Authentic Revolution

With the world ever evolving into social media, memes, and twitter hashtags authenticity seems to be falling further and further away from our pursuits.  We crave knowledge and immediate gratification over truth, vulnerability and lasting relationships.  My father was far ahead of the times (Who knew?) when he would disappear from the family for hours, days and weeks to pursue hacking adventures, and computer repairs.  With the fastest access to each other we’ve ever had in the history of time why do we feel lonelier, more depressed and further from each other than ever before?

We’ve lost touch with each other.  We’ve lost touch with ourselves.  More importantly we’ve lost touch with our creator.  Keep yourself distracted, keep yourself working, keep yourself busy this is the only way to find joy, and hope, and life.  This is the ultimate reality we’re being fed, and we’ve bought it hook line and sinker.    We work longer hours, and we spend more time staring at our phones and tablets. We know more random facts, more funny jokes, more ways to make fun of each other and hold nothing sacred.

We cannot, will not be bored.  For if we are bored, we must think.

We

Must

Think.

If we think, before long we’ll find ourselves questioning real things.  We’ll find ourselves questioning our lives, our hopes, our futures, our purposes.  We’ll begin to search after authenticity and find ourselves wanting to know our friends more deeply, and our families more passionately.  We’ll find ourselves in pursuit of truth, and love, and life.  All, we have to do is stop being distracted.  This is the first step toward the revolution.  This is the first step in finding your hope.  Finding authenticity.

Dear Scarlet

                                                                                                                01/11/2014

Dear Scarlet,

            You have been in the world one year now, and have already experienced a great deal of change.   Little sparks of your personality keep being revealed and it’s already been established you have your dad’s persistence, and your mom’s beauty.  No one can resist your smile; it’s infectious and only draws me closer and closer to the edge of insanity for fear of what the future holds for you and your romantic interests.  I am obsessed with finding new and creative ways to stun the world with your warmth, love, and smile. 

            To say you changed my life forever is a cliché but one that doesn’t truly describe what you have done for me.  You wrecked my life.  You’ve left me disorganized, afraid, frustrated, and discombobulated.  You have forced me to be a better man, and for that I’m eternally thankful.  Thank you for destroying me, so that God could use you to build a better man out of the rubble.  I love you scar-bear.

            The world is melodramatic.  So many people want you to live in fear.  So many want you to “not worry” because this is only temporary suffering for the glory that lies ahead.   While this is true, and it is temporary suffering, this life has meaning, and it wasn’t meant to be brushed aside to wait for the future.  Your life is meant to be lived, now!  This life is a vapor and it is one to be embraced, and enjoyed, and fantastically relished.  Don’t let everyone around you instill so much fear that you miss out on living.  Jesus didn’t come to leave you wanting.  He came to give you living water, so that you would never thirst again.  Enjoy it, don’t take it too seriously, life is supposed to be fun.

            I’m going to guide you into a life lived with Jesus.  Will I fail? Absolutely!  I’m not ignorant to the fact I’m far from all-knowing.  For a long time you will believe I know everything, I will be your hero.  This will only humble me.  In life if your pursuit is love, joy, and wisdom then I will not have failed you.  These three things are so radical, and so far from what you’ll experience at times that you will change the world if you discover their secrets.  

            I’m going to guide you in practicality.  I want you to know how to manage money, time, relationships, and basketball stats.  I want you to enjoy the arts, like the theater, the symphony, and all the wonderful sculptures, film and paintings throughout time.  I MORE than anything want to guide you into your hearts contentment.  I want you to know who you are and embrace the Scarlet you are meant to be.  I want you to be secure in who you are, never doubting the woman you can be.  I desperately want you to be loved well.

I could write lists, and have in my mind, of the desires I have for you.  I have thousands.  At the end of this all, all I’ll ever want for you is Joy, Love, and Wisdom.  If all the lists faded and you were left with these three qualities, there is no doubt you will have lived a fulfilled life, here, and now.  Don’t wait for eternity, seize the day.

 I love you, I’m committed to you, and am so looking forward to tickling you when you wake,

                                      -Dad (dadadada as I’m known for now)

Not a Fan: Book Review

**Disclaimer:  If you totally loved the book, and grew from it, please feel free to share how you’ve grown from it in the comments section.  I don’t intend/want for you to feel like I’m taking away from that growth!

I’ve never actually written a book review, but like many of you Amazon junkies I have read hundreds of them. This qualifies me, right? My goal here is to be brief, honest and hopefully helpful.  The book being reviewed here is “Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus” by Kyle Idleman.  

