Possessing Nothing

The following quote is from Commonprayer.net:

Fifth-century monk and bishop Paulinus of Nola wrote, “We have no right to our possessions; they have been entrusted to us for the good of all. Let us then invest with the Lord what he has given us, for we have nothing that does not come from him: we are dependent upon him for our very existence. And we ourselves particularly, who have a special and a greater debt, since God not only created us but purchased us as well; what can we regard as our own when we do not possess even ourselves?”

Paulinas may be called a communist or socialist by many Christians in the U.S. today but I call him beautifully in-tune with God. Richard Foster would probably love this guy (author of the classics Freedom of Simplicity and Celebration of Discipline). The concept of investing with the Lord is one we don't hear often enough. Surely we are stewards of all we have and we know we ought to serve God with all he has given us but we rarely use language that propels the idea that we are working alongside our Creator and Savior when we surrender all we have to him and when we acknowledge, praise, and thank him for being our provider. Every step we take away from materialism, self-focus, over-consumption, entitlement, or absolute ownership is a step we take towards the kingdom of God.

It is imperative that we realize that the world and everything in it belongs to God (Psalm 24:1), that everything we earn is because of God (Deuteronomy 2:7, 8:17-18) and that we are not our own but His (John 15:19) and all these truths result in the knowledge that we have no right to absolute ownership or selfish living. Christians have no justifiable reason to refuse gifting those who ask if all this is true. It also leads us to the conclusion that Christians should never ask back what has been taken from them (Luke 6:30) and that if what they have is taken it is no trouble to give what they have left, be it their time, their clothes, or their very flesh (Matthew 5:38-42). The generosity of Christians ought to shock the world for it is grounded in the kingdom that is not of this world!

If we are to live out our faith we must first be convinced of God's truth. We must be convinced in our minds of concepts behind the commands like Paulinus was. Perhaps this why the Apostle Paul writes to the Church in Rome, "...be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" (12:2). Let us be led God's truth, the gift of reason, and our faith in Christ. If we will not be led by these things then we shall fall into the pit of legalism and see only rules when we should see love. We will surely fail without embracing truth, reason, and faith for we will be leaning on our own strength and understanding (which is actually weakness and foolishness).

Being Transformed

Because we have been reborn through sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ and have entered into his kingdom and his body (the Church) our lives have been turned upside down so that we now rightly stand on our heads with our feet grounded on the reliable and inherently good foundation of heaven. This means that our person is not only transformed but our very world is transformed (though not the earth itself).

It is for this reason that we can no longer live the lives we once lived before encountering Christ and his transformative Spirit. Truly, the Father leads us into his jealous and loving arms. Just as Yahweh has been the God of Abraham and always sought to make his people holy and unique in the world they occupy in a way that proves they belong only to the heaven kingdom so he continues to seek a people who have been conformed to the likeness of his son Jesus Christ in the way they live out their earthly lives, as strangers in a foreign land.

Yahweh now gathers His people into His family which is often call the Church. When we are baptized we enter into that family, adopted as a son or daughter by the Father through Christ and thus we begin to renew our mind. We are overhauled internally and this overhaul has external evidences. Being rooted in the Church changes the daily life of every saint.

As a member of the Church, the Christian receives a new calendar to live by which begins with the Advent season every November. The holy days of the kingdom replace the holidays of their former allegiances and cultures, even though there are still times when the two may find themselves celebrating the same blessings. Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost make for the greatest days of celebration for the believer.

The Church member now embraces a new approach to all relationships. The approach is love. The Christian loves family, friends, strangers/foreigners, prisoners, and enemies. In this new life the believer views all people as children of Creator God who are made in His image and treats them as brothers and sisters, even if they be wayward, for we have accepted another great change in life due to our baptism and that is new family.

In Christ, Christians recognize the truest meaning of family and loyalty. Those who do the will of the Father are the highest form of family, replacing the old ties of blood with ties of faithfulness to Yahweh. Old ties are not lost but have been superseded by the purest form of family which is found in the Creator of all things.

There are so many things that change when we put on the new self and discard the old self. The new man, being anchored in Christ and glued to the Body of Christ has found a new way to be defined. His/Her definition is created by the story of Yahweh which is found primarily in the holy scriptures which He breathed into being through faithful servants across the span of time. After Christ, all is changed. If we have not changed in our minds, hearts, and deeds then we have been foolish and believed in a false or incomplete transformation.

Therefore, let us cling to the Gospel of Christ and being transformed through the power of His Spirit by the renewing of our mind so that we will indeed know the will of our Father and that we may become faithful members of His body, knowing how to be defined and how to live as new men and women as we occupy a foreign world as strangers belonging only to a heavenly kingdom.

