The Greater Risk?

A few years ago our son Joshua had just started college on a Theatre Arts scholarship.

His mother was concerned about him.

She was concerned like any mother or father would be; she wanted him to find the best direction for his life and to follow the path that would make the best use of his gifts and allow him to make the best contribution possible to this old world.

I was sharing her concerns with a friend of ours who was and is a successful professional and whose own children were on a track that would likely take them into successful careers in the business world.

When I said that my good wife was a little concerned about Joshua finding the right way for him, our friend responded, "If one of my children was pursuing the path he is, I'd be worried, too."

I've been thinking about what she said for almost ten years now.

I think I understand what she meant; she meant that (a) the artistic life is a difficult one in which to make a living, (b) the artistic world is filled with, shall we say, "offbeat" people, and (c) the artistic life can be filled with temptations that can threaten the very soul of a young person.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've come to wonder what kind of career path, when you evaluate the situation from the perspective of Jesus' life and teachings, puts a young woman or man at the most risk.

Granted, Jesus did have some harsh things to say about actors--that's the root meaning of "hyprocrite" and Jesus didn't cotton to folks acting like they were different--and especially better--than they in fact were.

But Jesus sure had a lot to say about people who put pursuit of the dollar--or the denarius, if you need to be a literalist--at the heart of their life and who make it the point of their life's work.

He did not say, after all, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an actor or actress to get into the kingdom of heaven." It was not, after all, an actor who said, "I have more awards than I know what to do with; I know what I will do--I will tear down my awards room and build a bigger one and say to myself, 'Eat, drink, and be merry.'"

Now, please don't hear me wrong. There are many people who are successful in business who also keep their priorities in the right order; there are many people in the business world who make lots of money and who still maintain their Christian love, their generosity, and their integrity.

Indeed, I have often told the Lord that I believe it is possible to be simultaneousy rich and righteous and that I'd appreciate the chance to prove it. Clearly, the Lord does not share my confidence in me.

Still, from the perspective of Jesus as it is revealed to us in the Gospels, there may be no greater risk to the souls of our children, or to our own souls, than putting the accumulation of wealth first in our lives--which let me again hasten to say is not the goal of everyone who becomes a stockbroker or banker or construction contractor or merchant or you name it. The great risk lies in the temptation, in the lure of money and of the supposed power that comes with it.

So, if your son or daughter wants to be an actor or painter or dancer or singer, don't sweat it too much. Their soul could be at greater risk if they go into one of the more "conventional" professions.

By the way, it all worked out ok for us. Joshua decided not to be an actor after all.

He's a poet...

Scripture's Truth

Christians affirm the truth--another good word is "trustworthiness"--of Scripture.

Evangelical Christians, of which I consider myself one, take it very seriously.

But do we think about the truth of Scripture in the right way, by which I mean in the way that God intends and in the way that Scripture itself leads us to think about it?

Most of us, in practice if not in carefully thought out theory, assign different levels of authority to different parts of Scripture. We just seem to know, whether or not we've ever studied hermeneutics and theology, that some random law in Leviticus doesn't have the same binding authority on us on this side of Jesus Christ as a saying of Jesus does--although we can be selective in which Old Testament "laws" we want to enforce and don't want to enforce.

Most of us would also affirm, although we might want to have much discussion over what it means, that since Jesus Christ was God with us and thus the epitome of God's revelation of God's self to us, that Jesus is the heart and center of Scripture.

If Jesus Christ is the epitome of God's self-revelation to humanity and if he is that to which all of Scripture points and testifies, then it stands to reason, it seems to me, that we should read and interpret Scripture through the lens of Jesus.

That position has clear if complicated ramifications for how we read the Hebrew Bible.

Today's question, though, has to do with the New Testament.

Given that the four Gospels offer a witness to Christ that is simultaneously consistent and diverse, and given that the letters of Paul and of the other New Testament writers offer testimony that, while clearly motivated by a desire to preach Christ and to apply the good news of Jesus to different situations, nonetheless reveals the realities of the struggle to do so--a struggle in which we continue to engage--might Scripture's second greatest truth, after its greatest truth of bearing witness to Jesus, be in how it bears witness to the honest, evolving, difficult, and messy process of trying to be Christ's presence in the real world?

Alongside the popular motto of "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it" maybe we should place this one: "The truth of Scripture is found in the model it offers of how to wrestle in an ongoing way with the meaning of Jesus Christ and with the meaning of being his followers."

Granted, it won't fit on a bumper sticker.

Thankfully, we have the Holy Spirit to help us...

Non-Viral Preaching

Have you ever noticed that videos of good, sound, biblical, compassionate, empathetic, gracious, loving, humble preaching never go viral? I wonder why that is...

Ten Things You Should Know (But May Not) About Your Pastor

1. She/he doubts.

2. She/he believes.

3. She/he wonders.

4. She/he searches.

5. She/he cares.

6. She/he bleeds.

7. She/he cries.

8. She/he breaks.

9. She/he limps.

10. She/he knows.

Sub-Christian Church?

Jesus said that we fulfill the greatest commandment when we love God with all we are and we fulfill the second greatest one when we love our neighbor as ourself.

Does a church that does not focus the vast majority of its energy, resources, time, efforts, and "programming" on fostering those two realities in our lives deserve to be described as "Christian"?

And if we are not about those two main things, what are we about?

If My People

It is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible: "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Is it also one of the most misused?

The context in 2 Chronicles is that Solomon has just finished the dedication of the recently completed temple of the Lord.

Taking the verse literally and taking the context seriously (and I recognize the complexity of "context," given that Chronicles is a post-exilic work and so the priestly writers no doubt had the Second Temple in mind as they told this story while the story being told is set in the 10th Century BCE and has to do with the dedication of the First Temple), we must acknowledge the following:

1. The promises in this verse and in the surrounding verses assume a nation in which the lines between the "people" and the "nation state" are fine if not non-existent and

2. That nation is pre-Christian era Israel and no other nation.

Is it possible for any other nation state to apply the promises made to pre-Christian era Israel to itself?

It seems to me that many people in my context make a too easy and likely inappropriate leap to apply this verse to the United States so that "my people" refers to American Christians (and anyone who will come on board with them) and "their land" refers to America. People living in other nations may make the same leap.

So, to take the verse literally and to take its context seriously seems to mean that it must be applied only to ancient Israel.

Still, being in our Bibles, we want and need to apply it to our time.

How can we with integrity and appropriateness do so?

Flat Bible

My late great professor and mentor, Dr. Howard P. Giddens, once commented on a particular pastor's preaching this way: "I don't much care for his 'flat Bible' approach." We talked about what he meant by that and I came away thinking about the following possibilities about which I am, thirty-something years later, still thinking.

1. Perhaps every part of the Bible does not have equal authority.

2. Or, perhaps some parts of the Bible carry a different kind of authority than do other parts.

3. If either of those first statements is true, how does one determine what kind of authority to attribute to a particular text?