johnny damon
A lot of people have rolled their eyes over the fact that Johnny Damon will be in pinstripes next year … along with having short hair and no beard. Many want to throw stones, and they curse the Yankees because they “buy their teams.” I believe it is all spoken out of jealous hearts. I for one am thrilled that Johnny will be with us next year and in the years to come. All of the things that I said about him in the 2004 ALCS no longer hold true. Boston had their chance with J D, but they lost him … and we will gladly give him a home in the “House that Ruth Built.”
a question asked
A friend recently asked this question based from his experience with another person ... this is what he wrote,
"I recently had a conversation with a friend who said that he thought all religions were the same. When I told him I didn't think all religions were the same, I was labeled close minded. How do we claim the truth of Jesus in a postmodern world?"
What follows are my thoughts to him ...
You speak of truth in a post-modern world, and go on to describe the post-modern world as a place filled with “relativism.” Does "post-modernity" really equal relativism? Maybe relativism was needed for a time. WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! HANG WITH ME … I am not saying that we need to be or should be relativistic. Let me quote Brian McLaren, reflecting on a philosopher named Ken Wilbur, “Emerging postmodernism sees relativist pluralism (the irrational idea that all opinions or views are equally valid) as a kind of chemotherapy intended to stop the growth of modern reductionistic rationalism (the oppressive idea that all reality can be reduced to mechanisms that the mind can understand via validation by the five senses). In order to kill the malignancy, the patient has to take dangerous medicine that would prove poisonous if taken in too high doses or for too long.”
In regard to our religion, we view relativism with fear and trepidation but we embrace the idea that our beliefs can be proven by simple logic and reduction, and yet this ideology can be just as damaging. Why? This kind of empiricism and “the proof is in the pudding” makes men and women the measure of all things. We are the ones who determine if God is good, if Jesus was God, if the Bible was/is true … this philosophy has been prevailing over the last several hundred years. Remember René Descartes “I think therefore I am.” The “I AM” suddenly became about mankind, not about God in Heaven. We then became the authoritative voice … the Bible began to quickly lose ground.
I would argue that many of us are both relativists and rationalists at the same time. We read a poem, hear a song, read a book, see a movie … and for us at that time we develop meaning from it. Maybe we hear a sad song after a hard break-up. We attach meaning and significance to that song that the author never intended. We have become relativists … the author meant “A” but it means “B” to me therefore even though it may mean “C” to someone else … it still is “B” to me. This may seem trite, but we do this all day long in the process of living our lives, but when it comes to our faith, we freak out, because our faith is rational, not relative. It is a static thing, that cannot, will not, and must never change. It has one answer and one meaning and can never mean anything else. I would suggest, that our faith is neither relative or rational but in a place far beyond our labels and titles.
People for 1,000’s of years have believed in the eight-fold path, transcendentalism, many roads to heaven ... on it goes. We believe in Jesus, born of a virgin, lived as fully-god/fully-man, was crucified for the sins of humanity, rose again on the third day, returned to heaven and will one day restore all things to himself to the glory of God the Father. We BELIEVE this … we have no choice but to go on faith that is empowered by the Holy Spirit. So where does that leave us? With faith … which brings us to humility … and this is where we must begin. We must tell people about our faith, as Dara said in a previous post ... our story in light of the big story. The continual unfolding drama of redemption.
heaven
Last night on ABC there was a News Special on heaven. Where it is, and how we get there. They had people representing an assortment of religions … Islam, Buddhism, Evangelical Christianity … beyond religion they had Atheistic representation and insights from the medical community. None of it was remarkably interesting to me. It really was just many different people speaking about what they believe regarding the afterlife.
One thing I thought was interesting was how thoroughly empirical the entire study was. The doctors who were on spoke of a “god-gene” that we possess, and the stimuli in our brains that come through when we worship / meditate. The focus was on whether or not it could be proven scientifically.
I was waiting for them to report about the fact that ever since mankind began recording history there has always been the element of spirituality. Rather, the science community tried to break down the physical to find the spiritual, the eternal. I guess I would liken this to looking at a flag that is blowing in the wind. Then embarking on a study of the flag … its fibers, its stitching, its design, its color and trying to deduce why it is rustling and moving around while completely ignoring the wind. It would not make sense, the flag is behaving this way, because of an outside force. Maybe people behave spiritually because of what the reality is that is all around us … maybe it is inside all of us … maybe this is why we reach out for God (See The Apostle, Paul in Acts 17).
As an aside it was mentioned that people don’t need proof, they need only faith. My trouble over this, is that so often as Christians we spend our time doing the same thing this program did. That is, we try to prove what we believe. We in many ways forsake faith. I remember teaching one time and telling the people I was teaching that I could not prove that God existed, that the Bible was true, or even that Jesus was God. I could however give good reasons why I believed all of these things to be true, and beyond that I am willing to die for these beliefs. Shortly after I was done preaching this, I was approached abruptly by many people who said, “What do you mean you can’t prove God?!?! It can easily be done, beyond question!”
