Random musings II

Just a few random thoughts that struck me while reading something or contemplating the big picture.

American evangelicalism with its reformed/calvinist roots has been beating the “saved by faith alone” and “works can’t save” drum so hard that it’s not surprising that society has taken them up on it and become so morally bankrupt.  It doesn’t matter what you do; the only thing that counts is the attitude of your heart; your good intentions, your mental believing  – right?  Not according to Jesus and the apostles.

Jesus says in John 14:12-15, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.  If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.  [and in vs 23 He says]  Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.

And then american christendom has the audacity to whine and moan about the moral state of society.  They’ve been preaching the gospel of predestination and faith without works for centuries now and they wonder why the unchurched and churched live the way they do…

The Republican’s primary battles and the subsequent lower chance of unseating Obama is self-inflicted because political libertarians/conservatives must behave in a dog-eat-dog, individualistic, last man standing, defend-my-honor-to-the-last-drop-of-blood way, because otherwise they wouldn’t be pure conservatives anymore.  They can’t be communal/conciliatory minded because that’s just not the right-wing way…

Free-market fundamentalism has become a major tenet of the religious right’s dogma. What they don’t seem to realize is that those economic policies directly and indirectly water the very weed garden of social issue problems they detest.  The free-market rat race, the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer, the necessity of two working parents, and the growth/materialism at any cost exacerbates corruption,  family breakdown, stress, greed, envy, immorality, gambling and spiritual apathy.  Hence the amazing scenes of politically conservative ‘patriot’ pastors and other religious right elites railing against lax sexual morality but hailing Ayn Rand capitalism as God’s chosen economic system…

Heard someone complaining today about public schools teaching evolution and being against Christians…  Here’s my word to said complainer….  “Who gave you [religious right complainer], as a member of that small percentage of this nation’s population, the right to whinge (rhymes with binge and is British for complaining.  A delicious word to say I might add) about such a circumstance and act as if everyone else should bend over and fulfill all of your wishes?  You live in a democracy.  The majority has decided to believe in evolution and to not start their educational days with rote prayers.  That means you [religious right whiner] don’t get to set the rules for public schools anymore.  So shut up and quit whining.  Leave the public schools or go and be a humble, loving positive person in that environment, quietly living out your faith, thankful for the many religious freedoms you do have (and they are many).

Finally, I’m so thankful for the existence of the living Kingdom of God in all its small and unheralded ways.  Without the hope of Jesus and what He and His Way mean I don’t know what I would do.  The world is so deeply dark without that Light.  The storm clouds mount but there is hope.

I apologize, but I must leave the american evangelical camp…

My sincere apologies to anyone who considers the american evangelical subculture to be your home, but I must leave the compound.  This may sound scandalous to some, and I apologize for the tone that it implies. I’m sorry that this declaration may come across as an insult – as if I’d joined Bill Maher in one of his crass putdowns of american evangelicals.

Unlike a foul Maher, my intentions are to be gracious as I ease out the door.  But I do believe there are some valid reasons that much of the american evangelical subculture is such an easy target for scoffers, and it is not for being good followers of Jesus Christ.  The claiming to be christian yet not talking or acting like Jesus (especially publicly) has disillusioned many.  I am a living example of someone pushed towards the canyon of agnosticism by the shallowness, the corruption, the hypocrisy and above all, the un-Christ-likeness found in all too much of american Protestant evangelicalism.  I would go so far as to say that the american evangelical subculture is as corrupt and far from imitating Christ as the Catholic Church was in the Middle Ages. Thankfully, God’s grace has intervened in my wilderness times and kept me from throwing it all out like many others have done.  Prophetic, intellectual and Spirit-filled writers and speakers drew me towards a rediscovery of real, Jesus Christ, Kingdom Christianity.

In physical reality you will still find me serving and worshiping among evangelicals.  In that sense I plan to stay, because I’m committed to the people within the evangelical subculture – kind of like a faithful husband to his bride no matter the imperfections.  But in my heart and mind I am compelled to forsake some of its more shallow, stinking pools.  I must disavow some of it’s most treasured assumptions.  It’s golden sacred cows I now consider no better than dung. Here are a few things I would like to hammer onto evangelicalism’s “wittenburg door”: 

Take the low road

Surrender

Humility and surrender are two of the most difficult ways to follow Jesus that I encounter daily.  The dark side in me resists these unnatural actions, but I was reminded recently that Jesus is the ultimate example, and that He calls us to the same practice in all areas of life.  Impractical by the world’s standards, the low road will triumph beyond the here and now.  Jesus seems to be saying the same in Luke 18:14 [...] For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” These words force me to consider, “Does the tone of my writing and conversation exude humility?  I know it often does not and I hope and pray that I grow in this area of humility.  Here are two other sources that have recently spoken these thoughts into my heart.

