A few days ago, Michael Spencer, a.k.a. “The Internet Monk“, wrote a thought-provoking opinion article about Evangelicalism for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper entitled “The Coming Evangelical Collapse”:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

Mr. Spencer, a long-time blogger and commentator about issues related to the Evangelical Church, is also the blogger behind the Jesus Shaped Spirituality site.

The article is divided into four parts: an introduction, an explanation about why, in the author’s view, Evangelicalism is going to collapse, a summary of what will be left in the wake of the Evangelical Church, and, finally, a discussion of whether this upcoming collapse will be good or bad.

The introduction explains the thesis of this commentary article. Evangelicalism will not die but will shrink to half of its current size in two generations. More aggressively secular societies will lead to more hostile public policies towards Evangelical Christianity. In the face of public pressure, many evangelical churches and para-church ministries will either fade away or grow increasingly secular themselves.

The collapse of Evangelicalism will occur because of financial difficulties, too close of an alignment with conservative politics, ignorance about history and theology, and consumerism, among other things. In Mr. Spencer’s view, megachurches will never completely vanish, but they will become increasingly weakened as they emphasize “relevance” over doctrine.

Many evangelicals will go to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. Others will go into the growing house church movement. Mr. Spencer also predicts that “emerging” churches will fade away by blending back into Mainline Protestantism. He also sees the rise of Pentacostal/Charismatic churches becoming the dominant part of what remains of the Evangelical Church.

Perhaps in a tip of the hat to Shane Claiborne and other new monastics, Mr. Spencer observes that the church will need to return to being countercultural and “empire subvers[ive]” instead of relying on a sense of entitlement and privilege.

I found Mr. Spencer’s critiques of the “pragmatism and shallowness” of evangelicalism to be his strongest. The failure of Evangelicalism to build across the generations through personal discipleship is perhaps its greatest weakness.

Mr. Spencer provides more detailed information about the coming Evangelical collapse at:

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-original-coming-evangelical-collapse-posts

Continuing with our reflections on the 12 marks of the New Monasticism, we encounter the third mark:

“Hospitality to the stranger”

The first mark of the new monasticism dealt with getting to the right location, whether physical or spiritual. The second addressed sharing with one another within a living and vital community.

This third mark of the new monasticism take things one step further: sharing hospitality with strangers.

After all, it’s one thing to share resources and time with people that you know well: friends and family that you know and trust, sometimes for years or even decades. It’s a bigger step of love to reach out beyond your typical circles of relationships to give freely to those in need whom you may have never met before.

The dictionary defines hospitality as “the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers” and, perhaps more enlightening for us here, “the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hospitality).

Although this mark pertains specifically to strangers, it is often the case that guests and strangers come together. Who of us have not had occasion where we were planning to entertain a guest yet that guest brought along a stranger whom we had not met before? In these cases, I think that this dictionary definition might need to say “guests and strangers” instead of “guests or strangers”.

And while I think that “tag-along” strangers that come along with intended guests are indeed strangers, I think that the intent of this mark is to drive our imagination out to care for the strangers for whom we cannot even call “friends of friends”. 

Some of you may have seen the Africa Trek television series, where Alexandre Poussin and his wife Sonia walk across Africa from south to north. During this amazing adventure, Alexandre and Sonia walked through remote parts of Africa that were far from any hotel. As they walked, they often encountered strangers who insisted that the two of them stop and stay with them for the night. Much of their journey centered around the hospitality of these perfect strangers who then became friends. In a very real sense, this cross-continent journey was not Alexandre and Sonia’s alone, but also the journey of the friendships and hospitality that they found along the way.

So what is the hospitality that we should offer?

I could offer a list here, yet I think that the yearning to be hospitable should be whatever is truly and uniquely on your heart to do.

At its heart, true hospitality, whatever it is, is, ultimately, an expression of love. It must be something more than a mere “bargained-for exchange”. True hospitality is all about giving of yourself and expecting nothing in return.

I also believe that hospitality is an expression of home. Hospitality is where strangers and friends are welcomed in and truly made to feel “at home”, if only temporarily. And please remember that sometimes we are the ones who bring the hospitality, that true sense of home, to others by visiting those who cannot go out themselves: the shut-ins and the prisoners, for example.

What prevents us from offering that hospitality?

1.  Well, I think that the first mark has to come first: relocate to the abandoned places. You first need to be a location where strangers are more likely to be found.

2.  Second, you should be practicing the second mark: sharing with friends. If you are already being hospitable to friends, it will be a lot easier to do so with strangers. Here, you are already practicing the habits of hospitality with each other.

