a gnostic hangover

i've begun to notice that we have this obsession with declaring certain things in our lives as spiritual and other things as secular or "non-spiritual".

some of us work in the secular world, others in ministry. we have "christian" music on "christian" radio. forget the fact that the christian band plays pop music or rock, it's no longer either one of those genres; it's simply christian.

many of us today stamp things like journals with a fish or a cross or an incredibly spiritual verse from our favorite chapter in 1 John. does a cross or a fish stamped on the front of a journal make it safe?

even in our discussions we speak of our "spiritual" lives; by default grouping our non-religious activities into some other "non-spiritual" category.

as we grow up with this mentality that certain things are spiritual (like David Crowder Band) and other things aren't spiritual (like Led Zeppelin) we begin to put everything in our lives into one of the categories -- "spiritual" or "secular". perhaps we do this in the beginning to protect ourselves from falling back into the ways of the world. but at some point we must realize that this method of perceiving the world in categories might be a specious process.

my question is -- where did this mindset come from?

my parents have it, their parents had it, and from talking with my grandparents they would say that their parents had it. but where did it start? is it a biblical idea or is it hindering our walk?

Genesis 1:31 says, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." if all things were created good, we are free to use art, entertainment, music, work, et cetera, even if they aren't stamped with a fish or the "christian" label. the fall didn't take God out of his creation. all things were created good.

Scripture seems to suggest in Isaiah that we should be able to see Jesus in everything and therefore we should be able to worship Him in what we see and how we feel led to worship. worship is how you live, not how your church leads you to sing on sunday.

so we should be able to see the Truth and Light of Christ in all things. we should be able to see Him in the songs of an atheistic musician, in a muslim author's writings, in a lesbian poet's prose, or in the spoken words of an agnostic political activist.

for some that thought process is teetering on the line of blasphemy. it sounds absurd that we could get something of spiritual significance out of a book written by gandhi or some non-believing pagan, but scripture would tell us that we can.

"All thins are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future -- all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God" 1 Corinthians 3:21-23.

there is truth in all things. there is truth in math, history, philosophy, poetry, even though it isn't stamped with a christian label. stamping only choice things as christian is part of our gnostic hangover.

in the first century church a dangerous teaching began to surface within the body -- gnosticism. gnostics believed the universe was divided into the spiritual and the material. (please note that this is a simplified description of gnosticism.) they believed that the world was evil and that God would not have inhabited a material body because of it's fundamentally evil nature. they also believed that if the world was evil that God and all that was spiritual was the presence of good.

even though this teaching was fought by the early church, effects still lingered. people began to teach that in order to live a worthy life one must withdrawal themselves from the worldly activities and only participate in the ones deemed "spiritual".

Paul fought this head on. in the book of colossians paul tells us that whatever we do, do it in the name of Christ. in his letter to the church at corinth, paul tells them that whatever they eat or drink or whatever they do, do it for God's Glory.

the significance of these two statements is that paul is trying to tell us that all activities are spiritual activities. "whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." -- 1 Corinthians 10:31. he is telling the gnostics that all things can be done to bring Christ glory. he is trying to get people to see that there is no such thing as "a spiritual side of life". he is showing us that through God we have Truth in all things.

our gnostic hangover is that we haven't been able to move into the reality that we shouldn't separate things into spiritual or secular, christian or non-christian.

the deeper you dive into scripture, the more you might see that there is no distinction between the spiritual and the secular. the men and women who walked the dusty roads in the first century would have not understood the question, "how's your spiritual life?" they wouldn't have understood why there is a distinctively spiritual side of life when they considered all things spiritual.

how do we come to the understanding that our lives are totally spiritual?

when we understand this truth, how is it going to effect us?

as you realize that everything you do is spiritual you begin to live differently. think to yourself how you would do things differently if you lived as though EVERY ACT WAS A SPIRITUAL ACT TO BRING GLORY TO GOD?

would you show more love, mercy, and grace towards your family?

would you show more love, mercy, and grace towards the oppressed?

would you take care of the earth by recycling and using less energy?

would you speak less and listen more?

would you eat differently?

would your conversations be different?

would you spend your money differently?

what would change?

may we see that God is everywhere.

may we realize that Truth lies around the next corner in the most unlikely places.

may our eyes be opened to the beautiful reality of our world being a spiritual world.

may we change our lives where Christ is asking us to change, not out of obligation, but rather out of pure, unwavering LOVE.

may we change because we understand that our lives are spiritual and we desire to live in such a way that changes the world for God's Glory. read the rest of this blog:.

staggering reality

as i sit and allow the new coldplay album to flow through my ears, i begin to think about all of the places that i've seen God move, all of the places i've seen people experience God's healing by His Grace.

