We Should See Other Blogs

I have a real soft spot for Reformed/Presbyterian doctrine. I’m convinced that it is the most rigorously and fully true expression of the whole of scripture. Any church would be blessed, I think, to be taught it.

Yet, I want to push past pure doctrine. It’s good. It’s right. The statements it makes are, as far as I can tell with God’s help, an accurate reflection of reality. All of this is true, and pure doctrine is still not enough.

Pure water is good, but if you don’t drink the water, you still die of thirst.

Maybe what I want isn’t to push past pure doctrine. Maybe what I’m trying to say is that I want to stop choosing doctrine or practice. Maybe I’m trying to make myself less binary, less like a pendulum. This is the way I’ve thought for a long time, you see: the churches that have the good doctrine generally keep it to themselves as if to let it outside of the church family will make it fall apart, and the churches that have the great practice generally seem to think salvation is about hugs and roses and making everybody feel great about themselves.

If you recoil at this dichotomy, I don’t blame you. I don’t like thinking like that, and I’m probably not right about it.

But I’ve been to too many churches where they put a verse — sometimes even a whole chapter — about sharing the gospel and feeding the hungry and taking care of orphans and the vulnerable, but have no real corporate way to put the words into practice other than shunting some money into a basket every Sunday.

And I’ve been to too many churches that seem to be active in the community and concerned about social justice, but just can’t seem to get it that Jesus’ death and resurrection are the only reason that justice means anything in the end.

These aren’t really helpful categories, though. It’s not like every church has to choose along an axis which percentage of orthodoxy vs orthopraxy, and every prospective member has to choose which percentage they’re content with. Life isn’t like that, and hardly any churches are the gross caricatures I’ve drawn.

I want both. It’s not a difficult formula. The central message of scripture transcends both, bringing both in line. The central message of scripture is that God deserves glory and honour and praise and adoration. He does this by both saving people’s souls, and redeeming the world. He chooses to do so by means of the very people he has saved, and God help me, that decision seems a little daft some days.

The Christmas season is upon us — it’s pretty much sitting right there on top like a sumo wrestler — and it’s time to think about giving again. A strange thing to say, really, because what time isn’t a good time to think about giving? And then after thinking actually do some giving?

I don’t think I need to make much of an argument for giving, especially from a Christian perspective. Scripture is rife with positive commands to give, to take care of orphans and widows, to be generous in giving. And some of the harshest condemnation arrives at the feet of those who had the means and didn’t bother yet thought themselves righteous.

Yet I think (and this is just me talking here, feel free to correct me if you think I’ve gone off the rails) that too often the need seems far away: Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, Mexico. Of course there are needs there. Great needs that organisations like World Vision, Come Over and Help, and others are making great strides in addressing.^[1]

There is a real need in the communities we live in, as well. In the church community — especially important, I think — to help those who need financial support, and those who simply need someone to connect with, and whatever other need arises. The tragedy is, I think, when giving becomes simply about money; giving can also be about helping someone on the fringes of the community feel less alienated, or it can be about just being there for someone who’s going through a bad time.^[2]

Still, there is a greater and even more hidden need in our secular communities. If you live in a city, for instance, the needs may be varied and obvious, but if you live in the suburbs (like I do), where appearances are everything and every family in every cardboard-cutout house seems just shy of perfect, these needs may be more hidden, and far harder to spot.^[3]

In burbs, your church may find different needs to address. Perhaps these people don’t as much need a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name as they do advice on how to get out of debt. Maybe they don’t need a solid meal as much as someone to consult about raising their children. Maybe they don’t need clothes, but instead need to learn to strip away the accoutrements and facades of their lifestyle and contact something real. Jesus, for instance, is real. A church dedicated to being Jesus’ hands and feet in community if real. Scripture is real. God is real. His death on the cross is real, and his resurrection is real.^[4]

Maybe what I’m trying to get at is some sort of holistic thing. We maybe can’t all go to Mexico or Mali, but we certainly can and do go the grocer and to the bank and to the hairdresser. The church has a responsibility but also an exciting opportunity: Jesus came to reconcile all things to himself, and he chose a bunch of sinners to do it, with his usual backwards logic. It’s exciting. And frightening. But I think giving can be like that, when you do it right.⁵

[1] Before you give to a charity, please do check out their financial statements and such. I singled out WV and COAH because they both dedicate over 80% of their income directly to their causes, the rest being used for administration and fundraising. Quite a few charities seem to spend a lot of time and effort and money fundraising and little time actually helping anyone. WV and COAH are wonderful exceptions.

