Handling Static

Jesus > Religion

2012-01-12T16:41:00.001-08:00

Wanted to share this video with all of you...LOVE THIS!

Girl Power

2011-11-29T21:49:00.000-08:00

Men have a hard time conceding anything, especially authority.

A large majority of men are built with this inherent desire to always be right, always have an answer, and to always be an authority on wisdom and experience. We like to be the decision-makers on just about everything. It’s in our blood, and it is also very much a part of how God created us to function.

But there is this other thing that men have a tendency to do that is exactly the opposite of how God created us to be. We like to take over everything, dominate conversations, use force in both our words and our actions, and we silence the voices of those who bring balance to our chaos. Men, left alone, quite frankly are chaotic.

In the same way that God said “It is not good for man to be alone” because we are in fact created to be in relationship with other people, I believe He also knew it was not good for men to be alone because He knew, that left alone, we would destroy everything God had created beautiful. We’d miss the important opportunities to see the world in a much broader perspective and a more full scope of understanding.

Thus God, in His infinite wisdom, created woman. He created her from Adam’s rib. This is a very important part of how God created woman. God could have just made woman materialize out of nothing. He could have made her from the dust of the earth in the exact same way as He made Adam. He could have made her from Adam’s head or from his big toe.

Why his rib? I think it’s symbolic of something. I heard it put perfectly in this quote from an unknown author:

Woman was created from the rib of man.

She was not created from his head to be above him

Nor was she created from his foot to be trampled by him

She was taken from his side to be his equal,

From beneath his arm to be protected by him,

From near his heart to be loved by him.

I don’t mean to be the constant downer, but this isn’t exactly how many churches portray women today. Women are the silenced members of our church congregations, the ones who are allowed do special music and volunteer to teach Sunday school. They get to cook the food for potlucks, babysit the kids in the nursery, and head up the knitting clubs and women’s Bible studies during the week.

But on Sunday, the men preach. That’s when the so-called real authority is displayed. The men have the power. Women have to keep quiet and look pretty. And the longer this mentality thrives inside churches across all denominational affiliations today, the church is only half as effective as it needs to be and is designed to be.

Churches seem to love grabbing a hold of a passage like 1 Corinthians 14:34 about women being silent in the church, and they use a loose understanding of its context to supplant women and place them into a subservient role inside both the home and the church. The Bible also mentions the sad reality that people in those days owned slaves, and America spent much of its early years using those passages to support slavery. It’s amazing what we can do with a Bible taken out of context.

There are these important and distinguishing commands that we receive in the Bible that most people don’t look very closely at these days. There are situational and contextual commands that God and His disciples give us throughout Scripture, and there are also very sweeping generalized commands and truths that God gives us to obey and follow in all circumstances. It’s crucial that we know the difference.

Churches in Corinth were dealing with some pretty heavy stuff in their local congregations when Paul made his famous 1 Corinthians 14:34 remark, and he was speaking to a very specific group of women (who had some issues with gossip) in a very specific church of a very specific part of Corinth. It’s about as relevant to the structure of the church today as God’s specific ark measurements and requirements to Noah were compared to us building or purchasing a speed boat today.

Then there are places when God says pretty sweeping remarks to us, one of which is found in Galatians 3:26-29 which says this:

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

I’m not a theologian or pastor, but that’s a pretty bold and all-encompassing statement in the context of our faith. It seems to presuppose that there is a way that the world looks at all these things and a way in which Jesus and the church reconcile these things.

If the church has become a place for gender and racial inequality, then the church is a very ineffective and incomplete body with missing body parts. Needless to say, it is crippled.

My wife is a youth pastor, and she gets a lot of flack for that, mostly from Christians believe it or not. A guy in my parent’s church once told me, “You better get her in line and put her in her place.” Another guy in Sarah’s dad’s seminary once said to her, “Have you even read the Bible?!”

The most puzzling thing about these attacks is how people react every single time I respond by asking the question, “Where does God say that women can’t be leaders in the church?” After quoting the only two most misquoted passages in the entire Bible about women in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:12), most people start using their own feelings and perspectives to explain the logic and common sense that they believe supports a male-only lead church body. I start to hear things like “Women are too emotional” or “Women only use feelings to interpret Scripture”. My favorite terrible thing someone said to me was “How can she relate to the boys in her youth group?” Clearly all those football analogies and all that talk about “hitting a home run for Jesus” are really resonating with the girls in the youth group.

The problem is not that women break Scripture or disobey God when they take up leadership roles in the church. The problem is that women break societal norms that we as fallible human beings have created everywhere, including in our churches. This makes many of us uncomfortable.

Men don’t like to give up authority. Men don’t like to share the load. Men don’t like to walk hand in hand as equals with women, whether in a business or inside the four walls of a church. It’s part of the fall. It’s part of our messed up imperfections as fallen creatures who take God’s perfect picture and distort all the edges and remove so much of the vibrant colors. Let’s learn to paint in color again and let God take our hands and trace a masterpiece.

Perspective

2011-10-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Fall is my favorite season. It always has been. It always will be. I love the colors. I love the way the morning is sharp with its cool but refreshing in its touch. I love pumpkins and pumpkin pie. I love NFL Sunday and flag football in the yard. Fall is an incredible, incomparable season. I would even humorously argue that Creation had to have taken place in the fall...it's that "good".

But do you ever notice how when the weather starts to turn cold at the end of summer, people sort of get sad as they take out their light jacket or put on their first sweater for the year? The cold seems extra bitter, the sky seems extra gloomy, and it seems as if the joy of sun and sand will soon be long behind us. We humans rarely seem to be content with what is in front of us. Cold itself is a foreign concept, and 60 degree weather feels like we might as well be stranded in the middle of the arctic.

Then something strange happens around April sometime (March, if we're lucky). A 60 degree day rolls in, and the whole world celebrates. People lay their coats in a pile and dance in the streets. Business men and women decide to eat lunch on the patio that day. People seem extra chipper, waving to each other and commenting to each other about the incredible change of fortune.

As I was walking to work this obvious fall morning, these thoughts were running through my head. I began to think about my faith, and how much of what Christianity and God have become to this world is a season taken out of context.

