Lent for Everyone Else

Lent has a rich and storied tradition in the church – forty days of self-denial, reflection, and prayer. I must confess that I have not been overly enamored with Lent. There’s a good reason for this – Lent became something else for me to do. Some other rule to keep among a host of others. I gave up rule-based Christianity for a heart-based version about eight years ago. In doing that, my relationship with God improved drastically and I became a tolerable individual. Plus, it keeps my heart-rate down. Now, I run away screaming from anything that resembles legalism in the slightest.

 

Lent for most folks today is a second chance at recouping the losses of New Year’s Day resolutions…only this time, there’s a little divine intervention. Others opt for silly self-denials – caffeine, sugar, candy. If we refuse to stress out over Lenten commitments we often end up trivializing them. Neither does anything for the soul. What’s more, I understand the importance of fasting, but am put off by people gearing up to fast for a specific period of time for no good reason. Once God began to show me the importatnce of living a “fasted” life, my need for a calendar date to start a fast went out the window…and with it, the relevance of Lent.

But (as is often the case) I’m wrong. Not for decrying triviality or legalism, but for not approaching Lent in a different way. Lent is important when it promotes serious reflection, healthy spirituality, and improves relationships. Okay. Great. But how? Well, this is what I’ve come up with. You’re welcome to adapt it as you see fit. Rather than giving up sweets or sodas, I try to “fast” things that will improve my quality of Christianity. Here are two examples.

First, I have fasted people for Lent before. Rather I should say that I fast a person’s influence over me. Let me explain. We all have people in our lives that irritate us or get under our skin – classmates, co-workers, relatives, even our friends. I don’t fast their presence in my life – they are gonna be around me anyway. But I do fast their control over my emotions and ability to wreck my mood. I fast those sleepless nights where I continually play a conversation I had with them while thinking up extremely clever comebacks to say. I figured out that when I do those things I am giving that person extreme control over my thought life that would be better used for something that actually matters. So I “fast” that person for 40 days. It’s absolutely liberating.

Another example: I have fasted expectations I have for another person for 40 days. Often times, my disappointment with another has to do with what I believe they should be willing to do rather than what they actually are doing. Of course, this can be a problem in marriages, but it applies to all the same people groups I mentioned above as well. Most times our anger towards others involves a big, fat SHOULD: how we believe others should behave rather than allowing them the liberty to live their own lives as they please. So, I will locate an individual upon whom I have placed unrealistic expectations – a spouse, child, co-worker, church leader – and I’ll completely relax any expectations of them for those 40 days. Of course, I don’t tell them, but I do notice that our relationship improves dramatically simply because they can feel that freedom in our relationship. The great thing is that after the 40 days, the relationship is usually going so much better that I continue that relaxed state. Truthfully, God means for our relationships to be that way all the time – Lent is just a way to jump start that process.

Be creative with Lent this year. Forget the cokes and candy. If used correctly, Lent can be a liberating way to create new avenues of spiritual health in our lives.

Pay Me What You Owe Me: The End of a “Profession”

I had a watershed moment this past week.

I attended a conference with a number of church planters from around the world. I’m not talking about our average “safe” conference where everybody flashes a lanyard to get in and sits around citing demographical research and discusses the latest Zondervan book. I have been to those and find them helpful. But this was different. These people were planting churches where no statistical data is available, if you get my drift. These people were hardcore. They were extremely kind and accommodating to me. But it became pretty clear that I was sitting with a class of minister far above my own.

One story struck me in particular. A guy had been making advances into a country for several years. Now, when I say that, I’m not saying that he’s got a 500 member congregation and health benefits. We’re talking about four converts in three years. That kind of thing. Hardcore. He was giving praise that someone in that group had invited him to visit again and was going to pay for his travel costs.

Here’s where it gets radical. I said, “Isn’t that a standard arrangement? How else would you get there?”  He said, “No. Normally I have to pay them to have the opportunity to witness to them. That’s why it’s a miracle.” Read that again. He has to pay them.

We send speakers and ministers around the world at our own expense. After all, motivational  speakers and ministers are worth the money right?  In the U.S? Yes. Elsewhere? Nope. In the U.S., the people who are paying are already Christians and deeply entrenched in that consumer paradigm. Outside of that paradigm, no one else gives a rip. A flying rip.

