My Lord, I have no hope but in Your Cross. You, by your humility sufferings and death, have delivered me from all vain hope.

My Hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore let me not trust in visible rewards.

My Hope is in what the human heart cannot feel. Therefore let me not trust in the feelings of my heart.

My Hope is in what the hand has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers, because Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone.

Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health or strength or ability or human resources. If I trust You, everything else will become for me strength, health, and support.

Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence (from Thoughts In Solitude)

I finally finished one of my favorite books of 2010 so far (granted it took me forever to read it because school ended up getting in the way for a while): METAmorpha: Jesus as a way of life by Kyle “Lee’s Son” Strobel. Let me get the “critique” out of the way upfront: From a stylistic point of view, Kyle is an easy but intelligent writer who knows how to make his arguments in a fair and balanced way. This isn’t surprising if you’ve read any of his dad’s stuff, so it’s a good read from that standpoint. There are a few sections in the book that tend to drag, not due to style, but exhaustive content. These moments were few and far between, though. With that out of the way, on to why METAmorpha is great read for any believer.

Perhaps I enjoyed METAmorpha so much because it parallels what the vision that God has laid on my heart for ministry: shift in worldview and depth in spiritual formation for the purpose of inviting God’s transforming power into our lives.  I can’t begin to tell you how much this resonates with me:

Our Christianity can often look more North American and modern than distinctively Christian. Our Churches often take their priorities and values directly from the society in which they exist and simply Christianize them. The story we are telling has everything to do with the worldview we have, and redeeming this worldview should be central to our lives as disciples.

The problem is not that our hearts are not in the right place, it’s that we’ve become so influenced by our culture (and so many elements of secular philosophy) that we fail to realize how secular our faith has become.  Often when I share my opinions on how secular or American we look (rather than Biblical and/or Christian), I am met with frustration, dissension, and defense systems. “Why can’t you see the good in the church?” … “You need to get with the times!” … “We can’t reach the culture if we’re stuck in the past.” … none of these statements really speak to the heart of the worldview issue, nor do they capture the essence of what myself, Kyle, and many many others are trying to say. Because I do see the good in the church (and share the good as often as possible), i’m not against modern means of cultural relevance, etc… but I understand that until we allow our lives and worldviews to be completely deconstructed by the Spirit of God, we will not become the church that He designed us to be.

METAmorpha not only helps remove the veil from our worldview, but follows up with how we can soften our hearts so that God’s word, spirit and community can pierce us and change us in ways that only He can do! This is the crux of it all. He is the facilitator of change, but we also must open ourselves up to honest examination in order to accept His transforming power in our lives.

The other thing I like about METAmorpha is it’s emphasis on a balance between education and experience. Often, depending on theological / denominational background, Christians will hold one in high regard over the other. We are to love God with all of our Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength. It is a totality of who we are, including not only our intellect, but our spiritual and emotional experiences. If we rely too much on our intellect, we become rigid and teeter on legalism… If we rely too much on our experience, we have a tendency to be tossed to-and-fro by whatever emotional or “spiritual” waves come our way.

My suggestion? Pick this book up. I got it off the bargain rack at Mardel for like $2.50 (sorry Kyle). You have to be willing to open yourself up, though, and at least entertain the thought that perhaps your worldview isn’t the worldview that God has in store for you. Or, perhaps you have already opened yourself up and God is shaping your worldview in a amazing new ways; if so, METAmorpha can be a tool to pass on to others in your life… either way, it’s well worth the read.

We grew up together; now we blog together. In the B/S Chronicles you’ll get to experience viewpoints from a brother/sister team…who may or may not always see things eye-to-eye.

A short Compare / Contrast between Coffee Drinkers and Beer Drinkers:

Let’s start with contrast…
* There is no such thing as a casual Coffee Drinker; you are either all in, or not in at all. Newbie Coffee drinkers may appear casual, but in reality they are simply too fresh to know the lingo and embrace the culture fully.
* There are a plethora of casual beer drinkers.

* Coffee Drinkers are elitist. If the coffee sucks, the drinker takes on the personality of the taste: Bitter and Dark.
* Beer drinkers see beer as an means to and end, thus quality matters dependent on the end. If the goal is to wind down and feel refreshed / relaxed, the beer of choice certainly matters. However, if the goal is to get plastered, any piece of crap beer will do.

* Coffee Drinkers are great at feigning thankfulness. Because they are elitist, only the best quality of coffee will do. So when someone who knows nothing about coffee buys them a bag of horrid coffee, they appear grateful, but on the inside they take one of three approaches: a) they cuss you out, b) they pity your obvious menial mind, c) they pity you and then cuss you out when you ask how it tasted the next time you see them.
* Beer Drinkers high five you and immediately set aside the case of nastiness for the next time they want to get plastered.