For those of us who grew up in the church (or had a bad experience there), God and faith are the fall season at the end of a gorgeous summer. We know we should value it, we remember a time when we appreciated it and clung to it with joy, but somehow it has taken on a bitterness, something that bites at us rather than awakens us, inspires us.

For those who have been anywhere but the church, have tried everything else and failed, for the alchoholic or drug-addict who found their freedom in Christ, for the gay man or woman who felt welcome in a church for the first time, or for a marriage on the rocks that finally found its unity in a triune God, He along with His church feel more like spring. After the cold, hard aches of an endless winter, the sun shines for the first time. The clouds roll away and a foreign warmth stuns our bodies with wonder.

God and faith are reacted to by the people of this world based on perspective. Perspective is this powerful, insurmountable object. Think of it as the ground on which we stand to see what there is to see, be it a valley or a mountain top. What we see and how we see it depends on where we stand to look. Many times, if not most of the time, the place we stand is the hand we're dealt. We're like Bear from the show "Man Vs. Wild", dropped in a random, remote location...expected to survive.

To a poor person, a mega church seems cold. To a rich person, a mega church feels warm, comfortable. To a person with loving parents and a good home, the idea of God as Father sounds intimate, reassurring. But like Donald Miller writes in his book Blue Like Jazz, the idea of God as Father sounds very unappealing to the kid whose dad walked out on him. To a Christian refugee in the middle of Sudan, the idea of "God Bless America" sounds more exclusive than inclusive, but to the marine clinging to his faith in the middle of a battlefield, he hopes those words ring true. To a white CEO in suburban America, the idea of serving the poor and selling away all of his positions seems very intrusive so he chooses to take it as metaphoric, but to the homeless man in the middle of a busy downtown Los Angeles street, he has seen very few Christians who are actually Christ-like. To the middle-aged married couple at a Baptist church who refers to a gay community as "hate the sin, love the sinner", they feel as though they are learning how to love in spite of, but to an isolated gay man in the back pew of that church, he wonders if he will ever find a friend in God or His people.

Perspective is what makes God and faith such a delicate and difficult thing to understand for many people in this world. If we're honest, even we who claim this faith have a hard time separating perspective from truth, opinion from God.

If we could simply see the world and those who are in it as the seasons that come and go and come again, we would start to understand that we all need to come to terms with our perspective, the past experiences (good and bad) that have shaped our view of God and our understanding of Who He is to a broken world.

Like I said, I like fall. But when winter comes, that's when I start to lose perspective. I'm always looking for spring, until I realize that I hate summer. God save us from our perspectives.

Loving a Terrorist

2011-05-02T11:01:00.001-07:00

So I haven’t posted now in quite some time, but every so often something begs of me to respond.

By now the whole world is aware of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. If not, you may live under a rock. 24/7 the news media has begun covering this event, and spontaneous celebrations of people have filled the streets of Washington D.C. and New York City, among countless other places in our country.

Almost immediately upon hearing this announcement, I began to hear over and over again the words of Jesus in Matthew 5. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, “Do not resist an evil person”, “Do not repay evil for evil”.

Osama bin Laden was no doubt a mass murderer, and deranged terrorist, and someone with immense hatred in his heart. He killed thousands of innocent people and spent his entire life plotting attacks on innocent men, women, and children. There was no doubt justice that needed to be served. But whose justice? What does justice look like? Is killing someone who killed someone just? Does it look like love? Does it look like Jesus? Can we honestly use violence for peace and then in the next breath say “May God bless America”? And if we do, will He?

Please don’t brand me as anti-American, unpatriotic, or a sympathizer of terrorists. Certainly Osama bin Laden deserved to be punished, locked away in a cold prison cell for the rest of his life. But are we accomplishing peace if the means to that end is violence? And if we do, can we claim it as just? As good? As Godly?

May God have mercy on us when we rejoice in the killing of another, even a terrorist. If terrorists are beyond redemption, then St. Paul and the writings in over half of the New Testament should be burned immediately. To say someone is beyond love, beyond God’s redemption…well, that doesn’t sound very Christ-like at all.

Is it a good thing that bin Laden can no longer hurt or kill innocent people? Of course. Is it worth the compromise of integrity and justice? I don’t believe so.

As the world and much of America celebrates the murder of a murderer, may we as follows of Christ remember that by grace we all have been saved, and that all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but by His love and grace.

Amen.

Aid for Japan

2011-03-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

Hey guys and gals!

In the wake of the devastation that has taken place over in Japan in recent weeks, I want to let you guys know about a great opportunity to help the people of Japan during these difficult times of hardship and loss.

Saturday evening, April 9th, I will be doing a benefit concert in Chicago to raise support for the relief efforts in Japan. The concert will be a night of my original music, with all proceeds (every penny raised) from the event going straight to the Covenant World Relief Fund currently aiding the people of Japan. We will be selling music and holding a bake sale, and we’ll also have a suggested $5 entry donation to the event. All of this money will go to Japan.

Not to mention it is going to be an incredibly fun night of music. I haven’t played out like this in almost 2 years, so I’m very excited to host this event and even more excited for the cause it is going to. I will also be joined by some incredible musicians on stage, including the drummer from the Least of These and some musician friends from some of my previous music projects/bands.

The address for the event is:

Edgebrook Covenant Church
6355 N Spokane Avenue
Chicago, IL 60646

The show will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday April 9th, and I am really hoping each of you will be able to join us for this important and equally fun benefit concert.

Much love and God bless!

Sincerely,

Brad Henry
www.myspace.com/bradhenrymusic
www.youtube.com/mylifeisasoundtrack

Held Accountable?

2010-10-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is the socialist in me (haha!), but does anyone else in the world think that it’s absolutely ridiculous that Hollywood stars, professional athletes, and entertainment folk on a large scale make enough money for entire nations to survive on, and yet in an economic time such as ours, and in a world with so much unemployment, widespread hunger, and poverty, that it’s somehow ok for Kim Kardashian to have a diamond studded birthday cake that's worth over $1 million?! Or is it ok that athletes wear outfits that could pay for an entire families sustainable income a thousand times over?

I confess, I along with most people give these entertainers my business, my attention, and my approval simply in the way I go to movies, buy tickets to a football game, or buy someone’s new album on I-Tunes. As a generation of social networking, we’ve become more infatuated with celebrity than at any other time in our history. We follow them around, take their pictures, spot them at airports, dress and act like they do, and aspire to live up to their impossible standards and lifestyles.

So why in times like these do we wonder why times like these are so difficult? We are the catalyst for our society’s own demise. After reading more and more articles and ads about what celebrities do with their money (and how they waste it), I have become fed up and want to see change, to demand change, and to take ownership of the way I fund this madness (the Kim Kardashian cake thing was the LAST straw!!)

So here is what I’m asking from all of you (because this is too big to just vent about, and I’m frankly sick of talking)- I want each of you to come up with a practical way that we can stand up as one voice and call out the overly lavish and ridiculous spending of Hollywood America and celebritydom (or dumb…haha!) I want us to hold the rich and powerful accountable for their spending, and demand that this country be better with its resources and blessings.

When there are millions of starving and dying people around the globe, a $1 million birthday cake sounds pretty messed up!

Peace!

BRAD

Enough Already!

2010-08-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Can I just say how over this mosque controversy in New York City I really am!?

We really need to move on from religious persecution in this free nation of ours, people. The Muslim world did not attack us on September 11th. It was a few lost souls with misguided views and hatred in their hearts. Let's not follow that sad example...

If tomorrow a bunch of radical Christians went into a public place and killed hundreds upon thousands of people for some misguided ideals and warped views, we wouldn't stop a church from being built down the street from that mall 10 years from then, would we? No, we certainly wouldn't. And if we did, people would be up in arms, and rightfully so.

In the same way, we need to look out for our Muslim brothers and sisters in this country. They have just as much right and freedom to practice their faith in this free country of ours as any other person or religious group, and we need to give them that decency and respect.

So to all these politicians and fear-mongers who are stirring up national controversy over a local issue that shouldn't BE an issue, please stop talking for your own sake.

For families who lost loved ones on 9/11, I cannot imagine the pain you have gone through and I can understand mixed feelings over something like this. Still, I would ask you to put this in perspective and look at it through a lens of tolerance and love. No one group of people did this to you, but rather a few misguided souls.

May all of us, especially those who follow Christ, be a bridge between the Muslim communities and the America we take so much pride in. We need to set the tone and be the example for love.

Just my two cents...needed to get that off my chest!

The Sad Reality...

2010-08-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

So today I was having lunch with some of my co-workers, and one of the guys in my office said in a random conversation that he feels worse for cats and dogs that are in animal shelters than he does for homeless people.

He then went on to ask rhetorically- "How badly must someone have screwed up in life to end up homeless?!" I was taken aback by the sweeping generalization and sheer ignorance of the statement.

This is the world we live in. Scruffy the dog has a better chance at finding a home full of love than the guy outside the 711 by my office.

Priority shift, anyone?

Proverbs 14:20- “The poor is hated even of his own neighbor: but the rich hath many friends.”

Rosina & The Best Chinese Food I've Ever Had!

2010-07-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

So this past Friday I took Sarah out for dinner to celebrate her birthday. We were both (and by both I mean me) craving Chinese food, and so we decided to go to this little quaint place about 2 miles from our house called Mee Maw Intimate Chinese Dining & Cuisine.

I'll be honest that "intimate dining" sort of had a weird ring to it that had always kept my wife and I at bay...as if we were going to walk into this place and find some kind of topless adult hangout for creepy middle-aged men.

Luckily the inside was a warm, welcoming, family friendly environment with dim lighting, romantic wall paper, and cute little booths.

After we finished celebrating that we had entered an actual restaurant establishment and not an Asian gentlemen's club, we settled into a both and got to ordering some food.

When our waitress arrived, we were introduced to this soft-spoken, petite, middle-aged Chinese woman, whose name we later learned was Rosina.

Rosina seemed timid, ready for any possible moment in which my wife and I would inevitably morph into blood-thirsty woozles that would pillage and devour her and everyone else in the room. It was obvious to me she was very accustomed to rude and demanding people, and it immediately broke my heart.

Both Sarah and I are very good at being attentive to these sorts of presuppositions, and so to make her night, we really spiced it up and went out of our way to smile and use a lot of polite words like "please" and "thank you".

Almost immediately she went from timid to grateful...and eventually to excited/ecstatic!

Upon the second or third visit to our table as she brought us our Crab Rangoon appetizers and refilled our waters, she looked at us and said- "You are a good match. Good match. You are also so very polite. So often people come in here and they are not polite. They are very (she went onto to impersonate what I can only imagine was an obese middle-aged man demanding more food)."

She would come back several times after this and repeat her compliment to us, praising us like we were celebrities simply because we used polite tone and smiled, treating Rosina like any human being wishes to be treated. We didn't give her a golden trinket or pay for her kid to go to college, but our basic kindness somehow rocked her world (I could only imagine how badly other patrons must have treated her in past encounters).

She would later show her appreciation by giving us extra food- boxes of rice, bags of almond cookies (I LOVE almond cookies), and continuing to tell us how nice and good we were. At that point I was going to ask her if she was in fact some kind of nun or some sort of saint brought there that evening to build up Sarah and my egos, like a high five to our self-confidence.

It was at the point of her bringing us our check that my wife and I asked her her name. She stepped back immediately and looked surprised. 'You want to know my name??', was all I could read on her face.

After she had told us her name and we have received the bill, we gave her our money and tip and offered a final "Thank you so much, Rosina!" as we exited the door.

Well this was apparently the ultimate gesture of our do-goodedness that we had always thought was just common courtesy. Rosina looked at us, with heart-felt warmth in her eyes, and said "You are both so nice, and such a good memory!"

I don't know why I share this story with you. I don't know if I have accurately relayed to you the incredible warmth and genuine beauty in Rosina's spirit. I'm not sure if there is a moral to this story.

What I can tell you is that genuine kindness and treating people with dignity and respect is always a good way to brighten someone's day.

But remember someone's name, and you'll have changed their lives forever!

A Kingdom Without Borders

2010-07-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

So today I heard that the United States government is getting ready to send down troop "reinforcements" to the border states of our country to help "secure" our border and keep "illegal immigrants" out.

