Torchdown Jesus

I've come to the realization over the last few years that I am more embarassed by some of my fellow Christians than I am of Christ. The "Touchdown Jesus" statue's recent demise is just another example.

I'm sure that the church that erected it had the intention of using it as a sign to point people to Christ. But this is the problem with many of my Christian brothers and sisters. They are trying to give the world simple answers to complex problems. Speaking in baby-talk to adults, they will sport bumperstickers that read, "Jesus Saves", while the non-christian is scratching their heads wondering what they need saved from. Another popular bumpersticker reads, "Jesus Is the Answer", while the non-believer might be asking, "What is the question?" "Lord save us from your followers" is a more aptly written bumpersticker.

Most non-christians who passed the giant Jesus statue on I-75 have deeper issues that keep them from coming to Christ. Those issues are much deeper than simply seeing a giant statue. They need to be engaged by Christ followers who demonstrate God's love through acts of kindness and whose lives well lived, demonstrate they have found the real answers to life's deepest questions. In many cases, non-believers don't even know the questions they should be asking. They need believers lives to be the questions they should be asking. They aren't ready for answers personified on the highway to questions they haven't yet asked.

To my Christian brothers and sisters who doubt me, I ask. Why has God hung this whole thing on the ambiguity of faith? He could have given a witness clearer and more explicit than a giant Jesus statue. Have you not noticed the paradox of the Gospel? Examples of these paradoxes include, "If you want to lead, you must serve" and "if you want to receive, give."

This pattern of paradox is reverberated by St. Francis of Assisi, "Go forth and preach the Gospel and if you must use words."

The depths of the truth that God has given us are too great to be expressed in a giant statue. Don't give the world answers. Give them questions. Make them think with an honest heart.

If you want to teach, first learn. If you want to point the way, first walk the way. If you want to make a difference, first be a difference. If you want to show people answers, be the questions. Is THIS not why God is pleased by faith instead of certainty?

Messages in the Experiential

Atheist's often embrace death as something to be accepted as natural and normal.

But what does the above picture say to you existentially? In other words, how does the image of death make you feel?

Not exactly feeling warm and fuzzy? Why is such a negative visceral reaction so natural and normal?

Contrasted with the end of life, what about the natural and normal responses we experience looking at the start of life?



Is it insane to act like these feelings don't exist when we look at the end of life while hypocritically embracing them when looking at the beginning of life?

I would be the first to stand up and say that a life lived only by feelings is a life lived in folly and will be cut off prematurely. But should these feelings totally be ignored?

Could it be that the feelings we experience looking at these things are signposts? If so, how can we reconcile the sign of a newborn's birth telling us to celebrate a life that inevitably ends in death?

It is enough to make one insane. Insanity is the height of brokenness. But perhaps instead of letting this dissonance break us, we can let it break the world. The world is indeed broken. By recognizing this, I can rise above the cocophany of dissonance and look for what ought to have been.

But one cannot acknowledge what should have been without presuming upon the idea of purpose. And purpose always has a purpose maker.

These Greek pillars are beautiful works of art. We couldn't also call them ruins unless we knew that their original purpose was to support a coliseum.



Don't ignore the questions of purpose. They are the most important questions of life, illuminating our understanding and pointing to a greater purpose maker.

Exploring Boundaries: Faith & Reason

I believe in the integration of faith and reason. Even many of my Christian brothers & sisters disagree with me here, I am not alone. Pascal, Edmund Burke, Augustine, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias and many many others would echo this affirmation.

When we put on seatbelts to ride in a car, we do so because logic says that the seatbelts make us safer. However because we cannot absolutely know whether or not we will arrive at our destination safely, our decision to ride in the car is based upon faith. Furthermore, if the driver of the car was inebriated, reason would dictate that such faith would be even less founded, if not unfounded.

I believe in Christ but not without reason. But because my reasons can not absolutely prove Him to be true, I still have faith. There is a reason that the Bible says that the Christ who could walk through walls in his resurrected body rolled away the stone from His tomb. It wasn't so that He could get out. It was so that we could see in.

I have blogged on the reasons for my faith in other posts and will not reiterate them again. But now that I have established this nexus of reason and faith, let's explore their limitations.

The limitations of reason are less obvious to many. Maybe you've read about the philosopher who asks questions like "How do I know I exist?" and "How do I know that I'm not really asleep living in a dream?" Go without food and drink for a while and you'll know that you are alive even if you can't explain how or why via reason. We somehow know that we exist but we can't explain how.

The limitations of faith are obvious. I can have faith that the world is flat, that I am the king of Narnia, that I am going to be healthy, wealthy, famous and wise, but reality does not always conform to our faith.

I can have faith that the oil currently spewing into the gulf of Mexico will miraculously stop but I cannot presume my faith upon God's will. It is only when I know the will of God that my faith can have traction.

What is at the boundary of reason if it is not faith? And what is at the boundary of faith if it is not God?

Hijacked Christianity

Pat Robertson recently said this about the recent Haitian Earthquake:

"They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil,"

Christianity has been hijacked by people like Pat. If you're not a Christian, you could easily dismiss its claims by thinking that people like Pat are accurately representing what it means to follow Christ.

Pat is speaking this way because he is assuming that he is a prophet. Jesus also claimed Divine authority. In Matthew 9, He tells a sick man lying on a mat that his sins are forgiven him. The religious leaders of His day were skeptical even believing that Jesus was blasphemy.