* Coffee Drinkers are at least sensible. Yes, they’re elitist, but at least it’s based on reason and logic rather than idiocracy. To better illustrate this point…
* Beer Drinkers are far too easily swayed by marketing. Blue Mountains when it’s cold? A logo at the bottom of the bottle? Venting Can tops? and now… coming soon… vortex bottles. Sheesh.

On to the similarities:
* Coffee Drinkers are excuse makers. If they don’t have their coffee, they have free reign to act like the scum of the earth.
* Beer Drinkers are excuse seekers. “I’ve had a rough day, i need a beer”… “I’ve had a great day, lets grab a beer.” … “I need to vent, pass me a beer.” … “I just want to relax and enjoy the quiet night with a beer.” … “Oh good God made the good earth so we could harvest good beer.” … “OH GOOD GOD! WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED!?!?! PASS ME A BEER!”

* Both Coffee Drinkers and Beer Drinkers have a lingo and value set that only those within the culture can understand. I have no idea why they freeze coffee and couldn’t tell you the difference between dark beer, light beer, wheat beer, white beer, or whatever else. I think I made at least one of those up.

* Both groups claim it is an acquired taste. If this is true, it reminds me of the women who wear high heels and complain about their feet the whole time.

* I love both groups equally, and I’m pretty sure Jesus does too… but if I had to guess, I’d say he slightly favors the beer drinkers only because beer drinkers show less favoritism. I know, it’s kind of a paradox… let’s just stick with He loves them equally.

Conclusion:
If you are a Coffee Drinker… I pray we only cross paths after your morning brew, and I promise to do everything I can to avoid giving you low-quality beans as gifts.
If you are a Beer Drinker… I pray your ends are always well placed, and I promise to do everything I can to give you adequate reason to celebrate our friendship with a beer.
If you are both a Coffee Drinker and a Beer Drinker… oh good Lord, I’ll just pray for your sanity.

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As always, check out the sister side of Coffee (yes, Coffee) here… Btw, she’s definitely a Coffee Drinker…

We grew up together; now we blog together. In the B/S Chronicles you’ll get to experience viewpoints from a brother/sister team…who may or may not always see things eye-to-eye.

This is one of those topics I feel most unqualified to discuss: Aging. I guess that is one of the reasons Lindsey and I came up with this hair-brained idea anyway… yes, to motivate our writing, but also to stretch us to look at things from different perspectives and angles. Even though my young svelte masculine frame is only 28 years in, I’ve felt my fair share of odd aches and pains where none used to exist, but I still don’t think of me when i think of aging. When I saw that our topic in this edition, my mind immediately gravitated towards the frailty of life. That’s not necessarily a fun place to hang out in, but it’s good to reflect every now and again rather than turn our soul away from the darker shades of gray we encounter in life… but that also starts taking me in directions away from the topic at hand, so I digress.

For where I’m at personally right now, aging is a beautiful thing. I’ve heard a lot of great things about your 30s, which I’m heading into soon enough… “they” say that most people spend their 20s trying to figure out what they want to do, their 30s figuring out how to do it, and their 40s enjoying their most success. Another guy at my work tells me that in your 20s, you think you know everything, in your 30s you realize how little you actually know (considering he is in his 40s and he thinks he has never been wrong in the time that I’ve worked with him, his assessment on aging must be cyclical). Maybe “they” are not that far off…

Aging brings another thing into play with me as well: my daughters. If we’ve befriended each other on FB, you might have noticed that my daughter (she’s 10), just learned to ride her bike this weekend. I realize 10 is a little old for most people, but I didn’t learn until I was 9, so maybe it’s genetic. But what was great is seeing how she handled adversity. Less than a week prior she ended her training sessions in the living room crying because she recognized how her fear of falling and/or getting hurt paralyzed her. Her brain was telling her to do what I was saying she needed to do, but nothing in her body would move. It opened up a great opportunity to talk (again) about fear and our response. A week later, she was determined, and boom… she was riding in less than an hour. It’s a small victory in the grand scheme of things, but it’s these memories and experiences that aging will bring for us over and over again, both with my eldest daughters and all of her siblings behind her.

Hopefully at some point I’ll realize that I don’t actually know everything and aging can bring some wisdom to my life…

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Be sure to check out Lindsey’s post on aging here.

Next B/S Topic: Coffee (yes, coffee)…

It should come to no shock to any of my handful of readers that a massive “Health Care” Reform Bill was passed earlier this week. For those who have followed me for a while, it will also come as no shock that I generally do not fall in line with the typical conservative Christian. Despite what most typical conservative Christian’s think, that does not make me a) a liberal, b) a democrat, or c) a bad person. If I had to give a political statement of where I fit, I am an apolitical moderate who would prefer a complete governmental overhaul, thus since “moderate” isn’t a party, I am much more in line with the governmental ideas of Libertarian’s than anyone else. In other words, despite a brief reintroduction into the political realm during the last presidential elections, I prefer to focus my attention on things other than politics.