It made me think about the story of the good Samaritan that Jesus told, where this Jewish man is jumped by a gang, stripped of his clothes, robbed, and beaten within an inch of his life. He's then left for dead on the side of the road. One by one these prominent people (priests, temple assistants) pass by the man and purposely avoid him, creating borders between the man's heavy burden and their own selfish concerns.

Eventually this Samaritan dude shows up (the type of person the Jewish people would have despised), comes by and has pity on the poor beaten man on the side of the road. He then tends to his wounds, puts him on his own donkey, and takes him to an inn nearby. He then pays the inn like an entire paycheck's worth of expenses to ensure the Jewish man is well-taken care of and can stay in this inn until he has fully recovered. The Samaritan man never asks for anything in return.

I wonder what it would look like if people in America, especially Christians in America, put the good Samaritan story into practice when our government tries to put up walls between us and the rest of the world, when we create borders to divide the "haves" and the "have nots".

So often people quote this story of the good Samaritan for the sake of encouraging the caring of those in need, for helping those who other people simply pass on by. While these are definitely important truths and good analogies, (as my wife pointed out in one of her recent sermons) it is not the main message in the story.

You see, we worship a God of a borderless kingdom. He doesn't see "us and them". He sees humanity, the diverse lot of us, and sees beauty and richness in us all. There is this potential "oneness" that our world is craving, but our borders keep that from ever being realized.

Maybe when our troops get down to the border this week to keep people out, we should be there in masses opening the borders of our hearts and lives and seeing the people on the other side of the wall as brothers and sisters in this world, children of a good God, the Son of Man who has nowhere to lay His head.

Since we have been so richly blessed in this country, and since our ancestors were brave enough to jump the wall and make opportunities where there were none (although sadly we also did some major injustices to our Native American brothers and sisters), maybe we can give those at the border a lift up over those fences.

After all, walls are meant to be climbed.

(To get the real facts about immigration, check out this Princeton University research document that reveals the myths and true facts about illegal immigration in America. http://cmd.princeton.edu/files/POM_june2007.pdf ...don't believe everything Fox News tells you!)

Keeping Beauty at Arms Length

2010-07-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

So today I noticed that most people have one arm or leg that is longer than the other. It was all the observing I could do this morning as I waddled behind other working Chicagoans as we mass exited our trains like penguins and headed to our respective office buildings.

My mind usually takes a good few hours after waking up to process anything remotely productive, so I apologize if this realization misses the blogosphere benchmark of intellectual thought.

Upon first recognizing this distinct feature about most of my fellow human beings, my initial reaction, I confess to you, was annoyance. What kind of person has mismatched arms? Please don’t take me for pretentious. A gentlemen at a shoe store recently pointed out to me that my feet are in fact two different sizes altogether. I share in this shortcoming with each of you, and your struggle is my struggle. I digress.

After my initial annoyance, my mind went elsewhere. I began to think about how the average person spends a few years at a time in life trying to rid themselves of some feature that they dislike about their chemical make up, be it their weight, their eyebrows, their receding hairline, or their crooked or corn yellow-stained teeth.

We look at our airbrushed, spray tanned, fake boobed Hollywood utopian kings and queens as reminders that we are flawed, broken, and incomplete specimens of a failed God, or a natural selection that we cannot naturally compete with.

The funny thing about it all is that it is actually they whom all look alike, who come from the same cookie-cutter mold, and whose limbs are so unnaturally and disgustingly perfect that they look as if their creator (or whoever recreated them) had actually very little creativity. Their souls have been simplified to magazine articles, paparazzi videos, and the characters and art they portray on movie screens and I-Pods.

I started to think- maybe we’re the ones that are beautiful. Maybe we with our unique body builds, eye and hair colors, teeth that point in different directions, are the ones with the creative designer.

Maybe our stylist had such an endless depth of beauty and creativity about Him that Hollywood America had no where to go but backwards.

As I concluded this epiphany that took all of about 1 minute to work through in my head, I began counting the unique features in myself and those around me on my walk, things that no one else could claim as a generic feature, but rather a prototype.

I concluded that Hollywood is boring, and that my occasional love handles and bad hair days reflect a God Who never runs out of creative designs and Who doesn’t see beauty as utopia but rather as unlimited possibilities.

The Opportunities in our Backyards

2010-07-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

Let me confess to you that I am not typically prone to being social.

There was this brief time in high school, when I looked like I belonged in a boy band and played sports, where I thought enough of myself to be loud, outgoing, and probably really obnoxious! But all in all, my whole life I've sort of always been inward expressive, the guy who doesn't usually end up being the life of a party or the guy next door who goes around introducing himself to all the neighbors in the area where he's just moved in.

For this very reason, I spent the first year of my time in Chicago behind the closed doors of my house, inside the parameters of my front lawn, and inside the box of 'me'. Little kids annoyed me and the screaming people in the houses next to ours were just more distractions from my much-needed sleep, rather than echoes of real lives or real people with real issues.

It's amazing that when you think you're living in a world created for you, it's quite easy to drowned out the noises of busy lives all around you. It's easy to treat people like distant faces at arms length, people you can politely smile at but whom you owe nothing more to...ever.

Recently, my wife Sarah was the first between the two of us to break out of this shell, to end her hibernation and begin this thing they call 'living'. Mind you that while she is quite drawn to being social and outgoing unlike myself (it's the youth pastor in her ;)), we both have a tough time taking that first step.

But for me, watching her attempt to walk in new territory like a baby deer daring to cross a park path in the first day of spring, it helps me to follow more assuredly, having more confidence in the ability to bring new lives into mine and share worlds that other worlds dare to tell us belong apart, separated by fences in backyards in neighborhoods where no one knows the other people's first names.

Sarah began this new daring feat by befriending some of the neighbor girls next door and several other kids a few houses down. She began this 'experiment' by introducing herself, learning the girls' names, and sharing small moments of exchanges and light-hearted fun. We were even gunned down with squirt guns on several different occasions while attempting to bring in our groceries from our car (these little girls can be ruthless...haha!)

Now fast forward to several months later (aka present day!). This past week Sarah and I set out a big round table in our front yard, set up a bunch of chairs, fired our mini grill up, roasted some hot dogs and burgers, and had community with these girls, some of their friends, one of the girls mothers, and had our own little impromptu neighborhood social event. I cannot tell you how liberating this was for me, how much it really made me realize the importance of this thing our Bible and our Jesus talk so much about, being created to need one another, to be in relationships with each other.

