Advent Conspiracy

You there.

Yes, you, the one who claims to follow the Lord Christ.

It's time to show the world that Christianity is more than watching your mouth and wearing a witty t-shirt that rips off some symbol from the culture and turns it into a clever slogan for Jesus.

Christmas is fast approaching, the day we (claim to) celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The key to salvation; victory over fear, and sin, and death. Is that what you are celebrating? Or have you bought the lie that the best way to celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World is to run around buying people stuff they don't need with money you don't have?

Come closer.

Come closer, watch, and think. Think hard, and then consider your actions this Advent.

Think about it, pray about it, and then do something about it. Do something different this Christmas. Because the very first Christmas, God did something about it, and the world was radically changed, and you and I have hope. It's time we got back to what the essence of this holiday really is. He came for you, to serve you, to give you the gift of life.

So who are you here to serve?

-Matthew 25:31-46

Sunday's Coming

There are times when you run into something both convicting and funny - in the last few days I have been hammered by a couple different videos, one of which I posted above. Seriously, it's like laughing while someone punches you in the gut. Then milk comes out your nose and you're a mess. But watch the video above, laugh, then spend some time thinking about how we approach the Lord in our Sunday services.

There are two dangers here for us, as Christians. The first is that we self-righteously laugh, not at ourselves but at those who are "doing it wrong," because our church is so much better than their church. We watch something like this, say "that's certainly not my church!" and then we feel pretty good. Except for the part where we do the exact same thing this video is criticizing: we make "the show" more important than the Gospel. Here, the show is lights, and music, and casual dress. In your church "the show" might be the lack of those same things, and you're sinfully prideful about what you don't have instead of what you do. But it's about Jesus, not us, and He doesn't care about your worship style, your dress code, or the other silly things we argue constantly about in Christendom.

The second danger is that we get offended because this humorous warning hits too close to home. If you see this model as the right way to do church because the other guy is sinfully legalistic... listen to what you just said. Repent, stay humble about the crowds the Lord has blessed you with, and use your epic church setup to point people to both Jesus and repentance. Fact is, We all need to ask a few questions as we approach Sunday mornings (or whenever your church meets):

What is the Gospel really about?

What have we made it?

What do we need to do to get back to the Gospel?

What do we need to stop doing that's detracting from His message?

This coming Sunday, enjoy your church, but more importantly, glorify God in your worship: in your learning from His word, your singing and your prayers.

Extremism

Extremism is defined by wikipedia as"a term used to describe the actions or ideologies of individuals or groups outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards."

Everyone from President Bush (in the days immediately following 9/11), to the imam behind the World Trade Center mosque/cultural center, have told us our problem is not with Islam, but with Islamic extremists. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf expanded the problem when he explained it, saying that extremists from all religions are the problem, and religious moderates just need to come together.

But labeling "extremism" as the problem is a slippery slope. Our society speaks of common moral standards, but rejects the idea that there is a knowable, reasonable and ultimately true ethical norm that we should look to in forming our morality. Morality is what a society actually does; ethics is what a society should do, and with our loving embrace of post-modernism our society essentially turns to its own morality for its morality. If you think this sounds like nonsense, it is; it is a logical absurdity to say that nothing is absolutely true ethically.

The real problem is, if we have nothing to look at but our own morality, and we reject all ethical norms, then anyone who even suggests there is an ethical norm can now be labeled as an extremist. If in church I preach the final authority of the Bible, I am a religious extremist. If in government I preach the authority of the Constitution as it written by the Founders, I am a political extremist. And since we have labeled extremism the problem, I am only safe so long as I never stand up for anything and say "this is truth; we should do this for this reason."

This really defines much of our lives as Americans. We have become a nation where our highest virtue is expressed in the phrase "live and let live." Very few are threatened by Christianity, if all we make it as the church is a feel-good social experience we have on Sunday (Wednesday is also largely permissible). But if we dare to say "as we study Creation we hear the spoken Word of God; here in the Bible we read the written Word of God; here in the person of Jesus Christ we see the incarnate Word of God," we have committed that gravest of cultural sins, extremism. We have said that something is absolutely true - and in a nation of people striving to be seen as caring, knowing and tolerant, we find that this rigid stance on our part cannot be tolerated.

And isn't that intolerance, in the end, just a tad bit extreme?

On the Nature of Sovereignty

On rare occasions in this life you will encounter art - a book, a film, a poem, a picture - that moves you profoundly. You find truth of such beauty it brings a tear to the eye; for a moment, it becomes hard to breathe.

Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield is such a work for me, historical fiction written about the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. The narrator here is the Spartan slave Xeones, and he is giving his Persian captors an account of the battle from the perspective of the Greeks. In the passage I quote below, he is summarizing the last stand of Leonidas, the Spartan King destined to die at the hot gates. Xeones speaks of the man, yes - but beyond this, he speaks of the very nature of sovereignty itself.

