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The Mean and Wild Jesus

WARNING: If you like your Jesus meek and mild ….DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!! – If you want to see Jesus in a clearer way you may want to thumb through it.  If you want to really know this Jesus, read the book and let your eyes be open as you do. However, as John Ortberg said, “I want to know this Jesus, though he scares me a little.”

Don’t say I didn’t warn you though…..The book is “Jesus Mean and Wild; The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God” written by Mark Galli.

This is by far one of the most refreshing books that I have read.  Galli looks at Jesus in a way the church seldom does (at the least the ones that I’ve attended). He doesn’t skim over the verses that talk about how Jesus made people feel a bit uncomfortable.  In fact he addresses seventeen passages from the Gospel of Mark that he finds Jesus so discomforting:

• Jesus “sternly charges" or “strictly orders” (depending of the translation) people he heals (1:43; 3:12; 5:43; 8:30).  He looks upon religious leaders with “anger” and “grief” (3:5).
• Jesus speaks openly of a last judgment that entails the rejection of many people (13:26-27), of a sin that God will never forgive (3:29), of horrific consequences for misleading children (9:42), of God being ashamed or severely displeased with some at the judgment (8:38; 13:36).
• Jesus destroys a head of swine, without regret or compensation to the owner (5:1-20), and overturns the tables in the temple in a moment of rage (11:15-17).
• Jesus rebukes Peter as demonic (8:33). He is “indignant” with the disciples (10:13-14). He says the Sadducees are biblically and spiritually ignorant (12:24) and describes his entire generation as “faithless” (9:19).
• Jesus makes it clear that following him will entail suffering and death (9:35-37, 43-50).  He says the endtimes will come sooner than anyone thinks and will be so severe that even the faithful will beg for death (13:5-37).

The Jesus we usually hear preached about on Sunday morning in most “growing” churches in America is a Jesus that is meek and mild.  You here about the Jesus that is loving, forgiving, peace-filled, sacrificial, he wants you to prosper and he invites all the little children to come and play with him.  He doesn’t confront (except the Pharisees), he doesn’t impose (at least not outside of 4 “How To” points or an acronym to help you remember what you need to do) and he is a little docile (after all he did go willingly to be killed). O.K. that last sentence was a little sarcastic, although there is truth in it.

The reality?  Jesus IS all of these things - but he is also righteous. So he does confront sin, he does impose his requirements on us and he is untamable.  Yes – Jesus is a bit mean and wild at times.  If we leave out this uncomfortable side him, we do not have a complete understanding of who Jesus really is, we put him in a box that we can package, market, sell and feel good about.  The danger is we end up as comfortable Christians, sitting in our comfortable chairs, in our comfortable buildings, listening to a comfortable sermon, all the time keeping Jesus at a comfortable distance.  (I should know – I lived my life like this for years).

Galli says it better, “The main problem is that we’ve become deaf to the richer parts of the symphony of love.  We hear the melody played by the strings but ignore the brass and wind and especially the percussion sections.  We don’t notice the strong harmonies, the counterpoint, and the dissonant chords.  We are left with a memorable tune that lifts our spirits, but we are missing out on the richness of the music God would have us hear.”

So again, if you like your Jesus meek and mild….DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!!

Response to "Time Out!" - Pt.3

So here is part 3 of Catalyst Faith (Tom Cox) series of questions in his recent post "Time Out!" stemming out of Philippians 2:12.

QUESTION #3: IF WE BELIEVE “ONCE SAVED, ALWAYS SAVED,” THEN WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TO BE FEARFUL AND TREMBLING OVER?  IN OTHER WORDS, WORK OUT YOUR SALVATION OR ELSE WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN?

I KNOW IT'S LONG....BUT STAY WITH ME ON THIS.

