my space

[postlude: April 18, 2006]

Recently, I received an “information” letter from my 6-year-old daughter’s school concerning myspace.com. It was a very informative letter and maybe I’m a little twisted, but I found the letter very humorous. Not because there was anything actually funny about the letter itself, but there was something funny about me (the parent and an ordained pastor) reading the letter while I’m adding a friend to MY myspace.com account.

Life is a sitcom sometimes, isn’t it?

As “personal space” was to the 1990’s, so is myspace.com for this decade of the new millennium. Sort of…

MY space is just that: it’s MY space. If YOU want to be part of MY space (better said my little, online kingdom), then you have to issue an “add to friends” request in order to be MY friend on MY space. It’s an incredible sense of control and power…if you have a myspace account, then you know exactly what I’m saying.

Admittedly, I’ve searched for many musical artists and long-lost friends to see if they have myspace accounts, but I have yet to search to see if God has a myspace account. Just the thought of it, without doing any research, got me thinking: what if God sent me an “add to friends” request? Would I approve or deny the request?

Bottom line, am I inviting God into MY space? More so, in my life and in your life, are there times when God’s space and MY space meet or overlap?

Before we go any further, let me stress that this is not a ‘pot calling the kettle black’ conversation, I have a myspace.com page and I check it just about every day, so my thoughts come from curiosity rather than condemnation. So, in the words of N.T. Wright: “I invite you (this week) to take the risk of thinking new thoughts in order that you may understand the old ones better.” *

What really happens when we approve an “add to friends” request”? In my mind, we’re not only allowing them into our space – whether that be adding a friend or networking with someone – we are allowing them into our little kingdom. It’s a power play and it’s about control. That might not be something we are willing to admit, but once we strip away all of our ‘good’ intentions, that is what it’s really all about. Not only can we control who people think we are, but we can control who our friends are and every aspect of how they interact with us. It’s an online utopia. It’s the ‘best-case’ scenario of having friends and community - no complications and totally at a distance. Who wouldn’t want that? However, this utopia or little kingdom we have control over is bitter sweet because for you and I the very thing that is attractive to us is often times the very illusion that distracts us from real beauty – real beauty being truth.

Let’s break this down a bit. First, my space and your space – our space – is the earth. Second, God’s space is in heaven. Throughout our Judeo-Christian history, God’s intent has been for our space and his space to connect and overlap. “Abraham keeps meeting God. Jacob sees a ladder between heaven and earth, with angels going to and fro. Moses discovers that he’s standing on holy ground – a place, in other words, where (for the moment at least) heaven and earth intersect – as he watched the burning bush.”**

More specifically, we can learn about God’s desire to dwell or to be added into our space in the book of Exodus. It is called “the Tent of Meeting”. It was a portable sanctuary or shrine where God would dwell with his people (the Israelites). It was God’s space intersecting with our space – heaven and earth coming together and overlapping. “The main focus of ancient Israelite belief in the overlap of heaven and earth was the Temple of Jerusalem.”** So whether it was “the Tent of Meeting” or the Temple of Jerusalem in the Old Testament, the question we must embrace in our new covenant (or friendship) with God is “don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1Corinthians 3:16 TNIV)

Because of Jesus and His Spirit, WE are “the Tent of Meeting” or the temple. WE are the place where God’s space and our space meet – the place where heaven meets earth – or in the words of Jesus, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (Luke 10:9 TNIV)

Jesus and His Spirit is (has been and will be forever) God’s “add to friends” request for your space, my space – our space. Our ‘new life’ begins when we embrace this with our entire being. When we allow The Kingdom Life to overtake (not just overlap) our little kingdoms in life, we begin to love intimacy rather than loving distance and we will find ourselves naturally drawn toward and attracted to real beauty – truth.

So the question isn’t really “is myspace.com bad?” It’s deeper than that. Our love for myspace.com is just a cultural reflection of a deeper spiritual need. It is our need to begin living and embracing who God has been continually calling His sons and daughters to be – the place where God’s space and our space meet, the place where heaven meets earth – His Kingdom here on earth. As with myspace.com, you and I have the choice to “approve” or “deny” God’s “add to friends” request – see you online!

reference notes:
*a quote from N.T. Wright’s message “Jesus and the Kingdom”
**from the book “Simply Christian” by N.T. Wright

BLOG readers only:
Oh..just in case – there is no myspace.com/god account. Don't get any ideas...

Christianity and the Karate Kid

Postlude [April 11, 2006]

If being a Christian is nothing more than conforming to a certain way of being human, then count me out. If it’s just another “quick-and-easy” approach to making life continually happy, I’d rather take Prozac. Bottom line, if it’s about being assimilated like some Borg on Star Trek, then I’m going to spend my life and my time doing anything BUT being a Christian.

