persecution = preservation for the Christian

I might as well publish these thoughts while I’m here meditating on God’s Word.  Micah has stirred me up to continuing this process by reminding me of salts preservative quality.  This has led me to think about faith, grace, and testing through persecution as having preserving effects as well.  Not only for the believer but also for the moral values of the culture in which we live as well.  Not only does God’s grace give us the hope that makes up our faith but it also creates in us the kind of life that produces the works that shine like a light in a dark place. 

So now I have worked into a system of thought that places radical faith in the face of suffering as a necessity for being saved (in the end) because it is the salt of grace through faith that produces works.  James agrees that trials aren’t strange for the Christian and that the purpose and outcome for them is the crown of life.

James 1:2-4,12

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, [2] when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Now I am left wondering how does one who lives in post-modern, relative, subjective, believe what you wanna believe and leave me alone America preserve and shine?  I see the outcome of Stephens persecution and the effects brought about by the death of many in the mission field and I desire that for my country, for my state, for my city.  I want the Sav’h Morn News writing an article about some radical Christian whack job who trusted God enough to stand up for the truth and made some waves doing it.  But it must be done in a way that is radical yet glorifying to God.

Titus 2:7-8

7 Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.

1 pet 3:13-17

13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.

I’m tired of just thinking about it and talking about it, I want to do something, but what?

radical faith = salt and light?

As I have been thinking about radical faith in the face of suffering and persecution I have noticed a pattern in scripture before that I had never before noticed or had called to my attention. I’ll lay my deductions out there and any who read this can decide for themselves whether it is true or not and comment back as the Spirit leads.

Here is what I noticed: In the gospels where Jesus spoke of salt and light or being salty it immediately followed his encouragements and promises for the persecutions of those who follow Him. Is Jesus telling us that we shine brighter for Him and salt the world by standing firm in our faith during trials and persecution? Take this passage in the gospel of Matthew for instance:

Matthew 5:10-16
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Salt and Light

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Those who are persecuted for righteousness are happy because we can look forward to the kingdom of heaven and our reward is great there. We are very familiar with this, but what follows next, and its placement in the Lord’s sermon is something I never noticed or thought about before. There is usually a new paragraph starting here or a heading as you see above (from the ESV)and that tends to cause us to close the last thought and start a new. But should we? Or is Jesus finishing the previous statement about persecution by telling us that if we aren’t living radically for Him, then we are good for nothing? If we get in the habit of not being “salty” (or radically faithful), how can we get back our zeal again. Many should ask if they have ever had the kind of zeal for Christ that comes with a regenerate heart and pray accordingly.

 

Now, the following passage is not pertaining to persecution or suffering for the cause of Christ which leads me to believe that the saltiness of our lives depends not on suffering or persecution alone (although faith through persecution is a very bright light for unbelievers). Rather this passage immediately follows the passage where Jesus tells us to pluck out our eye and chop off our arm rather than to be cast into hell. So I think that salt in this passage is relating to sacrifice. Some are salted with fire in this age as the Lord disciplines His children. Others are salted in the age to come in a perpetually burning lake of fire. We are to be living sacrifices and according to OT laws, all sacrifices were to be salted. We are living sacrifices that are salted with grace … past grace that brings us to trusting in future grace through the experience of present grace.

 

Mark 9:49-50
49 For everyone will be salted with fire. [1] [Some manuscripts add and every sacrifice will be salted with salt]

 

50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

In the gospel of Luke Jesus tells us about useless salt again after telling us to count the cost of following Him. To hate our own life and all the things of the world in order to bear our cross and follow Him is what is required to be His disciple. Then He says that salt that is not salty is no good. He who has ears let him hear.

Luke 14:26-28,33-35
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?
33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Salt Without Taste Is Worthless

34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

 

So here is where I am now: I believe that to be salty is to be full of grace and that grace causes us to live for Christ as we know He has purchased for us an inheritance that will not fade or go away. This Christ centered living by faith allows us to live in a way that the world hates and they are either changed or we are persecuted.

…or maybe being salty is to have faith and our faith if it is not bearing fruit is good for nothing. Like James says that faith produces works. We also know that a tree that bears no fruit is good for nothing but to be chopped down and thrown into the fire. Faith comes by grace so they can both be correct, I suppose.

If you read this far and were able to make sence of my feeble attempt to capture my thoughts as they unfolded I hope you were blessed. I started out to share a discovery and as I wrote through it and looked up a few sources to check my accuracy of thought I grew all the more. I wish I could organize all my thoughts and share them. My brain is like the highest Tetris level sometimes. Blocks fall fast and sometimes they fit by other times they just stack up to nothing.

self defense and radical faith

We hear about it more and more as the days go by.  Islamic fundamentalist radicals that offer up their own lives to take the lives of others; especially Americans, Christians and Jews.  As a Christian who lives in America I saw these radicals as a threat to my way of life and the comfort I enjoyed. As I listened to the voices of those around me over the years, I came to know that I was not alone in this and I also saw how the fear initiated by these terrorist turned into hate and anger toward them.  As an American I understood, but as a Christian I know that somewhere we have been duped.  Their threats, attacks and intentions lead us to feelings of terror, fear, anger, bitterness, malice and sometimes deep hatred for them.  This is not the way we should react.  But how should we react?