It's a really real thing. Not just a bunch of painted prose in fairy tales or cute Bible verses. This is the stuff of life. Knowing people by their first names. Knowing their likes and dislikes. Knowing where they work and what they do. Knowing what their lives are like and where they hurt. Knowing how to pray for them and actively participate in being there for them. This is good stuff.

My challenge for everyone today is- have impromptu neighborhood cookouts like once a week...right where you live! Who knows who you'll meet, what you'll learn about, and how you'll grow in those precious moments. Who knows what hurts people have that God wants to use you to be a part of fixing. (We learned two of these little girls just lost their dad a few months back, and very few other neighbors knew about this. Heck, the church next door to my house didn't even know!)

The moral of this story is- Doors, fences, and windows are meant to be broken, and they should be!

Pride worth Loving

2010-07-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday, a bunch of us went out to the Pride Parade in downtown Chicago to serve as an alternative voice of love between the Church and the LGBT community, as so often the only Christians at these events have large megaphones, harsh words, and condemnation burning on their tongues. We wanted to be different than that, to show that more than anything, the church is a people of love, of God-fearing Christ-like love.

I’ll be honest with you that this was an eye-opening, character-stretching moment in my life. I come from a very conservative Baptist background (nothing wrong with that at all!... inherently), but I was always made to believe that the gay community was some sort of brood of evil-doers, some disgusting and unclean group of fornicating sinners. Many people where I grew up in and around would even go as far to say that homosexuality was a “special sin”, a “greater sin than others”, and that God wanted nothing to do with these people, nor should the church have any interaction with their community. All the while I had always wondered where these claims came from, what they were based on, where these ideas were found in Scripture, and if anyone back home really even knew someone who is gay, much less understood anything about their culture, their perspectives, or anything that related to the people and faces we were giving mere labels and distant finger-pointing to (while covering our eyes and blinding ourselves from being people who engage rather than enrage).

My perspective of the LGBT community and the church’s role amidst this community started to change when I became friends with several amazing guys at two consecutive places I’ve worked over the past 2 years. These people became my friends, good friends, and the LGBT community was given a face (several faces :)) in my life. I started to ask questions, have dialogue, and engage a community I had never engaged before- a community I had all the answers for but knew nothing about. It was a group of wonderful people I had ignorantly hated, avoided, and condemned before ever talking to and learning from.

Let me stop right now before I continue and say to you all that this blog in no way is meant to be pro or anti gay. If you are awaiting my conclusion on my views of homosexuality, you might as well start reading someone else’s blog. This in itself is one of the major problems creating this gap between the church and the LGBT community. We’re always trying to talk about a stance rather than talking to and listening to people with honest opinions and genuine perspectives. This is what distracts us. People always want to talk about Satan/the devil being associated with lifestyle choices and all that, and yet one of his most successful/proven ways of spreading evil is by getting the good people in the church to wage war against the good people in the LGBT communities, the Muslim communities, the Catholic communities, the poor communities, etc. The more we get distracted, the more love is replaced by judgment, faith is replaced by religion, and whole communities are completed isolated and feel ousted by the church. Shane Claiborne once said that if the homosexual community cannot find a home in the church, then where can they find a home and what have we as the church become?

I went to this parade as an outsider, as a person apologizing on behalf of the church for the way we have hated and judged the gay community. It was to let a community know that we are more than megaphones and hate, that we are a people of unconditional, sacrificial love, and that the Jesus we serve would be hopping up on the floats in the parade, grabbing every man and woman He sees, embracing them, looking them in the eyes and saying- “I love you, and I always will”. I left this parade as a part of a new community, friends with people I would have never talked to in my younger days and immature stages of faith, and full of the love Jesus had everywhere He walked on this earth and everywhere He still shows up, begging the church to simply and genuinely- love!!!

Throughout the entire parade Sunday, people on floats and those walking in the parade would pass our area, see our t-shirts and signs that said “I’m sorry” and why we were sorry, and being completely amazed and happy to see Christians showing love rather than judgment, talking about unity rather than hellfire. One of the most amazing moments came when a particular float went by and this young man looked over at our spot in the crowd and saw us standing there with our t-shirts and signs of love and reconciliation. At first, he assumed we were the typical Christian megaphone protestors, there to show our disgust and words of judgment on their community. But as the float turned the corner, his eyes stayed glued to the signs and shirts. All at once, I saw the imaginary light bulb go off in his head as he realized what we were doing there and what we were saying and representing. He immediately jumped up, hopped off of his float and ran back to us, diving into our arms and, with tears held back, simply said over and over again “Thank you”. I will never forget that moment, being hugged by someone I was told to distance myself from, sharing God-like love with people while the stereotypes of religion and world attempted to keep us apart saying that we do not belong together. I remembered at that moment the words of Billy Graham- “It is God’s job to judge, the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, and our job to love”. I love my job. I get to love, to love like Jesus.

I will always be a different kind of Christian having been a part of this parade, having friends from a walk of life I am still processing, still digesting, still working out in my own faith journey. Above all, I will always remember that there are some things we can always debate, some issues people in the church and world alike will take opposing views on, but that in the end there is never a debate around love. Love is never called into question, and love can never be wrong.

As our good friend and author Andrew Marin says (and is the title of his amazing book), love is an orientation.

“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him”. – 1 John 4:16

“We love God because He first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen”. – 1 John 4:19-20

You can see photos from the parade at http://www.loveisanorientation.com/ or http://www.maladjustedmedia.com/ (ours start at like around photo #160).

How It Feels

2010-04-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

So I don’t know how many of you have been hearing about this radical group of Christian extremists called the Hutari, but they’ve been all over the news this past week for allegedly planning and masterminding a plan to “wage war” on the police and our local and federal governments.

They go around misquoting scripture and stretching out verse after verse to justify the radical and violent behavior they are trying to spew all in the name of Jesus.

Meanwhile, all of us who fall into the margins of a faith continually misrepresented in the media sit by helpless screaming to a brick wall “Wait!! We’re a people of love! We’re a people trying to stop violence and bring hope to the world. Jesus is a lover, not a fighter!” But nevertheless, the media pays attention to the extremists, and the extremists yet again have added more skepticism to the Christian faith.

