Jesus wasn’t right

After talking with a friend of mine about a recent article written in the Huffington Post, ‘Evangelicals hate Jesus.’ We both started talking about post modern Christianity. We both come from very difficult background. He was born and raised in a conservative church and was kicked out of his community because he was gay. Now he hates Christians and Christianity. Myself I wax raised in a church that was founded in the principles of mission work. So going out into the world and teaching the good news and loving people.

Alright, now that your have the our background, we started talking about how the far right movement in the US identifies so much with Jesus. The word Christian inherently brings along the thought of republican for many. And the ideals of the tea party are rooted with people proclaiming the name of Jesus. The conversation started as a aggressive attack on the morality of people that proclaim the name of Jesus yet don’t uphold his teachings in what they politically support. Jesus urged people to giveaway their riches and help the poor, while the right is full people driven by greed that despise food stamps and government assets programs for those in need.

After our right wing bashing, which I fully admit it was, I left the conversation thing about how Jesus wouldn’t identify with the right if he were to be here now. I found myself justifying my political beliefs with my faith. Thinking that Jesus would have been a democrat. He would have wanted to get the government to help people that could not help themselves. But then I realized I was wrong, and the they were wrong. Jesus would have identified with either side. He would be not be the middle ground between us, but weather he would be outside of the political movements,going out and doing. Finding his way into the homes of those on welfare and showing them love. Seeking out the person that is bedridden and has medical bills to pay so that he might heal them of their wounds.

The Savior I know doesn’t work like we do, he works outside the normal realm.

Just Perfect

Have you ever had one of those moments in life where you know things are just perfect? I recently had one of those moments.

I was on my honeymoon with my Wonderful wife Sarah and we had just spent a great day in Skagway Alaska. We walked around the town for a while and then went back to our cruise ship before we departed. Sarah was inside the ship and I went out on deck to watch us depart. I watched the deck hands unhook the mooring line and watched them splash into the aqua blue glacier water. The shipped started to leave the dock, right then I sway a whale spout of the port side of the ship. It was a humpback whale about 100 yards away. One of God’s most majestic creatures was so close to me. After staying out on deck for awhile I went back inside to get Sarah so we could go get dinner.

We went up to the dinning room for dinner. I don’t remember what we at , because it be insignificant. While sitting by the big window we looked out and saw a pod of Orcas in a bay by one of the island we sailed by. Not more than five minutes later we say some splashing about 20 feet off the ship, lots of it. We figured out that it was pod of dolphins. I really large one. With all of the exictment we went up to the top deck with binocolurs and started looking.

As we went up to the top deck the ship started to sail through a fjord, on both sides of the ship were mountains towering over us with the snow capped glacier valleys glistening with the afternoon sun. The water was almost glowing. The most beautiful I’ve ever seen. We both were filled with joy. We sailed through the fjord passing islands and lighthouses. We went to the bow of the ship to look around. As we walked to the bow of the deck we were stuck by overpowering wind. The wind was 50-60 Mph. So fast that we were struggling to stand. All we could do was laugh and smile at all of this. Life was perfect, for this moment in time, we had no worries we had no troubles life was perfect we were together in this majestic place and were so happy.

Give Away

Have you ever wondered why God has chosen to make the changes he made in your life? Why He gave you something then took something away? Matt Redman puts it best in his song Blessed Be Your Name, “You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.” Currently I question these very things.

 

Last summer I went on my fifth week long mission trip to Baja California, Mexico. I had come to really enjoy these trips. They had become a great opportunity to bless a community of people in need and also helped me grow in great ways with God. On this most recent trip I was presented with on opening to spend the entire summer of 2007 in Mexico doing mission work. It was on opportunity to reach people that were in severe need of humanitarian help, and give it to them with the blessing of my God. It wasn’t ever something that I wanted to do, it was rather something that God pushed me into doing. I really would have rather spent my summer hanging out with friends and enjoying my time off school. But as God usually does, He pounded it into my head that I needed to go, so I was obedient and decided to go.

