Drunken Mystic

This is a PS only because they are my personal pet peeves, not any absolute measures of anything.

I won’t mention the many times I’ve seen a “special” music at an assembly and had to cringe my way through loving them enough and keep muttering the words “joyful noise” in my head a few times. People have probably done it with me up there.

But what I will talk about is how annoyed I am that Christian churches have chosen the two most annoying forms of entertainment to use on a regular basis.

I’m talking here of handbells and mimes.

Sometimes when I walk into a building and see the rows of handbells up front, I figure that’s when I’ll go to the bathroom. The only redeeming quality to the handbell group is the one kid who only has like one or two spots in the whole fifteen minute arrangement and is either intently waiting for his millisecond of fame or completely oblivious and the girl next to him (its always a girl) has to poke him or yell at him and his eyes get big and he enthusiastically does his thing.

The whole mime thing gets me, too. Most people want to shoot mimes or just ignore them on the street, but somehow when they get on the stage and “act out” an overplayed Christian song its quite alright.

It might be funny to have the mimes actually act out the song while playing the handbells, thereby combining the two and doubling our pleasure. That might take talent …

Free money.

Peace.

So this one won out this week … some interesting ones coming up, but God has been putting this one on my heart even more recently.

As I read the Bible, I find no instance of Christian entertainment. Let me be clear about what I mean. Entertainment is the participation in some sort of activity for the express purpose of enjoyment alone.

So much of our modern American Christian subculture is predicated upon entertainment. Do you like football? We have a cell group that meets every Sunday after church during the season to watch the game of the week. Do you like rock music? Here’s a list of Christian bands you will enjoy. Do you like to scrapbook? We get together every Saturday morning. Make sure your husband can babysit!

Please come to our church this week, we are having a concert featuring (insert Christian entertainer here) or a special Christmas cantata that we have worked so hard on or the Easter program or “our church has the best Passion play in the whole state — we use real fake blood!” or hundreds of other kids programs or teen events with movies and pizza to draw people in to our building so they might get more involved if we just show them how cool we can be.

We have Christian suspense novels, romance novels, action novels, self-help books, diet plans, comic books (although they don’t seem to take off as well …), country music, punk music, rap music, metal music, pop music, boy bands, girl bands, alternative independent bands, movies and videos for kids (you might not really be a Christian if your kid doesn’t have all the Veggie Tales videos or DVDs) or teens or adults, even Christian comedy or haunted houses (Judgment Houses). We’ve got everything you could ever want if you’re willing to pay a little extra, accept the cheese factor and settle for a little lower quality overall.

Now, please understand who is pointing some of this out before we go any further. I love entertainment. I love to be entertained. I love all kinds of movies, music, comic books, novels Christian or not. I’ve spent a large amount of money over my lifetime on such endeavors.

I’ve even been in several Christian bands over my lifetime (to varying degrees of non-success) as have many of my friends and argued vehemently over their validity from the time I was about sixteen years old.

I just don’t see any examples of it in the Bible.

I know what people say (since I’ve said it), that we live in a different time and a different culture since way back then.

Do we?

For those who have studied either the Greek or Roman history (which dominated the known world and the regions evangelized by the apostles in what we have recorded in the New Testament), entertainment was a huge part of both cultures. Plays and sporting events were common forms of entertainment, not to mention the violent entertainment enjoyed by most Romans in many parts of the Empire. It’s well documented.

Why don’t we have any mention of this in the scripture? Why don’t we have one example where the believers are encouraged to write a nice Greek style play that shows the cross and resurrection of Jesus to better communicate the gospel to the surrounding community? Why isn’t there any mention of someone being blessed by the Christmas program or Easter celebration while Paul or Peter visited them? Why didn’t Paul instruct Timothy in either letter to make sure that the entertainment for his congregation set high moral standards?

We can make all the assumptions we want, but the fact is that they aren’t there. Anywhere.

The closest we could get might be Paul saying that to the Greeks he is a Greek and to the Jews, a Jew, all things to all so that he might save some.

I’ve come to the conclusion recently that passage is used to justify a lot of things. I don’t think Paul meant it to be that. He just didn’t want culture to get in the way of the message. And I think he would have had an issue with people using that verse to justify being like the world.

