Theological Musings

t is not the general nature of this blog to speak on political events or idealogies. However, from time to time, I find myself compelled to address certain things of a political nature from a Christian perspective.

Sometimes that results in a very unpopular view. There are certain things that are “fashionable” for Christians to hold to here in America. Speaking out against those things is often misconstrued as speaking out against Christianity itself. Or, at best, one is viewed as a political liberal, and therefore not a good Christian.

The “War on Terror” is one such issue. It has the ability to polarize people so quickly. And while I don’t seek to make a case for or against the current military action, I do think it is high time that those of us who are citizens of the Kingdom of God consider the tightrope that we must walk in balancing our American citizenship with our Heavenly citizenship.

Recently, someone sent me one of those ubiquitous “forwards” in email. You know exactly the type of thing I’m talking about. The type that ends with “If you believe this, send it on to everyone you know.” The email was entitled “Could Not Be Said Better”, and is quoted here only in part:

Written by a housewife from New Jersey and sounds like it! This is one ticked off lady.

“Are we fighting a war on terror or aren’t we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?

Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from our nation’s capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ? Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn’t they?

And I’m supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was “desecrated” when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?…Well, I don’t. I don’t care at all.

I’ll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I’ll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia

I’ll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don’t care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest assured: I don’t care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank: I don’t care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed “special” food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being “mishandled,” you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don’t care.

And of course, the email finished with these “noble” statements:

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your e-mail friends. Sooner or later, it’ll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!

If you don’t agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don’t complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great country!

…Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The American G. I.
One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET BOTH OF THEM. AMEN

Now, I realize that these types of sentiments are very popular. However, after giving it a lot of thought and prayer, I composed a reply to person who had sent it on to me. I didn’t touch on the idea that I found equating the death of an American G.I. with the death of Jesus quite offensive. But at any rate, here was the reply I sent to my friend:

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Greetings! It’s been quite a while since we corresponded personally. I have felt for several days, however, since receiving this particular forwarded email from you, that I needed to share something on my heart with you. After much prayer, and attempts at writing that have been abandoned, I am finally taking the plunge to share these thoughts with you.

I pray that you will receive them in the spirit in which they are intended. Having said that, feel free to test my words yourself and accept or reject them as you feel led by the Spirit of God.

Since 9/11, it has become increasingly difficult to see our Christianity as anything but enmeshed in our American citizenship. In other words, our patriotism and feelings of support for our country have blurred the lines between our citizenship in the USA and our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.

One very unfortunate side effect of this is that the War on Terror (among other things) has become a “religious war”, as evidenced by the email you forwarded below.

I can only assume, based on the closing remarks in the email, that you forwarded it on because you agree with the contents of it. And it is those contents to which I am responding.

It is very easy to get passionate about our country. It is very easy to see this war as something that is not only necessary, but right. And overall, the point of my response is not to question that. However, I think it is vitally important that we who claim the name of Christ are willing to evaluate our thoughts and feelings alongside the teachings of the very Christ whose name we bear.

Jesus spoke about how we should view our enemies. And what He spoke was pretty direct. He said that we should love those who hate us. Consider this passage (Matthew 5:38-48):

“You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Many of the statements included in the email you forwarded are in direct opposition to these words of Jesus. Would you agree?

“I’ll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in….”
“I’ll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Bible….”
“I’ll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry….”

I think you can see my point. The sentiments expressed in these statements that I’ve referenced are of the nature of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”. This is starkly contrasted by the words of Jesus. If I could paraphrase the words of Jesus a tad, “if you only care about those who first care about you, what reward do you have?”

Give it some thought. I’d be open to any disagreement or discussion that you have regarding this. I know the forwarded email said to just delete it if I disagreed, but I feel like my relationship to you as a brother in Christ calls for something different.

I sincerely hope and pray that my words here are not offensive to you. And I deeply regret that my first “personal” email to you in several years is to take issue with a forwarded email that you have sent on.

May God bless you, and may His Spirit allow whatever truth may be in my words here to be seen, and the grace to identify and correct whatever I may have spoken in error.

“Finally…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

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What do you, my readers, think?Until next time,

steve

here is no doubt in my mind that there is an awful lot of “business” in the “Christian music” world. There’s a reason why major record labels have been more than eager in past years to buy Christian record labels or to form their own “worship music” divisions.

I’ll be honest. Sometimes it makes me sick. Sometimes I hear songs that are promoted as “worship” or songs that are touted as the greatest thing in “Christian music” and I want to scream. It seems like the gems are few and far between.

And worse yet are the constant controversies about this or that artist’s lifestyle, blah blah blah blah blah. I’ve watched the Christian music world get rocked by scandal after scandal in the 20+ years I’ve paid attention to it.

One of the names that has been raked through the mud on many, many occasions is Amy Grant. Thrust into the spotlight at a young age, almost an overnight sensation, Amy has gone through more phases of musical style, wardrobe, and scandal than just about anybody I can think of.

I have always had a strange fascination with Amy’s career and the rumors surrounding it. And to be sure, there were sometimes some pretty interesting questions surrounding her life and career. But time after time, I found myself coming back to enjoy her music.

I remember in college going to see her in concert. It was the “Lead Me On” encore tour. And it was one of those points in Amy’s career where everyone was talking about how she was so carnal in concert and how far she had moved away from God in her career.

There was a part of me that didn’t want to believe all the rumors about her. And so I finally decided to go to see her in concert to make up my mind for myself.

