Month: April 2011

It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part Four, Conclusion

This is the conclusion to an ongoing reflection on why being a Christian may or may not be worth it.
Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is here.

Would it be easier to be a Christian?

Short answer: yes.

Everyone is both voluntarily and involuntarily mastered by a complexity of factors springing from a singular core belief. That’s not generalizing. If you’re free to do what you want you’re bound by the law of freedom, so then you’re not really free. If you follow rules to get freedom, you’re bound by those rules towards a non-freedom. Both extremes are counter-intuitive to what they claim to achieve. The drunken, partying, skirt-chasing, meth-using, vulgar-mouthed, belligerent next door neighbor is just as much a slave as the religious, uptight, pocket protected, non-smoking, short fingernails internet expert. One suffers by enjoying life; the other enjoys by life suffering.

Every de-churched person disagrees with the semantics of pseudo-freedom. “We’re actually free no matter what you say.” Immediately that’s the problem. A sense of superiority over one category is binding yourself to a hierarchy. Now there’s them and there’s you. The bridge has been effectively burned. Racism and bigotry emerge from categorical thinking. You might think you’ve escaped that, but the minute you think so you’ve only jumped ship to another category.

The Christian is called to be free, and I mean truly free. In the same breath Jesus said, “Carry your cross,” he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The unthoughtful person finds a contradiction; the less thoughtful person says all things in moderation. Jesus destroyed gray-area categories so we wouldn’t be constantly hopping from liberal leniency to conservative chokeholds and all the gradual spaces in between. If you think, “Jesus fits a category too,” that’s only because your familiar notions have trapped him in one: then we’re not talking the same Jesus but only your version of him.

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Book Review: Generous Justice


Generous Justice
by Timothy Keller

Summary:
Christians have some dirty words burned in their collective conscience that conjure up liberal danger: psychology, anthropomorphic, emergent, and of course, social justice. Dr. Timothy Keller unpacks the Christian duty to do justice in the world, including the reasons, motive, how-to, pitfalls, and results. It’s a daunting task that Dr. Keller tackles as easily as the alphabet. In both idealistic and realistic sweeps, the book paints a picture of restoration that the Gospel demands from every follower of Christ. It is a sensitive work without being preachy, an honest look that is not naive. Your safety zone will be challenged.

Strengths:
At some point in recent church history, it was deemed that social justice was a liberal cause void of eternal purpose. We can’t change the world, it was said, so let’s focus on ourselves. There was a prevalent fear that soup kitchens and thrift stores were replacing evangelism, that at the cost of the Gospel we were building temporary houses. It’s a valid fear, but Dr. Keller dispels the notion that both concerns must be exclusive. It is the outworking of our faith through justice that would call others to Jesus’ grace. It is also Jesus’ grace that compels us to do justice.

It sounds simple until we face the dizzying factors of our generation: every social disadvantage feeds into each other until entire groups are fundamentally crippled. Poverty affects literacy which affects job opportunities which leads to crime which ripples through city structures which keeps collapsing in on itself in a vicious cycle. It’s easy to throw our hands up and stick to preaching and teaching. But as Dr. Keller shows over and over, God cares a great deal for the poor, the orphan, the widow, the immigrant, the disadvantaged. Biblically, not caring for them is the same as injustice. Dr. Keller paves a familiar yet convicting groundwork on why and how we should go about real justice. Asides from the moral discussion, he also provides practical steps that will get you to your feet rolling up your sleeves.

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Because it happened.



Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened, then

1) there’s a heaven . . . and a hell.
2) we do have victory over sin.
3) what we do matters in eternity.
4) we have forgiveness before an all holy God.
5) we will also be resurrected.
6) every word in the Bible is true.
7) Jesus is everything he said he was, and is.
8 ) everyone else who isn’t following Christ has it wrong.
9) death is not the end . . . love awaits.
10) we have to get the good news out.
11) Jesus is coming back for us.
12) the actual Spirit of God lives in those who follow Him.
13) one day all evil will have an end.
14) a lot of stuff we think that matters doesn’t really matter.
15) miracles can happen.
16) he died for you and for that neighbor you can’t stand.
17) pride, self-esteem, and earning approval doesn’t work.
18) you will be called accountable to God.
19) you can be co-heirs with Jesus Christ.
20) nothing can ever take away your joy.

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If you need some encouragement

It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part Three

This is an ongoing reflection on why being a Christian may or may not be worth it.
Part one is here. Part two is here. Part Four, the conclusion, is here.

It’s hard to want God. We can say He exists, we can call the Bible true, we can conform to the religious pattern of a typical midwest backroad King James-reading church, but we can despise God with every passionate fiber in our puny body. Jumping the bridge from “There is no God” to “I want God” is nothing short of a miracle. You cannot convince the blind to see or the lame to walk. It takes an act of God. Really us tiny humans can only describe the seeing and walking.

Two conversations with atheists —

The first: “The Bible was just written by people. We can’t know if God exists. I have good morals and I stay out of trouble.”

The second: “There is no objective proof that God exists. And there is no real world application to believe in God. I need math to go to the market, but without a God I can live a good life just fine.”

The first conversation is easily answerable. The second though, I absolutely agree.

So we ricochet between two walls: one says God is not knowable by the self and the other says the self is knowable without God. Many self-proclaimed Christians also live this way. He is too difficult to fathom or we’re into our own thing.

