John Christie asks the question, “Is America Nailing Itself in the brain?”

He shares the picture from the Huffington Post, true story: accidental nail gun to head!

Dante Autullo, the guy pictured above, goes to hospital clueless to his peril.  He says this: “When they brought in the picture, I said to the doctor `Is this a joke? Did you get that out of the doctors joke file?’ The doctor said ‘No man, that’s in your head.”’

John shares a great reflection about our spiritual self-destruction in America.  The cultured influencers in America continue to undermine the spiritual foundations that make functioning community possible.  He calls us to pray.  Prayer moves us into the depths to experience the wonder of God and his presence among us.  Only the clarity that comes from the deep places will give us what we need to know the truth. 

 “Dude, you’ve got a nail in your head.”

Mark Zuckerberg, founder, CEO, guiding light, god of FB:

"Simply put: we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services and we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits."

Even though Wall street is a bit twisted around Facebook’s initial offering and The Daily Beast is skeptical,  Zuckerberg expresses a worthy hope for business in America: “something beyond simply maximizing profits.” 

So do  you think people want to live beyond maximizing profits?  What might that be?  Health?  Family?  Community?  Love?

In the cool light of day we say “Amen!” to all of that.  However, when the pressure’s on, when we’re jonesin’ for a fix, when we’re distracted by endless flavors and varieties, “maximizing profits” seems like the obvious solution. 

We need something more than Zuckerberg’s  “something beyond.”  We need a very particular something.  We call that, Vision.

What’s your vision?  What has the Lord laid on your heart to give your life shape, purpose, meaning, direction?  What kingdom need has God created you to fill?  Figure that out and you’ll be well on your way toward living “beyond simply maximizing profits.”  No vision?  Maximizing profits will probably be the best you can do.

So says George Schmidt, Google exec., at the Boston U. commencement.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has a must read piece detailing “the curse of constant connection.”

Intimacy with God is a must have core value, central in any life that would rise above the death dealing vacuity of life without depth.  Our desperate need for validation and connection has been served a pseudo-answer in our techno-centered lives.

Ruth, George, and I celebrate the potential and possibilities presented in the amazing new world of easy communication.  Really.  If nothing else, the rapid dissemination of prayer need makes it all worthwhile.

But we must be wary. Heed George’s advise: “Take on hour a day and turn that thing off.”  And pray.  

God and politics is one of the themes of Andrew Sullivan’s “Crisis in Christianity.”  For my taste, he pushes a bit too hard for a faith that runs the danger of being “privatized,” that is, kept to one self rather than brought out into the open of public discourse.

For example, when addressing the occasional engagement of Christianity in politics, Sullivan suggests that the church filter the God-talk out of the discussion.

When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all. But it also means, at times, renouncing Caesar in favor of the Christ to whom Jefferson, Francis, my grandmother, and countless generations of believers have selflessly devoted themselves.

This seems naïve.  How do you contend for a public policy rooted in a transcendent reality without the language of faith?  Part of the broader crisis of our time is the failure of the public sphere to grant a place for conversation that acknowledges the possibility of a divine presence.  The default, acceptable world view becomes a materialistic atheism, with politics devolving into a scramble of how to divide up the pie.  After all, there is nothing else out there.  Presumably. 

Lots of people, Muslims, Jews, Christians, et. al., say that’s a bad presumption.  I don’t think it is possible to always translate “religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments.” 

Let’s try one.  “God is love.”   Okay.  Let’s see, “Transcendent reality is good, personal, and to be trusted.”  Does that work?  It’s not very warm.  It makes my head hurt a little bit.  And, frankly, I don’t think it will make it through the filter of the secular pluralists Sullivan is asking us to appease.

Sometimes the conversation needs to be frank, honest and hard.  The only way I know to maneuver through that successfully is, well, by being anchored in that simple Truth, God is love.  

Kyle

Are we living in the truth or are we campaigning for the truth?  Another challenge Andrew Sullivan lays out there in his Newsweek Easter piece, “Crisis in Christianity."

Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday….What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself? If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely.

In an election year it’s good to be reminded that we are citizens of heaven before proponents of a particular ideology.  We make a mistake if we think a savior will come out of our bitter party spirit electioneering rather than from the midst of a community indwelt with the Spirit of Jesus.

In Sullivan, however, I hear the contemporary pitfall of an isolated, privatized faith.  If “reforming oneself” leads to a deeper sense of personal satisfaction and contentment, and it ends there, the church remains the kept pet of a secularized, pluralistic culture.  I fear Sullivan falls into the individualistic trap that so pervades the West. 

While he is right in recognizing that the delusion of political power has captured the heart of many in the church, he misses the mark in suggesting that the central point is “reforming oneself.”  The tough thing to think through is the public, communal application of what Paul describes as our aim, which is, “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”  (1 Timothy 1:5)  That public application, especially in America, will always have a political expression, although hopefully not the dominant expression.  To suggest otherwise is to relegate faith to a “behind closed doors” privatization, leaving the public sphere vulnerable to real confusion, if not evil.

Still, Sullivan’s rightly recognizes that the call to discipleship first begins in our own souls as we seek to become the people Jesus died to transform us into.  From our souls the transforming power must move through Christian community to impact the world around us, or it is mere spiritual titillation. 