 

In the January I started writing letters to friends and family asking them to support me financially with this endeavor that God had given me. God had opened a door for me that I had only dreamed of doing. When I started raising money I knew that there was no way that I was going to raise $2100 by myself. If this trip was going to happen it was going to be because God wanted me to do it. He was going to have to supply the means for this to happen. For the next few months everything fell into place, all the paper work that I thought was going to be a problem became simple, checks started flowing into my mailbox just a few days after I sent out my letters. It was all working out, I was going to Mexico for the summer.

 

About a month before I was going to go to Mexico my friend Tom and I went out to Smith Rock to do some rock climbing. We had been climbing most of the day when all the sudden on the approach to a climb my right knee buckled and gave way on a small up hill path. I believed that it was just fatigued after a day of climbing. It had hurt for a few weeks and had gotten so bad that I was having trouble walking up stairs, so I decided to go to the doctor to get it checked out. It was now less than a week before I was scheduled to depart for Mexico. When I went to the doctor He told me that I had severely sprained my LCL, which it the ligament that keeps your knee from twisting to much. The doctor basically told me that going to Mexico for the summer and working construction would be an unwise move on my part. He said that I could injure myself more and cause permanent damage to myself.

 

The very task that God had pushed me into and that I was trying to be obedient too was taken away from me. I had become excited for my summer in Mexico, I was ready to go and spend my time with people that needed help instead of the people that could help themselves. I don’t understand why God would push me into this and them pull me out at the last minute. God had showed me time and time again that He was making this happen, and I was along for the ride because I was not capable of doing it by myself. apparently I really am along for the ride, because I don’t know were I am going. Why is it that I tried to walk through the door that God opened for me, but then he shut it while I stepped onto the thresh hold? I didn’t want to go to start with, it wasn’t my plan, it could have done something else with my time, but NO I decided to listen to God, and He does this to me. I got my hopes up and got exited and then my hopes get crushed into pieces. We are called Jars of Clay, but right now I feel like pieces of that jar that are sitting on the floor.

Church Walls

Disclaimer: I am going to warn you now that this is sort of a rant on how I believe the modern Christian church butchered how we are supposed to teach the Gospel. From this I hope you take some information that is relevant to you. Maybe you agree with it, maybe you don’t. All I’m asking is for you to think about it. I’m just as much a part of this problem as anyone else.

I was recently talking to the pastor of my church about the acoustics of our sanctuary. My self and another sound-guy were remarking on the horrible acoustics of the room. The pastor then told us about how he had been trying to leave the building for that reason since he became pastor . He said something to the extent of. “I finally got the church big enough so we were to big, then we got the West Side Church. Then I got it big enough again and the church board convinced me to knock out the wall and expand the building.” This thought really upset me. When did church become about making your congregation big? When did we decide to make these mega churches? I’m not saying that a mega church is bad, I’m saying that the thought that we need to keep bringing people in is a bad concept. We need to bring people in, but I think we are going about it entirely wrong.

 

In recent church history we have started trying to bring people to church. We have come up with a great number of different ‘productive’ methods to get people inside the church walls. We put on concerts with contemporary Christian music, maybe a punk band or a R&B artist. We’ll advertise these events in public places and try to make the advertising seem as unchurchy as possible. Once they are in the church walls, we think we’ve got’em. If they are inside the church walls then we have a chance at ‘saving’ them. But who decided that we need to save people inside the church walls? I didn’t, Jesus didn’t. When did the church become a building? I have always learned that the church was the people, the body, all together as the living kingdom of God. We still need to get people to church, but I think that the church needs to go to the people.

 

When Jesus was doing his ministry very rarely do you find him inside the tabernacle preaching. Instead you find him out among the people teaching. In Luke 10 we find Jesus sending out seventy-two disciples to go out in pairs to the towns and villages that Jesus planned to visit. His instructions to them are thus, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields. Now go, and remember that I am sending you out as lambs among wolves.” Jesus sent them out into the people to teach. He doesn’t tell them to go to the towns, find the tabernacle and preach there. Instead he tells them to preach in the streets and heal the sick, telling them that “The Kingdom of God is near you now.” (Luke 10:9) Jesus has mobilized the church, He took them out of their comfortable church pews and into the streets. This is what we as a church need to do, we need to force ourselves out of our walls and into the streets. We are the church and we need to be mobile. We must build the relationships with people in our communities. I don’t think that this means doing our concerts and church services in a park, it has to be so much more.

