From Radical Christians to a Voting Bloc!

A strange thing happened to so-called evangelical Christianity in the 1970s, a rarity in church history. We became a voting bloc with a lot of political power and an exceptional opportunity to influence our society for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, what too many leaders were telling Christians to do with this power and what way too many of us were excited to hear is that we should become the “Christian right” and use this power to demand our rights and impose standards of biblical righteousness on society.

I would argue against that message, that we should use our influence to defend our rights and impose standards of biblical righteousness on society.

I would argue that the New Testament teaches that we should indeed use our political power to influence society, but that we should use it to defend the rights of others and to demonstrate biblical righteousness, justice, and mercy in the name of Christ.

I write about this in my book, Reborn to Be Wild. I think our Jesus Movement revival may have stayed more on track if we would have thought more about Christ and others and less about us and our rights.

I don’t know what it is about airports.

People in airports talk too much, and a lot of them are just too loud.

Maybe it’s the temporary anonymity of it all. You’re flying with and sitting with people you’ll probably never see again. Rarely does someone ask your name. Just, “Where you from?” Or, “Where you headed to?”

But the stuff they volunteer to anyone within earshot.

Recently I flew from SoCal to South Bend, Indiana to do a TV interview about my book, Reborn to Be Wild. I’m not a conversationalist. Like a lot of writers and people who get paid to do a lot of talking, I’m pretty much non-verbal in social situations. But I know how to listen, and here’s what I learned:

• The lady waiting for my twice cancelled commute from Chicago to South Bend with the hard face of an over-the-hill party girl wearing the too-tight sweat pants isgoing to lease a home near her estranged husband who is living with his girlfriend. “He doesn’t know I’m coming. But I gotta do what I can to try to get him back. You know?”
• The corporate-type guy talking to his buddy on his bluetooth at the urinal (now there’s a picture) is telling his friend that “her” parents need to be out of the picture and, “If you can prove you’re the father by a DNA test, there’s nothing she can do to keep you from having visitation rights, even if you only lived together.”
• The couple who seemed far too young to have given up on life so early, snarled at one another. “I don’t give a s…. where eat,” she screamed. “Just make sure you make it back in time to get on the blankin plane.” “Whatever,” he never even looked back.

It’s easy to forget what it felt like to live in darkness, isn’t it?

The lostness of those without Christ and without hope breaks His heart.

The crushing weight of their lostness moves me to think about ways I can connect with non-Christians.

Question: Does it ever hit you how lost most of the people you meet in your daily life really are?

The Apostle John says that God’s love is never comfortable (abiding) shut up in our hearts (1 John 3:17). What God’s love always wants to do is mature (have its end) by overflowing into love for others (1 John 4:11-16).

It seems there are two benefits of not suppressing His love within us.

First, our love for one another provides seeable proof of the unseeable God we serve (11-12). This is an amazing and wonderful possibility for any follower of Jesus. No one has seen God at any time, but when we love one another with His love, people see His presence on earth! This is exactly what Jesus predicted in John 13:34: They will know you are my disciples by your love.

Second, as others are seeing God’s presence in our love for one another, the Spirit is confirming His pleasure with the sure understanding that God is abiding in us (13-16).

The Priority of God’s Heart

Picture your church on a Sunday morning and all the “things” and “stuff” we focus on to attract others to Christ and prove to doubters that God exists: facilities, music, preaching, programs, bulletins, friendliness….

God’s heart is crying out for a different priority—love one another!

“Love one another,” John says, “and everyone watching will know that God is real. It is the only way they will ever “see” Christ here on earth until He shows up.”

That’s my prayer for you, for me, and for the precious Bride of Christ.

If you agree, you may want to tell your Father right now:

Father, please mature your love in me so that my life, my family, my church provides the most convincing evidence possible to a watching world that you are—my love for other Christians. Help me, please, to love others with the love you have loved me.

I’m Through With God!

A young Bible School graduate marched into my office and announced, “I’m through with God. This isn’t at all what I expected my life to look like. So I just wanted you to know that I won’t be doing anything at church anymore!”

Before I had a chance to respond, he explained his decision, careful to emphatically count off each of his supporting points on the fingers of his left hand. “I’ve been out of school for two years. I prayed for a wife, and I don’t have one yet. I prayed for a full-time position in a church, and I don’t have one yet. If I would have known that God wasn’t going to let me do these things, I could have gone to a regular college and studied engineering. I’d be making a lot of money right now.”

Nobody Gets That

After he calmed down, I jolted him with my answer: “Nobody gets that.”

He shot back. “Nobody gets what?”

“What they expected.” He seemed bewildered.

I knew I could prove my point from Scripture, but I decided to tell him stories instead.

I told him about some of the ladies in Judy’s His Alone class who did everything “right” but have to move on without a husband because he decided he would be much “happier” with a new wife and family.

I told him about a friend who teaches at a seminary who lives with a disease that randomly confines him to a wheel chair and sometimes even threatens his life.

I told him about the dedicated Christian couple whose only daughter was born with such a severe birth defect that in the precious few months they had with her this side of heaven she never smiled…never acknowledged their presence in the ways most mommies and daddies long for.

I told him stories for ten minutes.

And then I told him how the Lord used each of these disappointments and tragedies to transform not only the ones suffering through the pain, but also those who were watching.

We talked. He cried. By the end of our time together, he was able to hear what I wanted to tell him when he first walked in. “It’s not what you’re expecting God to do that matters, it’s what He wants to do. Once you get that straight, you are ready to receive His very best for your life–both the expected and the unexpected.”

“For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing”(James 1:3-4, New Living Translation).

There must be some way for Christian marketers to track down my twitter account because I get these “Christian T’s” messages in my tweets.

I’m not techy enough to block them.

But I couldn’t help wondering why the Christian community is so desperate to wear their faith on their sleeve.

I have to tell you that from the perspective of someone who came out of darkness (by that, I mean I wasn’t a church kid), a lot of these t-shirt messages would just flat turn me off.

So, I’m just saying. If you’re going to wear your faith on your sleeve, please don’t wear a mean faith.

And think about what the people reading your t-shirt message are reading from your life.

It Really Happened!

I love watching new Christians on their first real Easter. Everything is new to them and they just can’t get over it. “Jesus died for me, was buried, and rose again. It really happened, and it was all because He loved me.”

They arrive on Easter morning having thought about eternal life daily since their new birth. They remind me of my first year in Christ when I heard about Christ on the streets during the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s. It was all we talked about-Jesus, His love, His death, His resurrection, our new life, hope, meaning, and destiny.

And then we figured it out that Easter was now about something more than egg hunts and spring break. It was the church’s official celebration of the resurrection event.

“Wow, what a concept,” I remember thinking. “We should go to church too,” referring to my Jesus Movement friends.

Let’s Go to Church!

So we did.

But we weren’t too impressed.

It was obvious that they didn’t want a bunch of ragamuffins like us in their pews. We didn’t dress right, didn’t know the songs, didn’t know when to stand up or sit down, and took some of their every-Sunday seats.

It was also pretty obvious that they weren’t as excited about Easter as we were. Oh they seemed to enjoy singing the songs we later found out they traditionally sang every Easter. They surely loved getting all dressed up in their Easter-Sunday finest. And they talked a lot to each other about their ham dinner and other family traditions as they ignored us.

But the wonder of it all and the magnitude of the privilege of belonging to the One who died and rose again, seemed secondary to all the religious trappings.

Desperate for the Resurrection!

I don’t know all the reasons for the contrast between our appreciation of Easter and theirs, but some of it had to be the desperation factor. For them, it was just another Easter; for us, it was a celebration of the Event that rescued us from our desperate lives. It wasn’t that we were any more desperate than they were, we were just more aware of it.

In his classic on the life of Christ, The Training of the Twelve, A. B. Bruce writes of the two disciples who met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus, “Their hearts were set a-burning when they had become very dry and withered: hopeless, sick, and life-weary through sorrow and disappointment. It is always so; the fuel must be dry that the spark may take hold. The truth is, the heart needs to be dried by trial before it can be made to burn.”

Easter is for those who get it that every experience of life apart from Christ is dried and withered. Easter is for those who admit that we would be hopeless, sick, and life weary apart from His mercy. Easter is for those desperate for resurrection power.

Are you?

“And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” -Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:17

Judah Tried It

A few years ago I was calling through a list of people we hadn’t seen at church for awhile. A young mother answered the phone and told me, “We’re just taking a break from God right now. Our life is really busy with the kids in sports and our careers. My parents have been sick and then there’s the remodel. I like to think of it as putting Him on the shelf.”

She’s not the first to try “putting God on the shelf,” an entire nation tried to take a break from God—Judah, during the days of Josiah (2 Chronicles 34-35).

The Lord sent His indifferent people a message through His prophet, Zephaniah. The message was simple, and it had two parts: Judah, you belong to Me and no, you’re not taking a break from Me!

God Says, “No”

(more…)

…But reading the Bible matters more.

The challenge of finding the best translation of the Bible is a relatively new one, and it is an embarrassment in the English-speaking world where you have a smorgasbord of choices.