You could also point to Jesus’ use of parables, but as we read in Luke, Jesus declares to his disciples that he uses parables to hide the truth from those who don’t really want it, not make it more clear. They were begging him to just say what he meant and to stop using parables.

Here are the main problems as I see them.

First of all, the world is our standard of entertainment. We compare our movies and books and music to the things of the world and that seems like a mistake to me. Most of the time we don’t come close to the quality and we are using the world as a benchmark of what expression should be.

Second, we are creating a host of people famous not for giving or ministry or deep spirituality but for their ability to entertain and make the Christian community look cool. We put their names in lights and have them pose for glamour shots and put them on stage where everyone cheers for them and we create our own Christian idols out of them where we see them as more important in the Body because they are creative and we’re not. Then we scoff when they fall into adultery or have other major pride issues.

Third, if we have the Holy Spirit within us and are partakers of the Divine Nature, shouldn’t we be more creative than the world? I believe that all Christians should be the most creative people in their fields of work or arts. We should be the trendsetters and create the most unique music and other expressions the world has seen. We should also stop seeing our Christian idols as the only ones worthy of being creative. People in the local communities should be encouraged to create and express their testimonies and be the prophets, teachers and evangelists in their local congregations that they were meant to be.

Fourth, to a large degree we are ignoring the biblical mandates on our expression, that a Christian’s expression is meant to encourage the Body, to lift the believer’s eyes to Jesus, to teach or encourage or rebuke or correct or instruct or inspire on some level. Many Christian artists do this, but many do not. We have the same attitude towards our Christian artists that many have towards entertainers in the secular market, that we somehow hold them to a lesser standard and care little for their private lives as long as they make cool records. They should be held to a higher standard.

Fifth, the commercialization of “worship” music is a great example. Why do the people who lead worship need to have spiked hair and the coolest clothes and their faces to be all in lights and on big TV screens behind them along with the words? The words I understand … people need to have some way of knowing the song or singing along to participate (sometimes), but why the “leader”s face on the big screen so everyone can look at him?

Sixth, what is the opportunity cost here? With all the time we spend on our own entertainment, what are we not doing? Compare the amount of time you listen to Christian music or praise music or participate in Christian entertainment to the amount of time you pray or really fellowship and personally encourage another believer. It might shock you. Which one does the Bible say should be our focus?

Entertainment in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. We need times of rest and enjoyment. God has given us all things richly to enjoy. But while our American culture seems to have the idea that we have a right to be entertained (even the most poverty stricken in America has a TV … and its not to watch the news …), the Bible gives us no such right.

We do, however, have requirements to pray without ceasing, to rejoice in the Lord always, to preach and to teach and to fellowship and encourage. Many times we fool ourselves into thinking we’re living the Christian life when we’re actually entertaining ourselves and ignoring the basics of the biblical mandates in communing with God and with others. This is a level of self deception, pride and selfishness. And you can see it in the focus of modern “ministry.”

Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not against people using the tools at their disposal to communicate truth, teach and encourage others, rebuke and correct the Body, praise and worship God and to proclaim the message of the gospel. In fact, to some degree we must. It’s what we’ve been given. There are also some major artists within the Christian community who are full of truth and ministry and fulfill the roles they need to as they’ve been given those gifts for the whole Body.

I’m just saying that for the amount of time and energy and focus we spend on it, shouldn’t we be able to find concrete examples of it in the Bible instead of manipulating a couple vague verses here and there to justify the bevy of resources we dedicate to it? And shouldn’t that bevy of resources be dedicated elsewhere? I’m beginning to see that it would do more for the Kingdom if we did. And for those who know me, you know that could only be God’s revelation.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Announce a Christian concert, charge five bucks and see who shows up. Announce a night of prayer and fasting on the same night, free of charge and see who ditches the concert for the prayer and fasting. Which would would Jesus show up to? Most would wear their WWJD bracelets to the concert.

That’s what I’m saying.

Peace.

Here’s the scene. We have a meeting. Someone sings. Maybe we all sing. In any event, someone speaks. The crowd is moved by whatever is said, perhaps a nice story about an old lady and her cat. The old lady loves her cat, but the cat is indifferent and keeps running away. But then the cat gets hungry and wants to come home. Will the cat come home? If the cat would only come home, then he would get food and the old lady would be so happy.

