I have friends who are convinced that John Locke, a main character on LOST, is like Jesus.
If you follow the hit show at all, you know that Locke has been on a mission to get people back to the island. He has been told, and finally becomes convinced, that the only way to accomplish this is by dying. Only through his death will the mission be accomplished.
I finally figured out last night why this idea bothers me so much. Throughout the show, it has become evident that Locke's primary concern is for the Island. Not the people. Not his "friends" or his "enemies", but for the Island itself. The Island has miraculously healed John, and he senses his destiny lies there. So he acts on behalf of the Island. He also acts, not out of love for anyone or anything, but for himself. Because this is his destiny, his motivation is primarily self-directed.
This is not like Jesus. The kind of sacrifice that Jesus showed us, and then called His followers to, is motivated by love and done for other people.
So why bring this up? It's just a TV show, right? I mention this only because I see this idea of sacrifice, the John Locke variety, creeping in all over our world and being labeled as "like Jesus." We fool ourselves into thinking that any act where we sacrifice makes us like Jesus. Just going without, or experiencing pain, or having a rough day, does not make us like Jesus. We have been called to sacrifice, but this sacrifice has been defined for us: motivated by love, and done for others.
For this is the kind of sacrifice that truly changes the world.
Journey in Him,
Nick
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
I Need This On Monday...
I was sent this quote in an e-mail this week. In a "me" obsessed world, this is a powerful reminder of what faith is all about.
"God's loyalty is...foundational because it stops us from defining Christianity in terms of our personal performance and religious achievements. Many of us live as if the Christian life were a matter of feelings about God and duties done for God. We live as religious egotists. We say that we are doing well with God if WE are disciplined or if WE are obeying hem. We think that we are close to God if WE feel close to him. We believe that Christianity is true if WE have been made happy and successful by it or if our religious techniques work. We delude ourselves by thinking, 'If only I could conquer this nagging problem, then I would be a true Christian.' For many of us, our Christian faith is as good as we are, and not as good as God is. “
“But as long as we make our feelings, our discipline, our consistency, our techniques and our success and happiness the foundation for Christian living, we shall never know true Christianity. It always begins with God, never with us. He is loyal. That is the most basic truth. 'If we are faithless, he remains faithful--for he cannot deny himself' (2 Tim 2:13)"
[from the book, THE ADVENTURE by Jerry Sittser]
Journey on in his faithfulness,
Nick
"God's loyalty is...foundational because it stops us from defining Christianity in terms of our personal performance and religious achievements. Many of us live as if the Christian life were a matter of feelings about God and duties done for God. We live as religious egotists. We say that we are doing well with God if WE are disciplined or if WE are obeying hem. We think that we are close to God if WE feel close to him. We believe that Christianity is true if WE have been made happy and successful by it or if our religious techniques work. We delude ourselves by thinking, 'If only I could conquer this nagging problem, then I would be a true Christian.' For many of us, our Christian faith is as good as we are, and not as good as God is. “
“But as long as we make our feelings, our discipline, our consistency, our techniques and our success and happiness the foundation for Christian living, we shall never know true Christianity. It always begins with God, never with us. He is loyal. That is the most basic truth. 'If we are faithless, he remains faithful--for he cannot deny himself' (2 Tim 2:13)"
[from the book, THE ADVENTURE by Jerry Sittser]
Journey on in his faithfulness,
Nick
Thursday, February 19, 2009
This Takes Practice...
Practice. Never been one of my favorite words.
It conjures up images of 5:30 AM basketball practices when I was a sophomore in high school. It reminds me of double-days for college football in the muggy Minnesota heat. It puts me right back on the piano bench as a grade-schooler, struggling to learn songs that my older sister had long since mastered.
Yet once again I find my life circling back to this word. I have been reading through the book, "Your God is Too Safe" with a group of guys, and we recently went through a chapter on being aware of God's presence in your life. The author, Mark Buchanan, made it clear that becoming readily aware of God in our life requires...you guessed it...practice. He even references one of my all-time favorite (and least favorite) books, "The PRACTICE of the Presence of God" Written by a simple monk, this books encourages the reader to know and relate to God even while peeling the potatoes. (Seriously- check it out.)
