Focus on the Dysfunctional Family

May 23, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 9 Comments

I love my friend, Larry Shallenberger’s paragraph in this post, about the danger of “Christian Church Culture”.  He likens God’s transforming process to that of a mechanic restoring an old motorcycle, believing that the old rusted bike has its best years ahead of it.  We religious people, meanwhile, tend to handle each other like airport luggage handlers. This leads to the false belief that its better to lower our heads and fit in.

Lower our heads and fit in. Covertly demand that, as a precondition for fellowship, outsiders think the way you think (or at least pretend to think the way you pretend to think), about all things, as a precondition for finding your place at the table.  And of course, there’s behavior too, and at our worst, clothes – all covertly held up as preconditions for belonging  This, I think, is what Larry means by “lower your heads and fit in”.

The trouble with this, if I can switch analogies, is that this kind of Christianity feels more like an audition on American idol, or for a sports team, than an invitation to “come as you are”.  If you don’t have the moral cache, on the front end, to fit in, you’re stuffed.  As a result, many people learn to play the church game, creating a sort of Sunday “game face” that might be far, far from reality.  “Lower your head and fit in”.

I can’t begin to articulate how damaging this culture is.  It’s a petri dish for hypocrisy, and hence one of the major reasons the church is failing to reach young generations according to this research.  It mangles the gospel, making it less about good news, and more about fear, control, and conformity.  As I wrote in my first book, “every Sunday in America, people will walk out of a worship service never to return” for these exact reasons.  I don’t blame them for leaving, if all I’m part of is a performance modification program.

THE GOOD NEWS (the gospel) is wholly other than this.

After all, we serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  That’s how God refers to Himself.  It’s God’s way of saying, “I’m for these three guys.  They’re in my family.  I identify with them.  I love them. I’ll stay with them every step of their transformative journey”  And…  just off the top of my head, here are some bits of their lives, AFTER they said yes to God:

1. one lies about the identity of his wife, handing her off as his sister to a king in order to save his own skin.

2. the same one sleeps with the maid because his wife, tired of waiting for God to miraculously get her old womb impregnated with his old seed, asks him to do so.

3. one exudes unabashed favoritism to one of his twin sons, going to great efforts to thwart God’s plan to choose and bless the other son.

4. one of the twins lies, cheats, and steals in an attempt to secure blessing and affirmation from his father.

5. one them, on the run, and in fear of his life, settles in a land where he marries four women and father’s 12 sons.

6. those twelve sons will, over the course of their days, display themselves to be jealous, petty, vengeful, thieves, murderers, liars, proud, hard-hearted, and violent, even towards their own family members.  They’ll sell one brother as a slave.  One of them will sleep with his daughter-in-law, thinking her to be a prostitute, and impregnate her.  Oh, and they’ll become known by this title: “The Patriarchs”.

Let’s put it this way.  None of them would be welcome in church, or invited to do marriage seminars, or speak for Focus on the Family, especially when I remind you that all these things occurred after they’d said yes to God.

Somehow, though, God still found room for them, stayed with them, loved them, and walked with them relentlessly, shepherding them towards a transformation that would better represent God’s heart.  I wish we, who are the church, would take a cue from God on this.

Oh, and that daughter-in-law with whom Judah (one of the twelve dysfunctional sons) slept?  Her name is Tamar, and she fathered Perez out of that union.  She nearly lost him, because when Judah’s servant tells him that (the Message translation)… “your daughter-in-law has been playing the whore – and now she’s a pregnant whore”, Judah get’s all self-righteous and calls for her execution.  When she reveals, though, who the father is, he changes his mind, and Perez is born.  He becomes the patriarch in the line of David, who establishes the kingly line through whom Christ comes.

And we think people need to clean up their act before coming to Christ? It should be enough that they want to know God and follow Him.  How about giving God a little room to work, on both others and ourselves?  How about ending the game of pretend and acknowledging that none of us, None. Of. Us… have arrived yet, that we all have issues under our issues, things to be transformed that we can’t even yet see.  That would make the church a little more humble, and a little more patient with flaws, and a lot more like Jesus.

I welcome your thoughts.

 

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Big Bibles & High Flying Flags – or the presence of Jesus?

May 18, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom Leave a Comment

Sometimes, when I go to the movies, I can’t tell the film’s name 24 hours later.   It’s all gone: plot, players, why I bothered to spend $11 to sit in a dark room for two hours.  There are those few, though, that affected me so profoundly that, even now, 26 years later, I can still remember where I was when, unexpected, “The Mission” reshaped my soul.