As a moderate-libertarian, there are things I like and don’t like about the new bill… As an apolitical individual, I don’t care all that much honestly. For some of you, that is almost worse than being moderate and/or democrat… But that’s not what I want to talk about… Instead, lets look at a few after-effects of the recent days’ activities and see if we can redeem any of it…

A few that must be considered (swarming with pithyness, of course), before getting to the meat of redemption:

First, as of the writing of this post, 917,249 people, several of which are my friends, have joined the facebook group “I bet we can find 1,000,000+ People Who Disapprove of the Health Care Bill.” By the time most of you read this, the group may be well over 1mil. Congratulations, you have effectively socialized your attempts to disapprove of socialized healthcare.

Second, as most of my friends are conservatives, there has been an onslaught of tweets, status updates, conversations, and sarcastic diatribes blasting our government, our president, and the new health care bill. Congratulations, your voice has been heard by and you’ve successfully high fived, fist bumped, and man-hugged all of your conservative friends.

Third, as noted in serveral places in the websphere, conservative Republicans in Washington, based on the outcry from their states, chose to look for no compromise on anything submitted by this administration. There was no middle ground. This is not surprising considering the state of American politics. Congratulations, Representatives, you set idly by and the bill you hoped to kill through inaction has swept the country into a tizzy.

Sarcasm aside… there are things that we, as Christians, can learn from this whole ordeal, using the above somewhat tongue-in-cheek observations as a launching pad. Everything from here forward is no longer political, please do not take it as such:

First, we need to differentiate between real action and “Facebook action.” Social networking is great, it’s fun, and there are some pretty cool things that can happen through the various avenues for businesses, individuals, and even some level of evangelism and/or ministry. But in the end we must recognize the importance of making a difference in people’s lives through personal interaction and life-changing encounters in which Jesus shows up. Sometimes it’s as simple as helping pay for someones groceries, other times we travel half way across the world and land smack in middle of the Mid East, or it’s in our everyday lives at work, all the while allowing Christ’s light to shine through us in a real and tangible way.

I think of our church’s Servant Evangelism team. I know the heart of our pastor and the heart of our SE leader… they want to see people in our church understand what it means to live every day as if we have an opportunity to show the unique Love that Christ has to offer… it doesn’t have to be an “every 3rd Saturday thing” or only when your church offers you the opportunity. We need to be the hands and feet outside of the websphere, outside of the social networks, and get our hands and feet dirty in the real world.

Second, we need to differentiate between talk and walk. We all know this and there are great people doing great things for Christ but I still contend wholeheartedly that if the Church body was doing what the Church body is called to do, our faith would not be drowning in the socio-political US culture. I love what I see in so many of those around us, but to think that we are in large part doing what we are called to do is unfortunate naiveté. All we need to do is look at the fruit of this culture… and the stark contrast between who Jesus attracted and who we attract. Philip Yancey says it best in his book “The Jesus I Never Knew”… (paraphrasing) In Jesus’ day, he offended the so-called religious people and attracted the sinners, outcasts, and broken… Today, the church attracts the so-called religious and offends the sinners, outcasts, and broken. I think 1) he is dead on, but 2) things ARE slowly changing for the good… But perhaps this paints a picture of how this sometimes plays out in even the most grace-field lives: When Supermodels and Cafeteria Workers Fall (thanks Gabe).

Finally, we cannot sit idly by and hope that things work out for the best… I believe strongly that as Christians, we must stop thinking politically. The same people who say that the government shouldn’t be the avenue in which the needy and poor are helped, rather the church should take the initiative (which, I completely agree with) are the same ones who fight hard in the political realm against issues of sin such as homosexuality and abortion. You cannot have it both ways… if you do not want the government to do the work of the church, then we need to stop focusing so much of our energy and opinions on politics and instead refocus on rebuilding broken lives. You have to ask yourself, what fights do you want to pick? Those against flesh and blood? or those against the powers of darkness? You cannot fight both, and btw, one is loosing battle every single time.

(Check out Bob Hyatt’s take here, and Dave Burchett’s here… I appreciate both of their insights).

My intentions here are not to frustrate or take a political stance on the Health Care Bill… My hope is that we can move away from such divisive vices (as politics obviously has become), and recognize that as Christians, our citizenship is not primarily American.

Lets make sure that our walk outshines our talk, and walk much more than a mile… let us focus our attention on the Kingdom that is both here and not yet, of which we find our true citizenship…

We grew up together; now we blog together. In the B/S Chronicles you’ll get to experience viewpoints from a brother/sister team…who may or may not always see things eye-to-eye.
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We grew up together; now we blog together. In the B/S Chronicles you’ll get to experience viewpoints from a brother/sister team…who may or may not always see things eye-to-eye.
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