you'll find, if you haven't noticed already, that my heart gravitates toward the outcast. my heart and soul are pulled by a divine force to the people who spend their nights in bars and their days in offices pretending like all is well. i am pushed to people who would never step foot in a church, for whatever reason that may be. i grieve for those pushed into the margins by christians, so that it is easier for us to come home to our plush couches and huge tv screens to watch our favorite sitcom. i mention "christians" only in the previous sentence because i can't be upset with the lost for not helping the oppressed. christians are accountable for the widow and the orphans, as scripture would put it.

we can't blame the lost for acting like they are lost. it's funny how we get offended by the lost for the language they use, the gestures they make, the anger in their hearts. it's as if christians expect the lost to miraculously "get it" and act accordingly.

we (christians) are called to take care of the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. the oppressed doesn't have to mean "the homeless". the oppressed can be a 50 year old business man who makes 250K/year but struggles with depression and needs to be freed from that bondage. but oppression can also apply to the woman who has been addicted to cocaine for the past 10 years and somewhere along the way fell into prostitution to support her addiction.

the oppressed are the men and women who are held down by something whether it be poverty, addictions, depression, slavery, etc.

do we take care of these people who are not in a position to take care of themselves, whether it be by choice or circumstance?

many of us think that we can't make a difference on a large scale, but we can. let's just take a minute or two to grasp the reality of the oppressed and how we factor in...


a few statistics for you:

the amount of money americans spend on "black sunday" (the day after thanksgiving when all the sales are going on) could totally wipe out the world wide clean water epidemic. (ONE DAY!)

last year americans spent $455 billion during the holidays

americans spend approximately $12.4 billion on cosmetic procedures every year

wood consumption a day: world average -- 4lbs U.S. -- 14lbs.

80% of the world lives in substandard housing

New home size in sq. ft. :
Ireland -- 930
U.K. -- 815
Japan -- 1000
U.S. -- 2349

2 billion people in the world have no electricity

1 billion people in the world cannot sign their name

1% of people in the world own a computer

1% of poeple in the world have a college education

an estimated 22 million people died from preventable disease in 2001 -- 10 million were children

4 out of 5 american adults are high school graduates -- 1 out of 4 children worldwide have to go to work everyday instead of school

9.6 million people, including 3 million children go without meals - daily

33 million americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food

over 41 billion pounds of food have been wasted this year

on average, american households waste 14% of their food purchases. 15% of that includes products still within their expiration date but never opened

the wealthiest 1 billion people in the world have an average income of approximately $70 a day -- 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day. 1 - 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day

the 3 wealthiest people in the world are American (this stat changes almost daily). their combined wealth exceeds the GNP of the world's least developed countries (over 600 million people)

12% of the world population uses 85% of its water

40% of the world lacks basic sanitation facilitation

1 billion people are without safe drinking water. americans consume 26 billion liters of BOTTLED water annually

Every 16 seconds somewhere in the world someone dies of hunger.

2 out of 3 americans are considered overwieight.

U.S.A GDP is 21.4% of the world capital.

americans spend more annually on trash bags than nearly half the world does on ALL goods

8% of people in the world own a car. 1/3 of american families own 3 cars

leading oil consumers in millions of barrels a day: U.S.A. 20, China 5.6, Japan 5.5

20 million barrels, if lined up in 1 gallon cans, would encircle the earth at the equator almost 6 times -- 147,000 miles of cans

the US accounts for 25% of global oil consumption. US has 3% of its reserves. in 2001 US imported 54% of its oil

2/3 of the worlds oil suppliers are in the Persian Gulf

in 2002, 20% of all oil imported in the US came from the Persian Gulf

US hold 42.8% of weapons worldwide. in 2002, the US spent more on defense than the next 18 biggest spendors combined

when asked about the these facts the government responded with this quote: "The American lifestyle is not up for negotiation."

my question for the body of believers everywhere is -- is it up to our local church, food bank, shelter, or soup kitchen to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless?

or is it up to the body of Christ?

why are we waiting on a church "program" to get us involved?

i don't ask these questions or share these statistics with you to guilt you into feeling like you should do something. i give them because they shocked me and my heart grieves for my sins of not reaching out more and for the sins of my brothers and sisters in Christ who sit idly by doing nothing; waiting on a fun trendy missions weekend to help.

today my heart is saddened but joyful. i'm saddened by the blatant reality of the situation many people face. it was far greater than i imagined. i'm joyful because i know that Christ is revealing these things to me, to us, so that we might change the world.

we live in a consumer driven society and we must break ourselves from this cycle of spending almost all we are blessed with on us or things that benefit us.

we need to free our mind of our own selfish ambitions.

we must become selfless.