Praying in Schools

My brother "K" sent me this message on Facebook:

Do you feel that prayer should be put back in public schools? ...Do you feel that mandatory Christian prayer should be in public schools? Or would you be all right with Christianity, Islam, and any other religious groups having their own prayer times in public schools as long as prayer is not mandatory?

Here is my answer:

I don't think it matters much if prayer is allowed or forbidden in [public] schools. I don't think Christians ought to demand it be allowed either. If a Christian is demanding prayer be allowed in schools I would venture to say they potentially are putting the American ideals of "equality" and "freedom of religion" above fearless faithfulness to God. They may be putting American ideals above kingdom ideals. I'm not saying that freedom to practice religious liturgy is wrong or not worth pursuit but that isn't a Christian ideal. It is an American ideal. It'd be nice but I'm not convinced it's entirely possible. I'd rather see Christians seek the kingdom and see how that works out. Fortunately, we have an example in scripture of how believers ought to address the legalization or the forbidding of prayer.

In Daniel 6 we read about a great man of God named Daniel who was faced with a situation in which he had to deal with the conflict of illegal prayer. Daniel certainly didn't demand prayer to be legal or accepted when it was outlawed for anyone to prayer to Yahweh. He just prayed. He prayed at predictable times and in a known place. It was no secret to his adversaries (who coaxed the king, who loved Daniel, into creating the irreversible law for the exact purpose of getting Daniel in trouble) that he was breaking the law. Not only did he rebel against the laws of men and refuse to fight the absurd law but he was one of the most powerful men in the government! He had more pull with the king than anyone else and yet he accepted the law and acted against it. In doing this he, like the apostles later on, held to the truth that he "must obey God rather than human beings" (Acts 5:29).

Daniel's situation was far worse than the potential "banning of prayer in schools." He faced death for praying to Yahweh. Nothing happens to students who pray. Nothing. At least nothing happened to me or any of my friends and I've yet to hear from a first hand source that something has happened to a student who prayed in school. If something does happen, it's not serious. Well, not as serious as being thrown into a den filled with lions. If it is this serious, praise God for the world declaring itself the world and the faithful servants of God declaring themselves as such! Also, he has clearly proven himself able to protect his faithful ones in such times. Persecution is not something to fear (1Peter 3:14). We're called by God to be faithful and to obey him and not men. The rules of men are basically irrelevant. If they compliment the way of God then we are obedient to them and if they go against the way of God then we rebel against them in holiness just like Daniel.

I don't put much stock in the American ideal of freedom of religion (see my post Rethinking Freedom of Religion). Again, I'm not saying it is bad but I just don't believe it is possible and I don't think that is necessarily something to mourn. I believe that type of peace among men is only possible through Christ and inside his kingdom (see my postMy Struggle with Political Involvement). Everyone getting along is a nice thought but it is simply impossible in a sinful world. A government can not please everyone and should not try (for that is not the purpose of government). It is my belief that the U.S. is often attempting to please everyone. Tolerance seems to be king a lot of the time. Christians, in contrast, should be concerned with pleasing God. Christians in the U.S. are often too focused on having "rights" instead of seeing all good things as gifts from the Father. Rights don't matter. Not really. Not for the Christian. Not for the sake of protecting them from persecution anyway. We're not entitled to anything (see my postReplacing Gifts with Entitlement). We've never been taught to fear or fight against the possibility of persecution. Perhaps we flee at times but that's it. If we're fighting for the legal right to pray then we are misguided or cowardly or both. At least, that's my currently leaning.

At the end of it all, it doesn't matter if prayer is allowed, forbidden, or demanded. Christians are merely concerned with being a faithful witness to Christ. That includes praying no matter what the surrounding circumstances may be. Instead of fighting for rights let us simply fight to be faithful. Let us fight against the evil powers that attempt to keep us from being faithful by actually being faithful instead of pushing papers in front of government officials. Scripture tells us it pays to suffer for doing what is right (1Peter 3:13-22). We are not told in scripture that it is good or right to fight to get our way or to have government permission to live out our faith. Rather, we are instructed to live rightly and endure whatever consequences that may bring us. In it all, we praise God. Just like Daniel.