We want to believe in the saying “once saved, always saved,” and growing up Southern Baptist I am no different, because it is nicer, it makes us feel better about our sin that we continue to live in. The danger of this saying is that it implies that there is no obligation beyond the moment of our belief in Jesus.  It assumes that we can continue in our life with no alteration or even a desire for such.  And left to ourselves, we are not really inclined to make change.  This simple thinking of the Christian life negates any urgent requirement on our part to allow Christ to change us, to “work out our salvation.” To accurately complete the implied in this man-made theological statement, it should read; “Once you say the sinner’s prayer you are saved, and you will always be saved no matter what you do, even if you do nothing different in your life.” This is not in align with what Christ requires of us to follow him.  So what needs to motivate us to change – to allow the love of God to change us?  Fear!

Fear, drives us to change, whether its fear of terror or fear of reverence, the net result is behavior that is altered. Fear in Phil. 2:12 is describing a reverential fear of God, as a controlling motive of the life, in matters spiritual and moral, not a simple fear of His power and righteous retribution, but wholesome dread of displeasing Him.

It is a healthy thing to fear God.  John Charles Selner’s book, The Teaching of St. Augustine on Fear as a Religious Motive, summarizes the theologian’s insight on fear, which apply across the board.  “Augustine taught that human beings are designed to love, and the goal of life is to order one’s love so that it has a worthy object: God.  There are four principle emotions that shape us as we pursue love: Desire attracts us to what we love.  Joy accompanies the experience of love.  Grief is what we feel when we lose love.  Fear is the emotion we experience when we believe we may lose love.” Therefore fear is far from a negative emotion for Augustine.  It is a God-given emotion to prompt us to love truly.

I think Paul is using fear to highlight the ominous circumstances of living outside of God’s will. However, fear is not a means to an end.  Fear can temporarily cause us to change our behavior in order to avoid embarrassment, lose or injury.  For instance, I may be tempted in a moment to view pornography as an escape from my pain.  However, the fear of getting caught by my family or employer will stop me from doing it.  It will not inevitably change the forbidden desire in me, but it prevents me from fulfilling that desire, at least this time. Mark Galli in his book, Jesus; Mean and Wild, says, “To be motivated by fear, however, is to remain in our sins, even if we obey God’s law perfectly – because our ultimate desire is not God but to avoid the pain of judgment. This is why the law cannot save.  Though it can temporarily prevent us from fulfilling wrong desires, it cannot fill us with the love of God and the desire to please him.  Only the grace of God can do that.”

What Galli and St. Augustine are saying is that fear comes before love. In this vein, fear must step aside and allow love to take its place. This is not something that happens instantly.  Galli says, “While we are praying to learn to love God for himself, fear can motivate us to break with evil, to correct ourselves, to watch for the enemy, to begin to love the interior life.  The closer we grow to Jesus, of course, the more we will be motivated only out of love.”

Thoughts??  Am I off?

Response to "Time Out!" - Pt.2

So here is part 2 of Catalyst Faith (Tom Cox) series of questions in his recent post "Time Out!" stemming out of Philippians 2:12.

QUESTION #2; IS SALAVATION AN INSTANTANEOUS THING, OR A PROCESS?

It depends on HOW you are using the word salvation.  In the original text SŌTĒRIA (σωτηρία) refers to deliverance, preservation, salvation.  It is more than a two-dimensional term that is applied in the question; it is more of a four-dimensional term.  Salvation has several undertones that are used in the N.T.:

(1) There is material or temporary salvation; the deliverance from the harm (sea, prison, etc.).

(2) There is an immediate spiritual or eternal deliverance by God for those who accept his conditions of repentance and put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Acts 4:12; Rom.1:16; 10:10)

(3) There is a present experience of God’s deliverance from the bondage of sin.  The indication here is peace and harmony, both personally (internal) and corporately (external). (Phil. 2:12)

(4) There is a future deliverance of believers at the second coming of Christ for His saints, a salvation which is the object of our confident hope. (Rom.13:11, 1 Thess. 5:8)

I think there is a false sense of a two-dimensional salvation that has been created in the church today because of the inept ability to really teach scriptures; to really disciple people.  It is easier to tell them what they want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3). Most churches want to dumb down scripture and simply move people through their process “through the bases” and check off their progress on a registration form with carbon copies.  Oh yeah, if they get kind, unselfish and helpful along the way then we feel pretty good about ourselves (or at least our programs).

