Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life…But Not Now?

Recently Jerry Falwell Jr. tweeted:

Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing “nice guys.” They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascist Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps. 9/28/18

Falwell’s tweet reflects a growing theology among some Christian leaders (particularly evangelical leaders). 

It goes something like this. The way of Jesus... the way of enemy love, non-violence and self-sacrifice is okay in church, but it just won’t cut it in the real world.  In the real world, Jesus just isn’t tough enough.  In the real world, you need street fighters.  Jesus is a fine Messiah if all you want to do is get to heaven, but if you want to make a difference in Washington, you’ll need another Messiah.  You’ll need a Messiah that puts his or her enemies on a cross, not one that dies on a cross for his enemies.

Jesus is the way, the truth and the life…but not now.

I don’t think we can overstate how destructive this brand of political activism has become in our world.  I’m sure it’s not their intention, but politicians and preachers, like Falwell, who have bought into it are proclaiming to the world that Jesus is going to be Lord someday but he’s not Lord now.  Right now, we have to fight fire with fire, hate with hate, violence with more violence, political ugliness with even more political ugliness.

But the apostle Paul, among others, clearly proclaims that Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:11).  Jesus is Lord of the universe right now!  And a simple reading of history proves that the church has been truly influential only when we have chosen to do so through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ as we follow his teachings.  We bring value and honor to the politics of our land when, and only when, we are voices echoing the invitation of Jesus... “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44-45)

I’m sure that Jerry Falwell, and other religious leaders, have the best intentions for their political activism.  I’m sure they choose a street fighting Messiah hoping that he or she will bring peace.  But I think our politicians and preachers need to be reminded that Jesus really is the way, the truth and the life…right now.

A Dream about a Dream about Heaven

I had a dream.  And in my dream, I was speaking before the national gathering of my church’s leaders.  And I said, I had a dream about heaven!  (So, I had a dream about telling some people about my dream about heaven.  Are you with me so far?)

I said, heaven is this place where everyone, from those who hunger and thirst for righteousness to those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, are truly blessed.

Heaven is a place where everyone has given up on anger.  It’s a place where everyone has come to see the futility of hatred and decided to love their enemies.  It’s a place where the instruments of warfare have been converted into the implements of agriculture.     

Heaven is a place where religious posturing has fallen away and no one feels compelled to impress anyone with their deep devotion or their high holiness.  Instead, everyone is fearlessly honest about their deep brokenness and their failure to “get it right.”

Heaven is a place where the need to climb the ladder of success has lost its appeal and no one worries about financial security or owning stuff.  Everyone prays, “give us this day our daily bread,” and everyone shares what has been given.   

Heaven is a place where no one tries to decide whether or not any of the other residents should be there.  The need to judge others has long since passed away.  Christians have stopped judging Muslims.  Palestinians have stopped judging Israelis.  The poor have stopped judging the rich.  The right has stopped judging the left.  In Christ there are no “judgy” people.       

Heaven is a place where “the Spirit and the bride say come,” and all who are thirsty gather to drink the water of life.  Because heaven is, after all, the city whose gates never shut, where anyone who wants to enter, can.  Sure, there will be some who, like the elder brother, refuse to go in.  But in the end, who can resist a party?

Heaven is a place where all kings and nations have gathered under the tree of life to find healing in its shade. 

Finally I said, would you like to go to heaven? 

Slowly, reluctantly at first, then more willingly and then more joyfully and fearfully, most of the religious leaders agreed that going to heaven would be a good thing.  So, we prayed together and we walked out the doors of the place where we had gathered and we took our first tentative steps into the kingdom of heaven. 

Then I woke from the heavenly dream that is, according to Jesus, even now becoming a present reality.

THE TRUTH

We’re near Holy week, the time in the church calendar when we remember the passion of Christ.  So, I’ve been thinking about a scene from that week.  It’s when Jesus stands before Pilate, the official representative of the Roman government in Judea, his life hanging in the balance.  Here’s the encounter from the gospel of John.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (John 18:33-38)

Every time I come to this point in the story I really want Jesus to answer Pilate’s question, but he never does.  Maybe Jesus knew that (in the words of Jack Nicholson) Pilate couldn’t handle to truth.  But apparently, he believed that Thomas could.