3.  Hoarding prevents us from giving to others: to friends or to strangers. After all, we each need to be reminded that it is truly more blessed to give than to receive. Giving is a lifestyle choice (as is hoarding, BTW).

4.  Strangers often come at times that are the most “inconvenient” to our personal schedules. Because we don’t yet know them, there is no way to “synchronize our schedules”. Yet this inconvenience becomes convenient when it’s something that marks our lives. Showing hospitality to strangers is all about putting other people first, even when it adversely (and probably temporarily) impacts our time.

5.  Finally, sometimes we’re scared. After all, strangers are not people that we know and trust (at least not yet). Yet this, in and of itself, should not be an excuse. Depending on your own particular circumstances and as you are led by the spirit of God, you should be able to practice hospitality to strangers in a way that is safe and secure.

The movie “Slumdog Millionaire” is a 2008 film that tells the story of three children from the slums of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. Slumdog Millionaire follows the lives of two brothers and their friend from their childhood in Mumbai to the lead character’s winning of the Millionaire television show in India as a young man. The film is a wonderful story in its own right, but there also a few “symbols and shadows” in the story line that you might not be aware of.

Consider the names of the children. The last name of the two brothers is Malik, which means king. The protagonist’s name is Jamal, which means handsome. The older brother’s name is Salim, which means peaceful, and Latika means creeper or vine (or elegant). Salim spends his short life searching for peace but really never finds it. Jamal’s name points to his being looked upon favorably by the viewers in India upon his winning the grand prize. After the brother’s are displaced from their family after anti-muslim riot and then are forced to flee a bad orphanage, they, in effect, become “wandering kings”. Jamal’s quest from then on is to return to Latika (the vine).

The concentration of the game show on the number 100 is also significant: There was one question about the one-dollar U.S. bill and one about centuries in cricket. The number 10 often symbolizes the end of one order and the beginning of another (thus we have ten fingers and use a base-10 number system, where to get from 9 to 10 we must add a digit). The number 100, 10 times 10, symbolizes a major change in the order of things.

Jamal’s life-story takes an important turn when he meets a blind girl who is begging on the streets. Being a blind, begging girl is perhaps as low of a social status as one can have in India. Yet it is this girl who points the way back to Latika, Jamal’s long-lost friend. The girl also knows that Benjamin Franklin is the face on the $100 bill, something that she really has no need of knowing. The girl points out that Benjamin Franklin’s portrait has unusual characteristics: he has long hair like a girl. This scene is in contrast to another part of the movie where the police officer jokes with Jamal that everyone in India knows whose picture is on the Rupee note: Gandhi. That’s common knowledge.

Money can serve as a symbolic representation for a way of doing things (a “currency”). In this movie, Indian money represents the typical or common order of things. The $100 U.S. bill, on the other hand, represents what is not common. It is a larger currency note than most poor Indians would ever see, and it is foreign. However, it is the unofficial currency of the world at large. It represents the atypical order of things that lies beyond the present, everyday reality of the characters in the film. When Jamal and Salim start (without sanction) working as tour guides for Western tourists at the Taj Mahal, the movie subtly, and almost unconsciously, shows their change from dealing with Indian money to dealing with American money. Jamal, as a tour guide, acts as a bridge between these two worlds. Notice in one scene how Jamal takes two Americans to see “the real India” (when their rented car is, shall we say, involuntarily relieved of much of its contents). (This particular scene is also a subtle nod to the Western audiences of this movie, most of whom are not familiar with the poverty and injustices that are sometimes are a part of life for the poorest of the poor in India.)

The film’s turning point comes when Jamal must prove his identity. At the end of the first day of the television show, the police assume that he is a fraud, arrest him, and subject him to harsh interrogation. Through various flashbacks in the movie and rough questioning by the officers, the crux of the matter for the police comes down to this question: Is Jamal Malik a fraud or does he really know the answers to the show’s questions? Through telling the story of his life to the police officers (in other words, by being completely transparent with them), Jamal demonstrates that the truth is inside of him. And by doing so, he gains the victory and is able to return to the game show to answer its final question.

In the film, Salim symbolizes law (religion without love), and Jamal represents love. The respective heart-attitudes of the two brothers is demonstrated to us when Salim sells, without permission, Jamal’s autograph of the famous Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan. To Jamal, this autograph was priceless, but to Salim it was just a piece of paper to be bartered for something else. Later, Jamal did not even care if he would win or lose the game show prize; he only wanted to be reunited with Latika. In the middle of the film, Salim imprisons Latika and treats her only as a commodity, whereas Jamal is genuinely interested in her welfare without any conditions placed upon their relationship. At the end of the movie, Salim finally releases Latika and entrusts her to the care of Jamal (he gives her his mobile phone, knowing that Jamal will be calling it later). This is a picture of the law finally dying and giving way to love. Salim dying a bathtub full of money is perhaps a more obvious symbol of the ultimate emptiness of riches.