I recall numerous conversations in which we would somehow get around to matters of self-defense and the lengths we would go to to protect ourselves and especially those we love.  If someone breaks into your house you have many rights within the law to blast them with whatever you find within reach.  After all, they threatened you and your family’s well being and your safety, right?  They deserve what they get, right?  I would say right on both counts … BUT. 

I am now coming to a different perspective and conviction concerning this.  When I take a long hard look at my values and beliefs I abhor that I entertain thoughts of hate, rage, and fearful anger leading to the point of taking a life.  I desire rather to be the kind of person that would have compassion on them and be able to tell them the good news of the kingdom of God because even if they took my life for it they would be doing me a favor.   To be the kind of person that could give cheerfully to the one who breaks in to steal from me because I know that my riches in Heaven are much better than any possessions I have on this earth.  To be the kind of man who’s faith makes a difference, who’s faith causes heads to tilt and jaws to drop and eyebrows to raise and hearts to wonder at the evidence shown that points to the fact that knowing and trusting in all that God is for me in Jesus is more valuable than all things, even my life itself.  To die to myself in hopes of saving the life of another, this is what I want my faith to look like.  This is the radical I want to be.  My self-defense is actually soul-defense by radical faith.

Vintage Jesus

It has finally arrived!  The pdf copy of Mark Driscoll’s new book Vintage Jesus just popped up into my e-mail box and I began reading it today.  I have downloaded it and decided to peek at it only to discover that I may finish reading it before the hard copy arrives.  Honestly, it is much different that what I expected.  I expected a side-splitting narration of sorts on the life of Christ presented as only Mark can do, and much to my surprise what I have is a very clearly articulated, easy to understand rendering of doctrinal theology with a solid biblical framework.  I am NOT at all disappointed, in fact I am pleasantly surprised.  Still yet, I am sure that Driscoll has a few comedic surprises and brow-raising depictions of biblical history that would make it relevant to the TV saturated and liberally jaded culture of today. 

 To whet the taste for this new journey, the dedication reads:

This book is dedicated to

anyone who takes Jesus seriously,

but not themselves.

Chapter 1      Is Jesus The Only God

In typical Driscoll fashion Mark writes:

Who exactly is Jesus? Is he a good man or God, the half-brother of Lucifer
or a prophet, liar or truth-teller, therapist or communist, stand-up
comic or just my uber-fly, holy homeboy? So much has been said about
Jesus that it only seems appropriate to let Jesus speak for himself.

then He proceeds to explain in crisp detail ten ways Jesus flatly said that He was God and He does so in a manner that I never saw coming. His plain, in your face, no holds barred, passion for truth comes at us with guns blazing. Some may disagree with his colorfully descriptive style of bringing the biblical culture into the new millennium mindset but they must admit that they dont understand his style any more than they understand the younger generation. Case in point. Furthermore, in this book even the critics will be swept away by Marks integrity in staying true to the scriptures and letting the bible speak for itself in most cases.  The most potentially controversial statements in Chapter one are available on the the Vintage Jesus website.  I just love this guy!

recurring thoughts on being a reformissionary inspired by Mark Driscoll

Everyone should know what a missionary is … there is a relatively new (at least in the modern church) idea that everyone is a missionary in the culture around us. Paul demonstrated this through his preaching and we have gotten so far away from this that we have become irrelevant in the culture today. This ideal is represented by term coined by Mark Driscoll and that term is “reformissionary”

We all praise missionaries for going into foreign lands and learning their language and adopting their cultural distinctiveness’s (dress, food, govt, relationships) while we polarize ourselves from those who are in need of the gospel here in our own neighborhoods. This is not a biblical response to the need for evangelism.

Mark Driscoll has given me a few points to meditate on. One point is that we must have a even balance of focus in each of three categories in order to be a effective missionary in our culture. Those three categories are gospel, church, and culture.

culture + church – gospel = easy-believism, false assurance, universalism, which is completely man-centered and God-less

culture + gospel – church = para-church ministries with a disconnection from fellowship which lead to diminishing spiritual growth.

church + gospel – culture = sectarian fundamentalism that has no effective witness to the world through lack of love and understanding of needs

You can see how a proper balance of all three of these is needed to be a effective witness. Only when we have a proper balance of culture, church , and the gospel can we come alongside sinners like us and invite them to share with us in the riches that Christ offers through his love which he demonstrated by His life and consequently his death on the cross.

