Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Humble and Contrite?

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This morning I read the last few chapters in Isaiah and these words stood out from them:

“But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

Isaiah 66:2b, ESV

When I look at the church growth experts and review their strategies for building megachurches, I don’t see a lot of humility and contrition. Instead, I see a lot of words about “vision casting”, marketing plans, branding and worship service dynamics. We have pastors that act more like CEO’s rather than shepherds of their people. We have church leaders who frame a vision and then build a team of like-minded supporters rather than allowing disparate gifts to operate for the good of the church body.

Too much of what is written about building and managing a church could be equally relevant for managing any publicly traded company. Just scrub out the nominal references to God and the Bible and substitute more politically correct jargon and you’re good to go for a press release or employee pep rally.

I have served in leadership at a couple of large churches and we never began a meeting with prayers of repentance nor did we spend time pleading with God to provide wisdom and leading for the congregation. Usually the meeting proceeded with the nuts and bolts of following the growth plan after a nominal prayer asking God’s blessing and perhaps a short devotional. I am saddened by this and repent of my passivity in participating in it.

Perhaps I am becoming a curmudgeon. But I wonder if we have made the American church into something that God does not intend it to be. Do we cause God to weep when he sees the gap between what we are and what we should be? I’m pretty sure that God is not impressed by the big buildings, multiple campuses and large budgets.

I don’t think that we can place too much stress on Jesus’ statement about the responsibility for building the church. It is his; he claimed the responsibility and the resurrection proves that he has the power to do it.

If Jesus will build it and if Jesus has the power to do it, maybe we should spending more time in prayer asking him how he wants us to participate in that building than we do in creating our own strategies.

We might get to a better destination if we let him steer.

Before you hit send . . .

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I seldom (almost never) go to Facebook to read my feed. But I recently was notified by email of an exchange that took place on Facebook and was sorry I clicked on the link.

In the exchange, I found that two believers that I know crossed a line in disagreeing with a third believer over what has become a political issue. Rather than stating the reasons for their disagreement, they made comments about the third believer that were basically ad hominem attack. I was saddened by their lack of respect for their fellow believer and the damage that they caused to the body of Christ.

In response, I thought I would highlight some suggestions for Christians in their use of social media:

  1. The truths of Scripture are timeless and authoritative. But care must be taken in applying those truths to political issues. When it comes to governmental policy, can we admit that problems are always more complex than the partisan rhetoric allows? We need to be open to hearing other opinions and if critique is necessary, it should be focused on the issue rather than on the person who disagrees.
  2. We always need to keep in mind what we learn from Genesis 3 and Matthew 7. In the latter passage, Jesus warned us of our tendency to be critical of others while making excuses for our own sin. His illustration of a log and speck, while humorous, perfectly illustrates how we often act. We are ALL flawed in our character AND our thinking. We need to be open to hearing other opinions so that we can progress in wisdom and understanding.
  3. We are called by Paul to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). If we need to address incorrect thinking on a subject, it must be done with love. In the exchange listed above, I wasn’t feeling a lot of love jumping off the screen. What I observed instead was an attitude of if you don’t agree with me, I will not have anything to do with you.
  4. Guard against falling prey to our “sound bite”, “hot take” culture. We live in a society where competition for attention is fierce and people often say outrageous things to get noticed. Take a deep breath and analyze what is being said before rattling off an angry response. Analysis and reflection on the issue should be done before hitting the send button.
  5. Be really, really careful in adopting a “well if you believe that you must not be a Christian” stance. While there are beliefs that would cause one to be outside the orthodox faith, how one applies Scripture to societal issues should be open to discussion.
  6. Finally, James 1:19-20 should serve as a caution. He tells us to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. Why, because our anger does not achieve the righteousness that God wants us to display.

While the angry, “I guess I showed them” type of response may be gratifying in the moment, it doesn’t help in the long run.

Such a response brings division which grieves the Lord who died to bring unity.

For the record, I still have respect for all those involved in this fracas. My guess is that eventually there will be healing in the damaged relationships. But had the ideas above been followed, some wounds could have been avoided.

What the church should be about

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I started reading Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcey and ran across this paragraph in the first chapter:

“We often hear Christians speak about recovering the vitality of the early church. But which aspect of the early church are they thinking about? It’s a safe bet they are not thinking about the way the early church went on the offensive against the dominant intellectual systems of the age. Today’s churches pour their resources into rallies, friendship evangelism, and mercy missions that distribute food and medicine. And these are vital. Yet if they aspire to the dynamic impact of the early church, they must do as it did, learning to address, critique, adapt and overcome the dominant ideologies of our day.”

To engage our culture means that we need to teach people what Scripture says about our culture. We also need to teach people what Scripture says about how to engage our culture.

Saving Leonardo

People flocked to Jesus. He obviously knew how to treat people with respect, even those who the religious leaders treated with contempt.

We are not called to ratchet up the rhetoric in the culture war. We need to see how Jesus used respectful dialog to point people in a different direction.

Jesus shows us that it is possible to be firm on ideas while being loving to those who hold different ones. But this takes work, hard work. Work that few of the churches I’ve attended seemed willing to undertake.

It is so much easier to avoid the discussion by not entering into it through cultural conformity.

Another method of shutting down discussion is to use condemnatory statements and harsh rhetoric. Instead of tearing down walls, this approach reinforces and raises them.

Scripture enjoins us to do neither.

Living up to our Facebook Page

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We probably all have at least one acquaintance who makes us nuts with their social media posts because we know that their life is not as pleasant as Facebook would make it appear. According to Facebook, every social event they attend is wonderful and they had a great time and were appreciated by all.

This surreality is one of the reasons why I’ve removed the Facebook app from my phone and iPad. Well, the cute puppy and cat videos may also have had a little to do with it.

But if we’re honest (as the title of this blog seems to indicate we ought to be), we must admit our own tendency to display ourselves as better than we are. We may do it less blatantly but we all do it.

I’m not trying to say that the Facebook deception should be considered normal or acceptable. My point is that, for Christians, every form of deception should be avoided.

Boasting is never a good idea for Christians unless we want to boast in the extravagant grace and limitless love of God for his people. But boasting’s close cousin, false humility, can creep in and cause at least as much damage.

As Christians, we are called to speak the truth in love. We are called to confess our sins to each other. We are called to live lives of humble worship of our God.

But this takes wisdom. It would be very weird and probably unwise to start confessing our faults to a complete stranger.

My gut feel is that the less we say about ourselves the better.

Jesus addressed this issue when he cautions us about taking the coveted place at a banquet. We should, rather, take the lower place. If we are to be elevated, it is better that it be at the initiation of someone else (See Luke 14:7-11).

The question we need to ask ourselves is, “why do we feel the need to make people think we are better than we are?”

My opinion is that we feel this pressure because we have not let the gospel of Jesus Christ penetrate to the core of our being.

If we feel pressure to make ourselves look good, it is an indication that we are still holding on to some self righteousness that is odious to our God.

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