"Stations in Heaven" ... Probably not, but he makes a good point.

One of the things we Christians unknowingly struggle with, and especially us Baptists, is taking ourselves way too seriously! We think we have all the answers. We are very uncomfortable with doubt. We pursue certainty (not truth) at all costs making little room for love, which by the way, Jesus said was the thing that was to distinguish his people. Nonetheless, I was reminded of my own propensity to take myself and my opinions too seriously as I was reading In Constant Prayer by Robert Benson. His book is a helpful exploration of an ancient Christian practice called, "praying the hours." All that entails is a setting aside of certain hours of the day (Morning, Breakfast, Noon, 3pm, Dinner Time, Bed time, etc.) for brief prayer and meditation upon Scripture. This is something the people of God have done throughout their existence. For example Psalm 119.164: "Seven times a day I praise You, because of Your righteous ordinances" (NASB). This practice was followed by Daniel, Jesus and the Apostles and I believe it is a practice we should embrace as well. Praying at fixed hours of the day has a way of sanctifying the entire day and making us sensitive to the presence of God in all of life. When one commits to this practice we often take ourselves way too seriously when we fail. So when we neglect our commitment and realize our failure, this is Benson's advice. "Look at yourself in the mirror, and grin at yourself the way you would at a child who had a bad day yesterday. Grin at yourself until you grin back. Giggle if necessary. Not because the prayer is unimportant but because not having said them one day is not the end of the world. It is certainly not the end of God's work in the world or in your own life. It is not even the end of your own private piety" (pp. 103-04). This leads Benson to a bit of tongue-in-cheek discussion about the different ways people think of heaven.

He has one friend "who believes that when we get to heaven, some of us are going to have to go out behind the woodshed for a while before we are going to be allowed in. She also suspects that some of us are going to have to be out there longer than others. I do not like the way she looks at me when she tells me this" (p. 102).

Another friend of Benson "believes there is a pouting room in heaven. It is the place one has to go if one is disappointed that some of the folks you thought were not going to get in actually get in" (p. 103). I think if a "pouting room" exists many of us Baptists will spend quite a bit of time there. But be encouraged, eternity is a real long time!

Finally, Benson feels "there may also be a laughing room in heaven. Maybe there is a room where you go and discover that some of the stuff you were worried about the most actually did not matter at all. It may also be true that some of us have to visit those three rooms and some others as well. Who knows what sorts of places have been prepared for us (p. 103)?

May God give us the grace to not take ourselves and our theology too seriously. May God grant us the courage to admit we don't have all the answers. May God provide us with the wisdom to be glad we do not have all the answers. May God massage into our hearts the hope that his new creation is beyond our ability to grasp.

The Presence of the Kingdom and Bothering With the Church

While reading The Tangible Kingdom by Halter and Smay, I was impressed with these words from the introduction. Speaking of the struggling consumer church in the West, "The idea of the God's Kingdom is now relegated to the realm of heaven, the afterlife, and we just assume that we won't get to see God and his beautiful redemptive plan until we pass over. The church therefore becomes something we may not need anymore, something that at best is worth only our recreational enjoyment" (pg. xviii). These two convictions, the presence of the kingdom now and the necessity of the church, have been important to me for some time. However, I'd never made the connection that they are related. In Bible college, I was taught pretty forcefully that the Kingdom was the literal thousand year millennium for which we are waiting. Since then I have become convinced that Jesus' life, death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit are all reasons to believe the kingdom is present in power now and the church is called of God to engage that power through Gospel acts of love and service while we wait for Jesus to come again and bring in the kingdom fully. So what are your thoughts? Can an under-realized dispensationalism that relegates the kingdom entirely to the future be blamed (among many other things) for the optional attitude many "Christians" in the West have toward the church? Interesting.

Ask the Pastor Session 1

Sunday evening we begin our Winter Sessions of "Ask the Pastor." The questions have been submitted, sorted, some of them destroyed and two great questions remain.

1) Why does our church (and most churches in the West for that matter) feel free to basically ignore Paul's command to women in 1 Corinthians 11 to cover their heads on worship? I'm looking forward to the discussion I believe this question will generate. My desire is that our discussion will help us grasp the complexity of taking the Bible seriously.

