Community of the Risen

I just finished watching season four of The Shield on FX network.  I bought the DVD’s with my Christmas money from Best Buy.  The majority of the season was dedicated to dealing with the issue of a drug forfeiture program that would confiscate houses, cars, or anything else paid for in drug money.  A third of it would go back into the community, a third of it would go to crime fighting and another third would go to the City council.  It is a question of major proportions for me because the drug problem here and abroad is not something the church itself often wants to deal with. 

The reason that I like The Shield so much is that it makes the audience themselves decide what is right and wrong.  It provides a number of ways in which to view the world, but it calls each person to decide which decision is best.  The question that has been left in my own heart is this: What can Christians do with the drug problem running rampant in many countries today?  How much grace do we show and when should we be tough on crime?  Is it okay to let drug dealers go free if they sell out the people above them? 

One of the main questions of this particular series is redemption.  This show moves around from the main character, the hard hitting Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) killing one of the men on his team for double crossing him in the first season to being the man who brings the redemption of his partner Shane Vendrell (Walter Goggins) in the fourth season.  While many may not see Vic as a man who has been redeemed (he is still very hard hitting, and his tactics are brutal at the least) I see this show as a man who is learning what is really valuable in the world. 

All of these questions aside, I can’t wait for the next season of The Shield to start.  Until then I can only recommend that you buy season one, it will hook you in right away. 

This Christmas has been good so far.  Just spend the last two days down south in Pomona visiting family.  It was fun seeing cousins and opening presents.  I got to watch “The Longest Yard” and think a lot about the debates I’ve been having lately with Brad from www.thebrokenmessenger.com about the book of John.  I went to church tonight and now (at this very moment) am in the car on the way home to Santa Maria.  I’m going to spend a few more weeks up there, end the trip by going to Disneyland on the sixth of January and then start up the spring semester down at Azusa. 

The Christmas Eve service tonight was interesting.  The music was beautiful (for a Baptist church) and I think even my Pentecostal girlfriend would have appreciated it.  Pastor Glenn spoke on the four R’s of “Oh Come all Ye Hopeful.”  He basically gave a gospel message amid a flurry of reflections on Christmas and creation.  He recommended a book called “Case for Creator” for those who doubted the idea of creator (and managed to integrate a comment about the court ruling not too long ago about creationism in the classroom).  I’m sorry but I’m sick of Lee Strobel books as the “final word” on creationism and evolution, the case for faith and the case for Christ.

I have a feeling the book is more apologetics than actual facts.  If someone really wants to understand evolution they should read books that have already been written by the experts themselves, on both sides of the fence.  What people would be reading is written through the eyes of a committed evangelical and, whether he wants to or not, he is tainting the evidence to tip his sides of the scales (i.e. the problem of bias).  I just think that if Pastor Glenn was committed to the cause of “truth” he would allow both sides to be explored in the church. 

This may sound funny or misguided, but perhaps the church should be funding someone of academic integrity and who is known scholar to write “Case against a Creator.”  Perhaps we should let people read both of these “cases” and decide for themselves which is better.  Or is this just the idealistic college student within me talking?  I just think the academic world should be given a chance within the walls of the church and that truth should not be limited to what was truth 50 years ago.  We need to constantly be one the edge of culture and other such things in order to penetrate that culture. 

I just feel lately as though the church dismisses much of academia as unnecessary or “of this world.”  In reality, I think that Christians should be the ones supporting the schools more than others.  Christians should be helping their children get the most out of their education. 

Hi.  I just wanted to let those people who read my blog know that it was never my intention to get into a fist fight over the book of John with Brad (see the other posts for more information).  My intention has always and will always be to dialogue with others about the Christian faith.  I purposely left my last blog post open ended in order to bring about dialogue about it.  Life is about more than finding “right answers” and then defending them.  Life is about learning to understand and approach things from multiple points of view.  So here’s the deal, I’m going to spend the next two to three weeks attempting to understand John 3 and 4 in context of the rest of the book of John.  I will post it when I think I’m finished.  Please pray that the Spirit of God would move as I attempt to undertake such a hefty load of work.  Thank you.

Recently I was talking with Brad again about John again.  He quoted a number of snippets of verses from John and 1 John and dealt at length with my last post.  It is my observation that a lot of Christians in America tend to take snippets of three to five verses and make doctrines out of them.  Let me give you an example.  Brad quoted John 3:36:

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the son will not see life, for God’s wrath abides on him.” 

This is a common passage quoted by conservative evangelicals to support their position.  But what it lacks is context.  It lacks understand of the  chapters around them.  If they are really interested in “contex” as they speak of it, they would have understood first, that this is John the Baptist speaking.  If one reads it, it is talking those who have noticed more people are going to Jesus.  John proclaims that he “me must become less” in light of this.

This passage, then, should focus on the humility of John.  If we are to interpret it for ourselves today, we too should be come less and allow ourselves to enter into the reign of God where it is not about us, but it is about God.  Just as it was then, God has given Jesus “the spirit without limit” and “placed everything in his hands.”  That is, that Jesus has all authority on heaven and earth, as he has said in other places. 

But what exactly it means to “believe on” Jesus is not clear until chapter four.  Here we need to have the context of the last chapter to understand the response of the pharisees.  The pharisees hear that Jesus is “gaining disciples” and “when Jesus learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.”  First of all, we must understand that the text does not tell us why Jesus left.  We don’t know if he had a fight or what.  All we know is that it was a result of the pharisees attitude that Jesus left. 