 

So, I just presented a problem, and one of my biggest pet peeves about anyone who presents a problem is when they don’t present any sort of a solution. So, I’m going to try and not do that. As for me, I think to start, with we really just need to get out into the community and serve. Jesus when he was first starting his ministry he really just went out and served before he even went out and preached. He went around to people homes and healed, He showed them who He was before he tried to tell them what He was doing. As people of the church, relationships should be our first priority. We are told to “…love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. And, Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) We need to Love our neighbors, by our actions and our words. Sometimes it is just as simple as giving out free lemonade on a hot day to people, or doing things just to make them smile and never saying “God Bless.” It really needs to be about the actions not the words. St. Francis of Assisi said “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” When we absolutly have to we use our words, but most often we need to shut up and work. GIVE, LOVE, CARE about the people of God. I think the start can me that simple.

 

 

Compassion

God has such great compassion over me. I just read in Luke 6 the story of the widowed woman who’s son had died. Jesus comes across the funeral and the first thing he says to the widow is, “Don’t cry.” He then touches the coffin and says “Young man, get up.” I didn’t just see this as another of Jesus’s miracles, yes the boy did rise from the dead, but first Jesus comforted the woman. He gave her all of his compassion, and gave her a reason not to cry. It says that his heart overflowed with compassion for the widow. Often in my life it feels that I have lost God, that maybe he has lost me, that he may not have that compassion for me. But by reading this I know that his heart overflows with compassion for his people. For all his people, when I am hurt and in need he will be there with that heart of compassion for me.

I have such little faith in God for my life. In Matthew 17 Jesus tells his diciples that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed then they could move mountains. I’ve seen a mustard seed and I think I lost it when I was holding it because it is just that small. If I had this much faith I could move mountains, and last time I tried the mountains were not moving when I told them to, and I have tried. Where does my faith lie if it doesn’t lie in Christ? I want to have faith like a child. Jesus tells us to have childlike faith, for they are the ones that will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Hmm… Faith? I try to convince myself that I have faith in God, but apparently I don’t have faith the size of a mustard seed. Those things are really small and I don’t even have that. How do I put my faith in God when I already think its with Him? I often find myself doubting God in my life. Doubting that things will all work out, that He has a plan for me, but then I find myself thinking about Luke 12, were Jesus says that the Father care for the birds and the flowers. He makes sure that they are fed and live well.How much more does the Father care about me? So then how much more will He make sure that I am alive and well? I must remind myself that God will provide in my life, and that all things will work out for the plan, His plan.

Jesus’s Beginning

Recently I have been reading through the book of Luke. In the beginning of Luke the author documents the beginnings of Jesus’s teachings. I have noticed that before Jesus started changing things and using his words to teach he first went out and healed people. The first of Jesus’s teachings were with very little words, he would often say almost nothing at all. Instead Jesus went out into the cities and healed people, he went and taught by his actions.

So often I want to teach people, I want to minister to them, I want them to hear my words, but I need to shut up and act. I must let my actions first speak for me. Why should I let my word speak for me when my actions can make the real difference.? If I want to be like Jesus I must learn to act as though I am his follower. Patience is something that I must have when I want to talk. In James 1:19 we are called to be quick to listen and slow to speak. My words must not come before my actions. Jesus did not do such a thing. St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” We can preach the gospel with out every opening our mouths. There are people that I want to know the love of God, and I must do this my my actions first and my words second.

Why the Blog

So I’ve been trying to find a blog site that I was satisfied with for quite some time, and a friend of mine has a blog on this site and I decided that this would work well. I’m starting this blog to express the thought I have on Bible content, theology books and Christian life. There may be a few blogs that have very little to do with any of this, but they hopefully will be few and far between. Outhere Thoughts is just going to be me putting my thoughts on what I am learning out there for everyone to see and read. I hope that this will help me more than it helps any of you.