Even though Jamal was a humble servant (serving tea as a chai-wallah at a call center), in the end his true identity as a handsome king (in this case, king of the game show Millionaire) is shown for everyone to see.

Dr. Sam Soleyn mentioned three key symbols in Jesus’s story of the prodigal son in his recent teaching sessions entitled “The Mindset of the Orphan” (please see http://www.soleyn.org/download_materials.html).

When the prodigal son returned to his father, the father gave him three things. Each of these gifts were symbols of status in the ancient world.

1.  A robe. The robe is a symbol of identity. To put on the robe of another was tantamount to identifying yourself with that person. (Consider the custom in Latin American countries of a president wearing the national sash over his or her right shoulder. Here, the president is identifying his or her self with the nation and accepting the responsibility of representing it.) In the times of Jesus, a slave or household servant could not wear a decorative robe; only an honored son could wear the robe of his father. It was a mark of distinction and privilege.

2.  A ring. A ring is a symbol of authority. As with the robe, only a privileged son could wear the ring of his father. This was not the authority of self-will; rather, it was authority given freely from a father to his son. It was the type of authority where the son could show the ring and rightfullly say, “I’m doing this in the name of my father”.

3.  Shoes (Sandals). Shoes were the sign of ability and purpose. Only slaves would go barefoot. A son of a wealthy house must be given shoes. Shoes provide the ability to walk about in relative comfort.

Please notice also in the story that not only did the father give these gifts freely to his son, but he had ordered that these gifts be given quickly, without any delay. The status of the returned son was restored immediately and without any conditions.

In the story, therefore, we see a restoration of identity, authority, and purpose without any conditions when a lost son returned to his father. And it is these three symbols that tell us that story of restoration in a deeper, richer way than words alone could.

——————-

For a comparison of Jesus’s story of the prodigal son and a similar story in Mahayana Buddhism, please see:

http://www.comparativereligion.com/prodigal.html

 

The use of the term “hinge point of history” by Pastor Rick Warren during his Inauguration Prayer for President Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, has received some interesting discussion.

For example, please see:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258545247904479.html

Evidently, an exact definition of the term “hinge point” is not known. The phrase seems to bring us to images of how a door swings on its hinges, thus allowing a door to close or to open.

Regardless of the “official” definition, I think, though, that Pastor Warren’s intent was to say that history, with the inauguration of the Mr. Obama, is now making a clear turn from one era to another.

Whether Mr. Obama’s ascent to the highest office in the United States represents a new era (the Age of Obama, perhaps), I’ll leave it for others to decide. As is usually the case with such things, time will tell. As a history professor once told me, it really takes at least 25 years of time to pass before past events can be put in the proper historical perspective. It’s at that point that politics begin to pass into history.

What I can say here is that, for the spiritual seeker, the true quest in life is to find the door, the “hinge point”, between time and eternity. As the book of Ecclesiastes says, we are each born with “eternity in our hearts”. Yet, at the same time, we have been placed in a world where the eternal is somehow restricted. The desire to press through from this present world to the mysteries of the everlasting can never be completely pushed away. For this is the journey for which are spirits yearn for, cry out for. It is the spiritual call which gnaws at us and drives us forward, yet it is also the search from which we are sometimes so easily distracted.

As you consider the term “hinge point”, please consider not just politics or doors, but the spiritual journey. For it is this eternal hinge point that matters most.

Jesus said many radical things. One of the things that he said was that “something greater than Solomon is here”. Jesus said this in response to certain religious leaders of his time. These religious teachers and scribes had asked to see a visible, miraculous sign from Jesus.

It was clear in the rest of the gospels that Jesus could and did perform miracles (signs). Yet Jesus never performed miracles because he was commanded to do so by other people. If he had done so, it would have demonstrated that he had had the power but not the authority to do what he was doing. It would have shown that he was working under the authority of earthly authorities, religious or political.

To Jesus, authority was more important than power. It was the authority of Jesus that first impressed the people who had first listened to him (see Luke 4:31-32). And, later on, the direct question of authority from the religious leaders led to the puzzling response that Jesus gave back to them: A question about authority that they chose not to answer. This led Jesus to say to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” To Jesus, you must know who truly are before you can know what to do. To humanity, the natural thought process is usually reversed: in other words, might makes right. If you have the power, then others must obey you. For Jesus, this was not the way of life, … the way of love.

