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Tribe

August 12, 2012

“What is a Christian?”

It’s a simple question with at least a thousand answers. For the most part, those answers center around an understanding of the Christian faith as a cultural system – a tribe. We view following Jesus as a framework – a group of people who have a common language, clothing style, set of approved and disapproved activities – even music and art.

This is not a phenomenon limited to categorizing the Church – in the West especially, we are an increasingly tribal society. We gravitate toward those who see, act, feel, think, and live like we do – or like we want to. We organize our activities, our work, our free time around our tribe.

So we apply our tribal view of the world to our understanding of faith. To follow Jesus, then, must mean to join the Jesus tribe, to assimilate the Jesus culture. Since the moment Jesus left the Eleven gazing  slack-jawed at the sky on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem, humanity has been trying to nail down just what these “little Christs” are all about. Consider the accounts from the book of Acts alone – everywhere the Disciples went, they we’re met with an attempt to label their lives and their message:

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We Are Becoming Who We Are

January 18, 2011

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s the go-to adult question for children  – especially adults who aren’t very comfortable with children. Or are meeting a child for the first time. Implied in that simple, innocuous interrogative is the skeletal structure of a system of values. It assumes first that you are not anything now – merely a possibility, a hope, a beginning. It presumes you will grow into some thing – a career, a pursuit, maybe even a position of influence or authority. It infers that the meaning of every human life is inexorably linked to the things we do – especially the things we do for a living.

No one ever asks “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” In fact, we seldom ask ourselves who we are becoming.

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I Deserve This.

April 2, 2010

"I want an Oompa Loompa NOW!" screamed Veruca Salt, stamping her foot.13 years ago next month I graduated college and began “full time vocational ministry” work. Of my contemporaries who did the same, a good chunk of have abandoned that pursuit, some because they fell morally or ethically, even more because they just didn’t see the point anymore. I can think of an even larger number of “heroes” of the American church who have publicly and painfully crashed and burned – great leaders who turned out to be living a double-life. Frankly, it’s hard to have heroes anymore – and maybe we were never supposed to.

Though I work a day job to support the ever-increasing family, I still am honored to preach, teach, and otherwise participate in a local community of faith. I still consider making disciples my primary life’s work and purpose. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those who have left that work, especially through their own destructive choices – and how not to become one of them.

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Hugging the Monster.

February 22, 2009

Another detour, but some things much on my mind these days. This will be a random and rambling rant, and maybe not too cohesive. Enjoy :-).

If the economy continues to collapse in America, a lot of our mega-church and mega-ministry institutions will likely collapse with it – since they are built on the same principles (if you rely on donations to support your bloated, unwieldy organization, things will be getting tight for you very soon, I fear. Some TV preachers might have to sell their Bentleys). The measure of success for everyone in America - even those with a faith-centered worldview – is being severely tested, and will be even more so in the days to come. America is enduring much upheaval, precipitated mostly be events in our economic sector. You could argue that the foundation of our national stability has been our financial system, which seems to be rapidly morphing, maybe even collapsing. For many of us, the foundation of our personal lives is also our financial system, and the cornerstones of that foundation are the value of the house we own and live in and our source of income. And those are in jeopardy too. And things could get a lot worse. Maybe.

One of the things you learn in survival training is that the sooner you accept the traumatic event you have been faced with, the greater your chance of surviving it, especially if you have considered the possibility of it happening before it does (thinking the unthinkable). One author calls this “hugging the monster.” Or as Steve Buscemi so succinctly put it in “Armageddon” – “It’s time to embrace the horror!” 

So let’s hug the monster. Let’s ask the big question. What if it all collapses. What if we lose everything?