LATEST PODCAST. Preachers are like manure. When you spread us out, we can do a lot of good. But when you pile us up all together it can be almost unbearable. On a preachers tour to Israel I found out why.
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Category: Fundamentalism
Diligence not Goosebumps
There is plenty of good work to do—beyond the ministries of the church itself, we have a world of opportunity. Children and schools are important to all of us. Hungry children need food. Frightened children need reassurance, even if it’s not certain out there. Lonely children need connection.
The technology that was supposed to make life easy now is only our connection to get things done. Everything is a lot harder.
Here’s the problem now: the pandemic is going to stretch well into next year, from everything I can read. No vaccine is coming next week. I can see businesses adjusting, schools are figuring it out.
A caution in these times when the mind can fly off down Twitter rabbitholes: don’t give in to flights of fancy and fears of apocalypse. Beware the gloom and doom crowd. Conspiracy theories come along always in these times. So do second coming fears. In my lifetime there have been at least a dozen times over forty-one years in the pastorate when
My friend Dwight Moody wrote an excellent piece about this.
“You may know this phrase—Late Great Planet Earth—as the title of a book. It was written fifty years ago and sold more than 35 million copies. Which of course made
a lot of money for the author (Hal Lindsey) and the publisher (Zondervan). [at that time, he predicted the end would come at any moment. [it became the dominant interpretation of evangelicals and Pentecostals, said Dwight.
I’ve been around this my entire ministry. Again, and again, I remember times when timid and fearful Christians were the equivalent of Forrest Gump when he saw Lt. Dan on the dock and jumped into the water, leaving his boat to crash without anyone to steer.
The problem with this end times philosophy is twofold. First, it’s built on a very questionable interpretation of the bible, particularly the books of Ezekiel and Revelation. Second, it is neither the only nor the best interpretation of those books. And before the early 1800s, it was not dominant among Christians. Most of what you hear as pop Christianity presents this as though Christianity has only had this single approach. It hasn’t.
In the 1970s, the world seemed to be coming apart—racial division, Vietnam, ecological crisis, and the changing mores of the world caused many Christians to see signs that the end was near. At several points along the way, the same thing popped up again and again. In particular, I remember it at the end of the 20th century Remember that dreaded glitch in our computers that were supposed to make the world stop? (y2K) Then came the New Year and…life went on. 9/11, the Recession, and now this. Every time, anxious people said to me, “It seems like the Lord may come back any time.”
This is exactly why the Apostle Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians, and he said his famous verse that every parent has cited to a young adult that won’t go get a job: “If they won’t work, don’t let them eat.” People had literally quit working and began sitting on their spiritual keisters to wait for the apocalypse.
Paul also said, in Ephesians, these words:
25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up,[b] as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.[c]
Imagine the difficulty of planting these congregations when they came from pagan backgrounds, little or no knowledge of the Jewish scriptures, and no guidance. Paul gave them these basic guidelines because they needed the most elemental things. He is saying: Focus on these. Don’t be distracted by speculations, arguments, and divisions. Be kind.
These truths don’t depend on figuring it all out.
When you feel a little discouraged, do something for someone else. Call a family member or neighbor who is alone and listen. When you get angry about something on the news, turn it off and go fix something in the house.
I would suggest never buying books about the rapture, but if you must, at least read something practical to balance it. Most of those books fall into the category of Christian fiction. They are opinions, interpretations, but they are not beyond dispute.
My friend Dwight said at the end of his piece, “Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson are old people now, having gotten wealthy on predictions that proved false. The rest of us, however, are the poorer for it. We are suffering through the worst year since the Depression and the World War, largely because …[we] are still distracted (and deluded) by a book published a half century ago.”
The theology of “Left Behind” and its ilk presents a closed and fatalistic history—nothing matters. Most of creation will be destroyed and the small handful of faithful ones will be preserved but the rest of it done away with. That its enthusiastic supporters always count themselves among the few is glaringly self-centered.
Christian hope is not about terrifying people. It’s meant to…well, give you hope.
Rachel Held Evans’ Questions
The passing of Rachel Held Evans unleashed a surprising wave of grief to some. But to readers in the Christian world, and young women in particular, she was a voice of welcoming honesty. In an October 2012 article in Christianity Today called, “50 Women You Should Know,” Katelyn Beaty said of Rachel Held Evans that her blog, which began in 2007, spoke out on many traditional evangelical issues in a fresh and fearless way. Evans, she quoted, wrote that young Christians “aren’t looking for a faith that provides all the answers. We’re looking for one in which we are free to ask the questions.”