In regards to "practicing" God's presence, Buchanan writes,
"We need to practice the presence of God: not just to acknowledge in some philosophical way that God is present, but to rehearse, to repeat, to work and rework our knowledge that even though we don't see Him and sometimes don't feel him, he is there. He is here. When we practice the presence of God, we train ourselves to desire His presence..."
I certainly want to desire His presence. But with all this talk of practice, I can't help but reflect on my experience of learning to play the piano. For me, that kind of practice was a constant ebb and flow in my life. I would go through seasons of intense desire where I really wanted to get good. But inevitably, before I would reach a true level of competence, I would become content with my current ability. As soon as that happened (and it always did), my desire to practice immediately went away. Sometimes it would be weeks, even months, before I would return to practice again. The net effect of this pattern is that to this day, I have likely spent more hours at a piano than anyone in the history of the earth who is still unable to truly play. Why? Because I got tired of the practice.
I guess today I don't have a real "motivational" thought, but instead I want to wrestle with this idea. I want to express a very real fear and a worry of my own heart that I will do the same with God. I will seek and desire His presence to a point, but when I sense a certain closeness with Him, my practice will end. And over and over, rather than walking in true friendship with God by continued practice, I will go through this cycle of unlearning and relearning.
How do we break from this cycle? I am not sure I know. Perhaps it has to do with focus, or commitment, or perseverance, or any other number of words that could be thrown out in a cliche fashion. Or maybe it's something more. Maybe the "answer" is in finding a certain level of contentment with this pattern I have, believing that even in the ebb and flow of my heart, and the on-again, off-again nature of my practicing His presence, that God is doing more in me than I know.
May you know, and practice, His presence on your journey today,
Nick
It conjures up images of 5:30 AM basketball practices when I was a sophomore in high school. It reminds me of double-days for college football in the muggy Minnesota heat. It puts me right back on the piano bench as a grade-schooler, struggling to learn songs that my older sister had long since mastered.
Yet once again I find my life circling back to this word. I have been reading through the book, "Your God is Too Safe" with a group of guys, and we recently went through a chapter on being aware of God's presence in your life. The author, Mark Buchanan, made it clear that becoming readily aware of God in our life requires...you guessed it...practice. He even references one of my all-time favorite (and least favorite) books, "The PRACTICE of the Presence of God" Written by a simple monk, this books encourages the reader to know and relate to God even while peeling the potatoes. (Seriously- check it out.)
In regards to "practicing" God's presence, Buchanan writes,
"We need to practice the presence of God: not just to acknowledge in some philosophical way that God is present, but to rehearse, to repeat, to work and rework our knowledge that even though we don't see Him and sometimes don't feel him, he is there. He is here. When we practice the presence of God, we train ourselves to desire His presence..."
I certainly want to desire His presence. But with all this talk of practice, I can't help but reflect on my experience of learning to play the piano. For me, that kind of practice was a constant ebb and flow in my life. I would go through seasons of intense desire where I really wanted to get good. But inevitably, before I would reach a true level of competence, I would become content with my current ability. As soon as that happened (and it always did), my desire to practice immediately went away. Sometimes it would be weeks, even months, before I would return to practice again. The net effect of this pattern is that to this day, I have likely spent more hours at a piano than anyone in the history of the earth who is still unable to truly play. Why? Because I got tired of the practice.
I guess today I don't have a real "motivational" thought, but instead I want to wrestle with this idea. I want to express a very real fear and a worry of my own heart that I will do the same with God. I will seek and desire His presence to a point, but when I sense a certain closeness with Him, my practice will end. And over and over, rather than walking in true friendship with God by continued practice, I will go through this cycle of unlearning and relearning.