Now Jesus didn't simply tell them to have blind faith and believe He was a prophet. Instead here is His response:

5Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? 6But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." Then he said to the paralytic, "Get up, take your mat and go home." 7And the man got up and went home. 8When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men.

If Pat is REALLY speaking for God, he needs to authenticate such authority. I'm a computer geek. Working in IT, I am often challenged to authenticate who I am before gaining access to computers, networks, files, resources. In computers, you authenticate yourself via a username and password.

If Pat speaks for God, then we are NOT simply asked to believe it via a blind faith. Pat needs to authenticate his claims via some miraculous work that can only come from God. Mr. Robertson will NOT do this.

While it IS true that the Haitians practice voodoo and that Christianity condemns such practices, it would be presumptuous for anyone except a true prophet, to say that they knew that this earthquake was a judgment from God.

I can't tell you how many times I've debated with non-christians and had to deal with the distractions of the caricatures that they mistook Christianity to be.

G.K. Chesterton once said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

So I implore both non-christians AND Christians, don't believe that these claims represent the teachings and example of Christ. I also challenge other Christians to take back our faith from the hijackers.

Questions that Shake Us All

The earthquake in Haiti should remind us of old questions, not new. Why does evil exist? Why do people suffer? Why do bad things happen? I often hear this last question phrased as "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Jesus was approached by a man who predicated a question by addressing Jesus as "Good teacher". Jesus asked him in Mark 10:18, "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone."

If we really want to know about suffering and evil, we also need to know about goodness. What does it mean for something to be good? I realize that not everyone reading this posting even believes in the existence of good and evil. Some people believe that these definitions are imaginary and arbitrary in the sense that what we call "good" and "evil" is merely what we like. We might call something pleasurable good and something associated with suffering evil. Of course many people call sex outside of marriage evil, or a drug-induced high to be at least a bad thing.

These are just two examples of things that might bring short-term pleasure for long-term loss or suffering. Let me suggest that these things bring pleasure within the "smaller picture", but there is a "larger picture", a "greater purpose" to serve. If we serve that "greater purpose", if we are driven by it, we inevitably will be drawn to what we commonly call "good".

My favorite Christian teacher, Steve Brown (www.stevebrownetc.com) says, "Everyone needs a metanarrative." We all need a larger story to explain the small stories of our lives.

My heart goes out to the Haitian people. I don't understand the smaller story. I can't dogmatically say why this has happened, but I can respond with love, prayers and giving because my life is driven by a larger story, His story.

Christmas: Truth was born. Did anyone notice?

I'm writing this blog on Christmas morning, having already spent Christmas with one side of the family and getting ready to spend it with the other side. One side of the family is Christian and the other is not. One side is conservative and the other side liberal.

But what is most interesting to me is that on both sides, truth has died. There are at least three tests for truth (I get this from Ravi Zacharias (visit www.rzim.org).

For something to be true, it should be:
1. Logically Consistent
2. Empirically Adaquate
3. Existentially Relevant

I'm not going to unpack these points in this morning's blog because my larger point is that there are tests for truth however they don't matter if you don't believe in the very concept of it.

The family time I get around the holidays reminds me of this as I get to see it first hand. On Christmas Eve, we were sitting around watching family videos of Christmases past. In one, my wife is found singing Amazing Grace. One family member says something about her "singing religious music".

Simply calling it "religious music" is a fantastic way to ignore the contents of the message. It's a great way to be the ostrich. I've seen lots of people simply dismiss things as being "religious", which seems to allow them to never question whether or not it may be true. In their minds, religion is simply something you believe in to get through life. It is something that can't be tested, hence the tests above never get applied.

Truth has died in this nonchristian family.

But the same can be said for another side of my family that IS Christian. They will also never use the three tests I listed above (or any test) against their faith. They HAVE the religion that keeps the other side of our family from ever changing their ways.

They have beliefs but don't ask them WHY. They've never taken it that far. I disagree with a significant portion of their denominational interpretations, but because they don't test the truths of their faith critically, they are not open to change, thus the dialog is cut-off.

What is most strange to me is that neither side would apply such thinking to non-religious worldviews. Neither side would for instance, when faced with crossing a busy street corner, simply think that the belief in whether or not a car is crossing their path is simply someone's opinion or experience and should NOT be tested.

You might also say that religion is different in that it makes claims that are not testable. I agree that many religions make such claims, but Christmas should remind us that Christianity goes much farther. This Christmas day presents to us the intersection of God with humanity, the transcendence of God as He crossed the line of the supernatural and traveled into the natural, taking on flesh and being born a human baby, one that could be touched and seen and heard. Will you ignore the baby in the manger?

Truth Will Not Bend To Our Wishes

Imagine a world where the truth of reality was only that which we liked. In such a world, what would keep us from thinking that we were God? After all, only an omnipotent being can choose what is true based upon His desires.

Perhaps this is why so much of life has truths that are not pleasant to the human mind. What is the most certain truth of life? Is it not death?

And to think that some people claim that perception is reality. Just try and perceive death away. It nags like a mother-in-law's scorn.

We can try to choose our faith and make life conform to our wishes, but there is something about reality that will not bow to anyone else but its maker and we are not He.