Think about this.
I'm not going to use this post to critique literal readings of the Bible. Instead, I want to paraphrase The Princess Bride, and point out: "I don't think that word means what you think it means".
A long time ago, a preacher I knew told me about another preacher who offended his congregation. What did the congregation do? According to my friend: "They literally crucified him!"
Except that they only got angry. No crosses or nails were used to express their anger. So, um, "literal" is probably the exact wrong word to use there.
I have the same reaction when I hear people talking about whether they take the Bible literally or not. A common conversation might go like this:
Vaguely Christian Person: "The Bible teaches that God hates gay people."
Vaguely unChristian Person: "Wait, you don't take the Bible literally, do you?"
Vaguely Christian Person: "Yep, every word."
I've just finished writing up an article about why I believe the Second Coming has already happened. It's relatively short, far from comprehensive, and is only an attempt to look at the basics. Essentially, it's an overview of the story of the New Testament, and the times the New Testament authors perceived themselves to be living in.
http://micahredding.com/blog/apocalypse-been-there-done-that/
More important than understanding the WHEN of the Second Coming, is understanding the WHAT and the WHY. And I attempt to address that.
The real damage done by pre-millennialism and other religious eschatologies of the last 200 years is that they rob us of an understanding of what God has already done, why Jesus did what he did, and what God is truly interested in.
If we can discover a better understanding of eschatology, we can recover a better understanding of God.
I'd love to discuss this. Feel free to leave comments on the article below.
I received Zehnder's newest album: "Going Up" the other day. It's being offered as worship music.
It sounds quite unique. I wonder if they anticipate other people singing along to this? I don't really think it has either the hymn-like or devo-song feel that allows for people to sing along. But that doesn't mean it's bad. It just means it's not simple and repetitive.
The album's sound is kind of "acoustic L.A." It reminds me vaguely of Alanis Morissette. But it is more acoustic, and definitely, uh, more christian.
Ultimately, it might be really good for getting into a kind of mystical trance. You might like it.
I grew up in a series of churches that could be described as legalistic and ultra-conservative. But those designations aren't really important. The important word is shallow.
It would have been easy for me to accept the religious perspective I was handed, as it was. I would have done what was needed to stay out of hell, would have understood what check-marks I needed to check, and that would have been it. And then I would have set out to make my life as thoroughly secular as possible.
With nothing deeper than staying out of hell, no actual interest in religion or Jesus or God would have been needed - and there would have been no reason or room to be interested.
But my life didn't work out that way. From early on, I knew there was a space - sometimes big, sometimes small - between what my parents thought and what the church was teaching.
The religion that the church taught me was bland, uninteresting, extremely shallow, and held no significance whatsoever. It did not inspire great things, it did not provoke great dreams, it did not ask for anything except a narrow understanding of "moral living", and a basic set of religious rituals to perform on weekends.
Instead, it sunk me in a mire of depression. All I could see was the ignorance and shallowness of those around me. And those were the people held up as models for us to aspire to.
But my parents created a space between what I was hearing in the church, and what they thought. And that space became a bigger space in my mind between the church's religion and what was real. That space became a crack of light, through which I saw hope.
Because of that space, I never saw Christianity as the rituals, traditions, prejudice, and shallowness of the churches I was in. Instead, I saw it as something beautiful and transcendent, something far removed from anything I knew. And I began my search for it.
Stuck in the hopelessness of my surroundings, I saw Christianity as the one thing that could transform my life. Somehow, Christianity held out the possibility of being free, of becoming better than what my surroundings had prepared me to be, of living a meaningful and fulfilled and dramatic life.
I looked to Christianity for transformation.
I feel like Paul, saying "not that I have already attained..."
But this hope is the one fuel that has driven my life. I live like I do because I believe there is something beautiful and transcendent hidden away in the teachings of Jesus - hidden only because our religious traditions have clouded our minds. I live like I do because I want to attain to it.
And I only hold out that hope because a long time ago, my parents subtly demonstrated that Christianity is not what the church told me it was.
I have been doing some reading about Genesis, the beginnings of humanity, and the evolutionary account of human origins. It strikes me that a bit of clarity in thinking is in order. One may take several stances on the Genesis account:
I am currently reading The New Mystics, by John Crowder - the guy who wants to "toke God". As has been mentioned by others, the primary feeling one has in reading this book is cognitive dissonance. How can he write this well?
He does write well, and compellingly. One of his thoughts struck me hard, and I wanted to see what others thought.
He suggests "suicide preachers". As in, other people send Suicide Bombers to blow us up, we send Suicide Preachers to show them something better. Instead of watching a lone individual explode, destroying those around him, we'd see hundreds of people "imploding" on a lone preacher, destroying him.
The concept is mind-shaking. Particularly when he goes on to suggest these "suicide preachers" would come from the ranks of the young men with few connections, and little to lose. The mentality is the same as that of the suicide bombers, only to reverse ends.
The idea is not that far from scriptural. Jesus and the early disciples purposefully put themselves into "suicidal" situations in order to proclaim the message of Jesus even louder.
What do you think?
I'd like to get feedback on this. Here's a pattern I see in the bible. First, Genesis 1:
Now in this, there's an obvious pattern. 3 days of separation, then 3 days of filling in those separations with something to "rule" them. The sun is said to rule the day, the moon rules the night, birds rule the sky, fish rule the sea, and humanity rules the earth. It's a nice parallel.
Another thing I'm pulling out here is that what happens on Day 6, the last set of "fillings", sets the stage for an entirely different order of things. After Genesis 1, God will no longer be dealing with the sky and sea and land as much as he will be dealing with humanity. Humanity appears in this creation order as the anticipation of something new - the human order.