Maybe then they talk about the story of the prodigal son. God is the father who is waiting so desperately for you to come home to him. The Bible reading is optional, of course, depending on if someone might be offended or could think we’re too fundamentalist.

Now. Is your life miserable? Are you lonely? God can make your life better. Just come forward and we can show you how to be saved. Just ask Jesus into your heart. There is a God shaped hole there that only He can fill. Don’t you want to be filled? Don’t you want to be made whole? Come on, just come down or just stay in your seats and quietly ask Jesus into your heart. If you do that, you’ll be saved.

Maybe they come down and ask Jesus into their hearts. If not, that’s okay because we don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. Then they are given assurances that they are saved, that nothing can separate them from God. Nothing they can do will ever make them not saved. Isn’t this wonderful!

I don’t see it in the Bible.

Now, there is some Truth mixed in there, but the ultimate goal there is not found in the scripture. Unless someone has rewritten the Bible or it says it in one of the paraphrases like the Message, I don’t see the term “ask Jesus into your heart” once in the whole Bible. (We could also include “accepting Jesus as your savior” here …)

That would be a great new Bible to sell at the Christian bookstore. It would sell millions, I’m sure. As Jesus talks to Nicodemus, He tells him, “Just ask me into your heart” instead of the complete recreation symbolized in being born again. The end of the prodigal son story would say that Heaven rejoices at any person (not sinner … we can’t use that word) who asks Jesus into their hearts instead of a “sinner who repents”. The rich young ruler would have been told, “just ask me into your heart” and he would have been so happy instead of going away sad because Jesus tells him to take up a cross, a symbol of ultimate shame, become literally poor by giving all his wealth away and to follow Christ in every moment. After Christ challenged the crowd that the one without sin should cast the first stone, He would tell the woman caught in adultery to just fill her God shaped hole with Him and then go and do whatever she wanted as long as that hole was filled …. he definitely wouldn’t tell her to go and “sin no more.” At the day of Pentecost, the crowd wouldn’t ask Peter what they should do, Peter would give THEM the invitation and then say, “all you need to do is ask Jesus into your heart” instead of “repent, believe and be baptized (a symbol of complete death and resurrection).”

As Eric would say, that’s free money.

Of course, it could be just semantics at times, depending upon how the term is used, but its largely used as I described above. There is no discussion of true sin or conviction based on personal wrongdoing. There is only a discussion of the love and grace and mercy of Christ. There is the obligatory doctrinal checklist, i.e., do you believe that Jesus is the son of God and He died for you to restore relationship with Him, etc., which many times includes something about our sin being paid by His death, so at least there’s that.

The modern Jesus is the ultimate Dr. Phil who will tell you how to make your life better if you’ll only accept Him. He’ll fix your marriage. You’ll get a better job. Your kids will behave better and do better in school. You’ll have more success in this life.

I feel like sometimes we lie to people. Again there is a hint of truth here, but a half truth is a lie. Can God restore relationships and bless you in this life? Absolutely. But is that His focus? God actually wants you to die, to get up there on the cross with His son and be resurrected with a new nature and a new mindset. Your life is over. And a dead man can’t sin. Righteousness is yours not only in ideal through the blood of Christ but in practice through a Holy Spirit that’s placed inside of you.

Our attitude is that you can be you and just add Jesus to it. There’s not much really wrong with you other than you need to accept Jesus and then you’ll be even cooler than you already are. You can be a punk or metal head or gothic or athelete or musician or artist or politician or whatever you want to be, just accept Christ and add Him to the mix.

God does want to give you a better life, but His idea of a better life is an eternal one with eternal rewards. There are earthly rewards, as well, but God will always sacrifice the temporal for the eternal.

I feel that with this emotional gospel we get emotional responses. These Christians are most in danger of becoming the seed that fell on rocky, shallow soil. Life grew up, but at the first sign of testing or temptation, the heat was too great and the life was burned away. The roots were not deep enough. Now, if you remember, the testing was symbolized by the heat of the sun in that parable. Isn’t the sun supposed to give life to plants? Just as the sun is supposed to give life to plants, trials are supposed to give the Christian life and make him stronger. But with an emotional response and shallow roots, what should give the Christian life actually kills him.