2) How can we integrate the Pauline teaching of "Justification by Faith" with his equally clear emphasis on Judgment according to works? It is my feeling there is much confusion over what I believe to be a false dichotomy, "Faith vs. Works."

GREAT TIMES AHEAD!

A Thanksgiving Prayer from the BCP

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom. Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Under the Impact Advent 2

As you celebrate Advent and prepare for the coming of our Lord, meditate on these words.

"Because Jesus Christ is God, he not only make God known but what he does is work of God. Hid word and deed is the word and deed of God. His love and compassion is the love and compassion of the Father. When he forgives that is the very forgiveness of God ... 'There is no God behind the back of Jesus.' In other words there is no other God than the one we see in Jesus and no act of God other than the act of Jesus. The word and act of Jesus and of the Father are identical. The deity of Jesus is therefore the guarantee that the reconciliation we see and receive in him is the reconciliation of God himself" (From the editor's introduction to Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ by Thomas F. Torrance).

Under the Impact of Advent 1

In an effort to work ahead a bit, I am doing some reading to prepare for our Church's celebration of Christmas. I need a way to collect highlights from my reading. Here's the first knock-it-out-of-the-park quote. "And so Jesus was born, the Son of the Highest, born from above. Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not evolve out of humanity. He came into humanity. Jesus is not the product of man, but the Creator of man. He is not just the best human being; He is the Being who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. Jesus is not man becoming God, but God becoming man--God incarnate, God descending into human flesh, coming into it from outside and from above, in order to be one of us, and to be one with us" (Thomas Torrance, When Christ Comes and Comes Again, 32-33).

Introducing the Blue Parakeet: On Reading the Bible Well

There are very few authors (presently two), who when they write a new book, I automatically pre-order it through Amazon. One such author is North Park University’s Scot McKnight. He is most widely known for The Jesus Creed, and his blog by the same, name http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/. I didn’t have to pre-order his latest book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, thanks to an advance reader copy mailed to me by Zondervan (after the release date, by the way). As we review chapter two, we will discuss why he has titled the book, The Blue Parakeet. But now onto his presentation in chapter one of the problem that his book addresses, namely the complicated issue of HOW we go about reading and especially applying the Bible.

Have you ever considered the complexity of applying a document that was not written directly to you? Basically, evangelical Christians are united in their commitment to the authority of Scripture. “We believe the Bible.” “It has authority in my life.” All this sounds simple enough. But how that authority moves from what Moses and Jeremiah said to Israel or what Jesus said to the Pharisees or what Paul and Peter and James and John said to 1st Century Churches to us in a 21st Century Church in Northern Illinois is quite a sticky issue! Conservative evangelicals, who believe in the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, often accuse “liberals” of picking and choosing which texts to follow. McKnight, however, demonstrates that all of us deal with the complexity of applying Scripture by taking some texts seriously and conveniently ignoring others, or at least stripping them of their direct authority on us today. For example…

Do you keep Sabbath in a way that is faithful to the biblical command (Exodus 20.9-10)? Keeping the Sabbath according to the OT Law meant not working from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday? Do you obey this command in this way? Do you obey this command in a modified way (e.g. Sunday morning through Monday morning)? Do you ignore the command entirely? What reasoning, if any, leads you to your conclusion?

Do you tithe in a way that is faithful to the biblical command (Deuteronomy 26.12)? Tithing according to Scripture is not giving 10% of your income to a local church or other religious organization. According to OT Law, tithes are supposed to be given to the Levitical Priests and furthermore, to the poor, alien, orphan, and widow. As a Baptist preacher I can’t believe, I’m about to write this but the NT doesn’t even mention the tithe. So how do you respond to the OT command to tithe in the way described above? Again, what is your reasoning?

Do you wash feet in a way that is faithful to Jesus’ command (John 13.14)? In this passage, Jesus tells his disciples that they should wash each other’s feet in the same way he has washed theirs. Do you obey this command? Why or why not (And aversion to others’ feet is not an option)?

After citing several more examples, Scot encourages us to think about and ask questions about how we read the Bible and what method we follow in understanding Scripture and applying it to our context. This is why I have such an appreciation for his ministry. His overarching concern is for the Church to live out the Bible in our day. Because I have the same concern, I encourage you to think about and ask yourself the above three questions. Think about the way you read and apply the Bible. I’d love to hear what you learn about yourself and the story God is telling in Scripture.