A few days before Jesus appears before Pilate, he is with his disciples.  In response to a question from Thomas Jesus says,  “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6)  So, what is the truth?  According to Jesus, he is.

Frederick Beuchner once wrote, “Jesus did not say that religion was the truth, or that his own teachings were the truth, or that what people taught about him was the truth, or that the Bible was the truth, or the church, or any system of ethics or theological doctrine.”  Beuchner’s right.  While all the things he listed share truth, none of them are the truth, at least not according to Jesus.  According to Jesus the truth is, in a word, Jesus.

So if I really want the truth, I have to let the Spirit of God take me beyond a religious system, beyond doctrine or dogma, even beyond the words on the pages of the Bible.  I have to be willing to be exposed to Jesus himself, perhaps through religion or doctrine or the Bible; but it has to be Jesus himself, the heart of Jesus, the raw, radical, undefinable Jesus.  When, and if, I know him, I know the truth.

For example, there is a story in John 8 about the time when Jesus looked at a sexually promiscuous woman and said, “I don’t condemn you.  Go and leave your sin behind.”  Somewhere deep in that story the truth is exposed, if I can handle him.

How about the story of a leper who came to Jesus and said, “If you’re willing, you can make me clean.  Jesus had compassion for the man and touched him and said, I am willing; be clean.  And the man was healed.”  (Mark 1:40-42)  Somehow that story connects us with the truth, if we’re ready for that electrifying connection.

Stories about Jesus eating and drinking at parties where known sinners were in attendance, stories about Jesus castigating the most devout religious people and going home to eat with the most infamously sinful people, reveal the truth, if you want to know him.

The hard teachings of Jesus that include instructions to strip naked so others can have something to wear and to pray for those who beat us up so we can be like our Father in heaven.  The truth is contained in these teachings; not so much in the words themselves (as powerful as they are) but in the person who is audacious enough to say them. 

The truth is ultimately exposed, hanging naked on a cross outside the city gates of Jerusalem.  There he is, asking the Father to forgive his persecutors, instructing a disciple to take care of his mother, speaking words of comfort and forgiveness to one more sinner, crying out to his Father in abandoned agony and giving up his Spirit in the belief that he had accomplished what the Father sent him to do.  There on that cross is the truth, if you can handle the truth.

No wonder Jesus let Pilate’s question hang in the air unanswered.  Some of us, and sometimes none of us, can embrace the answer.  But sometimes, when we can handle the truth, the truth transforms us.  This Lenten season, as we enter into Holy week, may we be transformed by the truth.     

The Gun Control Debate

I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the rhetoric around the gun control debate. The loudest voices seem to promote one of two extremes.

1.  Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.  Guns have nothing to do with it.  We need “people control” not gun control.  So, parents! Shape up and do a better job raising your kids!  Oh yeah, those who want gun legislation are part of a conspiracy to take away your second amendment rights. 

2.  Guns are extremely dangerous.  If we could get rid of them, or at least get rid of the ones that are the deadliest, our kids could go to school without fear of getting shot.  So, congress! Pass reasonable gun legislation and all will be right with the world.  Oh yeah, the NRA is evil. 

I don’t consider myself an authority on gun control, but I do think of myself as somewhat knowledgeable about human nature in light of the scriptures.  So, I would like to address my friends from both camps.   

First, to my anti-gun-control friends; I agree with your basic argument.  The teachings of Jesus, along with the rest of the Bible, lead us to the understanding that evil (sin) is a problem that begins in the human heart. 

Jesus said things like, “You have heard that it was said to people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement.’  But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to the judgement.”

Clearly, Jesus understood that human evil is not external to the heart but originates in it.  That’s why anger is so dangerous.  It’s the internal condition that, when left unchecked, metastasizes and grows until it expresses itself externally, most of the time in some destructive way. 

This understanding of anger and violence can be seen in the ancient Hebrew story of Cain and Able, the sons of Adam and Eve.  Cain was angry with his brother Able.  God saw the danger of Cain’s anger and counseled him to “master it.”  Cain, however, ignored the warning and finally killed Able.  By the way, the story doesn’t even include a description of the weapon Cain used.  That part seems to be irrelevant to the point of the story.