Also remember that the only seed that survived was the one that persevered and produced a fruitful harvest.

Romans tells us to consider the goodness AND severity of God. We aviod talking about the severity of God like the plague. We are converting people to a half complete image of God.

Without a conviction of sin, God’s grace and mercy and love mean nothing. Its a shallow love that doesn’t require repentance, a true change. When I married my wife, I not only chose her, but I chose NOT to be with anyone else. Its inherent in the commitment. But we give people the vibe, or even expressly teach it, that you can choose Christ and whatever else you want, as long as you’ve “asked Him into your heart.” Becca might not have been too pleased if I asked her if we could just live together while I was free to cavort with whatever girl I pleased and do whatever I wanted regardless of my faithfulness.

A gospel preached without repentance does not prepare a bride for Christ it offers him a permanent whore.

With repentance a whore becomes a virgin again by the rebirth provided in the blood of Christ and the grace and mercy and love that accompanies it.

A “God shaped hole” might be a totally different post … but there’s a lot of overlap there.

Any comments! Good comments on the last one, by the way.

Peace.

Okay, so I’m going to start a new series here, and its called TICFITB, or Things I Can’t Find In The Bible.

I read the Bible a lot on my own, and many times I see a difference between what the Bible actually says and what we actually teach or do (there’s not really much of a difference … what we do is what we actually teach more than anything we say). Now, I hate to be “revolutionary” and actually check the Bible from time to time on my own without consulting a pastor or a commentary or some other extra-Biblical source, but I guess I’m just weird like that.

My goal here is not to say things are necessarily “unbiblical”, evil or sinful, but if we put so much emphasis on them or teach them as true, shouldn’t we be able to find them in the Bible? I mean, isn’t that what Luther fought for with his Catholic brothers and sisters? I know believing the Bible to be the ultimate source and guideline is becoming quite antiquated in our post-modern society, but again, I’m weird.

The first one that I will point out here is what is commonly called “friendship evangelism.” This is taught in many ways and with many derivations, but “friendship evangelism” is basically this: become friends with someone who is not a Christian or who doesn’t attend a “church” regularly and witness to them in a very subversive way that will interest them in Christianity or “church” but never directly confronting them. Let them see your witness, but don’t be confrontational. In fact, try not to bring up Jesus at all. We definitely will not bring up sin or anything else that might make them uncomfortable, because we don’t want to be the kind of people that makes others feel uncomfortable with our conversation. Hopefully your church is resourceful and “cutting edge” enough to offer opportunities for you to invite your friends to events that might interest them in your church or maybe even a program or two that would really benefit them and then we could draw them in enough that they would want to be a Christian or at least attend church from time to time so the pastor’s very seeker sensitive messages might clue them in to the Truth.

Although I’ve been guilty of this myself, I have to be honest and say that I can’t find it in the Bible. I can’t find one example of it. I can’t find one teaching on it in the New Testament. The Old Testament teaches a much more segregated idea of living with those who don’t believe, so I’m not sure that we should really focus our attentions there, although I’m open.

Let me be clear. I can’t find one example in the Bible, the New Testament especially, where a Christian befriended a non-believer (we don’t call them sinners anymore because we don’t want them to feel bad about themselves … the idol of self esteem would frown on us) and eventually won them over to be like us, a Christian. The evangelism that occured in the New Testament was much more confrontational and up front.

I discuss things like this with people here at the Hospitality House often, and I love it because there is such a cross section of Christianity that attends here. Regular attenders are Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Calvinists and Arminians. It really streamlines our discussions to what is really important and everyone is generally challenged.

In discussing this particular issue, some tried to come up with different arguments, and I’ll try to point a couple out.

Someone mentioned the woman at the well, where Jesus starts a pretty innocent conversation, but I quickly pointed this out as a prime example of Biblical evangelism. He completely broke social rules by speaking with a woman, a Samaritan woman, and then asking her to get water for him from her own jar, which was considered unclean by the current legalism since she was not a pure Jew. But even beyond that, Jesus confronted her pretty quickly and pointedly. He asked her where her husband was, and she said she wasn’t married. Then Jesus goes on to describe her whole relationship history and that she was living with a man she wasn’t married to. In other words, he called her a whore! A slut. You pick the word, but his inference was more than clear. He confronted her sin and told her to drink of living water. She believed in him and even brought others to Jesus to spread his message.

