The Lord’s Way of Lead­er­ship Part II  (sermon)

Here is a poster I adapted for the con­cept of Mar­riage Integrity.  In our cur­rent talk­ing culture’s hourly attack on what is labelled tra­di­tional mar­riage, it is dif­fi­cult to respond with­out being slan­dered by sup­pos­edly “pro­gres­sive”  rede­f­i­n­i­tions.  For instance, to adopt their polit­i­cally biased ter­mi­nol­ogy and speak of a “ban” on X mar­riage is to fore­stall ratio­nal dis­cus­sion of the issue.  To label some­one as “ban­ning X” is sim­ply bald asser­tion and beg­ging the ques­tion.   Noth­ing is being banned.  The integrity of mar­riage is sim­ply being main­tained.  Note the red equal sign on the thought police is there to mimic the “mar­riage equal­ity” sign and move­ment whose talk­ing class major­ity are swift to label and libel (mean­ing mar­gin­al­ize) those on the “wrong side” of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.   The rain­bow col­ored “mar­riage” is to show that nat­ural mar­riage (join­ing a man and a woman) con­tin­ues to unite men and woman across a rain­bow of diversity.

(Ini­tial pic­ture on Integrity before adap­ta­tion from site, “A Woman’s Jour­ney to Life,”  March 22, 2013)

I got my Manda­tory pic­ture made with Robin Hood—You did too

The Last Beat­ti­tude & the Tro­phy for Caring

     The Beat­i­tudes were Jesus’ begin­ning state­ment in the Ser­mon on the Mount which began with, “Blessed are …..”    Do you recall the last Beat­ti­tude men­tioned by the Lord?  It is in Matthew 5:11:  “Blessed are you when oth­ers revile you and per­se­cute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they per­se­cuted the prophets who were before you.”

Jesus’ Beat­ti­tudes that began with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,”  reach a counter-intuitive crescendo.  It is only nat­ural to ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion:  “Lord, Do you mean 1) that You expect us to be reviled by oth­ers and per­se­cuted, and 2) that we are to see this as blessed???”  I believe the Lord is say­ing YES to both.  Of course our nat­ural human protests, “Isn’t every­body sup­posed to like us?”  And Jesus no doubt would say NO!  Instead, we should expect per­se­cu­tion and all types of ver­bal abuse.  One bless­ing of the per­se­cuted is that it marks our authen­tic­ity as dis­ci­ples (when we are truly per­se­cuted “on His account” and not for our unfaith­ful car­i­ca­tures of Jesus.)   The onslaught of ver­bal assas­si­na­tion and other per­se­cu­tion is one of the most sure indi­ca­tors we are right in the mid­dle of doing the Lord’s will.  And coun­ter­in­tu­itively before the Lord, it becomes a strange form of encouragement.

Will we fol­low a Lord who calls us to this kind of social embar­rass­ment and suf­fer­ing?  It is not that we actively seek revile­ment, but that in the nat­ural course of dis­ci­ple­ship, fol­low­ing the ear­lier beat­i­tudes for instance, we will pro­voke the ire of peo­ple who are “con­victed” by our words and behav­ior.  The revil­ers reveal that they have alter­nate visions of what the king­dom of God looks like, con­flict­ing views of what it means to show care and com­pas­sion, and ulti­mately dif­fer­ent pic­tures of Jesus.

The cur­rent worldly pic­ture of Christ here in Amer­ica is “Jesus the Nice Guy who Cares.”  And there is truth to this pic­ture, as in any car­i­ca­ture.  It is hard for Chris­tians here to cor­rect and deepen this pic­ture of Jesus, for we are tempted daily to buy into it, to be nice like the world thinks Jesus is nice.  But this would ulti­mately lead to our deny­ing the Christ who was an equal offender of the reli­gious (Phar­isees) and the worldly (Sad­ducess and Hero­di­ans) who together planned to kill Him.  One could just as accu­rately paint a por­trait of Jesus on the other end of the spec­trum, along the lines of “Christ the Con­tro­ver­sial­ist.”  Sure enough, Jesus is nice and caring–BUT on His own terms.  He is not pre­oc­cu­pied as are his 21^st cen­tury dis­ci­ples with being per­ceived as car­ing.  In fact, Jesus’ form of car­ing was often down­right offen­sive and trou­bling.  Pure and authen­tic com­pas­sion has to be grounded enough in the King­dom and the Word to take the risk of revilement.