forget all that we've been taught to hold dear and give more than you ever have before.

if you've ever looked into the eyes of a homeless man, you'll never forget the desperation you see.

we need to be aware of the desperation of the world around us and realize that we must do more.

may God show you where to give more.

may God ask you to do things you never thought you would.

may God take your priorities and throw them into the wind so we realize that we are not in control of what we have.

may we see what it is like to give beyond the boundaries we set.

may we be the body of Christ in plain sight to the hopeless. read the rest of this blog:.

risk management

sometimes i wonder if we are constantly trying to live our life like Job.

i'm not talking about the time in life when Job had everything he knew taken from him and those he loved turned against him, but rather the "pre-trial" period in which all was going well.

let's take a step back into Job's life before he loses everything. he had all the creature comforts a man could need in his day. we can assume Job was comfortable. we can assume he wasn't in need of much, if anything. scripture tells us that during the great conversation between God and Satan (which is brilliant in itself), God asks Satan to consider testing Job. Satan's reply was to point out to God that Job had a "hedge around him and his household and everything he has."

i wonder -- do we want "a hedge" around us so that we can live a life of comfort and stability?

we live in a world where "risk management" reigns in our lives. we have insurance for our cars to protect us from accidents. we have insurance for our home to protect us in case of a fire, flood, tornadoes, and more. we have retirement plans we stock pile money into for our future. we live in homes in which the air is heated or cooled to meet our desired temperature. we drive cars with satellite navigation, satellite radio, heated seats, and airbags for every side of our body.

i do see the use for a few of these things, but i'm scared we've become comfortable with the hedge we are growing around us and we crave it more than we do the Gospel. it is a hedge stacking high and wide with the material comforts of our day.

have we become a people that minimize and manage risk in order to become more comfortable?

if we are creatures of comfort how does that correspond to the Gospel? would Jesus or the apostles live in the houses and neighborhoods we live, or drive the cars we drive?

does the Life of Christ translate as a life of risk management or a life of risk and faith?

perhaps we know within our souls that if we surrender fully to Jesus, He will ask us to go to places we never thought of going, and give up things we've grown accustomed to having. we love the idea of faith as long as we are safe or experience the perception of risk. too many have settled for their own tamed, water downed version of the Gospel, in which they follow the commands that make the most sense for their lives.

somehow along the way we have separated Risk and Faith and they were never meant to be apart.

living by way of risk management causes us to miss the heartbeat of the revolutionary nature of the call of Jesus.

this call of Jesus should invoke fear and faith. this calling always pushes us towards things that are much bigger than ourselves. Take a quick glimpse into some of the stories in scripture and examine the correlations between God moving and Risk.

God parts a large body of water for millions of men, women, and children to cross in order to flee an army that will surely annihilate them if caught.

a man is called to go to battle with a ridiculously small number of men who were from the weakest tribe, knowing they are outnumbered 100 to 1.

a young religious leader is called by God to stop what he is doing and serve Jesus, traveling village to village, city to city, telling people about the Messiah -- with the full knowledge that the men he used to kill Christians with would spare him no mercy.

a prophet is told to go to the capital city of Israel's arch enemy to tell them to repent or judgment will come. by the way, he was alone on this journey going to a hostile city of 120,000.

none of these challenges that faced these men and women were manageable by any means. these men didn't just appear courageous while minimizing their risk; they were courageous before they jumped into the risk. there was absolutely no way that a man could succeed in the situation, all resources were exhausted and the only thing left was faith. there were no odds in their favor, no back up plan to save the day, only God to step in and turn the tide.

none of the men in the stories mentioned above could take credit for the success. it was beyond what they were capable of doing.

we all have a part to play in this life of risk following Jesus. all of us are called to live as Christ lives. all of us are called to move toward the situations that are bigger than ourselves.

the invitation of Jesus is to abandon our whole self to Him; forgetting what we used to desire and letting go of everything with no hope of being able to control or manage Him.

i don't think God is looking for the people who act a certain way or do certain things because that is what good christians do.

i think God is looking for people who abandon themselves and run toward the cliff giving no thoughts to not jumping and plunge into the beautiful unknown.

may God ask us to give up more than we've ever imagined.

may we realize a life with Jesus is a life lived completely different than the american dream.

may we look ahead and see nothing but our next step.

may we leave our comfortable life behind and look toward new adventures of risk.
read the rest of this blog:.

don't point to Jesus

there was a man, who we'll call sam, driving to work last week and as he curved around a sharp bend he notice a car had run into a telephone pole. this curve was notorious for car accidents and sam had seen many cars who had skid off, waiting to be towed, but never one that had been crumpled by a telephone pole. as sam slowed down to inspect the damages, he saw sitting beside the smashed car was a young man in his late twenties; his hair was wet with blood, his clothes torn, his arm dangling loosely to his side. recognizing the dire need of the young man, sam swerved his car over to the shoulder of the road sliding to a stop.