But wanting something takes a choice, and many are too lazy to really consider it all. If your entire life and purpose and trajectory and destiny was possibly determined by a being of infinite proportions, wouldn’t you be at least be curious in rooting out all the angles of such a thing? Wouldn’t you absolutely want to know beyond a shadow of an existential doubt if you wanted God? We could at least go beyond our familiar territory to see if He is desirable amidst all the hypocrites, bad preaching, and rotten pastors.

Instead most of us only read things to confirm our own beliefs, so atheists go on angry atheist websites and Christians stay within the safe church walls and Christian literature. Every narrow-minded soul has a pre-commitment to their truth, throwing arrows rather than asking questions. It is when we have considered all bases — truly allowed them to percolate in our heart, mind, and soul — that we should commit to anything. It’s the same way in which we wisely pick a car, a spouse, a house, a college, a career. But with God we tend to carelessly use our preprogrammed defenses and automatic statements — for or against — that we’ve never fully contemplated on our own.

Continue reading “It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part Three” →

It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part Two

This is an ongoing reflection on why being a Christian may or may not be worth it.
Part one is here. Part three is here. Part Four, the conclusion, is here.

Imagine you’re a Chinese guy comfortably living in China, and suddenly some white guy with nicer clothes than you tells you about eternal life, a better way, and an intimacy with the Creator of everything through a man named Jesus Christ. But in China you could get arrested or shot up for believing that. It would be easier then to just believe that stuff in private, but no: Jesus has commissioned all followers to share the truth, because after all it’s the only truth that saves people from eternal hell. That sounds serious. Your friends call you crazy, foolish, brainwashed. But you go to the underground meetings, read your Bible in secret, and even attend public worship services that could tarnish your immaculate record.

Your friends ask: Is this really necessary? Do you have to be a Christian?

Millions of Chinese have chosen Jesus. Not quietly, either. At the outset this looks ridiculous; religion always flies in the face of our luxurious rational comfort zones full of Sun Chips and never-bother-anyone except for when-it-bothers-me. These Chinese must be crazy. They don’t have to be Christians, says the inoffensive whitewashed politically correct champion of tolerance. One thing is for sure: any public Chinese Christian is unequivocally the real deal.

Uncommitted: God, can we be friends with benefits?

We circle back: Is it necessary to be a Christian? This is a peculiar interrogative because it sounds like a manner of profession. A job is necessary because of its basic provisions but we can choose to change jobs. It’s like putting on clothes or leveling up an RPG sorceror. To interpret Christianity as a pair of jeans is dumbing it down to a fringe luxury. This is exactly what has happened with nominal, non-serious, hypocritical believers.

Continue reading “It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part Two” →

Keep you motivated and laughing


I want this job.

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My favorite Super Bowl commercial. All I watched were the commercials. Lol.

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Best duo ever.

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— Continue reading “Keep you motivated and laughing” →

It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part One

This is an ongoing reflection on why being a Christian may or may not be worth it.
Part Two is here. Part Three is here. Part Four, the conclusion, is here.

I commend every single person who wakes up early on Sunday, hops in that cold shower, finds their best dress, best shoes, best tie, and flies out the door for an hour plus of spiritual beatdown. To enter the church doors with all the piercing eyes, carrying your awkward Bible, some lugging an awkward purse and wild children, finding a seat in silence, trying to sing the songs you don’t know (not so loudly that others can you hear but loud enough that God can hear you), and not fidgeting for the entire sermon. Then trying to say hello to the pastor who is surrounded by more important looking people, meeting new people who probably already know you from tagged pictures on Facebook, and slipping out without having to volunteer for some expensive mission trip to an unpronouncable country. You go home, set the Bible on your nightstand for the week, and loosen your tie. You survived.

I’ve often thought: Wouldn’t life be easier without church? If I wasn’t a Christian, couldn’t I just do the stuff I always wanted to do? What do I even get out of all this?

In moments of extreme doubt, this is the tennis match I play out in my head. I’ve made lists. I’ve divided it pros and cons. I’ve pretended to be an atheist for days at a time; I used to be one so that wasn’t too hard. I’ve reformatted my moral grid to relativism. A few times I’ve contemplated all the wild things I could do if I wasn’t a “Sunday church person.” I remember what it was like when I would stay up four nights in a row downing shots of Bacardi and flirting with random strangers in tubetops. Sometimes I can even convince myself those days weren’t so bad. I imagine a world without God — impossible — so I imagine just my life without God. And every time the suspicion screams out: Life would be so much easier without Him.

Continue reading “It Would Be Easier If I Wasn’t A Christian: Part One” →

Book Review: Counterfeit Gods


Counterfeit Gods
By Timothy Keller

Summary:
My growing interest in Dr. Timothy Keller’s work continues with his short and fulfilling book on the poison of idolatry. Using vignettes from the Bible such as King Nebuchadnezzar to outcasts like Leah to the misunderstood narrative of Abraham and Isaac, we’re shown the dangerous power of modern day idols in our everyday life. From culture to career to codependency, we’re bombarded by every created thing that aims to steal us from our true purpose: to know and follow God.

We must live for something, but anything else besides God that is first place in our heart will always destroy us. Idolatry is enslavement: all temporary things consume our thoughts and goals until we are at the pathetic mercy of its every whim. Nothing is spared: Dr. Keller covers all imaginable angles. Yet there is hope, and while this could have easily been distilled to “love God,” he brings more intellect and insight to the issue.

Strengths:
On the first page, the book will cut your soul. Dr. Keller lists off rich men who have killed themselves since the economic downturn of the last few years, then quickly compares idols with the Ring of Power from The Lord of the Rings. From start to finish, this is an exhilarating read that will cut you over and over.

Continue reading “Book Review: Counterfeit Gods” →