Having grown up in a conservative Christian home, I’d learned, by other names, notions of American Exceptionalism, and that white guys always wore white hats because we always had the moral high ground by claiming that, whatever our cause, God was on our side.  That movie, so brilliantly crafted, began plowing the soul of my heart, chipping away at all those hardened assumptions.  A more thorough reading of church history furthered the process, and the Christianity’s rethinking of mission planted new seeds, so that now I can see, with greater clarity, some truths that we desperately need to recover if we’re to recover our real calling of making Christ visible in the world:

1. “Church” as institution has insidious dangers in it. The most powerful scene in the mission is that one where the church authorities come to Jeremy Irons, the local missionary evangelist who has intertwined his life with a tribe, loving them, serving them, pointing them to Christ.  The authorities tell him that both he and the people must leave the land (because there are resources that Europe needs for their economy, and this tribe, on this their own land, stands in the way).

“Tell them they must leave”, the authority says.

In a short and powerful dialogue, the priest responds by saying that they don’t want to leave, that this is their home, that they’re afraid of the forest.  When the church authorities threaten not only war, but the loss of salvation if the people resist relocation, Jeremy Irons tells him that their not leaving and, holding  a child in his arms, that he’s not leaving either.

The choice the priest made was between the kingdom of God, dressed in the clothes of poverty and simplicity, and the powers of the world dressed in the wealth and fear wielding of a power hungry church.  It’s tempting to think of “the world” as that which happens out on the streets, or in crack houses, or maybe if you’re really liberal, in board rooms somewhere.  But 26 years ago it began to dawn on me that perhaps the most dangerous form of worldliness all is the ambition and lust for power that can easily hide behind big Bibles and high flying flags.  The idols of nationalism and institutional religion are both bad.  Together, they’re a toxic cocktail.  That’s why I resist any attempts to align Christianity with any single party, or denomination, or church.

2. Outside the camp is where good things happen.  When Jeremy Irons walks away with a child in his arms, he seals his fate of excommunication.  And at the same time he seals his fate as one committed to being the presence of Christ with people he loves.

I’m increasingly of the opinion (and it’s just that – my personal opinion), that the best moments of church history have happened outside the camp. I think of the Celtic Christian expressions that thrived outside the reach of the Roman hierarchy.  Rural, de-centralized, co-ed in their leadership, adhering to a sound creation theology, and with a bent towards co-opting cultural elements rather than destroying them, they ended up with people like Columbanus and Patrick, Hilda, and Caedman.

Then there’s the Taize work, the work of Dr. Paul Brand with Lepers, and the people who are simply fed up with all the trappings and politics of religion, like Shane Claiborn, and decide to get on with it, and seek to actually live like Jesus.

I think of Gahigi, in Rwanda, and his reconciliation work.  There’s no political gain in it for him, or prestige, or money.  He’s sitting between perpetrators of a genocide, and their victims, talking about Jesus as the source of all forgiveness.  None of these people are trying to start movements.  They’re just trying to get with the real work of following Jesus, and sometimes doing that necessitates walking away from the argumentative, politicizing, self-righteousness that has become too much of institutionalized Christianity.

There are good ways of being the presence of Christs that come because of structure, surely – things like community meals, homeless shelters, free medical clinics, and more.  But it’s tempting for some of us to think that being part of a church that offers these things is all we need to do.  Nope.  The reality is that we, all of us, are called to love actual people somehow, and being part of a church with homeless shelter doesn’t make me missional any me than going to a Mariner game makes me a baseball players.

I need to take real steps – real acts of service.  I see people taking such steps all the time, both through structured ministries, and through their own personal initiatives.  When we serve that way, for the love of Christ, we’re offering water in Jesus name.   Those cups of water are the river life that our thirsty world needs – and I pray we’ll, each of us, become part of that river.

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Faith Requires Revelation, Conviction, and Humility

May 14, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 13 Comments

Right after my last blog offering, our president chimed on the issue of gay marriage, thus making the topic even more front in center for our culture, and necessitating the conversation for all people of faith.  The many comments on my last post included pleas for ‘clarification’ on my part, so I’ll try to do that briefly.  But the main point of this post is ponder, with you, the implications of the fact that people who love Christ see things differently.  I’d argue that there are three elements necessary for living out any set of faith convictions.

Revelation is the starting point because every life of faith is a continual response to revelation.  God reveals, through creation, fellowship, scripture, and we respond to that revelation.  Christ’s followers all believe that the Bible is core and foundational revelation to which we respond.  God has spoken, and it is ours to discern what God is saying to us through the book given us, a book of history, poetry, law, letters, and records of dreams and revelations.  There are many people for whom the previous conversation will have little meaning, because this fundamental starting point can’t be accepted.  Still, it’s where we who follow Christ begin.

