…Links for Your Linking Pleasure 34…

Halloween: Yes or No?
One person argues that the Puritanical fear of the occult and the general evangelical hatred towards the Roman Catholic Church is what originally created the fear of Halloween. Perhaps, he argues, we have come to believe our own propaganda?

A Theology of the Land
tallskinnykiwi talks about and quotes Christian farmers who are doing what they can to bring justice and equality to what Paul called “the whole created order.”

Pray for Glenn Beck
He surely needs it.

New Smashing Pumpkins album to be Free
If you love Smashing Pumpkins, you’d better read this.

The Jesus we Never Knew
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Church Marketing

In Bill Easum’s recent post, he talks about six tactical mistakes churches make.

In later clarifying the second mistake (don’t do announcements at the beginning), Easum says:

…announcements at the beginning of a worship service so deadly- because they violate every media tenet as well slap as our culture in the face.  Most younger people today do whatever they can to avoid watching a commercial on TV. Imagine what a media savvy twenty-something feels when subjected to five or ten minutes of commercials up front before they have the chance to decide if they like what’s happening in your worship.

And if you say, “That’s tough. We don’t bow to the culture,” you’re missing the point. The way to be counter-cultural is not by intentionally turning people away with your methodology. The way to be counter-cultural is to make the worship so appealing that the Holy Spirit has time to speak into their lives and transform their hearts into followers of Christ. You can’t do that if you run them off at the beginning of the service.

I don’t know Easum personally.  He seems to have reasonably valid credentials for talking about church growth and church marketing, but I wonder if we have lost something in this message of making the Holy Spirit “appealing.”

There is nothing all that “appealing” to me about Jesus.  He didn’t hold nice services and invite lots of people to hear him.  In fact, he tried very often to turn people away or keep what he did a secret.  What do we do with this Jesus in light of modern church marketing?

I’m not sure I have the answers, but I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter.

Roman Religion and Christian Faith: A Parable

James once said “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself form being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).  This doesn’t seem like such a radical point of view until one considers the way that the Romans viewed religion.  Borrowing from Richard Horsley’s Jesus and Empire, we can see just as much Romans viewed religion as an extension of the state:

“The most divine Caesar…we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things…; for when everything was falling [into disorder] and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave it to the whole world a new aura; Caesar…the common good fortune of all…the beginning of life and vitality…All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the beginning of the year…who was being sent to us and our descendants as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and [whereas] having becoming [god] manifest, Caesar has fulfilled all hopes of earlier times…the birthday of the God [Augustus] has been for the whole world the beginning of good news (gr: evangelion) concerning him [therefore let a new era beginning from his birth).” –OGIS 2.#458

When James says the word “religion” and does not include the word “Caesar,” he is subverting empire and committing a crime against the crown.  Not only that, but it is a commentary on the whole power structure of Rome.  How did Rome perpetuate the infamous Pax Romana?  The ‘peace of Rome’ was sustained by taking money from conquered people’s in the form of tribute to the capital and Rome redistributing that money to Roman legions who would, in turn, protect the crown.  While Rome takes from others to protect themselves, the church, as a vital and life-sustaining force for the world, gives to others who cannot protect themselves.

But this is the way that church has always been.  We have always been called to give ourselves away and to show God’s grace by helping the helpless.  We have always been called to share the gospel to all, even if this means great personal loss for ourselves.  We have always been called to carry our cross.  We have always been called, even if it is dangerous…

Seven Counterintuitive Ways to move Closer to God

1. Stop trying so hard.  The nature of Jesus Christ was one who was comfortable in his own skin to be truly human.  We were not created to be fallen creatures, but to be the imageo dei.  The fall was a choice that humanity made to follow things that are by nature not God.  It is a process to move back to the place where we view humanity primary as the image of God when it seems to have been so distorted by people, but there still is this glimmer of hope.  Rather than trying so hard to get close, let the spirit wash over you each morning as you pray to simply be in the presence of our Father.

2.  Cut things out of your schedule instead of trying to tag more “God” things in yoru schedule.  I am a big fan here that less is more.  If you are planning on meeting four people throughout the day today, try to meet only with two people for a longer and deeper amount of time.

3. Stop thinking of certain things as spiritual.  If you think of Bible and prayer as spiritual, you are, in a sense, making your job, your car, your house, your family, and your friends inherently unspiritual.  Write down ways that your relationship with God can be furthered through everything you do.  For instance, your relationship with God can be furthered with people as you talk about God with them (even if you are not “evangelizing” in the classic sense of the word).

4. Take an inventory of items in your house and decide what you do and do not need.  Get rid of the things you do not need by giving them to the poor and selling them (if they are valuable).  My suggestion is to get rid of 50 percent of things in your house.  Why do you need two TVs?  Why do you need so many dishes?  Do all households really NEED to cars?  More stuff often inhibits our relationship with God because we tend to want to play with it all rather than play with God.

5. Read less of the Bible, but read the parts that you do read more closely searching for a conceptual understanding of what you are reading.  I am not a huge fan of trying to go through the Bible in a year.  Scripture is an instrument for mediation, not a medal to be awarded once we have read it all.

6. Move slower in everything that you do.  The other day when work was really busy and everyone was moving at lightning pace, one of the girls said we all looked stressed out and that we should just be patient.  At the time it was annoying to me, but looking back on it, there is no reason to rush.  Sure, customers wanted their food, but the humanity gets lost in the rush of it all sometimes. God can get lost in this rush too.

7. Honor God by worshipping him with your body through the way one eats and exercises.  Our mental and physical health is not ever seperated from our spiritual health.  One will invariably affect the other.

The Mystery of Gatsby

I have always been intrigued by the mystery of Gatsby:

‘I think he killed a man,’ [Jordan said] and had the effect of stimulating my curiousity.  I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York.  That was comprehensible.  But young men didn’t–at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn’t–drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound

The phrase ‘only in America’ comes to mind thinking of a place where even Jets and Sharks can come together reminiscient of a Shakespearan Romeo and Juliet.  Only in America can Gatsby rise from nothing and become “something.”  While the phrase is utterly flawed and corrupted by the nostalgic tendencies, I wonder also if the idea of ‘only in America’ also deteroriates our trust in tradition.  The great innovator of the twentieth century–Henry Ford–noted that history and tradition are “more or less bunk” and the only thing that we should give a “tinker’s dam” about is the here and now.  Robin Williams performance in The Deat Poet’s Society emphasizes the American love of carpe diem.

And yet, Williams performance and the mystery of Gatsby raise up a central point about Western Civilization: have we so valued this rising from the ashes–coming from nowhere–that the places we come from really become nowhere and nothing.  Joe Biden emphasizes his rise from the working class and Barack Obama call for a world where we don’t see things in terms of red states and blue states.  But this is exactly the question: Should the red states abandon their traditions and their values for the politics of ‘change.’

Who is Gatsby?  Are we to know the traditions that shaped him?  Are we to know the traditions that shape our lives?  Or do we now live in a Western traditionless world where the mystery of Gatsby will reign?