Interestingly, at least 6 days of this pattern seem to hold in another way as you continue to read through Genesis.
The curses God hands out line up precisely with the separations he caused the first time around. Where before man and woman were separate, now they will struggle with each other. And as Adam will have struggle bringing forth food from the ground, Eve will have struggle bringing forth children. In the same way, the serpent's offspring will struggle with Eve's offspring.
And in the curse on the serpent, there is the anticipation of something new, a perplexing prophecy that indicates a new order of things is coming.
Your thoughts?
This is from my personal adventure blog. It deals with an alternate approach to how Christianity plays in public today. I call that approach embedded Christianity.
This weekend I was asked for the thousandth time if my band is a “Christian band”.
It’s a tricky question - with many ramifications on either side.
If I say, “Yes, we are a Christian band”, then I pigeon-hole us in a way I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. In many people’s minds, at least, this would mean that we only play songs that directly talk about a spiritual or religious subject. To most people, it would mean we were playing “Contemporary Christian Music”, a genre that has less to do with Christian subject matter than with a particular sound that has broad appeal among the Christian market.
Neither of those things are true about us. We do not play CCM (Contemporary Christian Music), nor do I limit my songs to ones that have religious themes.
My approach to music is from a different direction altogether. Rather than set out a genre that I want my music to fall into, I set out from the start to write music about things I cared about. The things I think about and immerse myself in become the subjects and the inspiration for the songs I write.
Rather than set out to write a song about the theological notion of God’s grace, I write a song that arises suddenly and spontaneously from my experience of the utter depth of my faithlessness - and the recognition of God’s presence even there.
How could I say we’re a Christian band? But how could I say we’re not?
The issue is that we’ve divided the world up into the “Christian market” and the “secular market”, into “the Christian subculture” and everything else. We have Christian movies, Christian music, Christian comedians, Christian television, Christian books, Christian bookstores, Christian colleges, etc, etc, etc.
I don’t think Jesus intended things to be done this way. Jesus didn’t intend to set up a subculture - an insular group creating content only for themselves. Instead, he intended to create a group that would go out into the world and draw from his example to create, to transform the situations they found themselves in.
Rather than Christian movies, we should have Christians embedded in Hollywood, involved in the making of movies, influencing them to be deeper, more artistic, more authentic. Rather than Christian musicians, we should have Christians involved in the creation of music at all levels, embedded in the music culture, authentically expressing the human spirit.
If we shift from the idea of a Christian subculture to this idea of embedded Christianity, we will see something far more productive than simply an alternate version of whatever’s popular in secular culture. Instead, we will see the rise of an entirely new level of cultural and creative development, as Christians everywhere begin to use their God-given creativity to transform all of their lives.
If we shift to this idea of embedded Christianity, we won’t just see more songs written to be sung on Sunday mornings, we’ll see songs written to cruise to, to climb mountains with, to sing to your friends and neighbors. We’ll see music that addresses all of our God-given human emotions, that honors the depths of humanity created in the image of God.
And bearing the image of God in all that you do is definitely not a narrow genre.
When I was growing up, the church I was part of was offended by Christian music. According to the argument, worship only occurred in the church, without the use of instruments. Therefore, any music that DID use instruments was okay, as long as it was NOT intended to worship or praise God in any way. For instrumental music to offer thanks to God was for it to encroach on "God's music".
Thus, in a strange twist of logic, Christian music became the "devil's music". It was okay to listen to country, rock, or pop - just not Christian.
At the same time, I was hanging out with another group of very conservative Christians. But their conservatism was in the other direction - they believed that all "secular music" was sinful, and it was only appropriate to listen to explicitly Christian music.
I was in a very confusing situation.
Driving up to someone's house with my radio tuned to the local Top 40 station would potentially earn me some looks and a reprimand. But to switch over to the local Christian station would offend others' conscience.
Either way, I was straying outside the lines of what GOD considered appropriate.
This odd dichotomy was characteristic of how I grew up, and it forced me to think very hard about a lot of things. One question I asked myself was "what music is from God?"
I thought very hard. Who was behind the melodies of different genres of music? Who was behind the driving beats? Who was behind the lyrical cleverness I admired so much?
And it occurred to me that ALL of this was a creation of God. Just like Peter saw the unclean animals, and heard God tell him "eat!", I realized that there was no dichotomy. There was no music of the devil - all of it was from God.
Every bit of a piece of music, from the rhythm to the chord progression, from the timbre of a singer's voice to the words of their lyrics, comes from God. The fact that notes can come together to make chords, the way a rhythm resonates with you, our entire ability to appreciate another person's musical creation - it's entirely a gift from God.
Which is not to say that some music isn't offensive or disturbing. But nothing can be disturbing or ugly without a reference point - a God-given beauty hidden inside it. Even if I don't choose to listen to rap, r&b, or much country, I still have to acknowledge that the existence of any of those genres can only be traced to God.
In the middle ages, there was a theory called "The Ape of God". The devil, the argument went, can only imitate what God has created. Therefore everything evil is simply a distorted imitation of something good. It was an insightful way to look at the world, and all the things attributed to Satan.
But it did not go far enough. There is nothing that a devil can create that God has not already made - no pleasure that can be created that God did not call into existence. Even if there is something horrendous and ugly, it is not even an imitation of God's handiwork. An imitation of God's creation can never escape the fact that only God allows its existence.
The devil himself can only exist because of God's graciousness.
Everything that exists is from God. Look closely and see it.