sam approached the young man with eager caution, not wanting to scare him away, but rather comfort him because sam knew he could help. as sam and the young man, who's name he soon found out was zach, began to talk, sam realized that zach was well aware what had happened. he was coherent, and seemed to be in fine mental shape. so, sam did what any person in his situation would -- he gave zach the best directions to the hospital, told him where to find the only doctor who could mend his wounds properly, and sam headed back to his car to leave. he opened the door, sat down, started his car and drove away slowly. sam would want you to know that as he was driving off he turned around periodically to see if zach was still okay. he by no means left him stranded.

maybe you're asking yourself, "why in the world didn't sam help zach into his car and take him to the doctor?"

i'm fairly certain that we would all agree that sam did the right thing by stopping, but he missed the boat when it came to actually helping the man.

i wonder, when it comes to the lost, if we are often times like sam?

in life we come across (not go to -- that takes up too much of "our time") people who are dirty, bruised, broken and cut up by the world. some choose to be that way and others are a product of a fallen world. most of the time we see them and we stop to help. doing what we can. we might tell them about God, how he can heal them, how Christ came to save them, where to look and what to say to find Him, but then we leave...

instead of picking them up off the street and showing them a physical/visible manifestation of God's Grace through our actions, we simply tell them the best way to begin heading in His direction.

do you ever see Jesus, in the Gospels, witness to people the way we do? giving them the best formula for salvation?

there is a story about a broken, short, dishonest man who Christ happens to see in a tree as he is coming into town. when Christ looks up at him, do you recall what He says? He essentially says, "come down, i'm going to your house for dinner". Jesus doesn't look up and say, "if you were to die today would you go to heaven or hell?" why do we make the Gospel unrelational?

perhaps Christ knew that investing Himself in the lost He came into contact with was more important than a regurgitation of a formula for salvation.

perhaps Christ knew that people don't crave formulas, they crave healing, peace, grace. they long for something bigger than this world, bigger than themselves.

now we can tell these people where to find this healing, where to find this peace, but is that what our calling truly is? ABSOLUTELY NOT! so why would we rather tell people about Jesus instead of showing them Jesus?

why do we expect a lost person to gladly accept our invitation to church, when we know how intimidating it is for believers to walk into for the first time?

instead of inviting people to us, where we feel comfortable-- why don't we go to them? not with the goal of getting our idea of eternal life explained in one, five minute conversation, but rather with the intention of picking them up, dusting them off, and walking with them.

as we walk with them, we can share the beauties that are held in the Grace of Christ. we can share how he changed us. we can show them what Jesus intended for all of us, by lovingly serving them.

what if we got off our butts and walked with the lost towards our Savior instead of simply pointing them in the right direction.

we are called to be men and women who lead people to Jesus, not point the way.

today

may we seek out the broken

the bloody

the bruised.

may we pick them up

dust them off

and walk with them, all along the way telling them about our Father and showering them with His Love. read the rest of this blog:.

beautifully scarred

as i sit and write these words, i realize what truly matters in this life. my wife, l'ray and son , kye, will be arriving on monday (21st) and i can't wait for them to get here. but because i've essentially been a bachelor for the past week and a half, i've been blessed to go hang out at coffee houses and elsewhere, not for the coffee, but rather the conversation.

God has revived my passion for the seeker.

while i was finishing up my degree, i spent significant amounts of time with people who would never step foot inside a church. some were scarred from the pharisaical hyper-religious, some were atheist who vowed to never believe, some were alcoholics, some were gay, some were men and women who thought love was found in someone elses bed, but all were pushed aside, left to be purposefully forgotten by the christian masses; all were marginalized for their scars.

scars are easily seen. as sin takes hold of our life and we make the choices we do, scars naturally are formed from lifestyle choices and the environment we dwell in. often times, after we become christians, we realize that our scars were healed by Christ. then we make mistakes, but we quickly learn how to best hide our scars so that no one else can see them.

the lost can't hide the scars that have yet to be healed by Christ. i wonder why we are harder on or quicker to judge women of promiscuity than we are on those who gossip?

why do certain sins rank higher than others?

why do we not extend the Grace Christ extended to us?
where has our compassion gone?

aren't we just as broken as everyone else, saved or lost?

do you know the best part about my scars? i can tell you how i got them and how they don't bother me like they once did. how i've been healed and given hope. a hope in restoration. a hope in a new life. a hope for today.

show your scars.

share your stories.

reach out to the forgotten,

the marginalized,

the scarred.

read the rest of this blog:.