[2] Qubit decided this would be a good time to come around and playfully bite and claw my fingers. Maybe I was making too much noise for her or something?

[3] American Beauty is a stunning film with a ridiculously stupid counter-cultural message. Yet at the heart, its portrayal of the festering rot inside those beautiful facades is spot-on.

[4] The reality of these things, I think, can so easily pierce whatever veils we (we’re human! we do these things!) put up around ourselves. It’s easy to become accustomed to the language we use to describe these realities, but coming in contact with the bare majesty of what Jesus did and is doing can rip away even that. God, after all, is pretty powerful.

[5] I used to catch a lot of flak for bitching about stuff without actually doing anything about it. I’m happy to report this is no longer the case. I’m not going to spell out how exactly, as with prayer so with giving (keep it in the closet), but Laura and I are trying to do our part.

• Fruit Loops hurt. No matter how you eat them, they scuff up the inside of your mouth. I know, you can let them soak for a while, but who wants to eat soggy cereal?
• At Freshwater Church this Sunday — having braved an early winter storm to get there – we got to see Joel and Tim operating on no sleep. They’d just come back from Cleveland, driving all night through that early winter storm. Thankfully, Joel only had to say a few words, as he didn’t really say most of those words in an particular order. Instead, Jeff (I think? I could be wrong) lit the advent candle and did a sermon about Hope.
• A lot of people seem to think that lighting an advent candle is pretty hokey, but being the lover of tradition that I am, I like to see a church expressing a connection with the past. Partaking in an ancient tradition (Advent, not necessarily the lighting of candles) and singing the songs of that tradition remind me that I’m part of something that extends beyond me, beyond just the present, and into the past and future.
• My workplace is moving soon — not just me, the whole thing — meaning I’m going to be 10 minutes closer to home. Everyone else, on the other hand, is 10 minutes farther away, or more if you count the trickiness of the highways in that area. It also makes taking the bus quite feasible, actually, as it cuts almost a half hour off the bus ride, thanks to the trickiness of the bus routes in that area.
• When it comes to grammar I’m really not a prescriptivist. Grammar and language need to be free to evolve, and let’s face it, you can’t stop that evolution. No matter how hard they try, prescriptivists will always, always fail. If someone expects me to use a gender-specific pronoun when the subject’s gender is indeterminate, they’re crazy. If that person wants me not to end my sentences with prepositions, I have a place they can go to. You see what I mean?
• When John asked Jesus whether or not he was Messiah, Jesus sent a surprising message back. Surprising in what he didn’t say, I mean. John was obviously doubting Jesus, but Jesus had no condemnation for him. He didn’t list the number of Torah passages he had fulfilled. He didn’t send a letter with three well-argued points and a rousing conclusion meant to nicely wrap things up. He said, look at what I am doing: the blind can see, the lame can walk, the dead are being raised to life. This if, of course, not the only way Jesus used to bolster the faith of individuals, but is it so hard to believe it should be the same way with us today? Are we the true religion? Look at what we are doing: the poor are being fed, single mothers are being looked after, war-torn countries are being rebuilt, people are being shown the light of the gospel and being invited into the family. Am I wrong in thinking this might be what real religion looks like?

Attribution and License for the above photo.

A short point, here. Churches are called to be a light and salt in this world. This is not an ambiguous suggestion; it’s a clear command. There’s no fancy theological hand-waving that can conceal the facts as they stand.

Bring to bear the parable of the minas (or talents, or cash deposits, or whatever you like to call it) on the issue and you have a pretty damning condemnation of inwardly-focused churches.

Like a selfish person, an inwardly-focused church is more concerned with itself than with the world at large, when the world at large is the very thing Jesus came to redeem.

On Sunday Kristin and Andrew came to church with us in his ridiculously loud Volkswagen, and Joel Main spoke about giving.