Recent random musings

Working overtime for the first time in a long time brings blessings, but it also limits my time in other interests.  Writing for this blog has been one area that has floundered in recent months.  Fully developed posts or articles are especially difficult so I decided for this post to just list some random thoughts and ideas kicking around.  Maybe I’ll return to them for a deeper look, and maybe this is all I’ll say.  Enjoy (or vehemently disagree)

Top Ten Movies that Preach Great Sermons

(But Won’t be Heard in Church because of their rating)

I enjoy films and the art of film.  I enjoy films for what they teach me and for what they stir in me.  The more frivolous and mindless entertainment centered films of the mainstream rarely entice me.  I prefer a film that speaks to me on deep emotional, spiritual, and philosophical levels.  Does it make me think about big picture ideas and soul matters?  Does it inspire me to make my patch of earth a better place?  Does it stir a longing for the glory, beauty and wholeness of God and His ways?  Films that pose these questioning thoughts are few and far between, but their impressions last longer than most of what drivels out of a Redbox.  Here are my picks in no order of importance and what I find most valuable in their viewing.

The anti-christ’s are here.

2 John 7 “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world.  Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.”

I believe when apostle John speaks of the anti-christ(s), he is referring to people who claim to be Christian but who deny Jesus Christ in some fashion.  In his day many “anti-christ” teachers were arising as the original apostles were dying off.  These anti-christ’s taught things that opposed the incarnation, humanity, divinity, character or example demonstrated by Jesus Christ when He lived among the apostles.  What I find interesting in John’s implications about the anti-christs is that they were not atheist/pantheist heathens but were religious and/or claiming Christians.  The first anti-christ’s were the pharisees and religious Jews who willfully denied the Messiahship/divinity of Jesus.  Ever since then there has been a parade of anti-christs, many who are religious but who deny and oppose Jesus’ Way, including the example He set for us.

At the gates of the Kingdom of God.

If the Kingdom of God existed as a physical place with borders on this planet or somewhere else in the universe, and you were standing at its gates, would you want to enter?  I’ve considered my life, my background and past stances and have been mulling this question.  As I grow older and live with our world’s brokenness, my desire to live in God’s kingdom is increasing.  But I’ve also had to wonder how many of my fellow american christians really want to cross the border into the Kingdom of God given the attitudes, values and lifestyles practiced in much of american christendom.  The following snippets from my recent reading list reiterated the question; do we really want to live in the fullness of the Kingdom of God and if not now…then when?)

The religious right is more convinced of American righteousness in the exercise of its military might than the neoconservatives are, and more invested than Wall Street in lower taxes. [...]  Neoconservatives who call for confrontation with Iran, a closer relationship with Israel, and pressing the War on Terror are not echoed by religious conservatives—they’re drowned out by them. In economics and military matters, no less than in social issues, conservative evangelicals are more Republican than Republicans (Michael Brendan Dougherty “Crossing the Tea”  The American Conservative Magazine).

Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.  [...]Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinism strenuously denounce Darwin’s evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism! [...]While the communists drove the reasonable concept of social equality into the ground, Ayn Rand did the same with individual liberty. Because she hated the teeniest expression of [...] socialism, and because the concept was in the archaic Bible long before some non-theists decided it was the wave of the future, she promoted an anti-Christian, pro-evolution atheism so extreme that even most atheists including myself reject her claim to have philosophically absolutely disproved the existence of any god. But many influential conservative Christians have embraced her expressly atheistic theory of Objectivism that in her books such as The Virtue of Selfishness, they propose that government must be shrunk to a bare minimum so socially Darwinist that it dances with anarchy. Only then can entrepreneurial greed have the free run that liberty demands.  (Gregory Paul  “From Jesus’ Socialism to Capitalistic Christianity”)

But the Christian Right parted company with both the Second Great Awakening and the Fundamentalist Movement with one immensely far-reaching decision. If those two earlier movements had limited themselves to persuasion in their respective bids to shape the soul of the nation, the Christian Right combined persuasion with raw political power and sought to force its agenda on the nation by controlling the nation’s political structures. [...]  With a startling lack of self awareness, the Values Voter Summit began their conference two days after the census report on poverty levels was released. However, poverty is not what concerns these “Values Voters.” According to their website, their values instruct them to: “Protect Marriage • Champion Life • Strengthen the Military • Limit Government • Control Spending • Defend Our Freedoms.”  Raushenbush pointed out that Jesus’ values “don’t include strengthening the military.” Nor do they include limiting government, controlling government spending or defending our freedoms. Instead, as Raushenbush correctly notes, there is nothing that dominates Jesus teaching more than justice for the poor, a concern embodied in Jesus’ vision of “the kingdom of God.”  (Richard T Hughes indispensable series, “The Christian Right in Context”.  Quotes are from parts 3 & 4.  Must reads IMO – more in-depth than the previous pieces.)

These selections reveal a mix of values; many of which have little or nothing to do with the priorities of the Kingdom of God.  Some of the values described openly mock God’s ideals for humanity    I am struck with the sad possibility that many “born-again” american christians may actually miss out on the Kingdom of God because in the present they show no inclination of wanting to live as citizens of such a place.  Consider the following questions and ask yourself whether or not this sobering possibility is not the present reality.