Conviction means that we’re called to respond to revelation.  The entire book is filled with God saying, in many ways, “life works best if you do it my way!”, beginning in the garden of Genesis, moving through the life of Israel, and later the church.  So it obedience becomes our calling, so to speak.  We’re trying to understand what God is saying, and follow it.  When I study what the Bible has to say about marriage, I see that everyone throughout the Bible appeals back to Genesis 2 as the reference point, and that’s where it’s “one man and one woman”.  Paul gives the import of the man and the woman theological weight in Ephesians 5, when speaks about the couple’s calling to be a living illustration of Christ and the church.  Some comments wrote that the church has so “mangled marriage” over the centuries, that it’s hypocritical to appeal to God’s ideal as the starting point.   But even within the Bible there are glaring failures to fulfill God’s vision for marriage, including Solomon’s 300 wives, David’s adultery, and God’s accommodation of divorce.  We have a hard time getting it right.  That’s no reason to lower the bar or change the vision, or change the precedent of God’s ideal.  To the contrary, our collective failure begs for a return to God’s vision, because such returning is called repentance. That means I need to uphold Genesis 2, and Jesus’ and Paul’s definition of marriage as a pastor, or I won’t be following my own convictions.  If, in our fear of being wrong in our convictions, we refused to hold to them, then we’re not really living by faith – we’re living by fear.

But convictions are tricky, because not everyone who loves Christ shares my convictions, on this, or a thousand other issues.  Some people don’t mind car loans, others do, based on this.  Some people own big guns and keep them under their beds.  Others don’t, based on this.  Some people think women can lead churches based on this.  Others don’t, based on this.  The church argued, in its early days about whether Gentiles could become Christ followers.  Then they argued about circumcision as a requirement for the gospel.  Then they argued about eating certain meats.  It’s no newsflash that this early church, empowered as they were by the Holy Spirit, didn’t agree on everything all the time.  Why should things be any different, now that the gospel has taken on a million iterations as it has expanded to fill the globe, adapting to various cultural expressions and sometimes losing its essence for a while, only to be recovered later.  The fact that good people disagree doesn’t mean both are right, or that God is absent.  It just means this:  good people aren’t really that good.  Our capacity to know truth is tainted.  Yes, we have the Spirit, but a quick look at church history tells us that people still missed the mark consistently, because we don’t only have the Holy Spirit, we have blind spots, and fallen natures.

How then should we live?  Should we abandon our convictions?  No!  Instead, we need to live faithful to our convictions, but we need to do so, always, with a key ingredient:

Humility is the acknowledgement that this is how I understand, and am responding to God’s revelation.  I’m trying to listen faithfully to the Holy Spirit, trying to do my homework, taking into account sound principles of Bible study and the view of the church historically on the given issue or text.  But then, having arrived at my conviction, I need to be careful to say, “this is my belief”.  Of course I believe I’m right.  So do you.  But humility is a posture that’s concerned about refining truth, purifying truth, discovering truth.. more than it’s concerned about defending itself.  Humility proves itself valuable, for without it, we’d still have a wrong reading of Genesis 9, and slavery would be the result.

Humility doesn’t mean a lack of conviction.  Nor does it mean a lack of spirited debate.  It simply means that I’m continuing to look for truth, continually open to my understanding of God’s Word being reordered by further revelation.  The best comments on the previous blog post displayed this kind of humility, and were evident from both the left and the right.   This conversation, though, is very different from a culture war, because though we live our convictions with boldness, and are willing to pay the price, we do so with the belief that we’ve not yet arrived at a perfect understanding of the gospel.  Those who want a pastor with a perfect understanding, a 140 character answer to every question, and a quick clever response that silences all those who disagree with him, don’t want me as their pastor.  As long as I’m a pastor and a writer, I’ll articulate my convictions, and seek to live them out faithfully.  I’ll also listen to your different view respectfully, and maybe, in the process, we’ll both become more like Jesus.

Note: I haven’t addressed, in this post, a response to requests regarding my reading of Romans 1.  I’ll do that in the comments section of the previous post… hopefully tonight.