For the people of Jesus’ time, Solomon, the son of the great king David, was the most powerful and most wise king. Solomon reigned almost 1,000 years before Jesus. His kingdom’s boundaries were greater in extent than at any other time in the history of Israel. The capital of Jerusalem was so wealthy during his rule that silver was considered to be as though it were worthless: only gold was valuable. And, of course, his wisdom was legendary. In Jesus’ time, the authority of Solomon as a great king was unquestioned.

For Jesus, however, Solomon the king was a symbol, a shadow of something greater that would ultimately come later in history. Solomon’s reign was one of visible displays of greatness. Yet, with this story about Solomon in the common thoughts of everyone in his society, Jesus made the amazing statement that something greater than Solomon was there.

Rather than the restoration of the kingdom of Israel to the greatness of the days of Solomon, Jesus spoke of another kingdom, the eternal kingdom of God. What is the kingdom of God? Rather than answer that question directly, Jesus invites us here to think about the greatest rulers that the world has ever seen. (And don’t restrict yourself only to thinking about political rulers: think about business leaders, scientists, and others, also, who have made significant contributions for the greater good.) Then, once you have carefully considered the greatest qualities of each of these rulers and their kingdoms, then consider each of them, even at their very best, to be a mere shadow and preview of the goodness of God ruling in and through people. … And what is goodness? It is power carefully constrained under proper authority to do things that will be beneficial to others, especially the less powerful, in love. … When goodness is reflected from God into the world, then this is the kingdom of God, and this kingdom has a king.

The familiar leads to the unfamiliar. The knowledge of the best of the kingdoms of this world present a shadow and a type of the kingdom of God.

I will admit that it is not really possible to “prove” or “disprove” the appearance of angels in the world today. The appearance of supernatural beings is really beyond the realm of scientific proof and measurement. However, that being said, you might also find this to be an inspirational story about the appearance of a guardian angel.

http://cbs11tv.com/video/?id=36288@ktvt.dayport.com

The power of the president in the United States to pardon criminals of their crimes is absolute and cannot be reviewed by any other part of the government (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 1). The original intent of this power was evidently two-fold: (1) it allowed a president to bring peace and order back to the nation after a period of rebellion or unrest (this occurred after the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s and after the Civil War in 1865) and (2) it provided for a ad-hoc appeals process in a time before the appellate court system was fully established in the U.S. In spite of this original plan, the pardon power as specified in the U.S. Constitution is absolute and has no strings attached to a president’s authority to use this power.

The pardon power may be applied to people currently serving sentences in prison. In this case, an inmate may have his or her sentence reduced or may be set free immediately. However, usually, the pardon power is used to restore the rights of citizenship to people who have already completed their prison terms.

By custom, presidents use their power to pardon on Christmas Eve (December 24) or during their final days in office. This past Christmas Eve (2008), President Bush evidently pardoned one man by mistake. The exact reason why a mistaken pardon was signed by the president is not clear, nor is it clear that such an event has ever occurred in the entire history of the nation.

However, because the official pardon papers had not yet been delivered by hand to the recipient of the presidential act of forgiveness, the pardon was not yet legal and so the president could legally withdraw and cancel out the pardon.

…

And so it is in the spiritual life. The intent to give and the matching intent to receive a gift is not enough for a gift to be legitimate. A gift must actually be exchanged from the donor to the recipient for it to be real.

An opportunity from heaven should be assumed to be a limited-time offer. God may want to give something to you and you may want to receive it, but until you actually take hold of it, then that divine gift is not actually yours. Like the man who told Jesus to allow him to go bury his father first before fully committing himself to follow Jesus, there was a clear invitation from Jesus and a desire for that man to follow after him. Yet this man apparently allowed this special limited chance to expire.

And so each of us might do the same on our spiritual journeys if we are not careful. Unlike the president’s mistaken pardon, God does not make mistakes. But God does insist that we take hold of the gifts that he assigns to us while the time is right for us to receive them.

Many things must be unlearned if one is to fully experience the subtle majesty of the stories of the gospels. For people such as ourselves, Westerners living in the post-Enlightenment era, a mode of life and thinking that is now foreign to us was fully accepted during the time of the ancients. For example, a belief in supernatural beings like gods, goddesses, angels, and demons was considered normal during the life and times of Jesus and his disciples.