In the midst of all this news coverage I’ve seen and the frustrations I’ve felt for the misrepresentation of Christianity, I stopped mid-whine and realized- This must be how the Muslims feel!

American media has done such a stellar job of stirring up feelings of animosity and fear towards the Islamic faith that we see them all as extremists who hide behind a religion of hate-mongering and mindless violence. But just like we Christians fear stereotypes, these accusations are farfetched and brainless.

I was reading a news article recently (which I kept in a drawer and now can’t find) that I wanted to share with you all (maybe another time). But, I did find a website of unknown facts about Islam that may surprise a lot of you. These are just a few that we taken from http://www.43things.com/ :

- The Islamic concept of God is that He is loving, merciful, and compassionate. But Islam also teaches that He is just and swift in punishment, much like a father is to his child. Nevertheless, Allah once said to Muhammad “My Mercy prevails over my wrath.” (Hadith Qudsi)

- Muslims do not believe in the concept of “vicarious atonement” but rather believe in the law of personal responsibility. Islam teaches that each person is responsible for his or her own actions. On the Day of Judgment Muslims believe that every person will have to answer to God for their every word, thought, and deed. Consequently, a practicing Muslim is always striving to be righteous.

- Terrorism, unjustified violence, and killing innocent people are not allowed in Islam. Islam is a religion of peace. The extreme actions of those who claim to be Muslim may be a result of their ignorance or uncontrolled anger.

- “Islam” literally means “peace through the submission to God”.

- “Allah” is an Arabic word that literally means “God”. Muslims also believe that “Allah” is the personal name of God.

- There are six articles of faith in Islam. These are the basic beliefs that one must have in order to be considered a true Muslim. They are belief in: A) the One and only God B) all the prophets of God C) the original books revealed to Moses, David, Jesus, and Muhammad D) the angels E) the Day of Judgment and the Hereafter F) pre-ordainment.

There are so many respectable and peaceful things about Islam that nobody ever hears about, talks about, or refers to in discussions of religion, and it’s a shame. Our Muslim brothers and sisters have so much amazing insight into Who God is, and the dialogue we could have with them as Christians could be ground-breaking, maybe even world changing.

So for those people out there who see Christians and Muslims as radical polarizing crazies, dig deeper. For every Muslim out there who has ever been judged wrongfully by a Christian, I now understand just a little of your daily battle. And to every Christian out there frustrated by the extremists who hinder our cause, welcome to the struggle.

The Ghosts of a Christmas Yet to Come

2010-02-27T07:26:00.000-08:00

I was walking home from the train station one night recently after work, in one of those "sick of my day job/need to start doing what I love" sort of moods, and I started thinking about what it would be like to see into my own future.

Somehow it would be a relief to know for sure where I would end up, what I would end up doing with my life in the context of entirety, and if I would be happy at the end of it all looking back. I sort of felt like Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, grumbling and mumbling and hoping some ghost might appear to me at midnight and answer all of my deepest pondered questions.

Then I started wondering what good all that knowing would actually do for me. If I know where every step I take would lead me before the step is even taken, would I walk the same direction? Would ultimately knowing my own future cause me to sabatoge it? Would I be too cynical? After a while, knowing the future stopped sounding like a relief and started sounding like a buzz kill.

The thing about it is- faith exists because of the unknown. Hope is the optimism God instills inside of us to make us stronger, even through the tough times and especially when we can't possibly see a way out of the quicksand in our lives.

I can't tell you how sitting in a cubicle at a job I hate, dreaming about being on a stage or in a studio doing music full-time, is going to bridge together. I can tell you it sustains my wonder, sustains my drive, and continually challenges me to take risks and find opportunities to bridge the present gap. I can't tell you how sitting at my computer right now, writing to the 11 people who currently follow this blog, is going to open doors for me to write a #1 best selling book on faith that will be read by millions of people around the world. But I will tell you that I'll keep writing these blogs until my fingers fall off, trusting God that there is hope it can happen.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight."

If God had said "Just ask me whatever you want to know and I'll just go ahead and show everything to you ahead of time", would we really be better for it? It is the very essence of believing in what we cannot see that gives our lives purpose, that gives us hope.

One of the verses I cling to every time I morph into Ebenezer Scrooge is found in Luke 12:27-31- "Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well."

Today, may each of be grateful for the conditions of our now so that when our then comes, we will be more than ready. Amen!

When Judas Joined the "Dark Side"

2010-02-05T06:09:00.000-08:00

I am a big fan of the Star Wars films. I have been since I was a little boy. I probably wouldn’t classify as a true fanatic, seeing as I don’t know every name of every creature and planet both in and out of the film’s mythical history. I’ve also never been to a convention, so maybe I’m just a wannabe fanatic. A poser, if you will. But there is something about the overall story of Star Wars that to this day I find compelling, captivating, and maybe even somewhat relevant to the Christian faith.

What most people don’t realize is that the Star Wars saga is somewhat of a modern day Shakespearian tragedy, at least from my point of view. I guess it is because I have always been drawn to the character of Anakin Skywalker, who (for those of you who don’t know) eventually becomes the infamous Darth Vader. This story of a boy who is gifted beyond reason, trusted with everything, and eventually betrays all expectations and joins the “Dark Side” is strangely and hauntingly parallel to both a part of the historical Gospels and the modern church as it can be seen in our modern day.

Recently, I was listening to a pastor speak on the life of Judas and his betrayal of Jesus Christ that ultimately led to His crucifixion. The pastor eloquently spoke about the nature of Judas’ betrayal, the clever façade he wore during the time he traveled and ministered with Jesus, and the revealing of his true nature that was fully understood in the handing over of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Every time I hear sermons or insights on the person of Judas Iscariot, it seems like he is painted as a liar, a traitor, and an inherently evil human being who faked his way alongside the life of Jesus in order to cleverly plot and implement a betrayal that would lead Jesus to His death. Now the Bible at places does defend this notion, but its ambiguity leaves the Judas bashers with far too much liberty to claim that his entire time of discipleship was a farce. My perspective is bias as well, mind you, but I would like to present an alternative theory about our friend Judas. Take from it what you will.

