Socialist Sushi

So, Obama has won. And a lot of my friends are freaking out. So, a few comments.

First, I didn’t vote for Obama (or McCain, actually) but I can’t help but be amazed that we actually have a black president. I remember talking with my parents about segregated schools. One generation later, I’m watching his victory speech.

I didn’t support his campaign, but good Lord give the man credit. He has managed to do what no one else has, even if he had lost the election.

Second, I’m quite honestly embarrassed at the silliness some Christians have bought in to. Just stupid stuff. In general:

1. Check Snopes
2. If it’s not true, don’t forward it to anyone
3. If it is true, don’t forward it to me

And, please, please, don’t put it as your status on Facebook. Ok? Please?

Finally, read 1 Peter 2:13-17. If you’re a Christian, keep this in mind: Peter was telling Christians to submit to an emperor who was persecuting them. Quite honestly, all the bile and venom is, in my view, the result of forgetting the gospel. At no point has our hope been Washington.

It will be an interesting four years. I’m praying for President-elect Obama, and for this country. But I’m looking to Jesus for change me, my community and eventually my country.

Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, and that our children will live in a world make more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever-widening circle of achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state … form but the prelude to the things that man has yet to do.

– H.G. Wells, A Short History of the World (1937)

The cold-blooded massacres of the defenseless, the return of deliberate and organized torture, mental torment, and fear to a world from which such things had seemed well nigh banished — has come near to breaking my spirit altogether … “Homo Sapiens,” as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.

– H.G. Wells, A Mind at the End of Its Tether (1946)

Quoted in Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, page 159.

Over the MLK, Jr weekend I went with the youth from my church to Ridgecrest, NC, for a spiritual disciplines retreat. It was pretty spiffy. The main speaker was great, the music from Will Goodwin was great, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with the youth.

Besides, there was snow.

I’m really glad I got to go, even if I didn’t get up there til 5am the day it started. Totally worth it.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently. Not in a morbid way, but as a way of assessing where I am and what I’ve done.

Last October my grandfather died. I preached his funeral on what would have been his 75th birthday. As I type this I’m 31. Going by this, I would most of the way through the second quarter, with the band getting ready to come out on the field.

Amber’s Aunt Ginger died from cancer on October 24 of this year. She was 60. That would have me in the second half already; somehow I missed the band altogether. Then this weekend a friend told me that one of his wife’s cousins had died suddenly at 33 — game almost over for me.

No one knows, of course, how long I’ll live. But it’s a useful exercise, I think, to consider: If I had two years left to live, what have I done worth doing? What will I do with the time that remains?

Don’t waste your life.

Someone brought it up again tonight. How the church today is so far away from the the New Testament church. “We just need to love people.”

What’s interesting to me is, the people in the early church tended to get themselves killed. Now, in general, you don’t kill people for being nice. They didn’t crucify Jesus for being nice. They killed him for speaking the truth, for being Truth.

It bothers me when people think they can disconnect the proclamation of truth from loving people. As if it’s possible to love without being faithful to Jesus, as if following Christ means hiding the truth.

Jesus told people they needed to repent, that they were risking hell fire. His love was shown in healing people, but also in caring for their souls.

In Acts 7, Stephen said:

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” (ESV)

For this they killed him.

Yes, we’re supposed to love people: Feed the hungry, help the sick, clothe the naked. And through all this, we are to tell them the gospel of Jesus, that they can come to know Christ and love him as well.

I pray we’ll stop this nonsense about loving without the proclamation of truth.

I’ve always been a book nerd. When I was in elementary school my parents discovered I loved to read. So they bought be books. Lots of them. They figured, hey, good habit, let’s encourage it.

When I was in my teens my mom bought me a book about World War II. I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, and had never really learned about this thing called the Holocaust (hooray, public school). Even though I don’t remember the name of this book, I credit it with what has become a lifelong love of history.

It wasn’t a book of generalities. It contained stories of individuals and families: “This is what happened to my parents.” “This is when I watched my brother die.” It wasn’t possible to look at the victims as a group. It was extremely personal, and painful.

We forget that things don’t really happen to groups; they happen to individuals. The poor in America aren’t a homogeneous blob. They’re people: mothers, fathers, kids. I fear that the American church has largely lost sight of this.

Painful as it is, we need to break out of this. We need to take the time to meet people who need help, get to know them, invest in their lives. If we claim to follow Christ, we can’t get away from the fact that he didn’t send a representative to give a handout. He came himself and paid the cost himself. We need to do likewise.

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.

Romans 15:8-9

Busy day today. Easter service, of course. Then we had about 15 people over for dinner. Easy to lose focus of what today is supposed to be about.

As seems to be normal for American churches, most of the focus is on us: How God loves us so much, how our guilt can be thrown on Christ. Which is true. The problem is these things are not the end, but one of the means. They’re meant to point to God, not to some intrinsic value in us.

The end is not us, the end is bringing glory to Christ.

Jesus fulfilled the myriad promises of God regarding salvation. That salvation — available to all — should cause us to look beyond ourselves to God.

Easter is a great time to remember that it’s not all about us.

Activist arrested while feeding homeless:

Eric Montanez, 21, a member of Orlando’s Food Not Bombs, violated a city ordinance against feedings in the park Wednesday evening, police said. Each group is allowed to feed only 25 people, but undercover officers saw Montanez feed 30, police spokeswoman Barbara Jones said.

It almost saddens me that Florida isn’t having to arrest pastors and church members is droves on this one. I guess it’s because we normally don’t care too much about feeding people, anyway, contrary to the opinion of some.

Francis Schaeffer never presented himself as an academic apologist, as a philosopher, as a theologian or as a scholar. Instead he spoke of himself as an evangelist and a pastor, and this truly is how he thought about the ministry that God had graciously given him.

So begins an interesting article on Francis Schaeffer.

I had never heard of Schaeffer until a few years ago when I borrowed How Should We Then Live from my pastor. It had, and continues to have, a profound affect on me.

If you’ve never read Schaeffer, or perhaps have never even heard of him, I recommend the article above as a good introduction.

OCTOBER 31, 1517

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light,
the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg,
under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther,
Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in
Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that
those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us,
may do so by letter.

In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

95 Theses in English
Wikipedia