Can I go off an a tangent here? Okay.[1] First off, I hate sermons about giving. They generally come off as thinly-veiled muggings, the preacher suddenly morphing into a salesman who is desperately trying to flog the money out of your pockets. That said, Laura and I have just migrated to Freshwater Church in Mississauga after a short stint at The Bridge Church in Burlington. I say short stint because we moved too far away to be a part of the church, but also because the church folded, citing amongst several reasons a lack of money. This came as a shock to me and Laura, as no-one had really actually said anything about money; maybe we missed those weeks, but there was a lack of transparency about it that bothered me afterwards.

This is why, even though I don’t particularly like them, I think sermons about money and frank discussions about money are good for a church. Actually, good for most organisations. Just be clear that the money isn’t going to the pastor’s slush fund. Be honest. Show what you’ve done with the cash. And be sure that you remind people that God doesn’t just want your cash and coin, but he wants those things you just can’t give him: your time, for instance. Or your talents. Or your ridiculously oversized SUV.

[1] Yes, I’m taking the piss out of Joel. Hope he doesn’t mind.

• Today’s my mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday mom! I hope you read this blog every once and while… because I tried calling you and you were out getting milk.
• On the elevator up to our apartment yesterday, I realised I have a thing for churches whose names involve water somehow. I used to attend Living Water, then I attended The Bridge (is dead, long live The Bridge!), and now Laura and I are tenatively attending Freshwater in Mississauga. It’s a small church, quite similar in character to The Bridge, and from what I’ve heard thus far, the preaching has been absolutely spot on.
• That sort of brings to mind how blessed I’ve been with the sort of preaching I’ve been priviledged to hear over the last few years.
  • At Living Water, Pastor Vogel has the sort of passion for preaching you don’t get to hear much anymore, and a soft spot for alliterative bullet points (who doesn’t!). His sermons always provoked me to thought; sometimes I would fill entire sheets with observations about what I’d heard. I still have quite a few of those sheets at home, I think.
  • At The Bridge, Robb Powell, who also married me and Laura, had a sort of calm rationality about his preaching. He’d throw out so much stuff in one sermon that I’d almost get brain overload. I’d have to chew on it for hours later.
  • I haven’t heard much of Joel Main at Freshwater yet, but from what I have heard he has a remarkable capability for historical analysis and context, and a passion to bring Jesus to life (yes, I know the Holy Ghost already did that) and make him seem real in all his Godhead and humanity.
• This morning I poured hot water all over my hand. The throbbing has subsided, thankfully. I topped that off with spilling my tea all over the floor at work about two hours later. Frankly, I feel like an idiot. Or, like Chandler, I’m a dropper. It’s true.
• I’m currently gathering information about tasers. If you have a link or something, please do post it in the comments! I’ll be ever so grateful.

I constantly marvel at the unbroken stream of offal emanating from Christian bookstores. Constantly. Now, I don’t like to be sexist, but it seems, from my experience at least, so take this with a grain of salt, that most of these books are bought by well-meaning but gullible women.

In church this Sunday I saw one of these woman with a book by Bruce Wilkinson, something to do with unlocking the secrets of abundance of some such. If sounding curiously like prosperity gospel isn’t bad enough, the cover of the book had three — THREE — trademark symbols on it, as if they meant to be remarkably clear that the secrets of abundance somehow involve having your own brand name and an enterprise whose mission is essentially to hoodwink people who have stopped using whatever critical skills they may have ever possessed.

All this is a preface to a little passage I read this morning, when I picked up a book called “Getting Anger Under Control”. Which, I might add, is a pretty noble sentiment and a good idea, etc etc. The only problem being I never actually got to read the book because the dedication in the front — the first few sentences — actually blew my mind. I mean, I’ve got a gasket loose in here now. I’m dazed and confused.

So, I’ve reproduced the passage verbatim, as is my fair use right:

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, occurred as we were doing the final editing of this book … Americans responded in disbelief and wondered how this could happen to us, a peace-loving nation. But what was intended to dishearten and destroy us took a different turn. It brought out a heroic spirit of brotherhood and revealed that the church is still the soul of America … These deplorable acts of violence brought about a righteous indignation that caused our country to unite against godless terrorism.