And the place that Jesus goes next is very important to the understanding of this passage as a unit.  He goes to Samaria, the place where God isn’t supposed to work, a place where the half breeds lived.  And what happens?  Jesus tells them that it is not about the Jews, it is about worshipping God “in spirit and in truth.”  In other words, the Kingdom of God is now opened to all in “spirit and in truth.”  No longer is it just open to the Jews, but to those like John and the Samaritan woman who believe that Jesus’ way of life is significant and powerful enough for living life now. 

Jesus contines by talking to his disciples who are confused because he is talking to a woman.  Jesus exclaims that his “food is to do the will of him who sent” him.  That is, to collect the harvest ”for eternal life.”  And notice also that it states the “Samariatians from the town believed in him because o fthe woman’s testimony…we no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the savior of the world.”  Never did they say anything about sins, about being forgiven from sins or anything of the like.  It is because I do not believe this confession of faith is as central as many Christians have made it.   

I was recently reading a post on the “Soverignty of God” and asked a question about Ghandhi.  The debaate moved to John 14.  If you want to see the full version visit here.  The question became boiled down to the two extremes of the gospel: either you believe it or you don’t.  I don’t think that Jesus meant it in this way and if he did, he meant it in a way far different than this person was talking about in his blog.

The text quoted here was that “no one can come to the Father” but through Jesus.  Reading this in context of the rest of John 14 we find that Jesus is emphasizing the community of the Trinity.  That is, that the Father lives in the Son and the Son lives in the Father.  In this sense, we find that Jesus is using this passage to let his readers know that Jesus and God are connected, united by a love that w do not yet understand.

Jesus later explicity states that what he wants them to “believe on” is that he is in the Father and the Father is in him.  This is to say that the entirety of God was incarnated in human form to the world today through Jesus and yet, he was fully indwelling and living within the reality of the father.  I is in this reality that we are called to live.  We are called to be sons and daughers of God living fully in a reality that says God totally and fully indwells himself in me, empowering me to be the type of person that Christ wants me to be, fully dwelling in the kingdom of God with Christ sitting on the throne of David.

The passage goes on to explain the centrality of Jesus’ teachings: obey my commands!  From what I can tell, Ghandhi obeyed Jesus’ commands to turn the other cheek, to provide oppressed people with a way out and to find ways to bring “heaven to earth.”  I don’t know how Jesus is going to “judge” but I think that Ghandhi provides a good template for those who want to live as Kingdom people

McKnight begins this section saying, “God designed the gospel for us.”  He did not design it for “my redemption and my liberation…it is about more than me” (McKnight 64).  There has been such a drastic shift from individualism in this day and age.  It would be wise to understand here that there appears to be a paradigm shift in America, especially in many emerging churches, trying to turn away from “individualism.”

Instead, the paradigm is calling for one of community.  This is why McKnight says that “grace is shaped for Eikons instead of individuals.”
The “thesis” appears to be that the gospel is “the work of God, in the context of community, to restore us to union with God and communion with others and the world.”  This adds on an element that I missed growing up in church.  The gospel is not just about getting right with God, it is about getting right with mankind.  Jesus calls us to be radically different people.  To quote fellow Blogger Alan Hartung (who, by the way, is referencing Dallas Willard, a favorite theologian/philosopher of mine) “you are either the type of person who can love someone who spits in your face, or you are not.  No amount of will or direct effort can cause you to love that person.”
This is to say that we have to naturally be the type of people that Christ calls us to be.  Willard uses an analogy in his book that it is not enough to imitate a good baseball player.  In order to become a good baseball player one must train intentionally for years.  Part of the gospel is training to become the type of person that can love others “in the context of community.”

The book of Hosea starts with a massacre and adultery.  It must be a good book. 
Currently I’m reading Hosea in my spare time during this holiday season and attempting to dive deeper into the Hebrew Prophets at the same time.  The beginning of the story grabbed my attention right away:
 

“When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, ‘Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness.” 
 

The story starts with a glitch.  One of my professors at APU (Bruce Baloian) reminds me constantly that glitches are important because the author is usually trying to say something important.  Why would God ask Hosea to take an adulterous wife?  I think it’s written this way for a reason, I think the author wants us to spend a moment on the absurdity of this claim.  If adultery is “frowned upon” in this country, the Ancient Near East demanded blood for such misdeeds (Leviticus 20:10).  For God to ask someone to take an adulterous wife was like bringing death into a Jewish household. 
If God is the bringer of life, why would he bring death into a house?
The question is a valid one and should not be glossed over for easy theological answers found in the next verse.  The next verse, however, explains the situation more fully.  It is here that we find that Hosea is to take this wife “because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord.”  If we understand the first verse, then we can understand this next sentence by asking the same question exchanging God for Israel that we asked above:
If Israel is the bringer of life, why would they bring death into their house? 
The covenant that God made with Abraham was to be for all people (Genesis 17).  They are called to be the light and salt to the world.  The people that God chose to be in relationship with, the model for the entire world, had turned to Baal worship.  They were sleeping with Baal.  This is just as absurd as asking Hosea to take an adulterous wife.  God here is bringing about irony.  It is similar to the effect that Nathan had on David after he had slept with Bathsheba.  After David responded so negatively to the parable that was told, he condemned himself.  In the same way, these people hearing this first verse would have condemned themselves by their response to Hosea’s marriage. 
Hopefully more posts to come on this subject in the future.      

For all those who follow my blog site, I have decided to move because I like some of the features used on WordPress including being able to categorize my posts (I always had a geometrical mind).  Anyways, change your links and start reading.  A new leg in the journey has begun.