We could bring up Romans that talks about being a Greek to the Greeks and a Jew to the Jews in order to win some. This might be the best argument, but within context I think it fails. If you read those statements within context of what Paul actually did and taught in other epistles, his concern was more that he didn’t want the focus on cultural differences to distract from the spreading of the gospel or even be an obstacle. In other words, he might dress like a Greek and speak Greek and change how he said it, but he never changed the goal of boldly proclaiming the gospel. He wanted to make sure that Gentiles understood that he wasn’t preaching Judaism, but Jesus Christ, the savior of all, and the good news of faith, grace, and repentance for all who would recieve it. Paul routinely made sin very clear and drew a clear line between righteousness and spiritual depravity.

The evangelism of the scripture made sin and the division between us and God pretty clear first, then offered repentance as a way of reconciliation through forgiveness offered by the blood of Christ, the only sufficient sacrifice, and a new life based on the resurrection power of the Son of God.

The problem is, I believe, that we have allowed the secular society to define for us what it means to be kind and loving to our “friends.” I hesitate to call it the secularization of society since I am not really convinced that our American culture was ever truly Christian, nor can any culture ever truly be Christian. The way is narrower than that. But a change has occurred within the popular mentality in the US, however. It began with teaching evolution as science and calling creation religion. It continued with a redefinition of the separation of church and state that was never even understood by the founding fathers, much less intended. Then prayer and anything remotely Christian was removed from the public schools. Then Christmas break became winter break and Easter break became Spring Break. All of these are just symptoms, however, of the deeper issue, which is the philosophy that the public sphere is not the place for Christianity or anything having to do with Jesus. He’s just not welcome. And if you mention Jesus or confront anyone on their sin or their need for repentance, then you’re not really American, you’re an extremist, a religious nut or fundamentalist. In other words, people won’t like you if you really talk about Jesus or the Truth.

Basically we are supposed to be Americans first, then Christians if we really feel like it. But we are supposed to keep our “religion” to ourselves. And it doesn’t really matter anyway to our New Age secular society because all religions are really the same. They’re about loving people and doing good things for people and voting Democrat since Republicans hate people. All religions preach the same basic truths, right? Look at the examples we have in the media, whether Hollywood stars or the characters they portray, you can even marry someone of a different religion and it never has to bother either one of you. We are actually progressive if we think this way, not backwards and uncivilized to think that different religious beliefs make us different or should divide us.

So we’ve become more afraid of what others think of us and the popular opinion of our ministry than the eternal weight of it. We’ve become decieved to think they are one and the same. So we bow to the idols of modern society instead of following the Spirit or the example of the scriptures. Didn’t someone say the world would hate us? I think I read that somewhere.

If we want to be friends with someone who is not a Christian, I don’t see a problem with that, although being unequally yoked with unbelievers could be stretched there, not to mention the warning in 2 Corinthians about bad company corrupting us. You become who you hang out with, so choose your friends carefully. If they happen to be an unbeliever, then I believe you are free to be friends with them, just don’t decieve yourself into thinking that peer pressure is a biblical form of evangelism. Romans also says that faith comes by hearing, and the message is the word of Christ. How can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Also, don’t be decieved into thinking that loving someone is being non-confrontational about their sin or who Jesus really is. If my son was about to run out into the street while a Mack truck was about to kill him, I would do everything in my power to save his life. The New Testament calls those who don’t believe the enemies of God, children of the Devil and other very extreme statements. Its a pretty desperate situation, to be honest. How much do we really love our non-Christian friends? Do we pray for them for hours? Do we lift them up before God on a regular basis? Do we risk hurting feelings by expressing truth? I wonder.

Either way, I don’t find friendship evangelism in the Bible. I won’t even touch missionary dating, which is but an extreme example of friendship evangelism. Just because it happens from time to time doesn’t make it right.

Now, if you comment in disagreement, that is more than welcome, but please include for my benefit a Biblical example of what you are supporting or where I have erred.

And stay tuned for more of these. I have a list.