Kyle
 

I’ve watched with amused interest the morphing of the vampire story from its gothic origins of horror into the sentimentalized romance of the Twilight tales and it’s spin-offs on TV. 

The vampire used to represent the emptiness of consuming desire, destroying all within reach to satiate the hungering compulsion for life accessible only through feeding on the lives of others.  The seductive charm of Dracula warned us against the emptiness of community destroying self-absorption.   Think of the lonely, empty castle in the highlands of Transylvania and you get the picture. 

Now the vampire is noble!  In a melding of Walt Disney and Bram Stoker, Edward, the vampire hero of Twilight, rescues Bella from the ravages of contemporary emptiness with true love! 

The Secularization Myth tells us that life has no meaning except the meaning the self creates.  Desperate for a sense of self, we purchase our identity with the brand name of choice and long for a heroic vampire to come and rescue us or seek life through surrendering to the hungers rising up from our emptiness.  There is no life here and no truth in the Secularization Myth.

We engage the Secularization Myth when we gather together as believers to live with God in our midst.  The basic act of worship (done right!) declares that life is not about my Western, individualized, privatized, “I’m on my own” foolishness perpetrated by our dominant culture.   If Jesus taught us anything, he taught us that we are all in it together, with himself, by his Spirit, in our midst.

Of the Eight Core Values, Intimacy with God, grounds us in the conviction that God is real and wants us to know him, “face to face as a man speaks to his friend”  (Exodus 33:11).  That goes right to the heart of the Secularization Myth and puts a stake in it.  We are not alone in the universe.  God is with us filling us with life as we share together in the good things the Lord pours into our lives.

"The secularization theses, that religion is all going to go away is so discredited now that last year the New Your Times Magazine had an article on how evolutionary scientists are trying to figure out why the great majority of the human race still believes in God.”

So observes Timothy Keller in a lecture at the University of Chicago in 2008.* 

The culture keeps trying to push the reality of God to the margins, to say only uneducated dolts still believe in the fairy tale.  But God keeps coming.  Everybody you know (maybe with a very, very few isolated exceptions) keep wondering about the Truth.  The persistent ache to know Him will not go away, and when a scary disease shows up or a loved one dies, that ache becomes a scream.

In that moment, we need to be there with a depth of relationship to share the Good News about the God who is right here and right now, by our being with them affirming that much deeper tug of longing.  Reality breaks in all the time with the Truth of God’s presence.

*Timothy Keller, “Reason for God,“ A Place for Truth, Dallas Willard, ed., Intervarsity Press, 2010, p. 58.

Remember the old Burger King commercial, "Where's the beef?"  That's a great question for discipeship and the work of Multiplication as we take a close look at our lives.  

Our fellowship supports a missionary team working in the Middle East.  Formerly in Baghdad, they are now in Lebanon.  They have moved to a Christian part of Beirut.  It is reportedly safer than other places in the city.  Here is our friend sharing about the new “security” they enjoy in “Christian” Beirut.

Now, back to how safe we are in the Christian area. Tex and Cal popped into a local cake shop to purchase some things delectable a couple of mornings back. They noticed an armed guard at the door. An armed guard for a sweet shop seemed strange (even though it was filled with chocolate, and if you have ever seen the way the Sisses here go after chocolate, well...). Tex asked the woman sales person why they have an armed guard. She said, "It is because of the fast." Tex had to inquire further. She explained that "all" Christians fast from cheese during Lent. Their shop, however, sells cheese goodies during Lent and they need a guard to protect them from Christians who would try to forcibly stop them from selling cheese during the fast. Besides striking us as very cheesy (and funny), we all agreed that there is not a huge difference between the Hezbollah bullies we left and the Christian bullies that now surround us. Come to think of it, where is that cheese burger?

Our missionary friend is commenting on the cultural Christianity in Lebanon.  We shouldn’t be surprised that it looks a lot like, well, the culture in Lebanon.  People naturally conform to the world around them.  We get that.

The need is great.  Easy it is to “conform to the pattern of this world,” simply falling in step with how others live.  The kingdom call to discipleship necessitates the hard work of prayer, truth-telling in community, and transformation.

One of the challenges for us in the US is not to cluck our tongues at cultural Christians in other places, but rather to look close to home and ask the question, "In what ways does our Christianity conform to our dominant American culture?"

Be gentle in your response.  "Speak the truth in love...."

It’s the “Peter Pan Principle:” boys who don’t want to grow up.

Tony leads engineers designing the stuff the Air Force uses to defend America.  A leader valued by the Department of Defense, he also serves to lead a variety of companies in developing internships to equip budding engineers soon to graduate from Cal State, Fresno.  He does that on his own time.

But that’s not his true passion.  Tony sees the crisis of an America without fathers and he is moving to change the world.  His vision is to transform a generation, one boy at a time.  He leads his church in working to turn boys (of whatever age) into men.  He’s paying attention to what’s going on in our culture, and he’s not content to let somebody else solve the problem. 

Tony’s not delusional.  He knows the difference between a pipe dream and a vision.  (He's an engineer after all.)  He’ll tell you, unless we’re praying, we’re just playing games.  He recognizes that if God doesn’t move, we are all lost.  He also knows that a praying people can move the hand of God.

You may think he’s crazy.  I think he’s inspired.  And I think he’ll change the world because it is the Lord who is at work in him to will and to work for his good pleasure.