It was intense questioning that led her to start writing in the first place. In 2012 alone, 1.2 million visitors went to her site to hear what she had to say. She was speaking for many others, giving voice to many who were needing one. To a church (in the largest sense) that is always, at least institutionally, last to respond to change, she pushed to make it look at its truth and heart and reassess what it was Jesus meant us to do. Continue reading Rachel Held Evans’ Questions
Faith Amid Many Faiths
Religion is in the news every day, and sometimes the way politicians and news reporters talk about it
shows an enormous ignorance. Religious faith as the media and politicians talk about it sometimes bears little resemblance to the daily lives of billions of faithful people across the world. We live not only next to Muslims, but Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and many others. Sometimes this diversity is seen as a threat. But how do we respond?
Most Christians are not hateful or uncaring to their neighbors. But in these fear-driven times, some truth is a welcome friend. In this study, we will learn a little more about two “neighbors” with whom we share similar ancestry through Abraham—Islam and Judaism—and how Baptists can draw from their heritage to find a way to a more thoughtful and faithful interaction with others.
First, we are affected powerfully by what I have come to call “un-socializing media.” The web has made powerful and wonderful goods to be available to the planet. Unfortunately, it also provides terrible temptations and problems. I’m not simply talking about terrorists and pornographers being able to spread their poison, though that is bad enough. But the damage of half-truths, uncritical forwarding and the anonymity of the internet enables people to “express” things better left to the Continue reading Faith Amid Many Faiths
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Q. How many bluegrass musicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?..:
A. Three. One to screw it in, and two to complain that Bill Monroe never did it that way.
I take Bluegrass Unlimited, and by far the most interesting part is the “letters to the editor.” Bluegrass fans are unusually obsessive about their music. I have pondered this, and perhaps it is in part because it is the living memory of a time and a way of life that is passing away, and in part because when we find something and love it we want to hold onto it forever
I am a Baptist minister, and reading those letters made me happier about the craziness of institutional religion. I told my staff, “Hey, there are fundamentalists and liberals everywhere. Month after month, the argument rages: “What is REAL bluegrass music and what isn’t?” Well, I think, “Who cares?” Obviously the purists.
I write songs, and sometimes when people say, “What kind of songs do you write?” I have to scratch my head and say, “I dunno. Mine, I guess.” Some are country, some are folk, some are whatever. But once you record them and start fooling with them, and listen, you even wind up turning them into something else. You just want to see where they will go.
I ran across this not long ago when I stumbled across (Okay, I was straying from what I was supposed to be doing) a Wikipedia article about pop classical entertainer Andre Rieu, who plays those happy concerts on PBS that apparently purists in classical music call “Schlagermusic.” One critic said this, according to Wikipedia: “Boyd assesses the low points of the concert as the “Three Tenors-style” rendition of “Nessun dorma” which he finds was an “abomination”, while saying the concert’s highlights included “a sugar-shock sweet rendition” of “O mio babbino caro” as well as Strauss’s Emperor Waltz and Blue Danube, Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary and the Boléro.”
My response to this is to recall one of my favorite conversations in the movie “Napoleon Dynamite,” when Napolean goes to work at a chicken farm for a local farmer to earn some money. He is hired to go into the chicken houses and is worried about getting hurt and asks,
Napoleon Dynamite: Do the chickens have large talons?
Farmer: Do they have what?
Napoleon Dynamite: Large talons.
Farmer: I don’t understand a word you just said.
I have the same reaction. I enjoy the classics, but don’t know enough to get indignant. Sometimes we all need to stand down about our tastes. There are legitimate arguments about good, better, and best, but it isn’t all that hard for one’s own ego to slip in unannounced. That said, snobbery is not limited to elitists. Plenty of snobs in low places who sneer at anything they don’t understand.
Music, like authentic religion, is LIVING and dynamic. So let there be experiments and fusions. Labels are something for catalogs and libraries, but not for creative work. Music is nothing more or less than trying to get to that place where we say, “Wow, I love the way that sounds!” And something in the heart is stirred. There’s a place for honoring tradition and a place for breaking it all to pieces. And the world is big enough for all of it. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it and don’t worry about it…
The Flatpickin' Pilgrim's Progress 