Another point that has stuck out at me is the terms “syncretism” and “sectarianism”.

Syncretism is what most fundamentalist are defending against. We “sync” up with the culture. It is what we become if we are influenced by the culture in such a way that leads to our being absorbed into the culture which has consequences of becoming worldly and sinful.

Sectarianism is the consequences of living in this fear and adhering to a “garbage in, garbage out” mentality and worldview as it relates to culture. Christians become part of a “sect” of society, no longer an interacting part of culture, but more like a mob across the street throwing rocks at the passers by on the other side.

Both of these extremes should be avoided if we want to be effective missionaries in our culture. We have to be able to reach out without selling out. We have to be willing to go into the world and preach the gospel that meets the needs of the particular people groups we are trying to reach.

from evangelical society’s review of Driscoll’s book Radical Reformissionary“…to people hurting from the pain of World War II, Billy Graham’s presentation of the gospel in terms of peace made a lot of sense. Likewise, talking about a personal, loving relationship with Jesus communicated well to the generation of the 60s and 70s. In other words, while both of these approaches are true and accurate pictures of the gospel, they may not be the most effective way of presenting salvation in Christ to our culture today.
Driscoll offers several “signposts,” or analogies, which he has found particularly effective in presenting the gospel. For instance, many people today come from broken homes, with no fellowship or love. The idea of salvation as an invitation to God’s family, or participation with God in life, is exactly what many people today are seeking. In a similar manner, emphasizing the life-changing power of salvation, along with the complete forgiveness of sin through the blood of Christ, is a powerful message to those whose lives are full of guilt, frustration, and anger. Just as each of the four gospels tells a slightly different collection of stories, and emphasizes a slightly different set of truths about Jesus and His offer of salvation, so we should know what method of communicating the truth of the gospel will be most effective for those in our culture.
But there is no way for us to know the language of our culture if we are completely separated from it. While there are certainly virtues to avoiding the moral depravity of our culture, if we are completely unfamiliar with the terms and the needs of the culture, then we are going to have a more difficult time communicating with the people around us. Further, only as we are involved in the culture will we be around those who need the gospel. Missionaries don’t just sit in their churches and write to foreign cultures about Jesus; they go to cultures and live in them. …”

I am steadily reminded of the need for Marks message among evangelicals.  As I frequent the forum I am entrusted to moderate, I see replica’s of my worldview before being influenced by missonal thinking.  I post many of my thoughts there to get some feedback from the active members who are willing to offer some insight into how they think.  Sometimes it makes me angry to see the disservice that the Church is committing with the uncontextualized presentation of the gospel truth.  Sometimes it makes me sad.  Either way it motivates me to pray for guidance as I try to reach as many as possible with the gospel as possible without being irrelevant.

laughter is like good medicine

laughter is like good medicine

It sure is good to have a relationship with the Almighty creator of all things, including laughter

I wonder if Jesus laughed when he told the Pharisees to take the log out of their eye
[close your eyes and picture that]
or the blind leading the blind and them both falling into the ditch … that is a funny sight
cracks me up

the log thing reminds me of that Dairy Queen commercial for the flaming hot burger or chicken sandwich or something
there is a guy in the office eating his flaming hot something or other and when he opens his mouth to talk flames shoot out

it catches his papers on the desk on fire
and then he tries to blow it out and catches the desk on fire

someone asks what is wrong and he starts to tell them but covers his mouth really quick before he burns em up

now picture us with a log in our eye trying to help everyone else with their sin.  We’d knock a few blocks off before we did any good.  Kinda counter-productive for helping, but funny to watch.

Re:Lit Vintage Jesus by Mark Driscoll and Dr. Garry Breshears

the first book is available for pre-sale in this new line of books and there are incentives for those interested in buying early at Crossway including 35% off, early release PDF for blogging about, and a signed copy for the first 1000 purchases..

“In Vintage Jesus, one of America’s most influential young pastors teams up with a seasoned theologian to lead you on a hilarious theological journey chasing Jesus through Scripture and pop culture. The authors provide timeless answers to twelve timely questions about the most important man who has ever lived. Each chapter concludes with answers to common questions about each subject.  

…questions are answered with insights from people such as Jesus himself, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther King Jr., Hugh Hefner, Jack Bauer, Fidel Castro, Oprah, Kanye West, Gandhi, Homer Simpson, Mike Tyson, Gil Grissom, and Madonna, along with some demons and a porn star. There have been seventeen thousand books written about Jesus, but none is like Vintage Jesus.”

I pre-purchased a copy.  I enjoyed both Reformissionary and Confessions of a reformission rev by Mark Driscoll and I have been looking forward to more of his writing.  I will probably be going through the pdf here on the blog when they send it at the end of the year.