Our Ancient Foe

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
Revelation, John the Apostle

Say first, for Heav’n hides nothing from thy view
  Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause
  Mov’d our Grand Parents in that happy State,
  Favour’d of Heav’n so highly, to fall off
  From their Creator, and transgress his Will
  For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?
  Who first seduc’d them to that fowl revolt?
  Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
  Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d
  The Mother of Mankinde, what time his Pride
  Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
  Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
  To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
  He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
  If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
  Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
  Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
  With vain attempt.  Him the Almighty Power
  Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
  With hideous ruine and combustion down
  To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
  In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
  Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.
Paradie Lost, John Milton

What happened in those initial hours of creation, when every tree was bearing it’s first fruit, and every lark was singing his inaugural song? From what source did Satan’s pride issue forth? What secret steam of bitterness lay hidden underground in Lucifer’ mind? A god among men, yet unto God an ant.

Still, Satan opposed his creator, and in those first breaths of life the Almighty was rejected. Goodness rejected, peace rejected, authority rejected, justice rejected. As Satan fell from the heavens his dark shadow began to blot out the light of God’s goodness.

Before long, mankind was hurling downward at the same pace, tearing away creation’s youth, and leaving only death, and despondency. Thorns and briars choked life from the ground. Brother turned on brother, and nation upon nation. Creation was crumbling, unable to shoulder such a load.

Think about these things as you work today. Search them out in your own heart.

The War on the Inside

Spiritual warfare is a range of activity by various Christian groups whereby Satanic demons are combatted, using a variety of methods depending on the beliefs of the group, but typically prayer. -wikipedia

What an interesting quote from wiki. I imagine that most people would think it an accurate definition. And while it is true that spiritual warfare involves demonic activity, my goal this week, through these blog posts, is to help enlarge the scope of our understanding. To widen, as it were, the aperture of your mind’s eye. Here is my definition (it’s in process)

Spiritual warfare is the cosmic contest between the accomplishment of God’s will and anything that would subvert that will.

While this definition includes demonic activity, it is not limited to demons. As believers it is paramount that we understand this: if every demon was destroyed right now we would still have spiritual  struggles.

And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. – Romans, Paul the Apostle

You see, we all have within us a natural bent towards destruction. Like iron that oxidizes and rusts, so too our lives decay and crumble under the damning process of sin. As Jon Foreman put it, “These carbon shells, these fragile dusty frames, house canvases of souls. We are bruised and broken masterpieces.”

Take for instance Alexander Pope’s poem:

Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

My friends, brothers and sisters, guard your hearts, for out the heart flow the issues of your life. Remember the quote from wiki at the beginning? I was very pleased that they chose prayer as the primary method of fighting spiritual battles (I wouldn’t want to hold a “how to” seminar on exorcisms.) So, as you pray this evening, ask your Father in Heaven for protection, not only from demons, but from the deprivation of your own soul.  Pray again that the will of God would be accomplished in your world, and in your life. Ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen your resolve to yield only to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. To Him be praise forever and ever.

Picture is “The Ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory” by William Blake, and comes from his Dante collection.

Comments/questions? Would love to chat with you all.

SYMC Day 1

Chris (Dortch) and I arrived here in Chi-Town at. 11:00AM. With Starbucks in hand we met up with fellow youth ministers Doug King and Josh Fulkerson. Doug is Chris’s youth pastor and Chris is mine. Josh is also a product of Doug’s 25 year ministry at Beaver Dam Baptist Church in Kentucky.
The past few hours have been filled with retelling jokes we have used for years, milk and cookies, and dreaming up BIG ideas. I am so grateful to have had a youth pastor who has stuck it out for almost 10 years at my home church.
Longevity in ministry has yielded a harvest of younger ministers. Currently on staff with Chris are two former students, myself and Jason Bratcher. Even this week while Chris and I are absent from our weekend student worship service one of our high school guys, Dalton Reynolds, will be preaching for us.
Students who graduated from Chris’s ministry years ago and now have their own families can still call him for advice. He hasn’t bounced from church to church. God called him to be a pastor to middle and high school students. This week we will listen to the biggest names in youth ministry, and there is one common denominator between the keynotes; they all have all served teens for decades.

Doug King- Youth Pastor 25 Years at Beaver Dam Baptist.

Chris Dortch-Youth Pastor 9 Years at Christ Community Church.

These guys deserve to share this stage at SYMC 2011

The Body

So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad. All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.

This afternoon I gashed my foot open rather deeply. I won’t go into details but a friend who was with me nearly lost is lunch when he looked at the cut. Luckily this happened just before supper at my church and I was able to let a lady who is a registered nurse examine my flesh wound and patch me up (I still had to play drums for a worship set). When I finally made my way home my wife Chelsea was noting the care that I was taking over the wound. I limped to keep weight off, when I cleaned the wound I was tender and careful, and when I applied ointment and bandages I made absolute sure there was no dirt or debris in the cut. After a moment or two of watching me Chelsea remarked, “It’s so amazing how one small part of the body gets injured and every other part rushes to its aid.”

She’s right. I favored the foot all night, letting my good foot bear most of my weight. I constantly thought about the wound, I was always aware of how I stepped and placed my foot so as not to reopen the cut. My hands helped wash and clean the cut. Even on a smaller scale the blood that ran out of the cut was washing out any dirt that may have entered the wound, while platelets began forming a scab that would seal the wound and allow new skin to grow.

It’s no coincidence that Paul uses the human body to describe the Church. When people who have committed their lives to Christ also commit themselves to one another, the natural result should be care that mimics the way the body cares for itself. If one member of our body suffers every other part of the body recognizes the pain. If one part of the body is wounded, every other part feels the pain.

