Soma

As this election cycle has continued, I have (admittedly) been persuaded to look again at my convicitons and at which candidates most closely represent my greatest concerns for our country.  As I posted last week, we should absolutely vote as though we were not voting, but we still ought to vote nonetheless (and be informed in doing so).

The charge of “single issue voting” has stung me particularly hard, as I have often times in the past identified with most Evangelical Christians in my desire to see the fight for the lives of the unborn as a fundamental issue that must be shared with someone I am willing to vote for.  The question has been raised, however, “What if that person disagrees with your economic philosophy, view of war (and just war), understanding of other human rights, etc.?”  So, I have begun to wonder if (while never relinquishing it’s importance to my heart) I ought to be a little less rigid in using a candidate’s views on abortion as a litmus test.

Fortunately, there are people in this world much smarter than me, who have thought about these issues far more than I have, and who can help to remind me of why an issue like abortion is so important to me in the first place.  Al Mohler is one of those men (to say he is much smarter than me is a gross understatement).  He recently wrote a blog asking the question, “Is the Abortion Argument Changing?” In doing so, he reminded me that we are not simply fighting a battle to preserve a culture that reflects our Christian beliefs (which is not one of my top priorities), but we are fighting against the oppression and destruction of people created in the image of God who are too small and helpless to have voices of their own.  Here is a powerful section from the article:

I can understand the desire to reset the equation, to transcend the tired divisions.  I can even understand the desire to move on, to go on to other issues of great and grave concern.  I can sense excitement about a candidate who represents generational hope, and whose election could do so much to heal racial lines of division.

But I just cannot get past one crucial, irreducible, and central issue — the moral status of those unborn lives.  They are not mine to negotiate.  If abortion were a matter of concern for anything less than this, I would gladly negotiate.  But abortion is a matter of life and death, and how can we negotiate with death?  What moral sense does it make to settle for death as “safe, legal, and rare?”  How safe? How rare?

Our considerations of these questions will reveal what we really think of those millions of unborn lives.  Do we consider the battle for their lives permanently lost?

Those fighting for the abolition of slavery pressed on against obstacles and set backs worse than these because, after all, these were human lives they were defending.  What if they had listened to those who, after Dred Scott and the Missouri Compromise, said that the battle was “permanently” lost?  What if they had been intimidated by critics accusing them of “single-issue” voting?

Living where we live, and being in the industry that a number of you are in, I found this post by Justin Taylor quite interesting.

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on Christians in the entertainment industry.  It’s easy for all of us to rip on Christian music, Christian movies, and Christian t-shirts.  But, “just do it better” doesn’t seem to quite be the appropriate resonse.  People don’t set out to make crappy music or movies (or t-shirts for that matter), but somehow you can tell the difference between secular art and “Christian” art without even hearing any of the content.  Many of you are artists…what do you think?

As I begin preparing for this weekend’s sermon as we celebrate our 3 year anniversary as a church, I’ve begun to reflect on the past three years and all that God has done and brought us through.  I have developed a “line” that I used to use when people would ask what it was like to plant and pastor a church.  I’d say, “It has been the most incredibly joyful and incredibly painful experience of my life.”  It is joyful because it involved people who I love.  And it is painful because it involves people who I love.  I’m reminded again that love does not come without vulnerability, and that life leading the church (life in the church) has the potential for incredible pain because it involves incredible love.

This morning I stumbled across a quote by C.S. Lewis that states this reality incredibly, so I figured I’d share it (It also speaks to the folly of idolatry we talked about on Sunday):

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your ehart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hoppies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the rist of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside heaven where you will be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

With the overwhelming mix of energy, excitement, fear, hope, and disilusionment that all seem to be present in the current presidential campaign, it’s easy for us, as Chrisitians, to loose sight of the eternal reality.  Over the past few decades, Christians have put their hope for our country in their own ability to organize and legislate morality.  I don’t think that Christians voting as a block is necesarilly bad, but I do think that we have bought into the system of this world a bit and have, at times, put our hope in something that it has no business being in.

On his blog, Piper explains how we ought to view voting better than anyone I’ve heard to date.  His thesis is that we ought to vote as though we were not voting.  That may seem a little weird, but you really should read the article to hear what he has to say.  In his final point (from 1 Corinthians 7:29-31), Piper discusses how we are to deal with the world as though we have no dealings with it.  This directly applies to how we vote.  This point should give you an idea for what he’s talking about.  Enjoy!

Christians should deal with the world. This world is here to be used. Dealt with. There is no avoiding it. Not to deal with it is to deal with it that way. Not to weed your garden is to cultivate a weedy garden. Not to wear a coat in Minnesota is to freeze—to deal with the cold that way. Not to stop when the light is red is to spend your money on fines or hospital bills and deal with the world that way. We must deal with the world.

But as we deal with it, we don’t give it our fullest attention. We don’t ascribe to the world the greatest status. There are unseen things that are vastly more precious than the world. We use the world without offering it our whole soul. We may work with all our might when dealing with the world, but the full passions of our heart will be attached to something higher—Godward purposes. We use the world, but not as an end in itself. It is a means. We deal with the world in order to make much of Christ.

So it is with voting. We deal with the system. We deal with the news. We deal with the candidates. We deal with the issues. But we deal with it all as if not dealing with it. It does not have our fullest attention. It is not the great thing in our lives. Christ is. And Christ will be ruling over his people with perfect supremacy no matter who is elected and no matter what government stands or falls. So we vote as though not voting.

emphasis added

Sunday night we began another round of Membership Classes at Shoreline.  The night was pretty exciting and overwhelming as 25+ people packed into our little apartment (some sitting on the patio, some sitting on the ground, some standing).  However, the highlight for me wasn’t the energy produced by breaking the firecode (once again), but it was the opportunity to look at the depth and the impact of the gospel again, and to stop and meditate on it.

We’ve taught the material in our memberhsip notes at least 5 or 6 times now, and Lara could probably recite it from memory she’s heard it so much.  In fact, every time I prepare to teach it again, I go in with a “ho-hum-here-we-go-again” attitude, but my heart is quickly captivated as I look at the truth of the gospel with fresh eyes again.  EVERY TIME we go through this stuff, I am amazed again at the glory of the gospel, and the glory of our God.  I walked away from our night together excited by the people who were there, but overwhelmed by the truth and extent of the gospel.  I thought I’d quote a couple of paragraphs here (especially for those of you who have heard it before) to remind you of the incredible nature of what we believe.

A lot of Christians think that the Gospel is something you need to become a believer, but when you’ve been a Christian for a while you move on to “deeper” things.  But the Bible tells us that the gospel is not just the A-B-C’s – it’s the A to Z of Christianity. The gospel is not just the minimum entrance requirement for Heaven, but the way we thrive as children of God.  And the fact of the matter is that none of us will ever get past our need for the Gospel, and none of us will ever understand or appreciate it enough to “move on.” It’s incredibly important to understand that we are not only saved by the gospel and then changed by obedience.  The gospel is the way we grow (Gal. 3:1-3) and bear fruit (Col. 1:6) so that we can give glory to God with our whole lives.

When talking about how the gospel changes the motivation and driving force of our church, this is the impact of that all-encompasing gospel:

Many churches bring people together for a common goal.  It’s a lot like a business, where there is one vision of success and people who desire that success work to achieve it.  Because of the Gospel, Shoreline exists as a church where Christians gather not to work for a common goal, but because we all share a common experience—the experience of being a sinner who was found by God and saved completely by grace.  Because of the Gospel and the new creations it has made us, we are motivated not by some kind of physical goal but by a radical love for Christ.  Without the Gospel, our desire to impact the world would be to prove to God that we were worth His love.  But in light of the Gospel, our impact on the world is simply a byproduct of the way we live out our worship of Christ.

Take some time to meditate on the truth of the gospel today.  No matter how many times you’ve heard it, I guarantee you need it.

Well, it’s Friday and my brain is just about fried.  It’s been a week of a lot of thinking and processing, reading and planning…but very little blogging.  For that, I appologize.

