Why Be a Christian?

This one’s in honor of my dad for Fathers’ Day. Dad helps me contemplate God without letting me forget to revel in the mystery. I love you, Daddy.

Dad and I love to bicker about theology. He prefers the Tradition, Reason, and Scripture quarters of the Wesleyan Quad. I prefer Experience and (Dad would dispute this) Scripture. Our most common debate starts over my belief in universal salvation, but boils down to a fundamental question: why be a Christian?

To hear youth ministers tell it, we should be Christians to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and have a cosmic therapist to depend on. Good ol’ John Wesley feared a-roasting on Satan’s barbeque. In the middle, there are those like Dad who want to be transformed by Christianity; they recognize that true happiness only comes when we fill the hole in our heart with God. I usually hang out in the middle.

But a part of me is even uncomfortable with that. If I do something because it’s going to benefit my life, aren’t I being selfish?

Do as we say, not as we do

How do you spell exhausted? V-B-S. Vacation Bible School has come again and for Methodist churches using Cokesbury, my church has the Shake It Up! theme this year. The kiddos learn “God’s recipe” for their lives with a new “secret ingredient” everyday, e.g. Give Happily or Remember Jesus Often. Yes, it’s corny, but anything is a theological improvement on Camp E.D.G.E. of yesteryear (don’t ask). I love getting to know a group of kids over the week and to share the faith with them. It’s a daunting call, but I try not to doubt myself.

It’s interesting to me: my church is as liberal as they come, but the curriculum is not. Really, liberal doesn’t do my church justice. I love my congregation, but we’ve grown stale in recent years. It’s rare to hear the name “Jesus” or even “God” in the contemporary service. Scripture is viewed as a nuisance to get around, not a gift to swim in. Life is hard and painful; faith exists to create a community who can help us through it. Yet these grade-school aged kids hear about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. We tell them to share, give even when it’s hard, and trust God unconditionally.

We expect more of six-year-old children than adults.

Luc Means Light

My family, mostly Dad, has begun a blog about my little brother’s autism. A post Dad wrote the other day isn’t really “religious,” but it was too touching for me not to re-post it.

1st Commandment Right to Blog

Yesterday, I took Dan Dick and Barbara Miller’s personality test to determine my spiritual gifts. My top three were Prophecy, Faith, and Knowledge. I was a teeny bit disappointed to discover that Prophecy does not mean I can tell the future. Rather, it means to be God’s mouthpiece to His people – to foretell the future that God has in store. I guess that’s fitting for a Christian blogger. Blogs probably don’t have a quantifiable impact on the church, but it’s still important that anyone or anything that claims to speak God’s Truth be… well, what exactly?

What criteria separates the good Christian blog from a bad one? The only way to determine that is to know the mission of the Christian blogosphere. Then the good blog is the one which fulfills that mission. But what is our mission? Are we a sort of cyberspace community garden, each blogger tending a patch in hopes it will yield fruit? Are we a think tank for the church, formulating strategies and policies? Or are we simply an extension of seminaries and should stick to theology? I believe the key to a successful church is intentionality. I wonder if it’s also the key to the blogosphere.

Lessons from the Mouse

The absolute greatest, most awesomest blog post ever is at this link.

Quote for Thought 4

“People have fish on the back of their cars while living exactly like everybody else.” – Reverend Joy Moore

The sermon I heard Rev. Moore preach at DYA was so jam-packed with spiritual awesomeness that I could write a book on it. This quote in particular changed my life. I realized that if you can’t go to function and by the end know who are the Christians by how they act, then we’ve done something wrong.

Yet as a church, we’re not very good at constructive advice on how to live differently. Congregants want an instruction manual on faithful living. The clergy seem resistant to provide one, perhaps for fear of becoming Catholic (X in the morning + Y in the evening = Christian). I, however, don’t find practices nearly as suspect. Our grandmother, Judaism, is based in the principle that practices and rituals are a natural response to faith, and reproduce that faith. A routine of practices is in fact the Christian life.

So pray twice a day. Read the Scriptures. Join a covenant group. Love til it hurts. Volunteer. Give more money than you can afford. Forgive. This is what it means to live differently. It’s far more radical than it appears. The unspectacular practices are just that: practice. Moses had to spend 40 years in Midian doing the simple stuff before he could tell Pharaoh, “let my people go!”

For what are we practicing? What Rev. Moore called “God’s great project.” We’re working toward no less than the salvation of humankind. Brick by brick, my son, brick by brick.

Red and Yellow, Black and White

The following post is brought to you by a Facebook status.

 

Shortly after I declared my blog break, a friend of mine posted an interesting status on Facebook. I don’t know if it was a quote from someone famous original. “Being nice and accepting to people close to you makes you human. Being nice and accepting to everyone makes you a good person.”

Nice. I’ve heard that insidious word before. A few months ago, I posted about “The Cult of Nice” as described by author Kenda Creasy Dean. Niceness is not the self-sacrificing love of Christ that we are all called to practice. “Nice” is a performance of noncommittal politeness. It doesn’t crack crowns or heal hearts. It lets us do whatever we want – or whatever society tells us to do. And it pervades Western values.

 

The accepting part doesn’t seem nearly as suspect. In fact, it appears positive. If Palestinians and Israelis could just accept their differences, they might know peace. So I thought if my friend’s Facebook status became true, it wouldn’t be so bad. We’d have a lot of consumerism, but a lot less racism.

 

Except, I realized, we wouldn’t have less prejudice. Just as there’s a difference between tolerance and coexistence, there is a difference between accepting and treasuring. And it is contingent on the Cult of Nice.

Two Week Hiatus

I haven’t really posted since final exams, but I thought when I got home last Wednesday the ideas would come pouring out. Summer offers me free time I haven’t had in months; my muscles even loosened from the change in stress. But the free time has also shown me that I am emotionally sapped. And spiritually. I have as much faith as ever, but no fire to go with it.

I realized this today when my dad gave me a new definition of the Means of Grace: that which incorporates us deeper into the life of God. I want to become an active, moving part of God’s universe again. I need to get back to the practices and the routines of faith. So I am going to spend the next couple weeks falling in love with God again – through His Word and His people.

See you in June!

She does it again!

Kenda Dean is my new favorite voice for youth. I highly recommend her latest post on the Top 10 characteristics of healthy youth ministry.

Southern Food and God

3 days home from college now. Or, a more accurate description, 3 days home from home. I’ll be putting up a post of my own very shortly. Until then, my dad has a succinct, thought-provoking post about evangelizing. (And it just so happens to mention me!)