Have you ever felt this way?

Have you ever tried to answer the question: WHY, you feel this way?
Why is there some sort of natural aversion to quick-and-easy Christianity?

In order to have you tracking with me, add some of these other (slightly random) questions to your mental arsenal...

• Why did most of us enjoy the first Karate Kid movie and not the sequels?
• For that matter, why is it that we (generally speaking) don’t enjoy sequels to ANY movie?
• Lastly, are you NOT thankful that they didn’t make a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 2”? I am. ☺

If you have no connection with the 80’s, I apologize for losing you in that last wave of nostalgic questions. Seriously…past any joking, why, do we feel this natural aversion to a quick-and-easy, conforming, homogenous, sequel-esque, Christianity?

It’s simple. It’s all in the difference between formula and story.

Each one of us could relate and connect with one or more of the characters in the movie Karate Kid – whether it was Daniel, Mr. Miyagi or Ali – and we found ourselves excited about the idea that someone could achieve their dreams. Karate Kid and its story, like many others, connected with our soul and thus became a hit movie. Hollywood film companies know this formula all to well and capitalize on it. Thus, they created the sequels Karate Kid II and Karate Kid III.

Most of us probably went to see Karate Kid II because the story of the original movie left us wanting to know more; more about Daniel, Ali, Mr. Miyagi and even some of the guys in the Cobra Kai. Whether the movie did well at the box office or not isn’t the true litmus test, that comes with Karate Kid III. It’s as if we had never heard the age-old rule “once bitten, twice shy”. Somehow we know better and yet we fall for the movie sequel time and time again – unfortunately, many of us also fall for this same sequel-esque, formulized Christianity. We end up buying the formula and by default, not buying into the story.

“Formula” Christianity can sound like this:
• Read “my” book and get your life together.
• Listen to “my” CD and it will change your life.
• Buy “my” package for 3 monthly payments and watch the transformation happen!

Trust me, the only reason I can write this, is because at one point in my life I bought this stuff, read it and I actually tried to implement the techniques into my life. It only made me more frustrated. Beyond that, I felt more and more guilty because I didn’t think I would ever really “conform to the image of Christ”.

I was more concerned with doing the formula for success in my faith than learning more about being a part of God’s story of redemption or for that matter, learn about MY story. Christianity had become a religion and not a relationship. I had inadvertently traded a unique relationship with Jesus, for a checklist of right and wrong things to do.

It wasn’t until I began reading ‘other’ books that I realized what I had been missing. These ‘other’ books were less about what to do, and more about who God had always intended for me to become. The idea that God valued ME – not for who I could make myself into through religious regiment, but as the person He had already designed me to be in Heaven – and as He was writing my story, He was revealing my part in His story.

Christianity moved from a formula on how to be a better human, to an active and daily story about being a new human. I’ve heard some say that being a Christian is to embrace the ultimate of being human. Even while writing this, I get a rush of adrenaline similar to when Daniel pulled out the ‘crane’ position to defeat Johnny from the Cobra Kai (in the original Karate Kid). ☺

As we ask God to reveal to us our story, we will begin to see His activity in our lives all along: whether near or far away from Him. We will see a Father who has been longing for the return of His son or daughter. As the story unfolds, we will find hope in our past, not shame – and THAT hope will give us wisdom to begin the walking in our future, now. All that you and I have to share with others in this life is our story and in affect, that’s God’s story. I challenge you to begin living a life of story rather than formula.

"Can You Hear Me Now?"

[postlude March, 28, 2006]

Philippians 4: 2-9

Imagine if the apostle Paul were the Verizon wireless guy. I know it’s a stretch, but if you know me then you know I constantly think in terms of stretching our perception or broadening our worldview (in hopes of aligning our lives more with the ‘Kingdom at hand’).

So, Paul is saying to us “can you hear me now – church?”

As often I as I read Paul’s letter (also known as ‘epistles’) I’m blown away by his attention to detail. But, as a writer, I pay close to attention to words; really close attention to words. Not only, words written in the bible and other books, but also in emails and in the conversations that I have with people. We’re probably all guilty of not paying close attention to what we read or what people are actually saying to us, but Paul was very aware of why, what, where and how he was communicating with the communities he had initiated. Looking closer at the words that Paul utilizes in his final thoughts in Philippians 4, hopefully we can all answer YES to the question of “can you hear me now?”