There is much about that concert that I remember quite well. But the one thing that really sticks out for me was a portion of the concert, right in the middle of it all, when she began to sing songs of worship in a very subdued way. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” wafted through the outdoor amphitheater where the concert was being held. “How Great Thou Art” rang through the air. And “El Shaddai”…

I sat there with tears in my eyes as Amy stopped singing right in the middle of the chorus and let the audience sing it for her. Tears of worship. But more importantly, tears of repentance. I felt the remorse of having listened to the gossip and bought into the judgments being pronounced by others. And I left that concert with quite a different attitude from the one I carried in at the beginning of the night.

In recent years, Amy has released a couple of projects that centered around hymns. Christy and I love these CDs. They are worshipful and uplifting.

And so, it wasn’t much of a surprise for me to read some comments about a recent event at which Amy sang. (HT: JollyBlogger)

[Amy] said that it was great to see up and coming songwriters creating new music for the church, “all those songs are fine and good but scripture is where the real power is. There is no substitute for putting scripture to music.” At this point in her life she said that scripture is pretty much the only thing she cares about and the most exciting thing to her are her efforts to memorize large sections of the bible.

…What was so refreshing about her was that she was so authentic and real. It was realness in a Johnny Cash, King Solomon ala Ecclesiasties kind of way. In effect she said, “Look, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and messed up a lot of things and, when it’s all done, Jesus is still the only thing real to me and his word is all I can depend on.”

“Jesus is still the only thing real to me….” This is the kind of ministry that needs to be happening. And it’s greatly encouraging to me to see this kind of thought coming from someone within that Nashville scene. I realize that part is not a direct quote from Amy, but I have read enough comments from her in interviews to know that it fairly represents the types of remarks she has made in other contexts.

I pray that others within the music world will minister out of this focus and determination. Ultimately, it may not end up being “what sells”, but that should never be the motivation for what we, as musicians — or any one of us who offers acts of worship to our God through abilities He has given us — do with our talent.

Until next time,

steve

any of you are probably familiar with George Barna. For years, church leaders turned to Barna’s research polls as a barometer of the culture around them and within their own churches. Many of the church growth principles that drove the megachurch model since the late 80’s and early 90’s found their support in Barna’s statistics.

Unfortunately (in the minds of some), Barna’s focus in recent years on the ways in which the institutional church is failing, along with his controversial book Revolution, has meant that he is no longer a welcome voice to many church leaders. I have been disappointed over the past year to see my prediction back in February come true.

I tend to feel, however, that any criticism of Barna amounts to “shooting the messenger”. After all, we can’t decide that we like polls only when they reflect what we want to see! I don’t personally believe that Barna has anything to gain by bringing bad news. In fact, from what I can gather, it has severely affected (in a negative way), his bottom line. (I tried unsuccessfully to locate the article where Barna described the severe downsizing that his organization went through about a year ago. If I find it, I’ll update this post with a link to it.)

Anyway, I say all of that to lead up to discussing a finding that Barna published earlier this year. It was brought back to my attention in a recent roundup of discoveries from 2006 that the Barna Group released this week. In that summary document, the following statement is found:

Evaluating spiritual maturity remains an elusive process for clergy as well as individuals. Across the nation, the only measure of spiritual health used by at least half of all pastors was the extent of volunteer activity or ministry involvement.

The more detailed analysis is found in this January, 2006 article on Barna’s website. It appears that pastors tend to think their congregants are deeply spiritual, but people themselves differ in their responses about their own spiritual commitment. In trying to understand this discrepancy, Barna describes the characteristics that pastors often use to judge the spiritual commitment of “their people”:

Overall, only one measure – how many people are involved in some form of church-related volunteer activity or ministry effort – was listed by at least half of all pastors (54%) as a measure of the spiritual health of their congregation. Only two other criteria – church attendance and some type of life change experience (usually meaning that a person has made a first-time commitment to Jesus Christ as their savior) were named as important criteria by more than one out of every seven pastors. (Each of these criteria was listed by 45% of all pastors.) Other top-rated standards were whether congregants were involved in evangelism (13%), how much new information or knowledge about Christianity the people received (10%), how much money was donated to the church (10%), and the comments made by congregants to the pastor (10%).

I’ve linked to the article above, so you can read it in its entirety, if you wish, but this paragraph is very telling. Many times on this blog, I have mentioned that I feel like the institutional version of church tends to put barriers in the way of believers actually growing and maturing. I don’t believe these barriers are intentional in any way! However, I keep coming back to this idea that it is next to impossible for someone to actually “pastor” large groups of people (i.e., anything over about 20) because that person can’t possibly know the spiritual condition of the people he is “pastoring”.

This report from Barna seems to support my ideas a bit from the standpoint that it shows that the way church leaders measure spiritual condition is severely flawed in and of itself. Notice the criteria that topped the list: involvement in church-related activities. While involvement in activities of the church may be the result of a spiritual passion, the reality is that those activities can easily be carried out without much in the way of spiritual depth in an individual.

Some of my commenters in the past have felt like I was being a bit too hard on the institutional church by seeing it as largely failing at its task. I don’t wish to overly emphasize the negative things that I have seen in my own experience, but I do think there’s something to be asked here. If Barna’s numbers are accurate, what does that tell us? I think that it tells us that the church is going to continue to “miss the point” if it evaluates spiritual commitment and passion based on a checklist of external actions.

And that is really the position I continue to hold. I don’t think that anyone inside the institutional church is seriously trying to miss the point. At least that is true for the vast majority, in my opinion. After all, “it’s always been done this way”, right? But I do think that, by and large, we continue to miss the point.

If we are to be making disciples, as Jesus told us to do, then we need to be aware of what a disciple looks like. We need to have some kind of relational sense of where someone is in their progress as a disciple. And I don’t think that can be measured solely by looking at attendance records, giving records, or even amount of involvement within the institution itself. Nor can it be measured from a distance.

Until next time,

steve