With the busyness of life, we all tend to not get everything done we hope to.  We end days with things still hanging over our heads.  We lay in bed desperately trying to shut our minds off, and then we wake up in the morning with a to-do list the size of the Los Angeles Dodger’s payroll after they resign Manny running through our heads before we take our first sip of morning coffee.  Mornings are a great measure for how we are dealing with life.  They’re a great measure of what our true priorities are.  If we wake up captivated by who God is and what He’s called us to, our day will probably be filled with realizations of His presence.  If we wake up captivated by our to-do list or by a project at work or school, it may be 6:00pm before we as much as acknowledge God’s presence.  This is why one of my favorite quotes from George Mueller is hanging on a bulletin board right next to my desk.  It haunts me.  When I wake up early and want to get right to work because of all the pressing responsibilities of the day, it sits there directly to my left like an angel on my shoulder shaking his head with disapointment.  And by haunting me, it helps me to refocus on truth.

I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my sould happy in the Lord.  The firs thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my sould into a happy state, and how my inner man may be nourished…I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and meditation on it.

I hope it haunts you too.

This morning as I purused the my RSS reader, Justin Taylor caught my eye twice.

The first was quite humorous.  He wrote a post entitled Don’t Waste Your Life on Your iPhone.  Immediately convicted, I thought to myself, “I really should read that post and think about what he has to say.”  So, I clicked on the link, only to find out that he was simply announcing the fact that John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life is now available to read on the iPhone.  Lesson learned: I’ve got issues and Lara’s snide comments that I’m an “iPhone junky” are starting to pay off.

The second was much more serious.  As I’ve observed this election cycle, and all the hype that has led up to it, I have repeatedly said that I have had a hard time finding a difference between McCain and Obama that is significant enough to absolutely convince me.  When you look at their policies, and think about the way they would govern, the differences are much smaller than any of us would like to believe.  However, Taylor took me to school this morning by pointing out a significant difference that we all ought to pay real attention to.  I have heard a number of false descriptions tagged to Obama, and most of the time I just ignore them.  Some rediculous people say he’s a Muslim, others (who are even more ignorant) worry about him being the anti-Christ (they wondered the same thing about Raegan).

But, until this morning I had never read anything substantiating the charge that Obama is “the most extreme pro-abortion candidate in American history.”  That is the charge that Robert P. George brings against him, which Taylor does an excellent job summarizing this morning on his blog.  It is incredibly important that, as Christians, we are informed voters…and as those who are called to fight for the rights of the helpless, it is also important that you READ TAYLOR’S SUMMARY.

There are obviously a vast number of issues that make up the decision in a presidential election.  We cannot oversimplify our decision by voting for or against a candidate solely on the basis of one issue.  However, we ought to be informed regarding the issues that matter the most to us as members of the body of Christ.  And after being informed we are each entrusted with the responsibility to make our own decision, and vote as we each deem best before our Savior.  That is the beauty of living in a democracy!  So, be informed…and vote.

As we begin our series on Everyday Faith at Shoreline, we begin to take a serious look at the question of how much the reality of Jesus’ gift of salvation and sanctification truly impacts every moment of our days.  The guys over at Desiring God just posted a video that may help to spur on your thinking in this vein.  It probably won’t directly relate, but if you take the time to reflect on the mundane moments of your own life, I think it has some great insight to provide.  Take five minutes and check it out.

As I stood on the bus this morning and the hordes of high-schoolers poured into and out of the seats, I had a realization that put a smile on my face: my life’s changing.  I realized that in the past month, there have been a number of ways that the knowledge I have gained (whether directly from the Word of God, or in the context of my pre-existing understanding of the Word of God) has changed my life.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article about kidney transplants that challenged the way I thought about loving my neighbor as myself.  Now, I have an appointment early next month to do a bunch of tests and see if I can be a kidney donor.  A week or so before that (I can’t even remember how!) I stumbled across a post on a blog (a blog for women, mind you,…seriously I can’t remember how) that talked about the discipline of getting up early and preparing for the day by spending (un-rushed!) time with the Lord.  I was convicted about how my mornings had become rushed and my spiritual preparation limited, and within a week both Lara and I were getting up an hour to an hour and a half earlier than we had before (we are also going to bed earlier and not wasting as much time at night).