Let me illus­trate with a real but unnamed exam­ple of what a dis­ci­ple looks like whose Jesus is the worldly car­i­ca­ture:  The Nice Guy who Cares.  This is a hard-working min­is­ter type involved in many good works.  Fine and good.  But his glory, what makes for music to his ears is not “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant,” but a head­line in the New York Times read­ing:  “Such and Such Church Gets Our Tro­phy for Car­ing!”  If we deep down want the world to like us and to think well of us, then we will be tempted in mak­ing Jesus just a nice and car­ing guy, who wouldn’t offend a soul or make any­one angry.  Com­pas­sion is indeed called for, but not capit­u­la­tion to the culture’s man­date to call blue red, just so every­one can feel bet­ter and we can be given a “tro­phy for car­ing” by a cul­ture that deep down really doesn’t like us.  Where would we dis­play such a tro­phy?  Hope­fully not in sight of the cross.

So the ques­tion at hand before the dis­ci­ple is this:  Where is your holy ground?   You take off your shoes on holy ground, like Moses did when meet­ing the Lord at the burn­ing bush.  Your cul­ture has places it con­sid­ers holy ground, whether mat­ters sex­ual, polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal.  You are being asked to take your shoes off on this holy ground so that no feet are stepped on.  Where’s your holy ground?  The fail­ure to rec­og­nize our culture’s holy ground will most assuredly mean our step­ping on some feet.  And you will hear about it.  When this hap­pens, Jesus calls you blessed.

No won­der Jesus said on another occa­sion:   “Woe to you, when all peo­ple speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.  (Luke 6:26)  LH

When Tol­er­ance Becomes SLOTHFUL

Part of our reflec­tions this Lent have involved remind­ing our­selves of the seven (even eight) deadly sins, those squid-tentacled sins that stick to us and ensure there are more entrap­ping arms to come.  We pon­dered what is THE deadly sin of Amer­ica, and saw there are surely sev­eral strong can­di­dates.  It came as a sur­prise to me, but the more I con­sid­ered it, the more I came to see the “pedes­trian” and “sleepy” sin of Sloth our great­est con­cern.  In a time of over­whelm­ing busy­ness, it is tempt­ing to neglect more impor­tant things as well as sub­sti­tute lesser visions for greater and more demand­ing ones.  Among the great­est expres­sion of sloth in our time is an unthink­ing depen­dence on Tol­er­ance as an answer to our great­est social and moral prob­lems.  This does not take away from the value and valid­ity of the clas­sic form of tol­er­ance described as bear­ing with those whose beliefs and prac­tices dif­fer from our own in view of the com­mon human dig­nity of being in the image of God and in view of the Lord’s exam­ple of patience and bear­ing with sin­ners (like ourselves).

The good and help­ful clas­sic tol­er­ance has been remolded by many in the “talk­ing class” (media/educators/politicians) as mean­ing not merely rec­og­niz­ing the right of oth­ers to hold dif­fer­ences but also the neces­sity to accept and even val­i­date that all dif­fer­ences are equal in value and in truth.  This is a sub­tle but real form of dog­matic social engi­neer­ing.  Here are some ways I describe the “new dog­matic tolerance”:

Toxic Tol­er­ance:  tol­er­ance to such a degree that truth suf­fers and is poi­soned; regres­sion to a moral stone age where folks impress them­selves with the dis­cov­ery of the wheel

Tol­er­ance with a cap­i­tal “T”:  Tol­er­ance above all; what “think­ing Amer­i­cans” think before think­ing, a means of coer­cion, expe­ri­enced as bul­ly­ing, thought con­trol, con­de­scen­sion, manip­u­la­tion & hypocrisy to those on the cor­rec­tive end of the “Be tol­er­ant” stick

Total Tol­er­ance:  the illu­sory and impos­si­ble idealistic-modern-dream that one can be totally tol­er­ant, main­tained by the pre­tense of ignor­ing the many things that per­son or group will not tolerate

An alter­na­tive to the above mor­phed and mas­saged ver­sions of tol­er­ance can be described as:

Tol­er­ance with a small “t”:  this is the clas­sic tol­er­ance men­tioned above, which although admit­ting many fail­ures in appli­ca­tion, has been a part of the Chris­t­ian teach­ing as early as Ter­tul­lian, the Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist from Carthage who wrote around 217 A.D:

“It is a human law and a nat­ural right that one should wor­ship what­ever he intends …  It is no part of reli­gion to coerce reli­gious prac­tice, for it is by free choice not coer­cion that we should be led to reli­gion.” (To Scapula 2.1–2)

Objec­tions:  Some object that tol­er­ance with the small “t” is not enough.  It takes the “Big T Tol­er­ance” as THE method for get­ting along.  Coex­ist, right?  So tol­er­ate is the answer.”  I quote Uni­ver­sity of Texas Pro­fes­sor of Gov­ern­ment, J. Budziszewski, who reveals real prob­lems in apply­ing the Big T Dog­matic Tolerance:

“If you really believe that the mean­ing of tol­er­ance is tol­er­at­ing, then you ought to tol­er­ate even intol­er­ance. If you really believe that the best foun­da­tion for tol­er­ance is to avoid hav­ing any strong con­vic­tions at all about right and wrong, then you shouldn’t have a strong con­vic­tion that intol­er­ance is wrong. If you really believe that when you do have strong con­vic­tions you should refuse to express or act upon them, then your tol­er­ance should be a dead let­ter; it should be one of the things you are pusil­lan­i­mous (faint-hearted) about..…

What then is the truth about tol­er­ance? The mean­ing of this virtue is not tol­er­at­ing per se, but tol­er­at­ing what ought to be tol­er­ated. Prac­tic­ing it means putting up with just those bad things that, for the sake of some greater good, we ought to put up with. We aren’t prac­tic­ing the virtue when we fail to put up with bad things that we ought to put up with, such as the expres­sion of false opin­ions in debate; nor are we prac­tic­ing it when we do put up with bad things that we ought not to put up with, such as rape. But mak­ing such dis­tinc­tions requires know­ing the truth about goods, bads, and greater goods.”

Why then is the new Big T dog­matic Tol­er­ance sloth­ful?  Because Jesus calls us not to tol­er­ance but to love.  Josh McDow­ell & Bob Hostetler put it this way:

Tol­er­ance says, “You must approve of what I do.” Love responds, “I must do some­thing harder; I will love you, even when your behav­ior offends me.”

Tol­er­ance says, “You must allow me to have my way.” Love responds, “I must do some­thing harder; I will plead with you to fol­low the right way, because I believe you are worth the risk.”

Tol­er­ance seeks to be inof­fen­sive; love takes risks. Tol­er­ance is indif­fer­ent; love is active. Tol­er­ance costs noth­ing; love costs every­thing.      Lance H

The Song of Songs by Don­ald E Cur­tis  (click to view)

song-songs (link to Bible.org site for article)

This Sun­day we con­sider Con­tent­ment.  One help­ful writer in this regard is Richard Fos­ter, who wrote the now clas­sic Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, and fol­lowed that book with a detailed treat­ment of one spe­cific dis­ci­pline enti­tled,  Free­dom of Sim­plic­ity.  What fol­lows is a link to read an excerpt from the book, which has ben­e­fited quite a few folks in seek­ing first the kingdom.

Free­dom of Simplicity

“The Michael Ram­sey Prize is intended for the­o­log­i­cal writ­ing which, by fresh­ness and orig­i­nal­ity, some­how changes the the­o­log­i­cal land­scape, and also serves the needs of the Church …  ”  We are glad to see con­fir­ma­tion of our high rec­om­men­da­tion of David Bent­ley Hart’s book,  Athe­ist Delu­sions, by its win­ning the 2011 Michael Ram­sey Prize last month.

Michael Ram­sey Prize 2011 (click to view)

So what if I don’t have time this sum­mer to read the artis­tic and engag­ing Athe­ist Delu­sions? (Which you may recall is actu­ally a book set­ting our civ­i­liza­tion in the con­text of its his­tor­i­cal roots–doing the home­work of trac­ing what is owed to the trans­form­ing influ­ence of Chris­tian­ity.)  You can get the gist of the book by the short sum­mary below by C Bur­rell.  Note the four ways men­tioned of how Chris­tian­ity trans­formed society.

Hart: Athe­ist Delu­sions (click to read)

Jesus prayed for the One­ness of His fol­low­ers.  Here is a poster I put together to illus­trate the mutual rela­tion­al­ity of discipleship.