We want a two-dimensional salvation because it is easy. We can manage that. We can understand that. The instantaneous salvation allows preachers and teachers to work in the sinner’s prayer at the end of the over programmed, soft, seeker service, and ask those that prayed to check the box so they can send them some information on their new member’s class and spiritual formation process.  And as the new believer it is easier for them to go through classes and check off the boxes as a means of working out their salvation because it really doesn’t require much. It really requires no change.

Response to "Time Out!" - Pt.1

Catalyst Faith (Tom Cox) has raised a series of questions in his recent post "Time Out!" stemming out of Philippians 2:12. I joked with him that I could not answer these questions in the little box that we are given to respond in.  So I am going to post them here and link to his site to hopefully expand this conversation and give more room to do so, because my thoughts got really long.  Here is the first.

If we believe salvation is by grace and not works, what does it mean to work out your salvation?

Work “out” is different than work “for.”  To work out your salvation, I believe Paul is telling us that, we need to resolve within ourselves what this salvation really means, and allow that to change us.  Salvation is not about us, it’s not about what we need to do to get it.  Salvation is a heart issue – not a math issue. If Jesus has truly gotten your heart, and in fact you fully experience and embrace His love for you, then life should look different through the eyes of your heart. And as a result, you would live your life differently and put into practice in your daily living your response to Jesus for the salvation that he has given you. This true, full understanding of whom Jesus is and what he did and what he is asking of us takes time.  Our finite minds are unable to instantly comprehend God and what He did.  Saying a simple prayer is not the end all (although most churches notch their belts and move on – “one more in the kingdom”). Peter worked out his salvation and became the rock in which God built his church (Matt. 16:18). Paul worked out his salvation and took the good news of “the way” to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15).  I have been a “Christian” for 19 years and just now I feel that my heart is waking to understand this.  I have been working out (or resolving within myself) that my salvation is no longer about me. But it is about God. And as a result my life – how I spend my time and what is important to me – is changing. 

What I’m getting at is that this is an inner change that takes place; it is not about how you look on the outside to other people, whether we are nice or polite, whether we are working “for” our salvation.  Some think that if you start on the outside and work your way in that you can be changed.  Or they don’t really care if you are being changed because you appear to look good on the outside and that’s easier to measure.  This is the opposite of what Jesus is after when he talks about life transformation, just ask the Pharisees of that day.  In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis talks about salvation in this way:

“We must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls.  A world of nice people, content in their niceness, looking further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save.

            For mere improvement is no redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine.  God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.”

So, if we resolve (or work out) our own salvation then aren’t we really allowing God to transform who we are into who we are meant to be?

Do You Respond?

Today I read a post on Joni Ruhs blog titled "How To Be Good Christian." I love her emphasis on God loving us first and responding out of that love. I think as a Christian, the temptation is to view God through our love for him first, the problem with that is it will always fall short. Why? Because the focus is on our efforts, it centers around how much we love God, not how much He loves us. Like all eager, goal-oriented, self-indulging, motivated kids in our Father’s kingdom, I need reminders daily to do die to my own drive, my own goals and simply allow God’s love to live through me and not worry about what I need to "accomplish."

Have you ever thought about such things?

Who Do You Love More?

I have been thinking about my post Your Perspective??  For some reason it has been weighing on my mind.  So here is my answer to my question....