Understand me first off, I’m not a theologian with loads of credentials, I’m a man with half a semester of seminary who decided he wanted to pursue a nursing career because he felt like being more like Jesus drew him to the sick, dying, and those who needed their butts wiped.   I was only in half a semester and I found myself exhausted by the status quo.  This book, if anything, reminded me of that exhaustion.

 

The overarching theme from this book is two-fold.  Firstly, it attempts to separate people who love Jesus from those who don’t by differentiating knowing about someone and actually knowing someone.  Much like that guy at work who knows every football stat about LSU but doesn’t know any of the players personally (A fan).  Secondly, the book attempts to tell the reader what it means to know Jesus (Be a follower).  These are lofty goals, but dangerous in that it presents an impossible gospel, one that really isn’t all that new, or great of news.

Part 1: Fan or Follower? An honest diagnosis

This section is seven chapters long and begins by talking about defining the relationship comparing dating with a relationship with God.  This section beckons you to question your commitment.   Are you just kind of into the benefits of God or are you into God himself?  Again, logical, good questions, but it’s the answers Idleman presents that lead to dangerous conclusions.  As I read through this section I found myself getting more and more depressed, angry, hurt, and confused.  I thought I was a Christian, but am I?

Nicodemus is described as only wanting to come to Jesus at night because of the great cost to his reputation if he were to approach Jesus during the day.  This assumes two things about this story, that one Nicodemus was intentional with his nightly approach and that two Jesus didn’t think of Nicodemus as a true follower because of this choice.  What about Mat 11:28  Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Wait, where is the precursor “make sure it costs you something?”  Before we start diving into too much scripture let’s make sure we understand something here, there are three situations that must be understood in order to understand Jesus more clearly.  There is the pre-Jesus situation, there is the during Jesus situation, and there is the after the Cross situation.  The after the cross situation changes everything, and this book COMPLETELY misses this.

The Holy Spirit breathing chapter of this book basically says as you repent you breathe out areas for the Holy Spirit to come into as you breathe in.  The problem with this is the scriptures say as a believer your body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit.  So, is he only partially moved in then?  Waiting for you to kick the roommates out before he fully moves in?  Sounds like what Jesus did wasn’t enough, you’ve got a lot of work to do in order for your sweet, powerful God of a roommate to come and live with you. 

Basically these 7 chapters are like a repetition of:  This is what it means to be a fan (know about stuff, and even put on the religious aspects of stuff, like a person believing the going to church saves them) and this is what it means to be a follower (someone who’s willing to give money to ministry without bitterness, and fully surrender to Jesus, every area of their life).

Part 2: an invitation to follow (the unedited version)

This guy seems to really enjoy making others feel like they don’t add up.  Which in reality is true, none of us do, that’s why we needed the cross, that’s why we needed Jesus!!  But, Idleman gets so infatuated with what we do, that he fails to truly preach what Jesus DID! 

The first chapter talks about Jesus calling everyone, but leaves you questioning everything when he quotes the goats and the lamb’s parable.  He makes you wonder who will actually be saved and what else you can do….this is a problem, because Jesus said it is finished.  Again, this comes down to during Jesus, and post-Cross.  In this section the author describes a follower as a slave, who loves Jesus so much they literally die to everything they desire, everything they are, and everyone around them.  The problem is Jesus is beckoning those around him to follow him, and he’s telling them “hey you’re probably gonna die, and you will definitely lose everything you care about because stuff is gonna get real crazy for a while if you follow me.”  He wasn’t talking to post-cross Christians, he was talking to the crowds who wanted to follow him because he was amazing!  Imagine your favorite celebrity saying to you “hey you want to be in movies with me?”  “Yes please!” “You can be, but it takes hours, and days of sleepless nights, and ridiculous amounts of studying, and you’ll probably end up losing your family because you won’t have time for them, and honestly, you could die from stress.”  Jesus was a radical celebrity with miraculous powers; of course there is sacrifice to follow him during his life.  But post-cross, the sacrifices are done!  The deaths are done!  There is no come and die anymore!!  You aren’t a slave; you are a son/daughter of the king!!  It is finished.

In this book the gospel is gone, and it’s all about what you are doing to be a “follower.” It has nothing to do with what Jesus accomplished on the cross!  This book doesn’t offer hope, or grace or a promise of a new soul, and heart made of flesh.  It offers work, and death, and anguish.  This was a message for another time, we are amazingly blessed to live in a new covenant with God, that promises God does all the work and gives us a new nature, with new desires, and we are made followers with a seal placed on our hearts from the Holy Spirit, not by following some guys’ formula in a book.