There’s so much wrong with that little paragraph that I won’t even address the things I bolded up there (yes, that was me), except to ask this: Is that really what Americans think of themselves? Really?

I assure you not a single other nation on the face of the earth, including their beloved allies to the north, and their “special relationship” allies over the pond, thinks of America a peace-loving nation. Nor do they think that the church is the nation’s soul, or if they do, it scares the living daylights out of them.

And, in the last analysis, it would be hard to explain why America declaring war on “godless” terrorism is anything more than rank hypocrisy.

Funny story. In church on Sunday someone said, “Yadda yadda yadda is in your mail slots.” I can’t remember what it was, except that it made me curious. So I go over to my mail slot–they put lots of literature and stuff in there–and am confused.

You see, each mail slot is part of a shelf, and each shelf is labelled with a name, except for the top and bottom (which are, of course, the enclosure that forms the shelf), so you can see the problem. There is an extra slot in there that’s not labelled, making finding your slot somewhat ambiguous. Is it the slot above or below the label? You never really know. I choose to believe that it’s the slot below the label, because people keep putting stuff in there.

But this Sunday, there was stuff in all the slots, meaning someone is confused. At that point it was me. Because there, on the shelf below my name, is my Bible, and on the shelf above my name is a bunch of tapes. So I say to Mr Hamstra, who is standing there also grabbing stuff from his slot, “Which of these slots is mine? And why would anybody give me tapes?”

Mr Hamstra says, “Well, maybe somebody thinks you need them!”

So I pull the first couple of tapes out, and lo and behold they are titled, “Grumbling” and for the pièce de résistance, “Church Discipline”.

As a post-script, I don’t actually think they were meant for me, and if they were, I don’t own anything capable of playing a cassette, so I guess we’re SOL on that one.

Now, I will end this post by complaining and grumbling about the people who ambiguously labelled those shelves. I mean, come on. Gah! It’s terrible! I AM GOING TO FORM A NEW DENOMINATION NOW.

• It’s an 80 magnum. It shoots through schools.
• On Saturday me and some friends decided–in view of the forecast–to go to a local church instead of Living Water. The sermon was about sex, definitely an interesting choice of topics, and highly reminiscent of Mars Hill’s “Good Sex/Bad Sex” series. Not only that, it was just a plain good sermon. The weather on the other hand was clear and sunny, leading me to believe that Brian Hill of 680 News is in fact “Lyin’ Hill”, which is what I shall call him from now on. But plans had been set, and it was good to see Mike (the nonchristian) visiting a church (any church).
• Oy, it’s hard to get up these mornings. Knowing that the only thing to greet me on the way out is going to be my own breath frozen in my mouth: it’s a difficult thing to muster up enough willpower to throw the blankets aside.
• Wikis quickly become disorganised
• Do you find Robusta makes for much worse coffee breath than Arabica?
• Philip Glass’ “Heroes” Symphony is bothering me this morning. I mean, I know he’s rooted in minimalism, but this seems neither minimalist or contemporary classical, both of which I enjoy very much. “Heroes” seems to take its cues from minimalism and try to apply that ethos to pop music and score it all as a big symphony. Yet it still very much ends up sounding like a very long, very boring version of itself repeating the same rhythm twenty-two-hundred times. Compare this to, say, his “Low” symphony, or “Anima Mundi”, both of which I enjoy greatly.
• The work, it does pile up. I must go now.

I just lost the longest theologically-related post ever, and I want to shoot myself in the head. Let me summarise:

1. Why does the church, described by scripture as nomadic, put so much stock in buildings and the like?
2. Why do we do church the way we do? We don’t kneel, for instance, or lift our hands in prayer.
3. How do we do church in such a way as to reach this current generation? If not worship services, what then?
4. What philosophical bent does your worship service portray?
5. People who want to be in a church are the most happy, the best members. If they want to come, let them in; if they want to leave, let them go.

Gah. These question brought to you by The Bridge, where I was this morning to see Laura and play the djembe. It was good. New theatre to meet in. But seriously, I’m PISSED that I lost that post.