Don’t call me a doomsday prophet just yet, but I believe this is on the horizon in all Westernized nations as well. Many would say it’s already here. Presently, I would venture to say that roughly anywhere between 10-20% of any U.S. city has contact with Christianity and that number is decreasing every day. As it decreases, any prestige associated with the “profession” of ministry will eventually collapse. It’s status as a reputable and viable occupation will cease and (as in other nations) it may bring scorn upon those who embrace it.

Then something else will happen. People will have a choice: they will either wait for someone to fund them or they will spend their own money to share Christianity with others. Right now, ministers and church planters still think someone else needs to pay for their services. But ministers of the future will no longer ask for funding for themselves and their families. They will ask for funding so they can “pay” someone else to listen to the Gospel.

Do you think that’s a radical idea? Let me know what you think.

The Heretic Next Door

Back in the first centuries of the Christian movement, a priest from Africa named Arius stirred up some trouble. Though Arius spent the majority of his days as a religious upstart at Alexandria, he was trained at Antioch. That’s an important bit of info. There were two main “schools” of thought in Christianity then: Antioch and Alexandria. Alexandria was known for interpreting the Bible in an allegorical fashion. Much of the Alexandrian writings are first year church history for seminary students. Antiochan giants like Theodoret of Cyrus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Diodore of Tarsus held to a strict literal interpretation of biblical passages. These are really important theologians who receive very little attention nowadays.

Arius began devoting his sermons to investigating the question: “Was Jesus really God or was he just a human?”Arius had trouble believing God and Jesus existed together prior to the incarnation. This really isn’t that surprising. Antiochian theology focused on the “humanness” of Jesus – it was only a slight misstep that would lead Arius toward a form of adoptionism. So, for roughly the next three centuries, Alexandrian-heavy councils dragged Arius and company through the mud in their writings using nasty words like “heretic.” And for most Christians, that’s all we know about him. Was Arius wrong? Sure. Jesus is God. But there’s more to the story.

People rarely ask why Arius struggled with the divinity of Jesus. His reasoning is not much different from many struggling Christians today. Most of us were taught growing up that God the Father was a sovereign despot concerned with protecting his image of magisterial omnipotence. Liberal Protestant preacher Lyman Abbot put it this way: God is a “kind of awful omnipotent police justice” and each of us is a “scared culprit who knows he is liable to punishment but does not clearly know why.”  And that keeps many Christians in line. Afraid of God…but in line.

There’s only one problem. Jesus looks very different than that…and in John 14, Jesus had the gall to say he was just like the Father. And that’s what bugged Arius so long ago. He had been taught that God was unfeeling (impassible) and Jesus seemed so different. And because God did not seem to possess the qualities associated with Jesus, Arius assumed they weren’t the same at all. He was protecting the Father’s impassibility over against the “human” suffering in Jesus. If God did not feel our pain, how could he become one of us? Arius’ answer was simple: he didn’t. Arius’ responded when asked if Jesus and God are the same: “No! I would never insult the majesty of God that way!” This thought pattern also affects how many view the cross today: good Jesus protecting us from bad God.

There’s a good lesson here. People’s actions make it in the textbook. But their intentions rarely do. And what’s important to note here is that a struggling priest was attempting to think outside the box when reconciling his ministerial training with what he actually read in the Bible. He’d been taught that God was a “police justice” and wasn’t sure what to do with the compassionate Jesus he read about in the gospels. No one else had a good answer either so he courageously took a stab at it and was branded a heretic for the ages. But really, he was just a man attempting to understand God a little better. Maybe we shouldn’t call him the heretic for the ages. How about the heretic next door?

We should be careful when reading our history books. While it’s important to oppose false doctrine, we need to be careful not to disdain the struggles, fears, and mistakes of people in the process. Arius was doing the best he could. May we have grace to do the same.

