Wealth (unfinished)

Luke 4:32-35 “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”

In modern Christian life, there are many that teach what is referred to as the health and wealth gospel. This news focuses on the idea that when we tithe, pray, and surrender our lives to Jesus, that he will return our money and devotion tenfold, giving us innumerable treasure here on earth and assuring us of bodily health. While alluring, I think that these ideas are misguided and, while I do not wish to cause trouble with my brothers, this gospel needs to be called out as what it is: a sinful lie that aims our focus onto our own greed and wellbeing, and not outward creating a relationship with God and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

We Americans are inundated every day with commercialism. We have billboards, television, radio, product placement, product misplacement, sale signs; buy now, pay later, all you can eat, lowest price ever, lowest price possible unless you go across the street and see what they have it for, once in a lifetime sales every other week, hurry before time runs out, before we put it back in the vault, this may be your last chance, because our product can make you better, faster, stronger, smarter, sexier, less wrinkles, more wrinkles, we can even make you into an elephant if you have the right money, works only in conjunction with diet and exercise, this product is not FDA approved and is not meant to cure, treat, or diagnose any disease, and we may not have actually done any tests on it yet per say.

With a flood of advertisements like this, how can we escape feeling like we need to buy, own, make more money, etc.. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I don’t want to have nice things and have enough money to comfortably care for my family, but where is the line? And what does God say?

Here is what Jesus says about treasure: “Do not store up for ourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21) “If you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21)

So to Jesus, treasure was not found in the money that we had, but the price we put into heaven. We do not horde wealth on earth where, in the end, we will never have it anyway, but we are to give to the poor, invest in others, invest in God and follow Jesus.

Now, yes, I know that the second quote is directed to one person specifically, but as is said in 2 Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

So what is the treasure that we have saved up on earth? And does it have to be money? What do we have to sell? If we want to be perfect, do we have to sell our possessions? Give up television? Stop working so much? And start giving to the poor, reading books that shake us up and make us question what we have been always taught in order to bring us closer to God, and spend time with those who are in need (family, friends, food pantry, etc.) that we may have good relations with them and so that we may be shining examples of God?

(look up wealth and bring in argument about being a good steward of time and money)

Grace Vs. Works

One of the arguments that we as Christians have is how our relationship with God and the status of our salvation is defined. There are those who argue that we are saved by grace and that grace alone is what we need. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, they argue, was a get out of jail free card essentially, and that all we need to do is accept this free gift and we become part of the “in” crowd. The problem with this view is that while we do need to come to a union with God in Christ Jesus, throughout Jesus’ ministry he preached of caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc.

This brings us to the other side of the argument, that we are not saved by grace, but that it is our works that save us. We are not judged by the status of our souls in alignment with God but by how our actions align with God’s will for our lives. This view is good for displaying how we should act in the world but it does not acknowledge the life-giving sacrifice of Jesus’ death on the cross.

Both of these arguments, I think, fall short from the reality that we find ourselves in. The one is flawed in that we accept Jesus for fear of condemnation, but never allowing that relationship to change us by allowing God to give us rebirth in who we were made to be, and the other acknowledges the need for us to change and to change the world around us but sticking only to the ideals of social justice and charity ignores the matter of submitting to Jesus as Lord.

I think that to truly grasp the whole concept of how we are to live in relationship with God we need to embrace the idea that we are in a marriage to Jesus. The Bible is constantly describing the spiritual relationship we have with God in terms of marriage. Jesus Christ is our bridegroom and we the church are his bride. This being true then there must be likenesses in the areas of spiritual marriage to the Lord and the marriages that we share with our earthly husbands and wives.

In “Flame”, the second installment in a short video series called nooma, Rob Bell, one of the teaching pastors at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan, breaks down love into three categories; friendship, companionship, and sexual love. Rob demonstrates how a balance between the emotions and attachments that two people can share with each other can be the difference between one or two small flames, and a raging bonfire. So how does this apply to grace and works? Don’t worry. We’ll get there.

First, friendship. So what is a friend? Webster defines the word friend as, “a person attached to another by feelings or affection or to personal regard,” so in our relationship with God, when we become friends with Him, we attach ourselves to Him as we would our human friends. We care for God and what God’s will is. We trust in Him and start emulating him. His concerns start becoming our concerns and we profess him to be who he truly is. In our friendship we lay the claim that Jesus is Lord and that God is the one true god.

We’ve already come to grace in God and yet we’ve only come to the surface of what a love relationship looks like. I think that too often this is where we as Christians stop in our relationship. We become friends with God and we get to know what he’s like, but we don’t go much deeper in any meaningful fashion and I know we can go further.

Companionship with God is the next step in reaching our goal. Companion is a soft word that I think should be connected to much powerful ideas. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word companion, I think buddy, or pal, or any of those other words that evoke ideas of light childhood relationships that may or may not include shoes and a fishing pole. Companionship should, I think, instead be defined with the idea of two people inseparably bonded together. When I think of companionship, I want the image of wanting to be nowhere but where I am with whomever it is I’m with, be it my wife or with God. So in our relations with God, companionship is that yearning after we’ve learned who God is to be with Him only. To desire nothing more than to do his will, submitting all of our self to him fully.

So finally we come to sexual love. So what is sexual love and how can we relate it to our walk with God? At it’s core, sex has two purposes. First it is a physical manifestation of the emotional love between two people, and the second purpose is it’s result, which is children. In our walk with God, I see this love played out like this; the creation of more children, which is leading others to Christ, and works. Works, I believe is that physical manifestation of the love that we share with God, and from that love we birth more Christians and more works.