So apparently, according to the Bible, weapon control is all about self-control.  It’s not about the weapon(s).

Secondly, to my pro-gun-control friends: I agree with your basic argument.  Guns are extremely dangerous and some form of reasonable restriction seems prudent and, in my opinion, consistent with the heart of Jesus.

The gospel writers record a scene in which Jesus takes a child in his arms and tells the disciples that it would be better for a person to have a millstone hung around his neck and thrown into the sea than cause a little one to stumble.  He goes on to tell them that if their hand causes them to stumble, they should cut it off.  Of course, Jesus didn’t intend for people to literally dismember themselves.  But he did seem to indicate that if there’s something we can do (even something drastic) to protect children, we should do it.

So, maybe we should be more careful about our children’s exposure to violence on TV and in video games.  Maybe we should be more proactive about school campus security.  Maybe we should provide more intervention measures for troubled young people. 

And maybe we should pass legislation that makes it hard for a teenager to get an assault rifle.  Maybe we should pass legislation that makes it hard for anybody to get an assault rifle. 

I know the argument that says, “If you outlaw assault rifles, then only the bad guys will have them.”  But, of course, we don’t use that argument for something like underage drinking or texting while driving.  We don’t say, “If you make it illegal for kids under 21 to drink, then only the bad kids will get beer.”  We don’t say, “If you make texting while driving illegal, then only the rebellious kids will do it.”  No! we pass laws intended to protect our kids and then enforce them the best we can.  So maybe we should do the same thing with gun control legislation.

The question is, will we come together, ignore the rhetoric of the extremes, ignore those who use fear to motivate, and do what we can to save human beings.

A prayer, taken from The Book of Common Prayer, seems appropriate.

“Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the people of this land], that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”

“I Believe In Jesus...Sometimes”

Christians are people who believe in Jesus.  And we believe that by believing in Jesus, we have life in his name.  But we live in this weird “between time;” between the time when God’s salvation has entered into the world (Christmas) and the time when the world finally enters into God’s salvation (the end of the age).

But Christians are people who have accepted the invitation to trust Jesus and enter into God's salvation now.  We're the ones who breathe in the crisp clean air that is God's salvation. We've been fitted with a set of spiritual lungs that can extract “God oxygen” out of this "between" atmosphere so that we are able to be fully alive. 

It's just that sometimes I don't believe in Jesus.  Sometimes (a lot of times) I fail to trust my new lungs.  I step out of my door on Monday morning, the day after I have publicly confessed my faith in Jesus Christ, holding my breath… waiting on the salvation that I already have. 

Or worse, I fall back on trying to suck life out of stuff like financial security, or a "successful" career, or hoping to hear about some other poor sap's failure so I can feel better about myself.  It’s sad really. It's not really living.  It's definitely not believing in Jesus.   

But sometimes, maybe on Christmas morning (which happens to be a Monday morning this year) I remember that I'm a Christian and I believe in Jesus.  And when I do, when I breathe deeply the breath of life that God keeps trying to breathe into me...well, then I am saved. 

This Christmas, may you and I believe in Jesus.  And by believing, may we have life in his name.  

Part of the Problem

What do you do when you realize that you’re part of the problem?

A while back I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, reading all the 140-character bits of “wisdom” (back when they were still 140 characters) written mostly by people who think like me.  It always makes me feel good when people think like me.

But then it happened.  Suddenly I found myself reading through the eyes of a good friend of mine, a good friend who disagrees with most of my tweets.  And I could see that the tweets were doing little to change my friend’s mind.  Not only that, my tweets were only stressing our friendship, making our interactions more tense and less productive.    

So, I took some time off from tweeting and blogging and posting; time for prayerful reflection.  I wanted to be able to discuss the topics I’m passionate about without alienating people who passionately disagree with me.  I wanted to learn to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

After some time for reflection I’ve decided on a couple personal guidelines.

1.      Whenever possible, my interactions should be in person instead of online; in the form of conversations, instead of tweets.

