” of life? We let the little things weigh us down, moment my moment, one shock at a time. We take it all in, never let it out, and let it well up inside of us like a big ball of electricity. We let it fester inside so long that most people are actually scared to come near US…the audacity of it all!

In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus tells us to come to him with our “static”, our worry and burden. He doesn’t want us to be the frustrated beings strategically trying to pull ourselves over the bed frame without getting shocked. He wants to take that burden, the little and big things, and lay them at His feet. Why? It’s because He can handle it. He can take it. He says His “yoke is easy and his burden is light”. I used to think that meant he liked eggs or something and was a good cook. I later learned that "yoke" is actually a fancy word for burden itself (What? What was that? Every single person reading this simultaneously laughing at how dumb I am? Nice. Me too…haha!)

But seriously- we have the best source of strength in this world through our Savior. How often do we take His promise to heart? Do we lay it out there for Him and allow Him to give us peace? Or do we hold it close to our chest, rub our socks against the shag carpet, and foolishly reach yet again for yet another doorknob?

The thing about static is- it hurts for a moment, but then it’s gone. Pain in life is fleeting, stress and worry like dust in the wind. No matter how big or little our static is, God can take it. He can and will make us new, and He can give us peace. That’s the thing about static. It’s not as powerful as it may seem when you hold it up and try to wield it next to the power of God.

The Matrix, Cookies, & Jesus

Do all of you remember the movie The Matrix? I love that film (not the second or third one so much…just the first)! One of my favorite parts of that story is when Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) takes Neo (Keanu Reeves’ character) to visit the Oracle to find out if he indeed is the one their people have been prophesying about.

The Oracle is the one everyone looks to, who is wise above the rest and can foresee the future to tell each person their destiny and purpose.

When Neo finally walks into the room to speak with the Oracle, he finds this little old lady baking cookies in a kitchen. The most powerful and wise person that everyone in this story looks to for guidance, and it’s a little old lady with cooking skills and small talk.

Something in this part of the film really sticks out in my mind. This Oracle is so much like who I believe Jesus Christ really is and was on this earth. We hear the name Jesus and think of some mega-Zeus god who’s zipping around the galaxy doing whatever He wants and controlling our fates like a puppeteer, having no desire to relate with us or live in us. Once you get to know Him though, you begin to understand Him more, like you’re sitting in a kitchen baking cookies talking about life and love. Many of us, even Christians, have never stepped foot inside Jesus’ kitchen.

All of my childhood was spent trying to understand the simple truth that Jesus Christ is the definition of love. There is nothing formulaic or predictable about who He is or what He requires of each of us, and yet His only expectation of us as human beings is to understand His love for us, recognize and appreciate the extent of that unmatched love, and to help those around us and all across this globe understand that simple truth that brings meaning and hope to every one who encounters it.

The sad reality is that the religious demands and piety we hold so tightly to choke us of our actual faith, and more importantly, our effectiveness in a world that so desperately needs to know the unconditional love of a God Who “cooks in the kitchen” and isn’t sitting in front of a big red button waiting for us to fail.

So what is it that prevents those around us every day from wanting to know the truth of who Jesus Christ is? Why doesn’t the Gospel message work so many times in its straight-forward presentation in hand-out tracks on the subway or during our lunch break conversations with a co-worker? Perhaps it is this- we spend so much time focusing our attention on why others needs Christ in their lives that we forget to display in our every day lives what and why we have gained from a personal relationship with Christ. I believe that begins in the way we love others, especially those who are undeserving.

When we start to love others in this way, we begin to understand God’s love better, and baking cookies in a kitchen over small talk starts to sound a little more divine.

Not left, not right....deeper

So I confess that about a year ago I had a very bad case of "religious politicitis". It's the disease that people get when they defend and exercise their religious beliefs in very politically dominant ways- using God, Jesus, & the Bible as the foundation for earthly man-made political views that fall in the margins of what faith and religion are truly about. We as Democrats and Republicans cling tightly to those categorical affiliations that define us, seeing the other as wrong, many times as "evil". We can even replace the word "Democrat" and "Republican" with the phrase "Christian ideals", and immediately give God a suit and a blue (or red) tie and force Him to choose a side. All along the way we argue views about the marketplace, the economy, jobs, healthcare, the environment, war, wealth, etc. We take sides as we think God would take sides. But God doesn't take sides, does He? Does He bless a Republican President or politician more than a Democratic one, or vice-versa? Does God speak universal truths through a Democrat or Republican and only one side? Is it good versus evil? God versus man? Or is it in actuality man versus himself? I believe it's the latter. We spend so much time as Americans and as humans in general taking sides and waging war against each other's humanity that we forget and neglect the humanity we should be fighting for. Now I am just one voice, just one Christian with my own understandings of the universal truths that God has given us in His word and in our hearts. But I believe our God wants us to be about His business, not the business of man. I don't think God cares about universal health care versus privatized medicine, as long as His people are taken care of and that everyone has a chance at life and medicine. I don't really think God opposes or condones socialism, but He does expect His people to make sure everyone has their fair share, that if we have 2 shirts and someone else has none that we do the logically moral thing. I don't believe God cares much about theories of Global Warming or the arguments against it, as long as we are responsibly taking care of the world He has given us dominion over and cultivating rather than consuming. I don't believe God is focused on whether or not Roe vs. Wade ever gets overturned or not, as long as His people are working hard to raise up wise men and women who understand the consequences for their actions, showing love to the scared women who need to know the options they have such as adoption and child support organizations. I think God hates all war and would prefer we seek peace, and I believe He loves extremists as much as He loves Marines. The reality is- when we are about God's business, political affiliations disappear and the lines between parties start to fade away. We start to think in a whole new way, not left or right, but rather deeper. We start to care about spreading the truths of God's love through Jesus Christ, and the business of man starts to matter very little in the grand scheme of it all. So do I think we should stay away from politics and simply not vote or be involved in our government? Absolutely not. What I believe is that we need to come to the table with a revised agenda. Instead of thinking like a Conservative or Liberal, instead of voting by party affiliation and allegiance, that we start to use our freedom of voice and choice to search out God's truth in man's business and do more for eternal hope rather than self-satisfaction. When that happens, there won't be Republicans and Democrats, but rather Freedom Fighters in exciting new numbers!