A Nice Little Apocalyptic Bedtime Story…

So, I promised you a story in my last post – one that shows the interconnections between religious groups in history. Theology isn’t done in a vacuum and many of the groups that we assume are totally unrelated often have had a significant impact on the other. So let’s talk about how an 19th century Baptist farmer influenced a cult leader in Waco, Texas…

William Miller, upon returning from military service after the War of 1812, began to predict the end of the world. He was convinced of his findings by 1818 though he kept them private until the mid-1820s: the second coming of Christ will occur in 1844. By the 1830s, Miller’s prediction had created quite a buzz in the New England area and became a national phenomenon by 1840. March 21 was the date. It came and went and a new date was set for April 18. Nothing happened on that day either. At this point, Miller began to apologize to his followers. But just then, another Millerite came up with a new date: October 22. The thousands of Millerites rallied again for the new date only to experience the “Great Disappointment” at that time. Many became disillusioned and walked away from the church for good. Others split off into other groups while those faithful to Miller formed the Advent Christian Church.

Another group came from Miller’s followers: The Seventh Day Adventist Church. Hiram Edson, a former Methodist brought hope to thousands by explaining how Jesus could have “returned” without us seeing him – Edson spiritualized Christ’s return. Christ had come to cleanse the “Temple” by beginning the process of judgment in the heavens but had not yet come to earth. Eventually, prophetess Ellen G. White came to lead the group and placed emphasis on keep Old Testament laws, hence the name Seventh Day Adventist. The Seventh Day Adventist Church formally came into being in the 1860s.

Things rocked along for a while until the 20th century. In 1930, Victor Houteff wrote a pamphlet that criticized the SDA church. He also said that Christ was going to purge the church again by raising up another lineage of David. The number counted in this lineage? 144,000, of course. In 1942, Houteff and his followers broke away from the Seventh Day Adventist Church to form the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists. They founded a religious center named Mt. Carmel near Waco, Texas. Bored yet? Come on, you know this is interesting stuff…

In the next several decades, the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists experienced another miscalculated date for the end of the world and their leader, Benjamin Roden, was sentenced to an insane asylum. Around this same time, they changed their name to the “Branch” Davidians. Vernon

Howell showed up on the scene, changed his name to David (in honor of King David) Koresh and began to preach that Armageddon was near. It was…in the form of the ATF.

Interesting story huh? There was no way that anyone could predict that the date-setting attempts of a Baptist farmer in the 1840s would play a part in the origins of  one of the most sensational religious fringe movements in American history. That’s what’s so interesting about it. We can rarely predict anything much less the end of the world. And for every religious “river” flowing through our history, there are thousands of tributaries that flow from them. And then those tributaries turn into a river…as a movement, denomination, or sect – some famous and others infamous. No one group stands alone and the marginalized group of today could easily become the mainstay of the next century.

I hope you enjoyed your apocalyptic bedtime story. Goodnight, kids…

The End Is Near!

I had an interesting thing happen this weekend while at an outdoor concert. Actually, I was listening to this guy.While listening , a couple of women came up to the crowd and began passing out literature about the end of the world…next month. May 21, 2011 to be exact. Technically, May 21 is the “Rapture” and the end of the world occurs in October. The women were associated with a group called Family Radio, a formerly Reformed group whose main emphasis in the last decade has been numerology. Hence, the date-setting.

People have been setting dates for the end of the world for a long time. Sir Isaac Newton was a chronic date-setter using the Book of Revelation, Neoplatonism, and alchemy while establishing the laws of the universe. Charles Taze Russell used the square footage of the pyramids and Egyptian symbolism in his calculations. William Miller is probably the most famous with his followers experiencing the “Great Disappointment.” From the ashes of the Millerites rose the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  There are hundreds of others who have been fascinated with that pastime. Don’t forget Nostradamus and the Mayans while you’re at it.

Sadly, just the few interactions I watched often ended in Christians chiding these “doomsday prophets” for their beliefs and mocking their sincerity. Of course, this was for the purpose shaming them into realizing the error of their date-setting ways. I saw one prominent minister “defending Jesus” with great zeal. Sure, there’s a good chance they are totally wrong about May 21. But that has little to do with the fact that they are made in the image of God and deserve their dignity as much as they next person. No one asked them about their families or their upbringing or their favorite book or their hobbies. Their date was wrong…so they were wrong. Honestly, it ticked me off. So, I decided to talk to them, too.

I took their literature and said, “Looks like you are getting bashed pretty good for what you are attempting to share.” “Yeah, we are but I suppose that comes with the territory,” one of the ladies said. I told her I can’t apologize for everyone’s behavior (though I do that on occasion), but I admire them very much for what they are doing. “Really?” she said. “Yeah, I do. I am so impressed with your willingness to believe in something so strongly that you allow it to impact your choices and your willingness to tell others about it. I’m not sure about May 21, but I do wish all Christians had your passion for what they believed.”

