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SAYING IT AGAIN
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” ― André Gide It took me years as a teacher to recognize the crucial role of repetition in learning. Of course, lack of attention isn’t the only culprit – and perhaps not even the worst offender. Prejudice and assumptions stand in the way of new insights and they are not toppled quickly. And it seems to me that repetition also has a way of establishing credibility: if the teacher is saying this yet again, it really must be important.…
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WRONG QUESTION
Believers have these crazy debates about whether or not you “have to” do good works in order to get to heaven. One side says good works are unnecessary. All you need is belief in Jesus. The other says you have to obey Jesus as your Lord or you get locked out. Back and forth and round and round it goes. There are big problems with the entire discussion, beginning with the fact that none of us are even going to heaven. According to Scripture, in the end heaven and earth are renewed and heaven comes down to earth. We stay…
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THE CHURCH IS A …
If you were to Google “The Church is a …”, what would you expect the top autofill suggestions to be? Some would come straight from Scripture: “The Church is a body.” “The Church is a bride.” Others, though not specifically Scriptural images, are part of the public imagination and seem true enough: “The Church is a family.” “The Church is a hospital for sinners.” But here’s an obvious one that I have never heard … and I wonder why: “The Church is a school.” Why isn’t the Church known as a place where people learn? About God? About life? About…
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THERE *IS* MAGIC IN CHRISTMAS
I have the (earned) reputation for being a bit of a Grinch about Christmas, so I want to record here something that I thoroughly enjoy about the season. And it’s something which spans across Christmas, includes New Year’s Day and at least the first week of January: This is the season of belief in the 180 degree turn. The belief in the possibility of transformation. That the evil old miser, Scrooge, can become loving – and loveable. That the Grinch’s heart can grow three sizes. That a New Year can bring a “new you”. And that openness to the reality…
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THINKING YOU’RE THINKING
I’ve gotten a little slack lately – my “daily” writing habit is often reduced to 4 or 5 times a week. It’s not that I have run out of topics. I have unlimited things to write about. But limited energy and time. Three years in, I believe the habit is solid enough not that occasional lapses will not lead to outright disappearance. I find writing much too valuable to ever give it up completely. This is because I feel the constant need to straighten out my thinking, especially as a pastor. And that takes writing. This is my experience: “If you’re…
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LOVE AND HATE
With our annual Christmas program this morning, I didn’t have to preach today, so I decided this afternoon to get a jumpstart on next week’s sermon. Next Sunday will be the 4th Sunday of Advent and the traditional focus is on Love. Out of curiosity, I got onto the STEP Bible website and did some searches: “love” and “hate” in both the Old and New Testaments. Any guess as to how many times words denoting “hate” show up in the Old Testament? 159. And most of those are humans hating each other or hating God. In the New Testament? 38. …
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TENACITY
I came across a deep thought from John Collison, Co-founder of Stripe: “As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren’t just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.” (Hat tip to Shane Parrish) It reminded me of a curious truth I heard on a YouTube video that went something like this: Everything you see around you started in somebody’s imagination – some, like trees and mountains and oceans, began in…
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QUESTIONS OF FAITH
James Fowler, in the opening chapter of his book Stages of Faith, lists a set of questions he developed for a workshop he was leading on the topic of faith: Wow. It seems to me that our present day understanding of “faith” has become so anemic that it looks puny in comparison to the weight of these questions. What Fowler has in mind when speaking of “faith” is, in his words, “a much more powerful matter than claimed belief in a creed or a set of doctrinal propositions”. (p.4) Ditto for what the Bible has in mind.
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MILK OVER GUILT
A pastor friend told me that he was often frustrated in the churches where he had served when the congregations would assume that evangelization was the pastor’s job rather than their own. I am sure this is common in American churches, but what is the solution? He had attempted to light a fire under church members to get out there and do the evangelizing themselves. Scripture makes it clear that the Great Commission is every believer’s duty. But this had never produced any fruit. I’m guessing because the root of the problem was not laziness or passivity or busyness. The…
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WHAT IS REQUIRED
To me, these verses from Micah 6 are a snapshot of the difference between the sort of true righteousness that God is actually after as opposed to the “works of the Law” that are so often performed in an effort to win God’s approval and cover over sin. 6 “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn…