30-40 years ago there was an incredible value in institutions that were present as anchors for people to go to in crisis. Churches, hospitals etc etc. Large buildings were constructed as icons of refuge that people could identify as places of help.
Old neon signs that said ‘Jesus saves’ flashing on the street, or large crosses o
n the steeple of the church etc etc. these Were edifices of hope in days gone by.Today there is the claim that there is a erosion of the fabric of society that the icons of faith are being rejected. This would seem true if our icons have become more important to us than the essence of the kingdom.
I would suggest that there has been a evolution rather than an erosion. Faith and values are under no more risk or erosion now than they have faced in the last 2 millenia. BUT the icons or anchors are different an
d shifting from what we have known. They have evolved from institutions to people (we talk much about decentralization but don't really see that trickling down to everyday life). As people of faith we must be anchors of refuge and reference points in an ever changing landscape.Your ability to be an anchor in your community is the metric of a holy life.... Am I separate is not the metric or more accurate ... what does it mean to be separate? We have so misconstrued the idea of being separate. Of course the scripture always brought up in these scenarios is 'be holy as I am holy' we instantly understand this term as meaning be separated from the world. What if it were to mean only that we are to fulfill what we are made to do… that we were to complete what we were destined for.
Fulfill the message of Christ through our lives. Not necessarily by our behavior but more so by the fact that we have a purpose and we are living up to what we were made for. How will people know we are different? Because we are doing what we are made to do? Not by what we do and do not do. As soon as Christians look to make a line of demarcation between them and other humans (ie we must be 'different' in our behavior) we actually fail in being holy... We cease in fulfilling our designed meaning in being faithful to our purpose.
The struggle happening today with what is known as the emerging and its erosion of morals is more a case of people in the past majoring on minors and creating moral codes for things that just simply do not matter. In doing this people have been left to re sort through all of the mixed messages to try discover the real issues. Some are simply lost because the real issues were never really made clear. Some are going to stray and be lost but part of this is the result of the mixed moral messages that the modern era has projected.
Man is made to live in community, with purpose and hope. The three primary questions of humanity are who am I? What am I here to do? Who do I belong to?
The secondary questions would be am I free to make choices? Is there joy in what I am doing?
Man is made to live in community, with purpose and hope. The three primary questions of humanity are who am I? What am I here to do? Who do I belong to?
The secondary questions would be am I free to make choices? Is there joy in what I am doing?
Jesus claimed as his purpose…
Luke 4
18 The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Luke 4
18 The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Our purpose is no different...
To bring freedom from oppression in our neighborhood and abroad and help others find their answers to these questions. If the church is oppressing people with its mixed messages it has missed the heart of Jesus, it is being unholy and is not set apart as the scriptures truly suggest. A pseudo holiness is an accurate term ...
My whole message is summed up in this... Holiness (in a NA Xian paradigm) is not the most important message ... The most important message is that the kingdom of God is amoung us and are we living what we are made for? Who am I? What am I here to do? Who do I belong to? Am I living under oppression ? Can I be free? Or Am I free to make my own choices?
My struggle with the church, emerging or not is this ... And this is why I must admit... I do not like what I see... This troubles me ... It preaches freedom and deliverance but in reality it oppresses and blinds people from seeing the real Jesus. That to me is the lie of the ages... The intolerable hypocrisy that I pray in my lifetime I will see eroded into oblivion.
My struggle with the church, emerging or not is this ... And this is why I must admit... I do not like what I see... This troubles me ... It preaches freedom and deliverance but in reality it oppresses and blinds people from seeing the real Jesus. That to me is the lie of the ages... The intolerable hypocrisy that I pray in my lifetime I will see eroded into oblivion.
Now many who may read this may in their minds say 'Mark you go too far... We must have a moral code ... We must stand against this erosion and decay that we see deteriorating the very essence of our society.'
In essence I agree that there is a moral code that living by that will bring healthy and whole life... BUT... Our first goal in helping people do this is not by becoming a filter and declaring to society the evils that it is sleeping with... The value is that we help those that are oppressed get to the right questions. And the end of the day I am not sure if God is concerned about whether or not we were 'holy' but maybe he is more concerned about how we are breaking the bonds of oppression and bringing liberty to peoples lives. In doing that that may mean I might need to sit down with a person and walk with them through their addiction and rationalization of the behavior and help free them from their oppression. But a trite declaration of what is right and wrong does not bring freedom or liberty but can actually bring more chains of oppression than anything.
Your comments are welcome.
14 comments:
My sentimants exactly.
Michelle
Are you being cheeky... or are you in agreeance with the heart of this?
Hi there Mark. Very insightful article. I think that being Holy is very important to God though. "Be holy as I am Holy". But what is holy? Is is sitting in the front pew on Sunday and looking holy there? Or is holiness what you described in the rest of the paragraph... helping that addicted person....as Jesus would have done, getting in there with those who are desperately lost and helping them find The Way? Just coming out of the woodwork to pick your brain...... :)
Anon
I wholeheartedly agree that holiness is important to God. It is very dear to his heart. But our 'holiness' or what we have interpreted that to me I think is really not at all what God intended. I think Zech 14.21 speaks of this well
"Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the LORD Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them.
Vessels are not changed into new or different vessels, a clay pot did not become a gold goblet ... no but the essence in the pots was what was significant in their holiness. They were holy because thay had a purpose for the kingdom and were being used for that purpose.
Holiness I believe is simply doing what we were made to do. Its not being something we are not... its being true to who we are, its less about not doing certain things and more about essence of purpose.