So I asked, “If that is the case, then why is it that we have not gotten the news out so that everyone will finally know the truth?” It is interesting to me that the Bible begins the story like this, “In the Beginning God …” In the Hebrew “God” is the second word. How much time did he spend defending his existence? We have to return to faith. This is what Jesus called us to, this is what the Text calls us to … it is in faith that we truly find ourselves and more importantly the one who created us.
the gospel of information
I was speaking with someone earlier today who was talking about the gospel. Then they mentioned something about the four spiritual laws. I thought, “Is the gospel only within the confines of telling someone the four spiritual laws?”
If this is the case, then what exactly did Jesus preach while he was on earth? It says he preached the gospel. Did he walk around saying, “I have a great plan for you, but you are separated from God, so I am going to die, and I become your personal Savior, then you can no the plan I have for you.” This would not have made sense because he hadn’t died yet, his own disciples did not know who he was for a long time, and he never spoke about the “personal savior idea.” He constantly spoke about the Kingdom of Heaven. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like …”
My wife and I were in Athens several years ago. I thought I was cool because I could read Greek. Then I got to Greece and remembered that I had gotten C’s in Greek Class … enough said. As we were walking in the downtown area, one word on a sign stuck out to me, because I had seen it before … it said Evangelismos. Below this word in English it said, “information”. The information that was there was the “you are here” dot, bus routes, roads, cafés, shops, and attractions. I stood there thinking … “that’s it.”
Evangelismos. The idea captured behind this word is to tell people about the reality they find themselves in relative to where they are. This sign told me that I was in the northeast part of Athens, and showed me how far away things were and how to navigate my way to and from them.
Maybe this is what Jesus was talking about.
Maybe his idea was to tell people about the ultimate reality (the Kingdom of Heaven) relative to who they are and where they were … the old “you are here” dot on the map. The sign that I saw did not try to give me directions … it simply showed me where I was in relation to everything else. So often we are trying to get people to somewhere and we have no clue where they are, where they are going or even where they have come from. Maybe this is the picture of the gospel.
radio preacher
Yesterday I was in the car, and I had about a half-hour drive ahead of me. I set the radio to scan, as I usually do to see what was on. I found myself a short time later listening to a radio preacher. He was talking about forgiveness. I have no idea who he was, where he was from, and given the absent response to his jokes, I don’t even no if he was speaking to a live audience.
He was speaking about forgiveness. As I listened to him, he kept speaking about how easy it is mentally to say, “I forgive you”, but how difficult it is to live it out. His solution was simple. Pray about it and let it go. Then it will be the problem of the person who hurt you, and you will be fine. I was driving thinking, “Are you kidding me? You’re acting like this is a one time shot!” Then I started wondering who else was listening to this guy. I do live in Grand Rapids, the center of Christianity for the last one hundred years (the rest of the world does not know about the last part, so if you ever meet someone from Grand Rapids, just act like you know about our being the Center of Christianity). How many people were listening who had just found out about their spouse messing around, had just been cheated by a partner in business, been betrayed by a friend or experienced some other hurt dealt to them by another.
They may listen to this and think, “Wow this is great.” Pray, forget it and within a few hours feel that twinge of pain in their gut, and again be at the place where they want to kill the person who caused their pain. All of the sudden this person realizes, “Wait, I just prayed this prayer and now I feel like I did this morning …” What conclusions will they draw? The reality is the solution given is devoid of the humanness we find ourselves in … emotion, rationale, grief, etc.
I drove on wondering if anyone else is tired of all of these easy answers, that when put to the test continually fail. I wondered do these preachers really live this kind of enchanted life, where all of these things work? Then I thought, what is wrong with me? Maybe this is the reason people place ministers on a pedestal, because they seem to have the answers and they live them out with astonishing results. This may also be the reason that many hate the church and the leaders within, because they cannot deal with the answers that do not work and these answers have never produced astonishing results.
Preachers have in large part become a vehicle for escapism. They tickle our fancy and tell us about a world of make-believe that they live in and have seen, but the common person rarely gets there. Maybe this is why we have so many people whom only go to church, but are not following Jesus. We go to get our fill of another world. Everyone looks nice, everyone smiles, there is a man or woman who speaks about this place where things fall into place, and then we leave only to be confronted once again with the skeletons in our closet.
It has to stop. We have to be real. We have to tell people that we hurt. We have to tell people that we live in a world that is waiting for the restoration of all things. Don’t get me wrong, let’s not be all doom and gloom … but we need to recognize the difficulty of life. This is what will make us so grateful for pasture in the wilderness, the still waters and the rod and staff of our Good Shepherd.
my first time
I am a perfectionist and thought that I would never “publish my blog,” until it was perfect ... then I thought, "who cares?" I am no web designer, and it looks good enough for me. So read what I have written, or in one case what Rudyard Kipling has written, and comment. Check back from time to time as I am sure I will continue to have these thoughts that find themselves out in the world of cyberspace.