I haven’t figured out much, but here’s something I think I finally understand. Right doctrine is important…but it doesn’t ignite a flame in your heart to where you adjust your life to fulfill that passion. And when I interact with people who have that passion, I know they are going to be okay. Why? Because the same passion that may drive them to a place of error for a time also makes them open to the correction of the Holy Spirit. Of course, that bothers us – after all, they may doctrinally “infect” someone or teach them “bad theology” that we must undo. But I’m okay with that. Here’s why. The longer I am alive, the longer I realize that what I attempt to control is really the Holy Spirit’s job anyway. I can point out date-setting “errors” but what I can’t do is instill the passion of God inside someone’s soul. And to crush that zeal is much worse than having an incorrect date for the end of the world. I’ve made a ton of mistakes in my faith journey and it was in the midst of those mistakes that God could do his most complete work.

Next post, I’ll tell you why William Miller was so important to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.

It’s Supernatural

I’ve been thinking about the idea of the “supernatural” in the Christian life. For a couple of months, I’ve been reading a steady diet of Watchman Nee, Malcolm Smith,  and Norman Grubb. And they often speak of something much deeper than your average Christian sermon ever introduces to a congregation today. Those readings have reminded me of things I’ve read by preachers associated with the Keswick “Higher Life” movement like F.B. Meyer, A.B. Simpson, and Hudson Taylor.

There are a couple of themes that keep coming back to me in all of their writings. First, most have done extensive missionary work, often times writing some of their most poignant spiritual thoughts down far removed from the paradigm of the “Western church.” Second, they all write about something called the “exchanged life”: that the basic premise of the Christian walk is not found in appropriating a particular task or objective (“don’t do that, make sure you do this”) but rather to allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through you. In other words, we are not to “keep” the Ten Commandments – we are to lean into the transformation Jesus brings to us and he will keep the Ten Commandments through us by pouring his love into our hearts (Jer. 31:33-34, Rom. 5:5, Rom. 13:8-10, Gal. 5:13-18).

But what stands out to me most in their writings is their understanding of what it means to live a supernatural life. Many in the world today believe for something “supernatural” that we often take for granted – simply because they have no other choice. When I think “supernatural,” I usually think of some sort of miracle - something far beyond my own abilities or expectations. But after talking with a number of friends over the past month, believing for a miracle is relatively easy compared to believing God for the “supernatural” in other ways. For example (at the risk of sounding crude), if I pray for someone to receive healing for a terminal disease their recovery has little to do with me or my family. Or I can pray for someone to rise from the dead and if it doesn’t happen, the dead person is no worse off for it. It doesn’t affect my livelihood.

I’m finding that it’s much more difficult to be “supernatural” about the ordinary needs of life.  The purchase of a home. Paying for new tires on a car. Relocation and job changes.  Choosing a school system for our children. Walking through a divorce with grace and dignity. In any of these or thousands of other scenarios, the stakes are much higher. My family, finances, relationships, and well-being could suffer drastically. And if I choose to not believe in God’s “supernatural” ability to be involved in the details of my life, the result may be disastrous. Plus, there’s only one person to blame for those repercussions: me. I need (we all need) the same guidance in the personal details of our lives that I would need when praying for a miracle. That’s been my focus recently. I pray God gives you the same sense of spiritual “weight” to your decisions.

Making Lent Relevant Again

Lent has a rich and storied tradition in the church – forty days of self-denial, reflection, and prayer. I must confess that I have not been overly enamored with Lent (which isn’t the best frame of mind for those who serve a church that places emphasis on the liturgical calendar). There’s a good reason for this – Lent became something else for me to do. Some other rule to keep among a host of others. I gave up rule-based Christianity for a heart-based version about eight years ago. In doing that, my relationship with God improved drastically and I became a tolerable individual. Plus, it keeps my heart-rate down. Now, I run away screaming from anything that resembles legalism in the slightest.

Lent for most folks today is a second chance at recouping the losses of New Year’s Day resolutions…only this time, there’s a little divine intervention. Others opt for silly self-denials – caffeine, sugar, candy. I happen to agree with the eleven year old boy who told me last week: “I’m denying myself coke and candy right after I eat and drink it.” Evidently the futility of such tactics is not lost on any age. We are left to stress out over Lenten commitments or to trivialize them. Neither does anything for the soul.

