Cosmic Con

Barak Obama is sitting down with a bi-partisan group of lawmakers today to discuss health care reform. It is probably just coincidence that his first attempt to bring the two parties together happened after his gang lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. After all, candidate Obama insisted he was willing to listen to good ideas from all sides of the issues. I'm sure his previous attitude of "my way or the highway" was only due to the lack of good ideas from his loyal opposition.

Things have certainly changed in Washington since Obama's poll numbers started to slide. The loss of Ted Kennedy's senate seat to the Republicans really accelerated the mood swing. The change has been on the wind for several weeks, as I noted in this space back in January. Now it is beginning to look like a floodgate has been opened. Democrats everywhere are starting to duck and run from association with their dear leader, Evan Bayh being a recent startling addition to the deserters.

Barak Obama and the Democrats (for the most part) still believe they deserve absolute power in Washington. He and his partisans remind us constantly of the mandate they received in 2008. This claim rings a bit phony; as I remember, only forty-something percent of the electorate voted for "change." Still, all we hear from the sultans of change is how out of step the opposition is with the sentiment in the country. Even the eruptions of the town hall meetings last summer didn't convince them. The protesters were a small minority, they claimed, stirred up by partisan Republican forces.

The faulty assumption here is that they think they can get what they deserve. We humans are conditioned to think that way in modern society. Get a college degree; get a good job; get a lot of money. Get elected; get a mandate; get an agenda rolling. I am not sure the serfs in feudal Europe would have seen this correlation, nor would the common laborers in the pre-union days of the industrial revolution. The nobles and owners probably did though, droit de Signor and all that.

The real issue underlying the health care debate is, in fact, determining what Americans deserve with regard to their medical care. Completely absent from the current discussion is a voice proclaiming that access to everything medical science has to offer is not a human right. I made that point in an letter to Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow last year, but she did not respond. Much to my dismay, none of the conservative legislators I have heard speaking on the subject bring this up either. They seem to be granting the assumption that health care is a right.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; the concept of entitlement is not something new in human history. That mindset is precisely what the Serpent said to Eve in the Garden: "God is not being fair. You deserve to know what He is keeping from you; you're entitled to eat from the forbidden tree." The downside of our remarkable prosperity in the West is that we come to think we are entitled to limitless prosperity as individuals. The cosmic con artist is still at work duping the human race. I really shouldn't blame President Obama for simply trying to give us what we think we deserve.

The Country Club Church

It concerns me that many of America's churches look a bit like country clubs, outside and in, the architecture as well as the people and the programing. Members flit about like chickadees looking for a tasty morsel or a warm place to sleep. At the slightest offense or challenge, people move on in search of a more welcoming atmosphere. I wonder if many of us have lost sight of what the church is supposed to be.

We spend millions of dollars erecting buildings to house hundreds or thousands of people for one or two hours per week. I realize that many churches have weekday activities that take place in the building, but only a small percentage of the square footage is used daily. If I grant that such large gatherings are even necessary, I stumble over the cost to build and maintain these usually extravagant structures. I think we may have fallen into the same trap that caught the medieval cathedral builders. Magnificent temples are no longer necessary to house our God; He does not dwell in houses made with hands, after all.

Similarly we expend tremendous effort to construct programs that will attract and entertain the masses needed to fill our modern cathedrals. We go to great lengths to provide musical and visual experiences that rival the theater and concert hall. Sadly, however, programs are often little more than entertainment. I am no Luddite when it comes to music; I enjoy the contemporary sound of the "worship band," as it has come to be called. Much of the popular music masquerading as worship, however, is anything but real worship. Too often it is pablum compared to the meat and potatoes of the traditional hymns it has all but replaced.

I fear that the experience-based Christianity that began to infect the church in the middle of the nineteenth century has become entrenched in the thinking of evangelicals today. As marvelous and reviving as the spiritual awakenings were, they left behind a legacy of expectation that is not entirely Biblical. Christians today seem primarily concerned with having an experience; they want a religion that makes them feel something. I believe it is more important, more Biblical to seek to know something (a revelation) and want to do something.