How do we break from this cycle? I am not sure I know. Perhaps it has to do with focus, or commitment, or perseverance, or any other number of words that could be thrown out in a cliche fashion. Or maybe it's something more. Maybe the "answer" is in finding a certain level of contentment with this pattern I have, believing that even in the ebb and flow of my heart, and the on-again, off-again nature of my practicing His presence, that God is doing more in me than I know.
May you know, and practice, His presence on your journey today,
Nick
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Redeeming the Time
Howdy folks! It is good to be back in the gentle green of Washington State.
In a life that has grown increasingly busy, and noisy, running is one of the times that I can find some solitude to listen and think. I'm more and more in the habit of listening to messages on podcast while I run, rather than any genre of music. I find this ironic when I run past people who are blaring their ipod so loudly I can make out AC/DC from blocks away.
Anyway, yesterday on my run I was listening to a message by Andy Stanley, who leads a large church in the Atlanta area. He has a fresh, innovative way of thinking and if you've never heard of him, go find his stuff on itunes. He's worth the time. The message I listened to was all about time. I'll summarize here what he said (or more accurately, what I got out of it!)
The question we ask all the time is, "what time is it?" while the question we should be asking is, "what am I doing with the time?" The way we spend our time is crucial, and here's why. When it comes to the things that matter most in life(exercise, relationships, spiritual matters), doing them in small segments of time over months and years has a cumulative effect on our lives. So, when we eat smart and exercise over several months, we'll notice it down the road. The urgent things in life, while not as important, tend NOT to have a cumulative affect. Meaning, when we look back a year from now at how we spent time, we often can't remember the urgent things that took so much time.
The danger in all of this is that missing any one occurrence of the most important things (such a workout, a dinner with our spouse, or a time of reading the Bible) seems insignificant, and so we often push it aside for things that seem more urgent in that moment. The long range effect is that we continually put off what is most important in order to do what seems more urgent, even when we acknowledge that the urgent is less important.
In Ephesians 5, Paul writes, "Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."
This "making the most of every opportunity" literally read, "redeeming the time". In other words, get the highest possible value out of the time you have been given. This is wise living.
How do we do this? By continually prioritizing the most important things in life- relationships, our health, our walk with Christ- even though each single act may not seem that significant alone. These small but regular investments of time will have a cumulative effect in our lives. This has been so important for me to remember as I return from a long trip. The "urgent" is all around me, screaming at me to ignore what matters more. And so, I'm trying to be smart enough to balance the "right now" with that which is simply "right."
How about you? What things that are most important to you do you tend to put off over and over? What secrets have you learned to stay focused on the important things?
May you journey in joy today,
Nick
In a life that has grown increasingly busy, and noisy, running is one of the times that I can find some solitude to listen and think. I'm more and more in the habit of listening to messages on podcast while I run, rather than any genre of music. I find this ironic when I run past people who are blaring their ipod so loudly I can make out AC/DC from blocks away.
Anyway, yesterday on my run I was listening to a message by Andy Stanley, who leads a large church in the Atlanta area. He has a fresh, innovative way of thinking and if you've never heard of him, go find his stuff on itunes. He's worth the time. The message I listened to was all about time. I'll summarize here what he said (or more accurately, what I got out of it!)
The question we ask all the time is, "what time is it?" while the question we should be asking is, "what am I doing with the time?" The way we spend our time is crucial, and here's why. When it comes to the things that matter most in life(exercise, relationships, spiritual matters), doing them in small segments of time over months and years has a cumulative effect on our lives. So, when we eat smart and exercise over several months, we'll notice it down the road. The urgent things in life, while not as important, tend NOT to have a cumulative affect. Meaning, when we look back a year from now at how we spent time, we often can't remember the urgent things that took so much time.
The danger in all of this is that missing any one occurrence of the most important things (such a workout, a dinner with our spouse, or a time of reading the Bible) seems insignificant, and so we often push it aside for things that seem more urgent in that moment. The long range effect is that we continually put off what is most important in order to do what seems more urgent, even when we acknowledge that the urgent is less important.