Think of it this way: we are introduced to God as we are a beautiful, deep, passionate woman who entrances every fiber of our being. We get to know God as we do this woman, learning what His likes and dislikes are, what He is like, and what He cares about. As time and connection progresses, we find ourselves falling more and more in love with Him and we want to shout this love from the rooftops. Everyone we meet we’re telling about this awesome God that we’ve decided to give our lives to. We, at some point come to the realization that there is nothing else we want to do and nowhere else we want to be than in his presence, which isn’t hard since God is everywhere. We start giving up the parts of ourselves that God is teaching us is not good, just as in a relationship and marriage, we are constantly learning about who we are through the mirror held up to us by our significant other. We shed our selfishness and replace it with selflessness, materialism is exchanged for generosity, and a mundane, banal life is given up for living each day with meaning and purpose. Each moment is a moment that can be used as an expression of love for the God that we hold so dear. And, in the end, that love is materialized in the generosity and care that we give to others, for everything we do for the least of God’s children, we do for God. We can not feed and shelter God for he doesn’t need anything, but we can manifest that love to others. We can listen and council those who are troubled, we can give the excess that we have, and I find it hard to believe that anyone in our country is in dire enough straights that nothing can be given, be it material or monetary possessions, we can just show love and caring for those who feel rejected and outcast. In this way, we show our love. Words without action are nothing but a clanging gong, but our actions of love to others is a beautiful symphony we write every day for our Lord. These actions make us pregnant with more and more works and those works birth more Christians.

While we can not come to saving grace through any way beside accepting Jesus as our love and Lord, works are just as important, for without the works and love and relationship blending together into a wondrous love affair, without works, we are just the creep, shouting to a woman that we love her when we’ve never gotten to know each other or done anything together.

May we fall head over heels for our wondrous, glorious, awesome God, and may we show that love each and every day to those around us with our works so that we may make love to our Lord so that we can become pregnant to birth more Christians and bring as much heaven to earth as we are able to.

Glimpses of Hell (originally posted Sept 2006)

I'm just kinda happy right now, and i don't know why. I've been thinking about the days back in Kenmore east when Heather, Joe, Adam, Trina, Josh, Vicky, Dave, Bridget, and Mike would hang out after school and just chill wherever our rumps rested. I know there were more that would join us, but i can't remember some names, and these are the main ten (including myself) that would regularly hang out. Anyway, i miss the people who where there, and i miss those times, and untill recently i couldn't figure out why.

We're told by our elders that we need to always remember Highschool and enjoy it while it lasts because it's the best time of our lives. I think that's a crock of shit.

I had a revelation recently. It was few weeks ago while i was walking my friend Jackie's son Joey around the block at where i used to live in Tonawanda. That's in New York for any who don't know or didn't grow up with me. Anyway, what i realized is why, for most people, Highschool was the best time of their lives, and it's kinda sad. It is all about community. In highschool we had a community. If you were a jock, you had football, or soccer, or whatever sport you played and your teamates made up a community for you. If you were into art or theatre, there were clubs and plays and shows to go to. For some, community was just sitting around wherever we wouldn't get kicked by the joggers or yelled at by faculty. But no matter how you looked at it, and no matter where you looked, people were connected and loved on each other.

Skip ahead about five years. Highschool is over, college is probably done with as well. You're out "Making it on your own". You're so stuck in american individualism that you haven't talked to the people that you loved so much and with all your heart in years and for some reason the american dream isn't looking as bright and shiny as it once did. The only person that you care about now is yourself and maybe you're boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife. wow.

I am a christian. I don't hide behind it, and I don't hide it behind me. I believe that there's two things that we need (besides food, water, and air) and that is God, and people. There's a popular christian saying that there is a God shaped hole in our souls and only he can fill it, although most of us try to fill it with other things like people, money, drugs, etc. I think that is true. God made us to be in a relationship with him, but that's the topic of another blog.

I think that there is another hole in our souls as well, and that's a person shaped hole. Sometimes we take people and put them into the God part of our soul, but they will eventually fail us in that way. But what people are ment for is that all vital community. We weren't made for just to commune with god but each other. We need people, and lots of them, to laugh with , to cry with, to help with our problems, and to help them with theirs. We play, we fight, we love we loose, but we need people just as much as we need anything else in the world.

Don Miller is a local Portland author. He paints this picture of hell: An astronaught is flying through space with a suit that can recycle all his waste and keep him alive forever with air and nutrients. There is a malfunction in his ship, and it explodes sending the man into orbit around the earth, still alive and able to be so until he dies naturally, but no one can come to his help. Days, weeks, and months pass, his hair grows, his mind plays tricks on him, and he starts going in sane from the lack of contact with other humans. Years pass and eventually everything goes dark because his hair is everywhere and he can't open his helmet to get it out of his eyes, so now all he has is the voices in his head and nothing else. Nothing.

Scares the crap out of me.

I love you all. Even if i don't know you, i probably love you. I leave you with this:

May you love, and may you have community, so that you may be whole and live a live that is even better than the life that you remembered that you once had.

~SMAK

King (written Nov 2006)

King

Blindsided by truth that I can not ignore,
The hopes and dreams of those long dead heros,
Laid to rest in an overstuffed coffin.

Wake up ye Men who wish for more.
I call out with the voice you forgot you had,
That this time will not be the same.

We have all suffered the toils from others,
For in our blood flowed the burden of slaves,
And now smelts the victory against injustice.

Wake up ye Men who wish for more.
I call out with a voice you forgot you had,
And we shall stand unashamed of our country.

Where once we had chains to bind us down,
Now is offered chains to link us together,
And all are needed to make it complete.

A face to everyone, individual,
Blended in to the picture of beauty,
All are welcome for we have none but love.

Wake up ye Men who wish for more.
Call with my voice if I forgot our path,
And we shall climb the summit with ease.

I see the tomorrow when you are with me,
And all stand in unity without shame.
Perhaps not by blood, we will be kin then.