 

Recently, I spent a long evening with my friend.  We shared a good meal.  We had a long and thoughtful conversation.  He shared his opinions and I shared mine.  He had great insights and articulated them skillfully.  I was able to understand his perspectives better and compelled to rethink some of mine.  I can’t say that we changed each other’s minds but, more importantly, our friendship remains intact.  Actually, I think our friendship is stronger than ever.  Maybe if we met our opponents at a restaurant instead of on Facebook we would be better off.      

2.       Assume the best in others, especially those with whom I disagree.

I talked about all this in a recent Questioning Christianity podcast (pardon the plug).  I believe Jesus taught enemy love and non-violence, and that he refused to use warfare to accomplish his purposes.  But I can assume the best of those who also follow the teachings of Jesus but believe that war is sometimes necessary.  I’m a pro-life advocate.  But I can assume the best of my pro-choice friends who also care about human beings.  I believe that the lives of those on death row are also sacred and should be protected.  And I can assume the best of those who believe in capital punishment.  If I can assume the best of others, maybe they can assume the best of me.  Maybe my just war friends can assume I’m not unpatriotic and maybe my pro-choice friends can assume I also care for women dealing with unwanted pregnancies and my capital punishment friends can assume that I care about justice and public safety.  

 So, I’m back online, but hopefully as part of the solution instead of the problem. 

The Way of Jesus is Hard

The way of Jesus, the way that infuses life into our souls, is hard.  Jesus said so.  He said it’s the narrow way, the hard way.  It’s the way that few people choose.  Most of us opt for the easy way, the way that keeps taking us to the same destructive destinations. (Matthew 7:13-14)

But those who choose the way of Jesus do hard things.  They grow food for the hungry, dig wells for the thirsty, open their doors to strangers, sew cloths for the naked, give medicine to the sick and visit the imprisoned. (Matthew 25:31-46)

I am often offended by the way of Jesus.

Take, for example, the very idea of inviting a stranger into my home.  I’m reluctant to house some of my own family members, much less a stranger!  But Jesus said that inviting a stranger in is actually making him [Jesus] my guest.  No pressure there!  

I once heard T.W. Hunt, one of the great saints now absent from the body and present with the Lord, tell a story about a “stranger” who knocked on his door.  He was a man who had recently shown up at T.W.’s church looking to make a change, hoping to be discipled in the way of Jesus by seasoned disciples, like T.W. and his wife Laverne.  To paraphrase a line from a Toby Keith song, this guy looked like a great big biker man.    

After praying it over they decided to invite this strange man into their home to live with them.  And he was indeed strange.  They worked on everything from personal hygiene to personal prayer time.  Needless to say, it was a great challenge for this saintly couple.  But they were determined to believe Jesus and take his teachings seriously.  So, discipleship continued daily.  Eventually, the stranger became a deacon in the church.  The hard way infuses life.    

The way of Jesus, the way that infuses life into our souls, is hard.  Jesus said so.

The word “stranger” in Matthew 25 is the Greek word xenos.  It literally means “alien” or “foreigner.”  We get our English word xenophobia from it, “the fear of foreigners.” 

So, when Jesus spoke these words he wasn’t just telling individuals to open their homes to strangers, he was saying that his kingdom is the kind of kingdom that opens its borders to foreigners, to immigrants, to refuges.   

  

I’m not a politician and I have little interest in attempting to shape national policy (like I even could).  I find that I have very little influence within the kingdoms of the world, including the one in which I live.  So, I mostly try to influence those who consider themselves citizens of the kingdom of God. 

And here’s what I’m trying to say.  Whatever our political affiliation and/or opinions, if you and I are interested in following the teachings of Jesus (also known as “being Christians”) then we must honestly grapple with what he’s inviting us to do for immigrants.  We must ask ourselves what it will look like to choose the way of Jesus.  In other words, those who honestly want to be followers of Jesus must take what he said seriously.

Of course, we won’t get it right much of the time.  Of course, the teachings of Jesus challenge us, offend us, scare us.  But remember, Jesus is the one who has “the words of eternal life.”  (John 6:68)

The way of Jesus is hard, but it’s the way that infuses life into our souls.  Jesus said so.