In the latter part the letter to his friends in Philippi (the book of Philippians), Paul directly addresses a conflict between two women within the community, Euodia and Syntyche. He pleads with them to “be of the same mind in the Lord”. But he didn’t leave it for just those women to deal with resolving this conflict. Paul then says, “Yes, and I ask you, my true companions, help these women…”(vs.2) The word ‘companion’ in the original Greek text means: yoked together and those united by the bond of marriage. He asking those who are united in Christ – the bride – in Philippi to get their hands dirty and work through this conflict as a community. Paul knows that true community and friendship is built through sharing the good times and the bad times; those who learn together, grow together.

Can you hear me now?

However Paul, knowing us humans and our natural inclination to condemn people, hedges for this a couple of ways. First, he tells his friends in Philippi to “not be anxious about anything.” (vs. 6) The word ‘anxious’ in the original Greek text means: to seek to promote one’s interests. He’s telling them to NOT be selfish in resolving this conflict and in telling them that, he is also giving them insight into real conflict resolution and in essence true communal intercession for people. As Oswald Chambers says, “intercession means raising ourselves up to the point of getting the mind of Christ regarding the person for whom we are praying”. And I add, for whom we are helping through a conflict. If we bring any other agenda into helping a friend(s) through a conflict other than the mind of Christ (or the heart of the Father) then we are by default going to be anxious because of that selfish, hidden agenda.

Can you hear me now?

Second, Paul lays out a simple checklist that will insure for his friends in Philippi (and you and I) that “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (vs. 7). It’s as if Paul is saying to us (and them) “before you go and get holier than thou, let’s have a check-up from the neck-up – let’s make sure that we are in the right mindset for this conversation or conflict resolution”. In verses 8 and 9 Paul writes the following:

“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”

The word ‘true’ in the original Greek text means: living in the truth and speaking in truth. As Mark Twain once said, “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” If we, as friends, live in and speak in truth we have a better chance of creating a healthy future rather than having to live in the past (by trying to remember what we said).

‘Noble’ in the original Greek text means: to be honorable or to be venerated by character - and venerated means to make sacred or have a degree of sanctification. Character is the root of how we make decisions to act in life and if our actions speak louder than our words, then our actions are a direct reflection of our inner character. Is our character becoming honorable or noble?

‘Right’ in the original Greek text means: virtuous or innocent - and virtue means that something is of particular moral excellence. Children, in their beginning years, are innocent. They don’t know what is right or wrong. Fortunately or unfortunately, we adults train the children around us in the paradigms of this world. We, in fact, make them less innocent – both intentionally and unintentionally. Maybe Paul was hinting at the words of Jesus “…unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3 TNIV)

‘Pure’ in the original Greek text means: pure from carnality, chaste and modest. Again, Paul is calling us to be innocent but more specifically innocent in our sexual relations.

‘Lovely’ in the original Greek text means: to be acceptable or pleasing. Maybe Paul is drawing from the words of Jesus, when He said, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40 TNIV).

Can you hear me now?

‘Admirable’ in the original Greek text means: speaking auspiciously – and auspiciously means intending good or kindly patronage. It’s along the lines of the old adage “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” But it’s not about being fake or superficial. It’s ALL about encouraging and edifying our friends. It’s about seeing what God sees in your friends, or in the words of Oswald Chambers it’s “a practical help in keeping your personal purity unblemished in your relations to other people is to begin to see them as God does.”

‘Excellent’ and ‘praiseworthy’ in the original Greek text mean: a virtuous course of thought, feeling and action that is worthy of praise. Not the praise of others but the praise of your Father and not for the action itself but the change in your character that happens through the continued pursuit of this course of thought and action.

“Think about such things.”

‘Think’ in the original Greek text means: to determine, to purpose and to meditate on. Another way of saying this could read like: “be intentional and determined to absorb these character qualities into your God given personality”.

Two verses (verses 8 and 9) on the first reading might seem like a simple checklist, but in fact, have a lot of depth. But honestly, should that really surprise us? If you spend just a little time understanding Paul’s past and then reading his writings in the New Testament, you’ll notice rather quickly that he doesn’t mince words. Actually, Paul gets a whole lot (and I mean a WHOLE LOT) of information conveyed by utilizing few words.

Paul not only wrote the letters to his friends he lived the very words he wrote. He was determined, thoughtful and intentional with the why, what, where and how he was communicating. For Paul, passing on the liberating message of Jesus to His followers and instructing them on how they should interact with each other and the community around them was a matter of life or death - it would yield life or death to both the individual and the community.

Did Paul’s timeless words land on deaf ears? Or do you hear him asking you: “Can you hear me now?”