What’s more, I understand the importance of fasting, but am put off by people gearing up to fast for a specific period of time without being prompted by the Holy Spirit. Once God began to show me the importatnce of living a fasted life, my need for a calendar date to start a fast went out the window…and with it, the relevance of Lent. But (as is often the case) I’m wrong. Not for decrying triviality or legalism, but for not approaching Lent in a different way. Lent is important when it promotes serious reflection, healthy spirituality, and improves relationships. Okay. Great. But how? Well, this is what I’ve come up with. You’re welcome to adapt it as you see fit.

I no longer fast sweets or sodas. I try to fast things that will improve my quality of Christianity. Here are two examples. First, I have fasted people for Lent before. Rather I should say that I fast a person’s influence over me. Let me explain. We all have people in our lives that irritate us or get under our skin – classmates, co-workers, relatives, even our friends. I don’t fast their presence in my life – they are gonna be around me anyway. But I do fast their control over my emotions and ability to wreck my mood. I fast those sleepless nights where I continually play a conversation I had with them while thinking up extremely clever comebacks to say. I figured out that when I do those things I am giving that person extreme control over my thought life that would be better used for something that actually matters. So I “fast” that person for 40 days. It’s absolutely liberating.

Another example: I have fasted expectations I have for another person for 40 days. Often times, my disappointment with another has to do with what I believe they should be willing to do rather than what they actually are doing. Of course, this can be a problem in marriages, but it applies to all the same people groups I mentioned above as well. Most times our anger towards others involves a big SHOULD: how we believe others should behave rather than allowing them the liberty to live their own lives as they please. So, I will locate an individual upon whom I have placed unrealistic expectations – a spouse, child, co-worker, church leader – and I’ll completely relax any expectations of them for those 40 days. Of course, I don’t tell them, but I do notice that our relationship improves dramatically simply because they can feel that freedom in our relationship. The great thing is that after the 40 days, the relationship is usually going so much better that I continue that relaxed state. Truthfully, God means for our relationships to be that way all the time – Lent is just a way to jump start that process.

Be creative with Lent this year – you can always adjust your Lenten commitments if needed. If used correctly, Lent can be a liberating way to create new avenues of spiritual health in our lives. Forget the cokes and candy. Go after something truly transformative!

 

“Feeling” God

I believe people need to “feel” God. In order to explain this I need to go into egghead mode. I’m gonna ramble for a bit if that’s okay with you…

Church ministry is a tricky business. Taking concepts developed in an innocuous vacuum of journal articles, magazine op-eds, and…well…blogs and translating them into real life is difficult. Rarely is the transition a smooth one. There’s a reason for this: while theology involves concepts, pastoring involves people. Though everyone lives from a place of personal theology, the outworking of that personal theology is often drastically different from one person to the next. Nurturing the growth of such a diverse group of folks can be the undoing of the most industrious minister. But I’ve noticed something that helps direct my personal ministry. One of the things I feel most “called” to in ministry is to help people understand and facilitate their ability to “feel” God.

I like to describe this idea idea using the term of somatization: the conversion of cognitive, emotional, or spiritual aspects into physical or tangible expressions. For spiritual purposes, it’s the work of  the Holy Spirit in bodily manifestation. Normally in the psychiatric/medical community, that term has negative connotations. But honestly, anything - good or bad, happy or sad – affects us physically. It’s the same idea found in the ridiculously overused term “psychosomatic.” Internal issues result in physical expression.

Over the years, I’ve watched many individuals have a spiritual encounter that completely shifted their personal paradigm of God’s nature and immanence. In each of those scenarios, experience (of some sort) confirmed the power of God available to them on a personal level. Personally, it struck me as odd that God would initiate a strong spiritual encounter when I knew that many of those who received it had little to no doctrinal knowledge. I believed God was doing things backwards; after all doctrine comes first, right? But it occurred to me that throughout the history of the church, many people openly rejected any attempt of indoctrination without a prior or accompanying spiritual experience to validate that doctrine’s truth. Once someone has an encounter where they “feel” God, they will desire to know more about the God who provided that experience. God anchors faith in experience until one becomes grounded in proper belief. I began to understand my pastoral role was to disciple a healthy and balanced Christian upon the foundation of those spiritual encounters – not denying their legitimacy or downplaying their appropriateness.

How Christianity translates the supernatural into daily life is the most important aspect of personal spirituality today. Many pastors and theologians are struggling with this. Contemporary Christians are eager to cast off strict, doctrinally-oriented approaches to Christianity without accompanying experience. We ask Christians all the time  to follow their beliefs with actions – that our love relationship with God requires corresponding expression in a personal way. But today’s Christians have turned the tables: they actually expect to understand God’s love through the experiences he provides. 

Christianity has always been a two-pronged religion. One side involves doctrinal ascent to a set of beliefs centering on the finality of Jesus Christ. The other side is more “subjective” – it involves the prospect of “feeling” God through experience. That experience becomes an anchor for faith that can be leaned upon as doctrinal maturity develops. Of course, ministers and theologians get this backwards all the time - we teach doctrine in hopes that it will lead to experience for our congregations. But people’s actions tell us differently. When they are forced to choose between experiencing something on a spiritual level or adopting a particular set of dogma, they most often choose experience, since they ultimately believe that experience will correctly inform their doctrine, not the other way around. In other words we’ve been doing theology backwards. Postmodern Christians don’t say “I believe because I know;” they say “I believe because I feel.” It doesn’t have to be crazy charismatic stuff…but it’s gotta be something.

Do you “feel” God?

The Books

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season.

At the end of the year, I suppose it’s good decorum to reflect on that year’s experiences. Yet, sometimes I find myself looking back further – looking at how this year has added to my overall life experience – just one chapter of many. I often look back at some conversations or books that altered my understanding about a topic. But what if I surveyed the most important books I’ve read to this point? Which books have shaped my worldview – which ones do I come back to? 

I take particular pride in the fact that I have never read The Purpose Driven Life, Blue Like Jazz, or any Max Lucado book. Indeed, you may say: “Sam, that’s exactly what’s wrong with you.” You may be right. But I have been reading something. The books below have been life-changing for me. Very few of them are well-known. Sorry the list is so long…

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression. As I wrote in the post before, I love the preaching style of “the Doctor.” Many of his sermons were edited for books. People love the Acts or Romans or Semon on the Mount sermons. This series is my favorite. It deals with spiritual burnout. And I was there. This book (along with the two books below it) saved my spiritual life.

Wayne Jacobsen, He Loves Me. I was a perfectionist. A legalist. And very angry. I didn’t understand what the love of God was all about. I didn’t understand the meaning of unconditional love. This book changed that. It’s a great introduction into the grace-oriented freedom that Jesus brought to us.

Malcolm Smith, Power of the Blood Covenant. Using the theme of the blood covenant and the faithfulness of God as its guideline, this is the best summation of the Christian life I have ever read. Hands down.

Jeff VanVonderen, Families Where Grace Is in Place. Within two years of our wedding day, our marriage was on the rocks. This book saved it. VanVonderen talks about how to create a family (as spouses and parents) where biblical notions of grace are at the center. No more controlling, fear-tactics, and shame. The McVeys and Kimmels are more popular but Jeff was the original. We’re still married, by the way.

Clark Pinnock and Robert Brow, Unbounded Love. I’ve read a good many systematic theologies. This one is different. The late (and great) Pinnock was a renown theologian and the late (and great) Brow was an Episcopal priest. The book is an honest attempt to create a systematic theology around the simple premise that God is love. It’s a breath of fresh air. From the conclusion: “God is so radiant that he deserves a beautiful theology, theology done with joy and thankfulness, theology that can dance and sing.”

Morton Kelsey, Encounter with God. A Jungian psychologist and Episcopal priest, Kelsey has written extensively on the intersection between the Bible, psychology, and spiritual experience. For me, Encounter with God is the pinnacle of those writings (though not his most well-known). He easily weaves theological, philosophical, and psychological sources together to create an understanding of how people “encounter” God and what they seek experientially from that encounter.  

Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God. Several of the books on this list changed my understanding of the Old Testament. But this one changed my understanding of God using the Old Testament. Previously holding God at an emotional distance from his creation, this book helped me understand that God “feels”. The story of God is one of suffering in relation to humanity. Whether you agree with process or panentheistic thought, this book helped me relate to God in an entirely new way.