When the Midaeval missionaries first encountered the tribes of northern and eastern Europe, the chief question that each of the tribal leaders had for them was this: “Is your god stronger than our gods?” Their questions were not: “Does God exist?”, “Does God care about us?”, or “Why should I care about God?” Rather, the tribes assumed that the Christian evangelists had a god and were representing him.

Stepping back further in time, look closely at the state of mind of Pontius Pilate in regards to the trial of Jesus. Pilate, the historical record tells us, was a man who did not flinch from dispensing tough justice, even to the point of mass executions. Because of this, modern scholars are puzzled by Pilate’s hesitancy to dispatch Jesus to his death (although he ultimately did just that). Yet to a pre-modern leader like Pilate, the possibility that Jesus might be divine led to a caution to dispense justice. Pilate took the dream of his wife seriously, at least seriously enough to pause before issuing the death warrant. The divinity of Jesus, in the ancient Greco-Roman sense of the existence of gods, was affirmed right after the death of Jesus on the cross when the leader of the Roman soldiers said, “Surely this was the son of a god”.

And notice in the gospels that the opponents of Jesus did not question that he had actually performed miracles. Looking closely at the stories of Jesus, his opponents objected to his miracle-working on the Sabbath day or they assumed that Jesus had used the power of the devil to perform miracles. They in no way questioned that extra-natural events had taken place by the efforts of Jesus.

Taking a step back to a pre-Enlightenment sense of life, the gospel stories surrounding Christmas also will come with more clarity to us. To the modern Western mind, it might be impossible to imagine ancient astrologers (“magi”) travelling a long distance based on astronomical events in order to pay homage to the brith of a foreign king. We see, however, that the people of the time took this all very seriously when those magi arrived in Jerusalem and asked “Where is the one who was just born as the king of the Jews?”

Likewise, when a baby was born in ancient Judea, the friends and family of the child would come together and sing around the home of the newborn in joy and happiness. So the coming of a large group of singing angels to nearby shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus was a supernatural event that fit the natural cultural traditions of that time and place.

When you read the ancient stories of Jesus’s birth, take a quiet moment to let go of strictly held ideas that only what is seen and can be scientifically measured is real. When you do, these stories will take root in a fresh way in your heart.

Near the beginning of the history of humanity, in the second generation of the human race, there were two brothers. Unlike their parents, neither brother had had the opportunity to know God personally by talking with him face-to-face. Yet both brothers had the desire to please God, and so each one prepared a gift for God. One brother worked hard in his field and brought a basket filled with a variety of fruits to present to God as a gift. His younger brother brought a lamb as a sacrifice to God.

For some reason, God liked the gift of the younger brother, but God didn’t accept the fruit basket from the older one.

Yet we might ask ourselves today: why would an all-powerful God care about one particular gift and yet disregard another? Could he not create anything that he wants at any time that he wants?

Well, it was not the actual gifts that counted, but, rather, the attitudes of the hearts of the brothers that mattered to God. The older one said to himself as he put his basket of fruits together: “Look at what I’ve done for God. I’ve worked hard for many months, from sunrise to sunset each day, to grow these pieces of fruit for God. Surely God will recognize all of the hard work that I’ve done for him and accept my gift with great pleasure. With this gift, God will also grant me a favored place in the sight of my family.” The younger one, on the other hand, said something like this to himself as prepared his lamb as a gift for God: “You know, there is really nothing that I could give to God that he couldn’t provide for himself if he really wanted to do that. I also see that my parents had once had a much closer relationship with God, even to the point of speaking with him face-to-face on a daily basis. That opportunity is now closed off to me and my brother because my parents stepped outside of the spiritual boundaries that God had carefully set up for them. I have no power in and of myself to repair that breach of trust and relationship with God. Yet, I truly desire to show God that I love him. I love him because I can see that, since God did not destroy my parents even though they had disobeyed him, God must still have a plan for my family. The one way that I know how to demonstrate love is to make a sacrifice. If I let go of something that is very meaningful to me while expecting nothing in return, that’s the best that I can think of to show my love. After all, God made everything anyway, including all of the animals that I watch over. By giving one of them to God, I honor him and show that I’m not interested in hoarding what he has given to me for myself. By shedding its blood, there is no way back: It’s life will be poured out and I can never recover my loss. Yet, I’ll show God that I love him the most, by giving up one of my finest lambs to him. Its very life will demonstrate the love that I have for him.”

The older brother approached God by an attitude of exchange and barter: I do something for God; now God should do something for me. The younger brother came to God with an attitude of love and sacrifice: I give up something special to him, one of my lambs in the prime of its life, simply because I love him.

This way of the lamb is the way of love.

« Older Posts — Newer Posts »