Call me a skeptic, but the idea that Judas could pull off a scam this big around men who knew everything about each other by the time of Judas’ betrayal of Christ (some of which were tax collectors and could spot a double-agent from miles away) strikes me as a little farfetched, a little naïve, a somewhat generous giving of credit to Judas, and a near-sighted understanding of Jesus and his choosing of His apostles.

We have to really dig deeper into what it meant to be an “apostle”, as well as what Judas’ role in the apolistic journey truly was.

Along with all the respect and responsibilities of being an apostle of Jesus, Judas is historically known as the treasurer of the group. This tell us that Judas was chosen for his role, at least in part, because of his abilities and skills in some form of financing, budgeting, and care-taking of the provisions Jesus and His followers lived and survived on throughout their 3-plus year journey. Therefore, he must have been responsible, very intelligent, and very trustworthy.

As we understand and analyze this historical background and this specific role assigned to Judas, it makes a lot more sense why Satan would find and attack Judas in an area of his life he was highly committed to, extremely passionate for, and maybe even a little prideful about.

Isn’t that how Satan works so often? When we find strength and passion for something, when we commit our lives to being good at something, Satan is always there to highlight our shortcomings, offer distractions, and pull us away from what we originally set out to accomplish for God.

I see Judas as a good person with good intentions, but who fell flat on his face by letting Satan’s short-term distractions pull him away from Jesus’ long-term plans for his life.

Judas, before his betrayal, must have been a true follower of Christ also because of his endurance and commitment to the cause of Christ. John 6:60-71 is a passage of the Gospel in which Jesus clarifies the cost of following Him and speaks of the difficulty of His teachings and His mission. It says in verse 66 of the chapter that many of His followers turned away and stopped following Him, but that a handful remained. This would have included Judas Iscariot.

Other passages in Scripture go on to depict how trying, tough, and almost unbearable following Jesus truly was for both the physical and spiritual aspects of the journey. People began leaving Jesus, going back home, and tiring from the ongoing adventure. However, still all twelve of His apostles, including Judas, kept the faith and pressed on with their Rabbi.

Judas, therefore, must have been committed enough to the cause to carry on. So he was obviously strong, obviously faithful, and obviously committed to Jesus as a friend (or revolutionary leader as he might have seen Jesus).

So what went wrong? When and how did Judas lose his faith? When did he, like Anakin Skywalker, join the “dark side” of the force? Well, the story goes much deeper.

Historical studies and research on Judas Iscariot point us to an understanding that Judas believed Jesus to be the leader of what he considered an earthly revolution. Some historians claim that Judas believed and followed Jesus, at least in part, because he believed Jesus had come to save His people from this world. Jesus, to Judas, was a man who spoke against government, and who would eventually lead His followers in an earthly uprising and overthrow the Roman government.

While Jesus many times did challenge the establishment of that society, His revolution was a spiritual one. Jesus has come to save this world from the next life, a life destined for destruction, hell, and eternal separation from God.

Judas never fully grasped this, and as time went on, he began to lose faith in the plans that Jesus had for this broken world.

So now, let’s step back and take a look at Judas’ struggle. He wasn’t inherently evil, and least I don’t think so. He hadn’t followed Jesus as a spy for the devil. Instead, Judas let his plans for Jesus and his over commitment to a love of money cause him to lose sight of the bigger picture, ultimately taking matters into his own hands. As his faith in Jesus dwindled, as he became more and more selfish and short-sighted, he fell to the quick and easy path- take the money and run!

Judas was playing a spiritual game of “Deal or No Deal”, and he was taking the wrong deal at the wrong time. It would lead to the betrayal and execution of the person he cared for and loved most in this world- his Rabbi, his teacher, his Savior…his friend Jesus Christ. Why else would Judas have hung himself? He was so distraught, so messed up, and so lost and hurt by stabbing his friend in the back. Not only that, he was directly associated to the execution of the Savior of this world. He, like many of us, couldn’t handle that guilt, and took his life as self-punishment rather than seeking the unending and unmatched forgiveness of God.

Think about Anakin Skywalker for a second. How parallel is this Star Wars character to the person of Judas? He was considered to be one of the greatest Jedi Knights ever to exist. While hundreds had fallen during the Clone Wars, Anakin and a handful of others remained. Anakin was strong, determined, and faithful to his teachers. However, Anakin wanted power, and with that power he wanted a revolution. He was willing to sacrifice a few for the sake of many down a quick and easy path, and we all know how it ended. Anakin fell to his obsession for power and prestige, and became Darth Vader and was ultimately defeated.

George Lucas actually got something right (I say this because the man is awful with plot development and writing quality scripts…Indiana Jones 4…need I say more?). In the exact same way, Judas was selected to be one of the few to spread the Gospel. While hundreds of other followers fell by the wayside, Judas and the other apostles remained strong. When Judas realized that Jesus would not fulfill his selfish plans, he decided to sacrifice Him for the sake of the cause. He let his passion for money become an obsession, and his obsession caused him to be overcome with shame and guilt. In the end, he took his own life with the noose. Talk about cruel irony!

How often do we, the church, do exactly what Judas did? How often do we get so wrapped up in “doing” church rather than “being” the church that we lose sight of what we originally set out to do in the first place? How many times have we gotten impatient with God when His plans weren’t our plans? How frequently have we taken the easy route that left us worse off than we were at the start? How often have we betrayed the One Who loves and cares for us most?

There are hundreds of Judases in the modern church, and we’ve all been one at some point. The two questions we must ask ourselves are:

Are we letting our God-given talents, skills, and abilities distract us from God using those gifts to bless others and bring honor and glory to His name?

When we fall short and betray God’s intentions, do we seek His loving forgiveness or do we hate ourselves and feel useless and irrelevant to God’s bigger story that He’s writing for us?

May each of us, rather than clinging to the noose, cling to the loving arms of Jesus Who always forgives us and who never leaves us, even when we fail…even when we are like Judas. That is when it stops being about us, and allows His purpose to take the wheel.

Preaching to the choir

2010-01-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-29T07:35:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-19T19:39:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-01-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-10T09:56:00.001-08:00

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!

God is always teaching me...