Abraham Heschel, The Prophets. Raised as an evangelical, the Hebrew prophetic books meant little to me other than a way to “prove” Jesus’ messianic claims. This book changed that for me – I finally understood the importance of the prophets and their lyrical narratives that reflected the heart(break) of God. No surprise that it took a world-renowned rabbi to bring me to those conclusions.

Richard Kyle, The Religious Fringe. This book is solely responsible for directing my academic interests. In it, Kyle (professor of history and religion at Tabor College) doesn’t just recount major religious movements in the Western tradition. He traces all the interconnections and tributaries that make the history of religion interesting. As someone who was deeply intersted in the charismatic lineage of the church and its ancillary movments, this book showed that tracing religious thematic trends through Western history was possible. A remarkable book.

Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon. Second to Kyle’s book, Hutton’s introduced me to the Western pagan and esoteric tradition. I read this book on a church leadership retreat. I don’t remember anything that we talked about on the retreat…but I remember the importance of having a scholar peel back the historical layers of the neopagan movement and expose the “humanness” of religious seekers outside the Christian tradition. I finally stopped seeing heretics or heathens and began to see people reaching out for religious experience. Not sure that’s what I was supposed to be learning….

Anne Punton, The World Jesus Knew. This book is about the contexts of culture and archaeology that surround the stories of Jesus. It’s a wonderful introduction to all the other elements that inform the Gospel narrative that rarely makes it to general Christian readership. Thankfully, books like Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus are changing this, but this book was one of the predecessors.

Watchman Nee, Release of the Spirit. I was a worship leader at several churches for about ten years all together. I read some good articles and books on the technical aspects of leading worship. But this is the book I recommend to beginning worship leaders. It’s about ”breaking” the flesh so that God can release the spirit of each of us for ministry. True worship comes from this state of release. Worship leading is a spiritual event much more than it is a musical excercise. This book explains that event.

Why You Should Listen to Your Father-in-Law

There’s this really great story in Exodus 18. Moses is leading the Israelites through the wilderness and his father-in-law, Jethro, comes to visit. Now, Moses to this point has acted in the formal definition of a judge – the same way you find Deborah or Gideon responding later in Israel’s development. Judge meant rescuer or deliverer – one who fights on the behalf of another. That’s why God chose Moses to act as his judge in Egypt.

Somewhere along the way, Moses reinvented what a judge should be. Starting in verse 13, we see Moses sit down in a chair and begin to settle grievances among the people essentially acting in a legal capacity. A “judge” becomes someone who renders decisions in a legal fashion rather than someone who rescues others. Look at Moses’ answer to Jethro in verses 14-15:

Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.”

Jethro, in his own father-in-law way, tells Moses this is a horrible idea. But Jethro doesn’t put his finger on the real issue either. He says that Moses will be overwhelmed by the administrative task of rendering legal decisions for everyone. He advised him to spread out the responsibility. Good administrative decision. But one that misses the bigger picture. The reason Moses was sitting there in the first place is because he had exchanged the God’s original idea of judge as rescuer and deliver for the human concept that a judge uses delegated authority to tell everybody else what to do.

I’m not big on symbolic interpretation or anything, but this story strikes me as relevant to Jesus’ death on the cross. The crucifixion is not really the issue. It’s our inability to interpret the cross outside of what we know and understand. Just as Moses traded in the original understanding of  a judge as deliverer for the belief that a judge renders a legal decision, we too throughout history have done the same thing. We’re the ones that based it on feudal honor (Anselm) and breaking the law (Calvin). We treat the death of Jesus as a “transactional” event. God was angry. Someone had to pay. Jesus took God’s punishment. Justice has been served. We came up with the legal model. Of course, now we are so used to talking about it that we can’t see the cross without it. The cross was necessary, though I’m not sure the reasons we have constructed are the reasons God initially intended. It takes only a cursory look at the verses preceding John 3:16 the know that the cross was about more than “breaking the law” in some cosmic courtroom - it was about reconciliation and healing. A point Moses makes clear a few pages over in Numbers 21 (I talk about that in-depth here).

I think Jethro had a point. Most fathers-in-law do. He knew Moses had created a way of understanding  judgment far removed from God’s original calling. We do the same. How freeing would it be to embrace the cross as an avenue for rescue, redemption, and reconciliation?