In that world, it’s clearly important to make a wise choice. But the best way to move forward as a disciple of Christ is simply to choose one to read and apply. After all, reading and applying the Word of God is what matters most, if we’re looking at the translation controversy from Jesus’ perspective.

But Christians have discovered that after translation number three or four there remains the need to actually read what you’ve chosen. Suddenly, you realize that you have to stop debating translation theory and starting trusting a few good translations.

What an insight! The Spirit is rewarding those who read the Scriptures honestly and openly, whatever the transition. He’s rewarding Christians who give Him access to their heart through the words He inspired. None of this is measured by the “correctness” of the choice of translations.

Billy Graham doesn’t read a better Bible than yours. Neither does Beth Moore. Finding the perfect translation is a silly question, just as finding the perfect church is a nonsensical quest. Instead of debating the nuances of translation theory, it might pay to devote your time reading and praying about what you’ve read.

Question: Am I the only one tired of all the “controversies” like what is the best translation? dominating the Christian landscape today? 

“We revere the Bible, but we don’t read it.”

This quote comes from George Gallup, who should know.

Tyndale House Publisher’s survey showed that 64% of Americans said they did not read the Bible because they’re too busy. 80% feel that the Scriptures are just too confusing and when they read the Bible, they don’t understand it. (The Baptist Standard, December 4, 2000)

There are many reasons why Christians today feel they’re too busy and that the Bible is too confusing to understand, but there are two that I feel the church is responsible for:

1) We’ve developed a consumer mentality in our churches.

I’m all for relevant Bible teaching. I think it’s a crime to bore people with the Word of God. And I’m all for seeker-sensitive cultures. I came to Christ during the Jesus Movement that was the ultimate seeker-sensitive revival.

But my concern is that in trying to make the church relevant and seeker-sensitive we’re listening to the wrong seekers. One of my first reactions when I attend a so-called “seeker” church is, “Show me the seeker!” Often we’re trying to please immature Christians with Sunday show-times that are more exciting than the “seeker” church down the road so that we can swell our numbers and our giving.

The last time I checked, discipleship was costly. And I’m a grace guy. I believe that eternal life is a gift freely given, but once we belong to Christ, He makes costly demands. And one of those demands is that we study His Word.

2) An overreaction to the postmodern generation.

What an arrogant lot we pastors and theologians are. We’ve decided for an entire generation that they’re too shallow, too ADD, and too Sesame-Street to sit still and actually study the Word of God.

Again, I’m all for doing whatever we need to reach the next generation. I’m a Jesus Movement rocker who was part of the generation that refused to dress up for Jesus and listen to religious elevator music.

But I’m in touch with many young and hip pastors who are filling up their churches with 20-Something’s hungry for the Word of God. My friend Britt Merrick leads one of the fastest growing movements in the world right now—Reality Churches. He teaches through the Bible, verse by verse, for 50 minutes every Sunday.

Could it be that some of the reason Americans feel they’re too busy to read the Word of God and that the Word of God is so confusing is because the pastors of America have ignored Paul’s command to Timothy to “Preach the Word”? (2 Timothy 4:2)

Questions: Do you think I’m overreacting? Would you rather have a shallow and fun church or a deep and challenging worship experience? 

I love the Beatles! But it bothers me that a survey of 1000 Americans reported that most of us can name the four Beatles, but few of us can recall even one of the Ten Commandments! (Kelton Research survey, 2007).

“Oh come on, Ed. You’re overreacting. That may be true of everyday Americans, but Christians in America know their Bible better than the Beatles.”

Really? Consider the findings of Gary Brudge, professor of New Testament studies at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. Wheaton is one of the most prestigious evangelical colleges in America. In an article published in Christianity Today in 1999, Burge exposes the depth of the problem of Biblical illiteracy among American youth with these statistics from a survey of incoming freshmen:

• 1/3 of the students could not put the following Biblical events in their proper order: Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, the death of Christ, and Pentecost.
• Half of them couldn’t remember who came first, Moses, Isaac, and Saul.
• 1/3 were unable to name the book of Acts as the book containing Paul’s missionary travels.
• 1/3 could not identify Matthew as an apostle from a random list of names.

These students represent the most churched and most committed demographic in America!

Paul, John, George and Ringo made some great music. Every song they ever wrote is on my iTunes. I’ve been listening to them for over forty years.

But it’s the writings of another Paul, Luke, Peter, and another John that have changed my life.

I hope you’ll join me as we journey through all 66 books of the Bible in 2012-13. Let’s do our part to improve the Biblical literacy of God’s people!

Questions: Honestly, how do you think you would have done on a test of your Biblical literacy?