2009-11-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

Recently I took a train out to St Louis to meet up with my wife and her family for a graduation, and while on the train I had the privilege of sitting next to this really cool guy named Bian. He was a botanist from Asia who worked and traveled the country and abroad on behalf of the Botanical Gardens.

We talked the entire 6 hour ride out to St Louis, about everything and anything from music, to politics, to the environment, to world travel and food. He even showed me a few hundred pictures from his travels all across the world. He actually stood at the base of Mt. Everest. Way cool! Anyways, about 4 hours into the train ride, we got onto the topic of religion. We both shared our faith to each other, and he shared with me he was a Zen Buddhist, but that he had a lot of respect for other faith perspectives and saw universal truths in each of them.

We began talking about Christianity and I began to share my faith with him and my take on faith's importance in the world. I shared with him my personal journey, my relationship with Christ, but also spent much time talking about my frustrations with modern day American Christianity as well as my negative experiences growing up in the church. Somehow we eventually got onto the topic of homosexuality.

I expressed with him my frustrations with how the church as a whole had really shunned the homosexual community, and that these sad representations of the church in fact were not a true expression of Jesus' love. I shared with him that we need to do more to build relationships with them, talk with this community, that we need to LISTEN to them and find commonality and ways to share our faith in a way that uplifts rather than condemns, and that through our loving relationship, we can then discuss more personal matters like sexual orientation choices. I was obviously trying to be firm but diplomatic.

All of the sudden, I noticed tears welling up in his eyes. He then responded to my words by first saying he had never known that Christians had such love about them, and that he had always seen Christianity as sort of a judgmental and hateful religion. He then proceeded to tell me that he was in fact gay. Wow! It blew me away. Here I was talking about my faith to this guy I had come to really enjoy in our 4 hours of talking, and God gave me the exact words to say in the exact way to have an impact on some random guy who's life story I was redeeming through my personal faith in Christ.

Now I have no clue if that guy made any life changing decisions that day or the days that followed, but I planted a seed through love, and now that's the only way I want to do it the rest of my life.

I write this because right now I have a great love and desire to engage the homosexual community, and I have recently had the privilege to make several genuine friendships with members of that community, and it has been eye-opening and has challenged me in the way I live out my faith around these good friends as well as everyone else I encounter in my life.

It is amazing that when you engage communities in which Christians are notoriously known to keep at arms length and to shun from the outside, you begin to see issues with people's names and livelihoods attached to them. It is no longer about issues that are right and wrong, but it becomes flesh and blood people that identify with those issues, and it becomes more about loving them and showing them what Christ-like love is all about.

I believe that God takes care of the rest!

eChurch...I wonder if Jesus "tweets"

2009-11-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

This morning I was reading one of those free Chicago newspapers on my train ride into work, and I stumbled across a feature article on the newest internet sensation- eChurch. “eChurch,” you may be thinking to yourself, “what’s e Church? That sounds so cool.”

The idea is that you can basically go to church from the comfort of your own home without ever having to change out of your pj’s. You can watch an internet pastor give you a sermon from his internet studio right to you in your own living room or home office. They even have a separate guy who, before the actual sermon, leads you in a slew of worship songs like some sort of Sunday morning sing-along. I guess you follow the bouncing cross or something…I don’t know. (I picture some guy sitting around in his boxers eating a bowl of cereal, corn flakes dripping from his chin, while he’s singing “How Great is our God” with a mouthful of food desperately trying to not fly out of his tone-deaf mouth) They even have people take communion by themselves from home with their own bread and grape juice. (What???! The word is “communion”, which is basically a fancy word for a “spiritual union”, like when people come together to remember something important.) Technology is making us more and more isolated. We as Christians, but also as the human race, have become more selfish than we have ever been any other time in human history. This goes beyond the church or specific culture or society, but the fact that the church is among the groups of people buying into this innovative brand of “all about me” is something to be genuinely concerned about.

My point is- this disturbingly and overwhelmingly technological age has now become a centerpiece for the modern church as a whole. No longer is the church a body of believers who gather together to share in the joy of love and faith. No longer does it seem that we gather as members of a congregation, or as human beings in general anymore, to be social beings who were created and designed to need one another, to help one another, to love one another, and to help and encourage one another. It seems to be all about ourselves, and all about making our own self-actualization as easy and as effortless as possible. We're closing ourselves off from the world God called us to cultivate, to change.

We’re like those fat slobs in the movie “Wall-E” who ride around on hovercrafts and eat and watch TV without ever having to lift a leg to do anything meaningful with our lives. Now we don’t even have to make an effort for God, or other people for that matter.

Whether it’s sitting in a movie theatre seat in a mega-church watching some guy we don’t know preach to us from some church building we’ve never been in while we sit next to someone we’ve never introduced ourself to or been introduced to likewise, or whether we’re crammed in alongside hundreds of other people huddled together is some sort of religious mosh pit while a “worship” band entertains us with “Christian” songs and cool light shows, we’re quite frankly, simply, and genuinely….missing it.

It amazes me that they didn’t even have church buildings in the early days of Christianity. They had rooms in people’s houses where people in a town or village would gather together for community, for fellowship. They came together to worship and experience God together. It was as selfless and genuine as it could have ever been. Now we’re back to no buildings, but it's like we’ve lost the community too. It’s just us, alone, in front of our computers "You Tube’ing for Jesus."

There was a day when back when the earth was first formed when God said to Himself- “it is not good that man should be alone”. Yet here we are, alone in our rooms being fed "church" by someone we’ve never met offering us what is basically a pornography-like and cheaply whorish version of the church body that I feel God originally intended.

If we keep technologiphying every opportunity to replace genuine human interaction and fellowship, and most importantly the raw power of experiencing a living and breathing God, we’ll have to add Jesus on Facebook just to network our way out of self-reliance and the self-made reality of being completely and utterly alone. Is it any wonder the world looks at Christians like used car salesman and head for the woods? It's all about keeping up with the times to "sell Jesus". But Jesus could not be bought or sold, and in fact ransomed Himself for all of us. I don't claim to be the model person for doing this all right, but if love and community are not central to what we as Christians in a pluralistic society do on a daily basis, we will close ourselves off from a world that needs genuine faith now more than ever.

So with every monitor bowed and every web browser closed, let’s try this again.