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Carolina (and gay unions) on my mind

May 9, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 135 Comments

It’s official:  North Carolina has officially, and constitutionally banned same sex marriage and civil unions.  This marks another, in a long line of evolving legislation and discussion occurring on this important topic.  It’s important, not only for the small percentage of the populace who are gay, but because where we ultimately land on this issue will ultimately reflect both our theology as believers, and our commitments to people who are marginalized minorities in our society.  At the risk of offending everyone on both sides of the issue, and with the caveat that we all need bigger ears and smaller mouths if we’re to make progress redemptively, I offer three observations:

1. I don’t know anyone who’s chosen to be gay. They might be out there, but I’ve not met them.  Most of the gay people I know are big hearted, and many of them pray, read their bible regularly, and are seeking God’s best for their lives.  None of them ever said, “God please make me gay”, and why would they?  Who would chose, intentionally, to be the object of fear, hatred, and social marginalization?  To the contrary, most gay people I know struggled with their sexual identity, desperately wanting it to be ‘normal’.  But for the majority (not all) of them, no amount of prayer, counseling, confession, or exorcism, ever led to the desired change.

This, of course, flies in the face of a most common reading of Romans 1 which seems to trace gender orientation to a wholesale rejection of God (1:28  “…they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer).  I know the right answer here is “don’t let your experience determine your interpretation”, but after meetings dozens of gay people who read their Bibles regularly, pray, and desperately want to honor God with their lives, I’m beginning to wonder if the standard interpretation might be wrong, sort of a ‘the earth as at the center of the solar system because of this verse‘ situation.  If it’s true that more prayer, more counseling, more whatever… won’t, in most cases, change things for my gay friends, we need to stop blaming them for being gay, and find ways to help them live fully in Christ, discovering together what that means for their unique situation.

2. There’s a civil rights issue at stake. Our culture is terribly confused regarding sexuality, as evidenced by the hook-up culture, serial monogamy, and the general reduction of sexuality, for some, to just another form of recreation.  “Like tennis…only more fun because we both win” as someone once said to me.  This is one of the reasons I’m planning on preaching and teaching on relationships this coming fall.

For all that, though, we’re still a culture that exalts the covenant commitment and doesn’t look kindly on cheating (just ask John Edwards, or Anthony Weiner if you doubt me).  It seems that the notion of commitment is still seen as valuable, and this, of course, a good thing, something which carries not only responsibilities, but privileges.  I’m wondering why the church should rule that civil unions, which exalt this committed state for two people of the same sex, is in our purvue to discourage?  Wouldn’t we rather have committed relationships than promiscuous ones?  Further, civil unions are precisely that: civil.  Why, in a culture intent on separating church and state, would we want to impose our own definition of marriage on two people who simply want to make a commitment to each other? It seems that on the ethical spectrum of things, we ought to favor commitment rather than actively fight against it.

3. It’s time to take a turn to the right, as I consider what the Bible has to say about marriage. This is because marriage, in the Pauline definition (which I presume to be written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) seems to require a man and woman.  The challenge for my gay friends is that we all need to acknowledge that marriage is God’s place to display the relationship of Christ and the Church, and that this display is intended to be reflected through the unique nature and calling of, respectively, the husband (Christ) and the wife (the church).  I know I’ve just opened an entirely different can of worms, but I limit blog posts to 1000 words, so forgive me for moving on.  If it’s true that husbands and wives have unique roles and responsibilities that are part of their marriage vocation (and I believe it is), then marriage can’t be androgynous.   To live seriously and fully into this calling requires, it seems to Paul, a husband and wife.   This doesn’t denigrate someone who’s gay, any more than it denigrates someone who’s single, for marriage is, after all, a calling.  Further, it’s not a universal calling, as Paul also makes clear.

This, however, begs the question of how we treat single people and unattached gay people in the church, because though Paul exalts singleness, the modern church doesn’t.  As a result, singleness, for many, equals loneliness, as it exposes the isolation that comes with consumerism and mobility.  The church needs to swim upstream against this, and enable every single person to find deep, familial, community.

If civil unions exist, then the word marriage can, I hope, be preserved for churches to offer their own hallowed definition.  Though some may see room for gay marriage, others may not.   What’s important though, is that the word can be preserved to be defined by communities of faith.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  This conversation isn’t going away.  It’s dividing congregations, cultures, families.  I’m praying that, in Christ, we can genuinely listen to one another as week seek to understand what God would have us be, as neighbors, citizens, Christ followers, and church leaders.  And in that, the I know we mustn’t be either a group of arrogant, homophobes, nor blindly following cultural trends in the name of relevance.  Rather, we need a continual search for truth, grace, and love – for this time, with these people.  I have a friend in Boston who’s going to a a yearlong study of the topic in his church.  Maybe we will too.  God help us.

I welcome your thoughts.

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