In addition, after being convicted by the truth regarding the tongue in James, I have consistently been less mocking, joking, and un-eddifying in the way I speak.  This has caused me to talk less, and even be a little less funny (as if that was possible!), but it has been a necessary step towards obedience.  This past week, I realized that it’s cheaper for me to ride the bus to the places I need to go than to drive and that I can meet far more non-believers that way than I can alone in my car (where I’m annoyed by them) so I’m trying that out as well (it’s still in the experimental stage).

I could continue on, but I think you get the point.  My goal in sharing these things with you is not to demonstrate how great I am (the fact that these areas needed to change is demonstration enough that I am still a desperate sinner), but to demonstrate the reality that our lives should always be changing.

Too much of the time we hear truth or gain knowledge and it doesn’t change us at all.  We like what we hear, and may even be “moved” by it, but it never changes our day to day lives.  We just put it in our “knowledge” bank and go on our mery way.  James also has something to say about that:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

So, what about you?  Have you learned something this week?  Have you read the Word of God?  Have you heard a sermon?  If so, how have you changed?  What is different about your life after hearing what you heard?  Is anything?

I plan to learn something tomorrow when I open my Bible.  As a result, I plan to change tomorrow.  I plan to become more like Christ tomorrow.  Because, if I learn something and nothing about the way I live changes it means I’ve forgotten who I am.

So, after reading this post what is going to change about your life?  Is anything?

As the body of Christ, God has called us to live in deep, meaningful relationship with each other.  Some people call this “family,” some call this “community,” many (very simply) call it “church.”  Whatever name you tag it with, the truth is that as humans we were created (and as Christians we were re-created) to live in relationship with others.  Isolation, individualism, and surface-level relationships are not simpmly undesirable for the Christian, they are sin.

Few people would disagree with me, here.  Although, the reality is that our actions and the way we live our lives don’t always line up with our convictions and the way we view our lives.  As I sat in my living room with a group of friends the other night, and discussed the hindrances in our culture to the real and true community that Christ desires us to have, Chrissie mentioned the “Facebook Culture” as something that hinders us from true community.  I had never thought of it like this, but she’s absolutely right!

Right now, I know that Mark Glesne is having trouble with his healthcare, Brian Kincaid has someone’s cell phone because they left it at his house, and Denise James is pregnant.  “What’s wrong with that?” you ask.  I haven’t spoken to any of these people in years!  I know what’s going on in their life, so it feels like we have some sort of relationship…but we actually have no relationship at all!

In addition, I know that Phil is tired, Meredith and Karina are having lunch on Friday, and Amy has a new job.  “What’s wrong with that?” you ask?  I have spoken to these people lately, in fact they’re all my friends.  However, I haven’t talked individually with any of them about these facts…yet I know them.  I have a relationship with these people, but it feels more involved and intimate than it is.  I know things about them, but we haven’t really talked since those things happened.  It’s weird.

The first few years Lara and I were married we worked together.  We not only worked at the same church, but we both worked in the same department.  We sat in staff meetings together, we saw each other in the halls repeatedly, we knew what each others day consisted of.  Most of the time, the question “how was your day?” was unnecesarry because we both already knew.  As a result, when we would get home after work, we didn’t really feel any need to spend time together because we felt like we were all “caught up.”  Our surface level time together and knowledge of fact about each others activities gave us a false sense of intimacy.  But the truth was, we hadn’t spent any quality time together at all!

I think that our “Facebook Culture” is kind of like that.  Because of the tools at our disposal, we develop a false sense of itimacy with each other that doesn’t really deepen our relationships at all (and is defeinitely not the kind of relationship God desires for His church).

So, next time you see a status update and learn something you didn’t know about a friend that you talk to regularly, don’t simply be thankful for the information, but take it as a cue that maybe you should hang out more, or give them a call…and maybe we can use the technology at our disposal as tools to build true community and real relationships, and reject the temptation of false intimacy.