The present focus on the individual's personal relationship with Jesus biases believers toward an inward facing experiential mindset. Instead, the Biblical perspective is that the church IS Jesus; we are his body in the world. Therefore, we should be doing Jesus when we are doing church. What did Jesus do? He reached out to the hungry, the hurting, the downcast, the outcast. Most of His forays into the Temple, the cathedral if you will, resulted in heated arguments with the Temple partisans. He never turned a sick person away, yet He sent the Pharisees scurrying off with tails between legs.

If our churches seem more like a country club than a rescue mission, are we really fulfilling Christ's call? During a particularly difficult time for the church in Hitler's Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of a cheap grace that lulled people into thinking that they could have Christianity without cost. I am afraid we have gone one step further from the truth by suggesting that it is not costly at all, but rather pays wonderful social and material dividends. How blind we have become.

If you had to walk three hours to church, only to sit on a wooden plank for three more hours, then walk back home, how often would you attend services? If your religion caused you to lose all your possessions and find your very life in peril, how long would you name the name of Christ as your Savior? No, I don't think we should sell all our buildings and run around in sackcloth. But I do think we had better wake up. Read Jesus' letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. If it doesn't send a chill up your spine, you're not really listening to what the Spirit has to say to the churches.

Hero Worship

Who are your heroes? On Sunday New Orleans crowned a whole new set, once the Super Bowl ended in Miami. Last night goal tender Evgeni Nabokov stopped more than fifty of the Red Wings shots leading his team to a victory on the ice; a lot of St. Louis hockey fans would call him a hero. Maybe you look up to the likes of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. Perhaps Brad Pitt or Danny Glover or one of the other Hollywood stand-outs who waltz across the media stages makes your hero list.

I will tell you who my heroes are. Young men like my son (who might be shocked to read this) who served in the military, left home and country to help prepare for the Gulf War and got no headlines or medals, but made a difference anyway. Or his soccer teammate from high school, Bronze Star recipient U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Harvey Wagenmaker who is making a career out of protecting my freedom. These two like tens of thousands of men and women bring a lump to my throat, and the pride I feel for them dampens my eyes. These are my heroes.

Or I could mention a couple men I have recently met at Baker College, young men who are making valiant efforts to overcome the odds of a societal deck that is stacked against them from birth. Yes, they are black men, and yes, society still places higher hurdles before them than it did me. But these guys are fighting to hang onto a dream that they can do better, be better than their past, achieve something many of their peers have given up hoping for. These are my heroes.

How about these? Katie Davis and Amanda Lehman are two beautiful, intelligent twenty-somethings who took Jesus' call to "the least of these" very seriously. They left behind the dating scene, the mall and the mini van to follow in the footsteps of Amy Carmichael and Mother Teresa. Katie just posted a message from Uganda that makes me feel ashamed of my own puny self. Grab a cup of coffee and a box of Kleenex and read her blog if you dare. These are my heroes.

Ultimately, our heroes are determined by our values. What do you value? Is there something here on earth that holds real worth to you, or do you not look not to the things of this world? Some people think it is not practical to focus on other worldly goals. In The Jesus I Never Knew Philip Yancey says, "The kingdom of heaven... represents value far more real and permanent than anything the world has to offer." These values, he goes on to say, "are every bit as pragmatic as General Norman Swarzkopf." The General, another of my heroes, is as practical as they come. Yancey's point is that heavenly values are the only values that matter in the end. (Hence the title of my blog, in case you were wondering.)

It is not enough, I am beginning to believe, to have the best intentions. There is, after all, that old saying about those becoming paving stones on the road to a place where "global warming" takes on a whole new meaning. The best intentions are destroyed by a bad attitude, and attitude, as Chuck Swindoll says, is what determines your altitude. Why not soar above the crowd from how on? Take your cue from Katie or Harvey or someone you know who embodies the true attitude of the Gospel, the spirit of the Cross. There is, after all, an uber hero whom we are all called to worship, the One who died so we can call Heaven home. I believe people like these would be His heroes.

Sunday Morning Prayer

Lord I thank you that I am not like that guy sitting in the pew over there. He looks like he's just here to impress the ladies, or maybe he's checking them out because he is so lonely and pathetic in his look-at-me cool sweater and slacks.