I will tell His Majesty [Xerxes] what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require the service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.
In the final moments before the actual commencement of battle, when the lines of Persians and Medes and Sacae, the Bactrians and Illyrians, Egyptians and Macedonians, lay so close across from the defenders that their individual faces could be seen, Leonidas moved along the Spartan and Thespaian foreranks, speaking with each platoon commander individually. When he stopped beside Dienekes [Xeones' master], I was close enough to hear his words.
"Do you hate them, Dienekes?" the king asked in the tone of a comrade, unhurried, conversational, gesturing to those captains and officers of the Persians proximately visible across the oudenos chorion, the no-man's-land.
Dienekes answered at once that he did not. "I see faces of gentle and noble bearing. More than a few, I think, whom one would welcome with a clap and a laugh to any table of friends."
Leonidas clearly approved my master's answer. His eyes seemed, however, darkened with sorrow.
"I am sorry for them," he avowed, indicating the valiant foemen who stood so proximately across. "What wouldn't they give, the noblest among them, to stand here with us now?"
That is a king, Your Majesty. A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free. His Majesty may ask, as Rooster [a fellow slave] did, and the lady Arete [Dienekes' wife], why one such as I whose station could most grandly be called service and most meanly slavery, why one of such condition would die for those not of his kin and country. The answer is, they were my kin and country. I set down my life with gladness, and would do it again a hundred times, for Leonidas, for Dienekes and Alexandros and Polynikes, for Rooster and Suicide, for Arete and Diomache, Bruxieus and my own mother and father, my wife and children. I and every man there were never more free than when we gave freely obedience to those harsh laws which take life and give it back again.

In all my studies, I have found many men who attempted to live up to this standard of kingship. In all of human history, there are few men we can look to, men who for a moment or a short period of time attained the ideal.

But there has been only one man - and he, no mere man, which in itself is instructive - in all of human history that lived out the ideal every day of his life: the Son of God, Jesus, the Christ. In Him alone do all the sovereigns of this world find their standard for the governance of those entrusted by God into their care. In Him alone all men find a True Sovereign worthy of their utmost devotion. For it is He alone who, through the brutality of the Cross and the triumph of the Empty Tomb, truly takes our lives, and gives them back again.

National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer

On April 30, 1863, the country observed a National Day of Fasting and Prayer. It is interesting, as one studies the Civil War (1861-1865), that prior to this date the War went very badly for the Federal government. From April 30th to May 6th, 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville was fought and won by the Confederacy: their last significant victory of the war, and in which their most impressive offensive general, Stonewall Jackson, was killed by friendly fire in the darkness. Less than 3 months after this proclamation, the Union won the Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, sealing the eventual doom of the South as an independent nation. The struggle continued on until April of 1865, but any hope of victory for the Confederacy was gone.

I confess I do not know how moments such as these are taught from a 'secular' perspective in our schools, but I wonder how one can study the events of our nation's past and not see the providential hand of God working within our nation's history. Perhaps this is the first time you have heard of this particular proclamation. Take a moment and read it. Far from being ancient history, there is much here that is deeply relevant to our modern age.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

Politics - Defined

politics (1828 Webster's Dictionary)

POL'ITICS, n. The science of government; that part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a nation or state, for the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; comprehending the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals. Politics, as a science or an art, is a subject of vast extent and importance.

politics (current Merriam-Webster's Dictionary)

Function: noun plural but singular or plural in construction
1 a : the art or science of government b : the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy c : the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government
2 : political actions, practices, or policies
3 a : political affairs or business; especially : competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership (as in a government) b : political life especially as a principal activity or profession c : political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices
4 : the political opinions or sympathies of a person
5 a : the total complex of relations between people living in society b : relations or conduct in a particular area of experience especially as seen or dealt with from a political point of view

I felt the need to post this as the culture war heats up moving toward the elections later this year. The first definition came out of a culture seeking truth; the second, out of a culture moving ever closer to a belief that nothing is true. It should not surprise us that the first is an accurate description of God's design within government, and the second removes all mention of Him (or morality/ethics).

As Christians, it is critical that we remember Biblical principles: Barack Obama is not the President merely because he received a majority of the popular vote and enough electoral college votes: he is the President of the United States because God ordained that he be so (Romans 13:1).

While many of us disagree with him on his policies, we are called upon to both submit to his authority and to honor him (Romans 13:2-7, I Peter 2:13-17). This goes beyond just not saying something bad - we must honor him. To be direct: stop the rude jokes, the altered pictures, the crass stories, the twisted Bible verses, and the general hatred. But that is only the beginning: we must pray for him, upholding him before the True Sovereign who rules over all kings. And beyond President Obama, this goes for how we should treat anyone on the "other side of the aisle."

What should our goal be in politics, or any other area of life? Whatever we do, we must do it to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Tell me - if you can - how mockery of our leadership (or those we disagree with) brings glory to God? How does our typical political discourse lead anyone to knowledge of the Truth we claim?

So, as political discussion intensifies, I dare you to be different. I challenge you, fellow Christian, to be humble. Authority in this world is given at the discretion of God alone, whom we claim to serve, and we must humble ourselves to submission. Our nation needs us now more than ever, but not just to point out problem with the current administration or an opposing view. We need to be able to point our fellow citizens back to the foundation stone of our nation. And this is not merely the Constitution, but something far greater. Consider once again 2 Timothy 2:24-26...

"And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will."