I also find it interesting that Paul follows his illustration of the body with this…

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

 

 

(verses are in the New Living Translation)

Showing “The Office” in Church

Every Sunday morning here at Christ Community Church close to 130 students meet to hang out, and connect Jesus in meaningful corporate worship. The service, called DRIVEN, is geared toward reaching middle and high school students who struggle to make sense out of this crazy, mixed up life. To reach these students we embrace some non-typical methods of ministry. We play games like “beat the volunteer”, and even listen to Coldplay.

This morning, to kick off a new series entitled “Labels”, we showed a clip from the popular NBC show The Office. The clip was a scene from a season one episode called Diversity Day. Needless to say, there were plenty of politically incorrect assumptions, concepts, and jokes made about multiple races in the clip.

Before showing the clip I introduced it with a few comments to our students. The point I wanted to make was that far to often we watch television and enjoy it simply as entertainment without ever asking deeper questions. We laugh at the absurdity of Michael Scott without ever asking what the writers of the show are trying to say to us.

I believe that anyone who takes the time to critique the show will see that the writers of a show like The Office are not creating awkward moments only for the sake of entertainment. Rather, by making Michael Scott the racist fool who wrongly associates himself with Dr. King, the writers are teaching us the stupidity of predjudice.

And if you think The Office is racy you should go and read the parable of the Good Samaritan. That was the Bible text we were studying today. It’s the story of a half-breed outcast who saw beyond skintone. The Biblical writer used irony, an awkward situation, to teach us the intrinsic and equal value of all people.

Kinkade and Van Gogh

In his latest Huffington Post article Jon Foreman, lead singer of Switchfoot, offers a few thoughts on popular art and the artistic consumer. You can find the entire piece here, but the gist is this… Don’t rely on the “crowd” to tell you what to think of a certain piece of art. Examine it for yourself and then come to a conclusion. Regarding democratic America, Alexis de Toqueville put it this way:

“To the extent that the citizens become more equal and more alike, the inclination of each to believe blindly a certain man or a certain class diminishes. The tendency to believe the mass increases, and its is opinion which increasingly leads the world.” (emphasis mine)

The point is that democracy carries with it a danger: the majority might be stupid. In order to preserve itself, the democracy depends on citizens who are personally invested in the betterment of both themselves and the state. In the same way, the artistic soul of a democratic nation carries with it a danger: the majority might be lazy, stupid, self-indulged, egotistical morons. Hence Lady Gaga, and a 12 billion dollar a year pornography industry.

Now, although I agree with Mr. Foreman’s conclusion there are a few things I would like to point out:

He uses Thomas Kinkade as an example of kitsch (cheap or anti-art). Later he uses Van Gogh as an example of an artist who was considered unimportant in his own time, who eventually became a postmortem phenom. I would argue that there is a major difference between Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters and Kinkades “Cottages Collection”. I am actually glad that Foreman chose Van Gogh as an example. His art and rise to popularity demonstrate exactly what can happen when the majority decides that something is popular.

50 years ago Van Gogh’s art was largely obscure in the American mind. Then suddenly, between 1987-88, three of Van Gogh’s paintings were sold for a total of just over 170 million dollars. Keep in mind that these are purchases made by three respectable art collectors (not the general public). Since that time there has been an explosion of Van Gogh mania in America. Step into any given home decor shop and you can find everything from Van Gogh prints to Van Gogh napkins (the thought of wiping grease off our mouths with a priceless piece art would be detestable to the man who paid $50,000,000 for the original, or more importantly to Van Gogh himself). The point is that, although Van Gogh’s original was not kitschy, it has been forced into a cheap democratic mold. Because the herd has decided that Van Gogh is fashionable we began stamping imitations out for 3 cents a unit. Now you can wallpaper your house in Van Gogh.

So what about Kinkade… the second half of my argument is that Kinkade (I use Kinkade’s last name to refer to his brand) is designed to be mass marketed, and by extension cheap. Now I certainly understand that his originals are costly, but the cheapness that I am referencing is of a different sort. While Van Gogh can be made cheap by printing him on a napkin, Kinkade will never be considered in the same class as Van Gogh. Kinkade could be hanging next to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, but it does not mean that they are comparable.

What I think Jon Foreman should have said was this…

Don’t take popularity as a correlating factor to something’s intrinsic value or worth. On the other hand, don’t take your uninformed opinion as rule when it comes to art. Instead compare the piece to something more objective. Popularity and perspective can wax and wane, but objectivity does not go out of style.

The Experience of the Numinous

There was a man born among the Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be ‘one with’, the Something which is at once the awful haunter of nature and the giver of the moral law.

The above quote is taken from The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. In this book Lewis begins by explaining what Rudolf Otto called the “experience of the numinous”. The numinous is the anxious dread or awe experienced by men who are perceiving the really supernatural.  There is NO natural (material) explanation for this awe, argues Lewis. This is the first oddity of human experience and religion; how man can come to build such elaborate and super-natural explanations from purely natural data.

Secondly, Lewis is baffled that, although systems of morality differ worldwide, everyone arrives at the conclusion that there are certain things that I “ought” and “ought not” do. How does “ought” arise from “is”?

The third stage of religion is when man infers that the Numinous is the keeper, controller, and guardian of morality. And to this incredible leap Lewis writes:

“for is was the Jews who fully and unambigously identified the awful Presence haunting black mountain-tops and thuderclouds with the ‘righteous Lord’ who ‘loveth righteousness”.

Finally, Lewis writes that the man Jesus, a Jew, claims that he is, and is the son of, and is one with, the Numinous and the keeper and originator of morality.

A very interesting string of thoughts. Read the book. Tell me what you think…