Part 3: following jesus-wherever. whenever. whatever.

This section is geared toward those who keep offering excuses as to why they aren’t ready to take the plunge.  It’s basically an altar call.  I don’t have any qualms with this section per se except he doesn’t really offer the gospel message.  Idleman asks everyone to repent and then follow Jesus.  The problem with this theology is it’s not in the right order per se.  Again, it makes the gospel about you, not Jesus.  If you chose to receive Jesus’ then you’ll receive a new heart, a new mind, and repentance will come because you sincerely won’t want to live any other way, because it simply just doesn’t make since to do so.  Jesus plus nothing.  That’s the gospel.  This man wants it to be Jesus plus repentance.

Conclusion:

I didn’t hate this book.  I hated that Jesus was made less.  I hated that people are reading this experiencing large amounts of shame, guilt, and pure self-hatred all the while calling it “Conviction.”  There is no more condemnation for those that believe, the work is done.  God wasn’t stupid when He sent His son to die, He knew you would sin before, during and after you accepted His son….that’s why it’s called grace.  I felt like great questions were asked, but horrible, dangerous and even soul destroying answers were presented.   For a perspective on Grace to help balance out the works based-ness of this book check out “God Without Religion” by Andrew Farley and “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World” by Tullian Tchividjian. 

Thanks for reading.

Revolution of Theology

Theology is a fancy word meaning the study of the nature of God and religious belief.  This study leads us to our hundreds of religions, to our thousands of denominations and our millions of personal beliefs.  I have to tread very carefully as I dive into this thought process and/or rant.  The first thing I want to acknowledge before anything else is I believe in absolute truth as in I believe it exists and is discoverable (the discoverable part is tricky, but I believe God is capable of revealing what He wants, and I can’t deny certain things like Love existing).  Let’s tell a story to help you understand the intent of this blog entry.

When I was just a young boy and beginning to find myself interested in young women I did everything I could to be a good, loving boy.  I wrote love letters, I bought jewelry, I sang (which I would never ever, ever do now), and I poured my heart into pursuing a young woman I found myself fascinated by.  I was taught by movies, and television what the pursuit of love looked like and I was hooked.  The boy was always the hero, or a jerk that got his hard-heart changed by some damsel in distress or a woman who knew how to break through his walls.  Then a girl lead to me church and my idea about what love was dramatically changed.  I was told how a man is to be willing to die for his love, must be head over her and expect her to submit to him.  Uh oh.  Women submitting.  I knew what this looked like; it looked like a beaten mother who spoke up to a husband who wanted to beat his children.  The third place I learned about love was home.  My father told me one evening that he knew I was going to have premarital sex, and tossed a pack of condoms towards me.  Safe sex was love.  Then as a man I was studying love and came across 1^st Corinthians 13 which describes love as:  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  So, what the hell is love then?!

Exactly.

Theology is bit like this story.  You get told that grace (which is God’s indescribable love and mercy and kindness towards us that he would save when we deserve not an ounce of saving) through faith in Jesus saves you.  Then you get told that in order to be saved you must repent (turn away from all your sin) and follow Jesus to the death of all you are and become a robot filled with some mystical God spirit.  Then you’re told that you must be baptized through water, spirit, and fire (which this one is rarely actually used) in order to be saved.  Next you’re told what marriage is, that the bible says one man, one woman (which not one time in the bible does God say “I ordain a marriage as only being between a man and a woman”).  You’re told that you must register republican, not cuss, not drink, not vote for Obama and watch Duck Dynasty.  You’re told in one sentence that ALL your money is God’s, and to give it back to God (Wait, if it’s His, then how do you give back??).  Giving back to God is so well known to mean “give to the church” no one reads that and thinks anything else…sad?  You’re told it’s easy and to come as you are to receive God’s free gift, and then you’re told you must pay the ultimate price and sacrifice your whole life to be a Christian (so who’s life is it that is sacrificed again? Mine? Or did Jesus already take care of it?).  Next you’re told that scriptures are all 100% truth and that you must obey them to the T, or else you’re a terrible, terrible heretic.  Oh, and you must believe that the way your local church translates and understands the bible is the right way, and that everyone else is entirely bonkers and wrong.  Your head hurt yet?  This barely covers the hundreds of theological debates.

This is enough to break someone to the core.  I mean I absolutely feel shattered to my core when I try to understand all these directions I’m pulled and I’ve been at this for a long time now.  There is truth.  There is a perfect theology, and if you’re like me you’re thinking it’s time for a revolution.  A radical change like Jesus intended is in order.