In Ephesians 5, Paul writes, "Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."
This "making the most of every opportunity" literally read, "redeeming the time". In other words, get the highest possible value out of the time you have been given. This is wise living.
How do we do this? By continually prioritizing the most important things in life- relationships, our health, our walk with Christ- even though each single act may not seem that significant alone. These small but regular investments of time will have a cumulative effect in our lives. This has been so important for me to remember as I return from a long trip. The "urgent" is all around me, screaming at me to ignore what matters more. And so, I'm trying to be smart enough to balance the "right now" with that which is simply "right."
How about you? What things that are most important to you do you tend to put off over and over? What secrets have you learned to stay focused on the important things?
May you journey in joy today,
Nick
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Absolutely Absolute
A few days back, I raised the question about moral absolutes. Are there ethics or moral that broadly apply to every person in every culture in such a way that we would say they are an absolute rule of practice. In discussing absolutes, most philosophers bring up broad terms such as lying and murder always being wrong, and protecting life and defending the innocent as always right.
The problem that "absolutists" run into is when two absolutes collide. (I've learned in ethics that you can make up words to suite your fancy, so therefore if you believe in absolutes, I now call you and "absolutist") What if a mad-man is waving a gun, promising to kill your friend and demanding to know their where-abouts. In this case, two absolutes (not lying and protecting life) would be at odds and therefore you would have to choose to break one of the absolutes. In so doing, you would no longer call that an absolute because there is a situation in which that "law" no longer applies.
There are many ways to deal with this. Some call for an ethic of the "lesser evil". Others call for one of always doing the "greatest good." A method presented in class that I have found appealing is the idea that we don't trust in absolutes; rather, we trust in the Absolute One. We believe in God as the only absolute and we enter into relationship with Him. His commands carry obvious weight, but the absoluteness (I think that's another new word) is not in His commands, but in God Himself. So the reason we obey a command, such as not lying, is because an absolute God has shown us this is the best way to live. But, in a situation where lying, and say loving our neighbor, are in conflict, we are able to choose rightly by looking to God and his love for us rather than trying to decide between two moral laws.
Have I lost you? If not, good. Thanks for reading this far. I hope that my class experience here is serving to at least make you think more deeply about why we do what we do.
ETHICAL QUESTION OF THE DAY:
When we face an ethical dilemma, (a choice where either way we are violating a moral law) how do we decide what is right? In other words, how might we discern God's leading in issues not specifically addressed by Scripture?
The problem that "absolutists" run into is when two absolutes collide. (I've learned in ethics that you can make up words to suite your fancy, so therefore if you believe in absolutes, I now call you and "absolutist") What if a mad-man is waving a gun, promising to kill your friend and demanding to know their where-abouts. In this case, two absolutes (not lying and protecting life) would be at odds and therefore you would have to choose to break one of the absolutes. In so doing, you would no longer call that an absolute because there is a situation in which that "law" no longer applies.
There are many ways to deal with this. Some call for an ethic of the "lesser evil". Others call for one of always doing the "greatest good." A method presented in class that I have found appealing is the idea that we don't trust in absolutes; rather, we trust in the Absolute One. We believe in God as the only absolute and we enter into relationship with Him. His commands carry obvious weight, but the absoluteness (I think that's another new word) is not in His commands, but in God Himself. So the reason we obey a command, such as not lying, is because an absolute God has shown us this is the best way to live. But, in a situation where lying, and say loving our neighbor, are in conflict, we are able to choose rightly by looking to God and his love for us rather than trying to decide between two moral laws.
Have I lost you? If not, good. Thanks for reading this far. I hope that my class experience here is serving to at least make you think more deeply about why we do what we do.
ETHICAL QUESTION OF THE DAY:
When we face an ethical dilemma, (a choice where either way we are violating a moral law) how do we decide what is right? In other words, how might we discern God's leading in issues not specifically addressed by Scripture?
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