And I thank you that I'm not like that girl, coming here every week desperately hoping someone will notice her, watching the guy in the sweater to see if he looks her way. She's just like those misfits who populate Match.com. Seriously.

And I thank you that I'm not like those two over there, parents who come to church for no reason other than to make sure their snotty rambunctious curtain climbers get a dose of Christianity. They obviously need a little dose themselves or they wouldn't have such troublesome kids. Maybe they just come for the free baby sitting.

And Lord I so grateful that I'm not like that one, the guy I'm pretty sure I saw coming out of the Canary Inn last night. We know what goes on in there, Lord, and I'm sure you wouldn't approve of most of it. He has a lot of nerve coming here this morning. Like this is going to make up for last night!

And Lord I am so pleased that you have kept me from becoming like the older couple across the aisle who show up every Sunday as if their lives depended on it. They wear their attendance like a badge and make everybody else feel guilty by saying how much they were missed when they happened not to be in services one morning.

And Lord I thank you that I'm not in the place of that woman in the back row who looks like she has lost her last friend, coming here as if this was the Walmart for lonely shoppers, thinking she might just stumble onto some kind of comfort bargain.

Most of all Lord I am glad you kept me from becoming like that guy up front who is on his knees again, bawling about something he's done that he should be ashamed of, expecting us all to pity him or maybe think highly of him because he is sooo spiritual in his weepy way.

And Lord, I know I'm supposed to respect my preacher, and I do pretty much, but I'm relieved that you didn't call me to do his job; it must be tough to stand up in front of a bunch of losers like we see around us and try to keep them awake for twenty minutes every Sunday morning. But really, Lord, could you give him some better material. He's going on this morning about the Sermon on the Mount AGAIN with all that stuff about some Pharisee who didn't know how to pray and that old thing about, "Judge not lest ye be judged," and whatEVER.

Merely Christian

C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite thinkers, compiled Mere Christianity from a series of radio broadcasts in the 1940's. Much of the ground Lewis claimed in his defense of his belief in God was found in the argument from morality which was instrumental in his conversion from atheism to Christianity. Simply stated, the idea is that the universal presence of moral law in all people everywhere and in all times in history begs for a universal lawgiver. If a transcendent being has not implanted moral sensitivity in all humans, how else can you explain it?

According to a recent Fox News poll, fully ninety percent of Americans say they believe in God. Strangely, the same poll reports that about one third of Americans also believe in ghosts, UFOs, reincarnation and astrology. This combination of statistics leads to the unnerving conclusion that the god many Americans believe in is not the God of the Bible, or else they disregard much of what the Bible teaches. The poll also reveals that sixty-nine percent of Americans think religion plays too small a role in people’s lives today, while only fifteen percent saying it plays too large a role and seven percent say “about right.”

I suppose what might be taken from all these statistics is that seven out of ten Americans think their neighbors don't take the Bible seriously enough. Count me among the seven. Christian pollster George Barna has found that indicators of morality such as divorce, infidelity, and unmarried sexual activity are no less prevalent in respondents who claim to believe in God than in those who make no such claim. Circling back to Lewis' focus on the moral nature of God's presence in our universe, one wonders what value or encouragement is to be found in numbers that intimate a widespread belief in God, while simultaneously describing prevalent attitudes and behaviors of which He would strongly disapprove.

Are these multitudes of "believers" simply ignorant? Do they not recognize the fine moral distinctions present in God's revealed Word as normative and proscriptive? Can it be that they just don't know how to behave? Or is it more likely that they know, but lack the proper motivation or incentive to change their behavior? Is the disappearance of the Sunday school, the evening service and the mid-week Bible study a result of Christians' lack of commitment to learn more about God, or is it the cause of the complacency with regard to the moral demands of Scripture?

I long to see the kind of hunger which exists in many mission fields. Where people find learning about God most difficult, it seems they are most passionate. I do not wish ill times on my country, but I wonder if we will not repent and revive until some disaster, natural or political, drives us to our knees, to our Bibles for the Bread of Life. To the church who said they were rich and in need of nothing, Jesus replied that in fact they were "wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked." He begged them to "buy from me gold refined in the fire [His truth]... and white garments [His righteousness, moral purity.]" They were to "be zealous and repent." He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to America.