Monthly Archives: January 2017

stones for peace not outrage

Outrage made us sick; it cannot make us well

Think about your job. I’ll bet you accomplish a lot there. But are you outraged? Or do you just know what you need to do and you do it? Think about other areas of your life— family, friends, volunteer work, hobbies: there’s not one where outrage is held to be a necessary precondition for showing up and making a difference. Just the opposite: if you had a coworker who was constantly enraged, you’d be apologizing for him to customers, avoiding inviting him to meetings, wasting time cleaning up the unconstructive messes that he makes.

So, our nation has problems and we have to work together to fix them. The need is urgent. There is no time to lose. How would you solve a problem like that at work? Would outrage help? No, it would get in the way. The universal embrace of outrage is why things continue to get worse in our country instead of better. And I’m not talking about “them”, I’m talking about us.

The Bible has been teaching this wisdom for thousands of years, yet Christians have forgotten it. We are as outraged as anyone in today’s society. We quote a handful of verses in which Jesus was angry but we reject the overwhelming testimony of his life and the direct urgings of scripture. Consider:

  • A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger… The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit. (Proverbs 15:1-4)
  • You who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently (Galatians 6:1)
  • If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:18)
  • Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. (Psalm 37:8)
  • Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God… Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. (James 1:19-26)
  • Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared. (Proverbs 22:24-25)

There are hundreds more and I could go on, but if I do this post is going to be really boring.

We are being told that the weak medicine of peace and grace and love for our enemies has no power to heal. We are being told that strong medicine in the form of outrage and hate will make us well.

It isn’t true. That “medicine” is destroying us. We cannot become well by increasing the dose. There is a medicine with the power to heal. How sick must we become before we are willing to take it?

a great nation

“A great nation”… thoughts on inaugurals past and present

In a great nation, it once was said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Under the banner of making that nation great again, today it was said, “A nation exists to serve its citizens.”

In a book whose advice I value, it says, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant… just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”


To “the greatest generation”, these promises were offered: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” and, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

To our generation, this promise today is offered: “From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”

In a book whose advice I value, it says, “Those who love their life in this world will lose it… for friendship with the world is enmity with God.”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

3 ways I’d fix the Church if I could

We left our church over a year ago, and we have a new church home we love, but I still often find myself heartbroken over the old one. I wanted to fix the church. I loved those people, I think they genuinely loved God and others, but we had to leave because they were missing three things—transparency, freedom, and grace. Without those, you can have a very nice religion, be pious and do good. But you will always have the danger of hypocrisy, legalism, and destruction, and you will never have the gospel of Christ.

Transparency/Hypocrisy

A church has to be honest about who they are. If you’re legalistic, OK: be legalistic. If, bottom line, a church holds that there are a set of inviolable rules, and the ultimate expectation is that you will agree with their definition of the rules and follow all of their rules, then put the rules on your website.

We saw this over and over again when we were church shopping last year, and I think it comes from a sincere place. Everyone knows Christian faith is not supposed to be about introducing division over trivial matters, and so they really want to be their best selves and put the important tenants of the faith out there as who they are. The danger, though, is when it crosses over from “aspiring toward our best nature” into “appearing as something we’re not”, which is very near to the type of hypocrisy that Christ condemned in the most scathing possible terms.

Better to just own our prejudices and be forthcoming about the ways we know we’re missing the mark.

Freedom/Legalism

I’ve written before about Christian freedom, which means freedom from Hebrew law. Not just parts of Hebrew law, scripture doesn’t support that. It’s all or nothing. And yet, our modern American Church often preaches the need for certain people to obey certain parts of the law, while we ourselves enjoy Christian freedom from those other parts of Hebrew law that would have affected us. This, again, Christ unequivocally condemned.

Legalism and freedom are opposites. If we must live under some law, we must live under all of it. I think most of us would prefer freedom. And if we assert that obeying law is essential to pleasing God, then we throw in our lot with the hypocritical religious leaders of Christ’s day, rather than with Christ himself.

Grace/Destruction

And yet in all of this— important though transparency and freedom are— it is the factual absence of grace that is the death knell of a church. Oh, churches know the word “grace”. Thousands of them even name themselves after it. But in today’s Church, many of us have lost the real import of the word.

How often have we heard it preached that grace means second chances? The notion that no one is too far gone? That we always have room for the return of a sinner who repents? Certainly it’s easy to imagine the opposite world, in which a one-time sinner is never welcomed back, however much they amend their ways. So the principle of second chances is real and good and correct.

But it’s not the same as grace.

Because if grace is only second chances, then Christ didn’t accomplish anything and notion of a “Christian grace” is meaningless. See, they had second chances already. Even the Pharisees had them. Christ’s words: “You teachers of the law and Pharisees… you travel over land and sea to win a single convert…” Who were those converts going to be, if not people who weren’t Pharisees already? “Just clean up your act, make some changes, start living like us…” That is the Pharisee notion of second chances: acceptance because you deserve it now. What Christ sacrificed to buy us is something different: acceptance in the knowledge that none of us “deserves it”.

This kind of grace only has one restriction:

  • Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?
  • This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.
  • Do not judge, or you too will be judged.
  • With the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Simple as that. Grace means, a way is open to God in spite of all shortcomings—ours, theirs, anyone’s— if we will only offer that chance to others too, as if our lives depended on it. Cleaning up your act is great, but it has nothing to do with grace. In tying the two together, many of today’s churches set a bushel basket over the true light of God’s transforming redemption, tying up burdens and placing obstacles, in a way that destroys others and themselves.

If I had to choose just one way to fix the Church today, it would be that.