Maybe it’s because I am an immoral being trying to walk with a moral God.  Maybe it’s because my world, my nature, my natural inclination is to love the world. Maybe it’s because we only follow what we love and in order to follow God I have to give up what I love….me.  I mean, I did love myself long before I loved God.  And even when I got to the place that I could actually say that I love God, and accept the truth of His ransomed love, did I really mean it?  Was it out of a response of His love to me?  Was it authentic?  I don’t think we can love God out of our nature, because it is fallen.  Our father Adam set that course.  I think the only way we can love God is out of a response to his love to us.  But in order to do this you have to have a deep belief that God is who he said he is and he did what he said he did and we are who he says we are.  I like what Don Miller says about deep belief in his book, Blue Like Jazz:

“The trouble with deep beliefs is that it costs something.  And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn’t like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them.”

Maybe that’s it.  Maybe that’s why I find it so difficult to give up the world and follow God.  Because the way of the world is to love me, and like I said, I love me!

I guess the good news is that is doesn’t stop there.  That it only begins.  I believe this is where we need to be on-foot, in battle, everyday against Satan who wants us to believe in meaningless things for meaningless reasons. Dieing to ourselves and living in Christ is not easy, again because we love ourselves and we love our lives.  But this is what Jesus asks us to do, and in return He promises to give us a new life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).  Did you catch that?  More abundantly!  Jesus is promising us a new life that is better than the one we are trying to build ourselves.  Now you have to be careful here, because our nature has a tendency to frame this promise with H.W.P. (Health, Wealth and Prosperity) theology within the environment of what we know…our world.  We have to give up what we “think” this new life is that Christ wants to give us and simply trust him to give it to us.

So all I have to do each day is give up my first love – me, and then, live in my true love – Christ,  Then maybe I would not find it so hard to respond to Christ.  And maybe I will find it easier to give up the world and rather unthinkable to give up God.

Your Perspective??

Why do most people say,

"to walk with God, we need to walk against what the world says is important,"

instead of saying,

"to walk with the world, we need to walk against what God says is important?" 

Why is the emphasis on giving up the world instead of giving up God?  Thoughts anyone?

A Moment of Dying

I picked my kids up at a birthday party yesterday.  It was at one of those pizza/video game “fun” places.  You know the kind where you get tickets out of a video game for playing (It’s a clever way to feed our addiction to want more).  Anyway, I was helping my daughter pick out a toy with her 220 tickets when my son walked up and said, “Here Makenna, I spent all my tickets on you.”  He then handed her a cute little pink purse that had a couple of purple, star shaped erasers, a gold ring and a blue Chinese finger cuff.  She took this gift and stared at it with amazement and disbelief.  She finally said, “Thank you.”  “You’re welcome,” Devin said with a smile. And with that, he turned and walked away to play with his friends.  Makenna stood there for several moments just looking at this unexpected gift that was just offered to her, with love, no strings attached. After several moments of contemplating how to respond, she looked up at me and said, “Daddy, I want to spend all my tickets on Devin.”  I smiled and said, “I think that’s a great idea honey.”  So we spent the next few minutes picking out a few items so she could love Devin the way he loved her.

Although I witnessed this unselfish act between my children, I couldn't help but be reminded of our human depravity toward narcissism this morning when I read a poem by literary critic C.S. Lewis:

            All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

            I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

            I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;

            I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

          

            Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

            I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

            I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek –

            But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

The selflessness my children displayed did not come from their nature or from clever parenting on my part!  It came from Jesus Christ, who was permitted to be alive in them at that moment.  First in my son’s heart and then in my daughter’s.  You know, there is something beautiful about dying to our corrupt nature and allowing Christ’s love to live during those moments in us.

By the way, my kid’s behavior turned to self-interest about whose gifts from Christmas were whose, as soon as we got home. We need to be on-foot; in battle to war against our nature.  It reminds me of the dodo passage in Romans, Chapter 7 verses 15-25.

More Than A Gift

Our Church, Ginger Creek, Put on a Christmas performance this year that told the story of a family's journey toward reconciliation with each other.  Of  course the deeper message that was clearly told was our innate longing to be reconciled to God our Father.

There are some amazing and talented people that God has blessed this fellowship of believers with....and the cool thing is that they are all using their gifts to glorify the King!!

Click here for more pictures from "More Than A Gift"