When Scripture Contradicts

I am reading through an article written by Brian McLaren entitled Is God Violent? I'm not a huge McLaren fan. In fact, I'm not sure I'm a fan at all. I stopped reading his work a few years ago. When I saw Sojourners publish this article on their website I had to check it out though. I'm not sure what I think about it all just yet but there was one portion I wanted to share. McLaren discusses the tension of reading the Old Testament scriptures that reveal God's violence and the Old and New Tetament scriptures that reveal God's compassion and mercy. He was wrestling with the the tension and in doing so was reworking his approach to scripture and theological issues. In his explanation of this approach he writes,

...if I see a tension in scripture, rather than appealing to Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Scofield, or the pope to resolve it, I should first turn to Jesus. If Jesus truly was the highest and fullest revelation of God, if Jesus was truly the logos, the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of God's nature, the fullness of the godhead in bodily form, and in very nature God, then his life and teaching mattered in tensions like this. And if the Bible was intended, as Jesus said, to bear witness to Christ, or as Martin Luther said, to be the manger on which Christ was presented to the world, then "when in doubt, consult Jesus" seemed like good advice.

This is my view as well. Jesus is the pinnacle of God's revelation to mankind. If there seems to be a contradiction or some sort of tension in scripture that causes confusion theologically then we ought always to turn to Jesus and see what he said and did. This is true for issues like violence, but also for issues like marriage, sexual immorality, finances, and compassion.

The second half of John 12 points us to the unity between Jesus and the Father when Jesus is written to have said, "For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken" (v. 49). In his sermon on the mount, Jesus points to Old Testament teachings and corrects the way the Jewish people have wrongly learned and applies them. It seems as though he is contradicting the old way of things when he is not. If we believe Jesus is who he says he is and who the apostles said he was then we have to side with him first and foremost when we find tension in scripture (no matter the issue).

I first came to this conclusion with firmness when I read through The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays.

Replacing Gifts with Entitlement

Life is a gift. It is the first gift our Father gives us. And like he said, it is good.

We're so used to being gifted that we often begin to see gifts as rights and we gain a sense of entitlement that we were never meant to have (even with God's original plan). I'm entitled to people being kind towards me, entitled to a home, to food, to whatever else. Well, that's what I want to think anyway. But the truth is, I'm not. In a perfect world I could expect those things at every turn but this is a world filled with sin and is no longer perfect. As soon as Adam and Eve left the garden they had to work for food, clothing, shelter. Outside the garden there was murder, sexual sin, etc. Inside the garden was only perfection. Gifts were nonstop and were the only thing one could expect because they were the only thing one could know! What was once expected was no longer such after sin entered the world. Paradise and perfection still can't be expected because sin still infests the universe. We're not entitled to anything but holy justice. Even then, we're shown mercy in Christ! To expect anything seems ungrateful of what God gave us, gives us, and promises to give us in the future. It ignores what we've done and what we continue to do as sinful people.

Homes, friends, health, comforts; These are mercies. These are gifts from a good and righteous Father to sinful and undeserving children. Now I'm not saying sinful people deserve rape, murder, homelessness, or anything like that. After all, we are supposed to treat one another well. However, those terrible happenings are results of sinful people. Of course babies don't deserve to be raped, but they also don't deserve to be born into a world of sin. Yet they are. And every child ever born has been born into a sinful world and every future born child will be because every human being (outside of Christ) has sinned and created a world which destroys the opportunity for continually expecting good. What we deserve because of sin is an eternal matter. What we get right now because of sin is consequences and unfortunately they aren't always fair. It's not fair that innocent children are harmed but that's the result of having sinful people living in the world before the birth of that child! We've created a world that was not intended exist. It's not right but it's also not what God wanted. If it is good, it is a gift. If it is bad, it's a result of sin (either by men or angels).

We should provide food and safety for those entering the world and those wandering in it. We should do all we can to be like Eden even though we can't make that happen on our own efforts. We must accept the tension of the already-but-not-yet-kingdom found in Christ Jesus. We know things SHOULD be one way (good and fair) but we also ought to know we don't deserve things to be that way and thus we can't expect things to be that way. We can expect things to be bad and unfair. We can expect to get what is wrong according to what God planned and created. It sucks but that's how it is. Things are supposed to be good but that doesn't mean we deserve things to be good or that we even ought to expect them to be good. However, we can hope for good. Even with this outlook we can rejoice in the good and be disappointed with the bad. We recognize the way things ought to be and feel the pain of when things don't meet that ideal. We rejoice greatly when things do meet that ideal though! In all of this, there is hope. Even if we have negative expectations we can have positive hopes.

Thank God for his mercy. He gives us so much more than we deserve. He helps us move towards what he intended for us. He works within and among us to bring about restoration so that someday we can expect good things at every turn. It's in Christ we find that hope. Praise God (from whom all blessings flow)!