This was what Jesus life was all about... staying on purpose.
Very interesting dialog. In many parts I agree with this posts. There are also many dangers. This leaves much room for justification in peoples actions. What the bible talks about being seperated fromt he world, I DO believe the actions in which we PARTAKE in are very relevant, maybe not so much the actions we are PRESENT in!
Who decides what we should do in our lifetime? I think we must be very careful that our actions that we are currently in, are the NOT the actions that are guiding us! Just because I have the habbit of going to work everyday, does not mean that God intended me to be there... Just becaue I have the habbit of going to the bar everyday does not mean that God intended me to be there. On may say that it doesn't really matter what we are "doing", but what matters is that we are doing what God called us to do... "preach the gospel...". But I do believe that there are BETTER places that we can be, BETTER things that we can partake in..."a man after Gods own heart".
So here's the question. Does it matter what we are doing and our personnal morals and their relation to effective "preaching" or reaching out to the world? Is it worth the rist to reach out to someone and justifying our actions in order to do so. Or is there a better place that we can be, that does not justify these? Bottom line... there is ONE GOD, ONE JESUS, and he would have made a descision... thats the descision we need to follow.
Anon #2
Some good points there... but may I ask a question...
Who determines what is classed as better? I mean there is always something better... the church I currently attend is a great church ... but I am sure there is something better... so do I leave that and go somewhere else.
My efforts to find something better may mean that I never actually accomplish anything because I am not finding God in the spaces that I am in [that thinking by the way is somewhat of an oxymoron].
Our current actions are a part of the tapestry that God has designed for us... so I think we need to learn to express the kingdom in each of those circumstances.
ALso ... can you please explain to me what it means to 'preach the gospel'... I try to avoid that term because it has become so misconstrued.
No, I really do agree with you....no'cheekness' here...(well this time anyway)
Hey Mark. I'm at school and I'm bored, so I'm stalking peoples blogs, and yours is one of them.
Perhaps I'm way off, but as I read your post, it screamed to me the way the church (for the most part) treats the Homosexual community. Perhaps I'm broaching a sensitive subject, but I really don't like the way the Church opposes gay marriage. We tell them. "No! You can't get married" (even though, in light of numerous past and recent events, we do a piss poor job at upholding the sanctity of marriage ourselves), and it's all because we are trying enact what we think is holy. Does holiness mean it's ok to tell people how to live their lives and what they can or cannot do when we don't even know them, or if they even care what the Bible says? Does holiness mean it's ok to treat a minority group as lesser citizens even though they are just as tax paying and law abiding as the rest of us? Do we think God is proud of how His church comes across as so sanctomonious and holier than thou that people don't want anything to do with us? I don't. We don't love the gay community, and it's because we're trying to be holy. I think (in this matter) we're trying so hard to win the battle of "being holy" that we're losing the war of "loving our neighbour" b/c for the most part, they do not feel love from us. Don't get me wrong, our own personal beliefs of morality and holiness is our own perogative to live out, but when we go a step further and tell people, "You are immoral and unholy" because they're gay, and cause them to feel pain, rejection, unacceptance and anger towards the Church, we stop being holy. Perhaps it would be better if we, like you suggested, came along side them in love and friendship, accepted them for who they are in spite of their sexual orientation, and prayed that eventually our influence (thrugh the Holy Spirit) will cause them to ask the right qustions on their own. Ok, now that I'm done my really long tangent, what I'm trying to say is that I liked your post.
Mark,
I'm not going to jump into the debate with Anon, but instead want to take up your cause against the church building (read any Michael Frost lately?). I'm not a huge fan of the buildings either, and have been a vocal critic for a long time in fact. But there's a cultural phenomenon that's got me rethinking the issue. You write that church buildings are, "edifices of hope in days gone by," yet I can't say with any certainty that those days have actually "gone by." It seems to me that at times of crisis (9-11 for instance), the church buildings are exactly the kinds of places to where people go for hope. They are like lighthouses, quiet and useless most of the time, but boy are people happy to have them when the storms hit (hurricane Katrina, for example). My point is, the buildings may not be intrinsically evil, they just may need some retooling and re-purposing. They are still important to the wider culture, we just don't see it until something goes horribly wrong. Perhaps in the near future more and greater things will go more horribly wrong, and biblical or not, the church buildings will be a symbol of hope in God again. For many wanderers, God is the hope that God exists. The church buildings they drive by every day on their way to the mall are a tangible piece of that hope.
CJ
Thx for stopping by... In response to your statements.. you are right ... the buildings will remain places of hope ... as they have been for lilterally thousands of years...however the more important focus of my article was the importance of us as a people being those icons of hope in our communities.
Anon - I like what you are saying but I am relunctant to respond on the item that you have articulated.
I'm with you for the most part Mark. But I fear that some who share your sentiments use grace as an excuse for their sin. The fact is that the word "holiness" has diferent meanings for people, but the context of that passage in 1 Peter uses words like "alien" and "foreigner" to refer to disciples of Christ. I beleive Peter's point is that disciples of Christ live by different rules than the rules of the world. Not rules as in the the commandments exactly. But our lives are to be marked as different. Not just that some of us are living out who we were created to be. I think that is a by-product of obedience.
I think this isn't an "either or" issue, but a "both and". Both a high standard to our actions, and a high calling to live and to extend grace.
Rob
Just because people use grace as an excuse does not mean that we do not let grace be our standard. Paul talked about this ...its a reality that will happen but the truth and importance that grace must 'abound' must be our priority.
If not we are as guilty of being the 'relativists' that some are accused of.
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