This past Sunday morning our little community of Christ followers prayed that prayer. In some profound way, as I prayed, I felt that I was praying something deeply controversial and subtly subversive of the kind of Christianity we’re often sold in American culture… “Do you know where you’re going when you die? If you were to die today do you know for certain where you would spend eternity?” is their sales pitch and these questions seem to be the mantra of American evangelicalism. Although these questions are almost incoherent to the ears of emerging culture, they are still alive and well in Christianity today because the idea that Christianity is primarily about “where you are going”, about certainty thereof, and about what happens to you when you die, is still alive and well in Christianity today. The shadow of a doubt pertaining to the destination is seen as heresy and a lack of faith. But this is not the attitude of faith, this is the attitude of spiritual arrogance with a hint of ignorance.

In response to a question about destination, a question about entering God’s kingdom, Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). There is a beautiful uncertainty about true faith and following Jesus. Christ called his disciples to follow him without revealing any sort of destination but only by promising a sort of becoming, by inviting them on a kind of journey, “Come follow me… I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1:17). He called them to “ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden and through perils unknown” and spoke much more of the following itself than he ever did about any kind of destination, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Never did he talk of being certain of the destination and yet that has become the center-piece of American Christianity, even to the point where Christians often overlook actually following Jesus and taking up their cross because they’ve come to see everything on Earth as secondary to their heavenly destination. For Christ, the world and the here and now were primary, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son” NOT “for God so loved heaven that made sure that people could know they were going there.”

God calls us to follow him because of what we might become NOT because of where we are headed. The destination may indeed be uncertain, the path may well be “untrodden,” but we go with faith because the way of the cross is ironically the best possible way to live. In this uncertain path we may find life that is truly life. In these “ventures of which we cannot see the ending” where we are called to see all we have and give it to the poor we will discover “in this present age homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions” (Mark 10:30). May we live in uncertainty so that when the path takes the unexpected turn toward the cross of Christ we will not abandon him for another destination but faithfully take up our cross and follow the crucified Jesus to become resurrected people.

As I prayed that prayer I felt indescribably free and I felt a sense of new life, empowered to live today in the uncertainty of tomorrow guiltless and with the hope of God’s leading love here with me now.

Let our faith not be defined by where we are going but let it be defined by the one who is taking us there, that our destination will not become our god but that the tortured and crucified Son of God would be the One God of our wandering hearts. May God lead us on paths of justice and mercy here, now, and always.

Wesley Ellis
from Living in the Kingdom

Zach Lind on Thinking our Way to Heaven
Zach reflects on Scot McKnight’s latest post on evangelism.

Glenn Beck as Sincere as … Stephen Colbert

HT: Halden

Can Megachurches Be Missional?

Ed Stetzer & Dave Fitch – a missional conversation Part II from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

I want to note first of all the complexity of the word “missional.”  It is very difficult to define, but I found this video very interesting and both points of view very interesting.  For those who read my blog (especially my tirade againt Mark Driscoll), you know that I dislike using statistics in trying to prove certain points within a church.  I think statistics are both misleading and often oversimplified for the use of point proving.  Both men here, however, do a good job of staying on point and having a respectable dialogue.  Fitch seems to be taking a “straw man” megachurch and Ed Stetzer does a good job of showing that Fitch is doing this.  However, I tend to agree with Fitch more in general in his past posts on the dangers of the attractional model.

The Third Street Freedom Rally Parade happens today
Marching with rifles and pistols
Down along the way
Carrying the second amendment
With them to their graves
American flags wave like
beauty pageant stars

Oh, but down the way another rally meets
Yelling explevities and down with the state
Singing old Lennon songs,
just give peace a chance
Their so young and in love
With the sunset and the shades of the moon

Then the rallies met with cold words exchanged
Partisan politics always was the game
Stop yelling just listen to the river
Stop talking listen to the sound of it all

But me, I’m somewhere in the middle
But me, I just can’t understand
I’m just a poet with a heavy heart
I’m just a man, what can I do?
What can I do?

When everyone stopped yelling all around
I told in my dreams to, oh,
Just sit down
Maybe if you were just to listen
you’d be calm
Stop yelling, and looking for a way
to be right.

See that tear streaming down your cheek
Just keep crying
It’s probably what you need
Better look for roses on the
other side of spring
Scattered six feet above where you are.

But me, I’m can’t just the words
To say exactly how it hurts
The pain, another life that’s lost
The shame, but I still don’t know for
what it’s for
I don’t know what it’s for, for, for

The third street freedom rally
parade happens today
Marching with rifles and pistols
down along the way
Carrying the second amendment
like hawks to their graves
American flags burn
Like the setting of the sun
tonight.

2. As I try to get put a variety of Christian opinions about abortion on here, I am also now trying to put a variety of opinions about prop 8 on here for your linking pleasure.  Over at Bicycle Muse, I want you to read his full post on prop 8, but I want you to here this quote that particularly resonated with me:

Public policy is the act of constantly navigating between two extremes; nothing goes or anything goes. We constantly see this tension when we talk about the hot political topics of today be it abortion, immigration, economics, military action or, in this case, marriage. In other words, public policy often comes down to the tension between security and freedom; highly controlled or loosely allowed. From a secular as well as a religious standpoint, limitations and boundaries are essential for social order. The question that remains is who sets the boundaries? Are they self-imposed and do we practice self-control (anarchy)? Is control imposed upon us by others (dictatorship)? Do we gather together and agree on a common standard of control and create communal boundaries (democracy)?

3.  Over at blip there is a good discussion beginning about iconoclasts and their opponents.  I would suggest joining in if you feel strongly about it.

4.  On Beauty’s Road and Common Root are both asking how Christian communities are responding to the financial Crisis.

5.  According to these pictures, we have no financial crisis (thanks to Pat for linking me to this).

6.  Torture and America – Read all about it.

7.  What do you think of emergent homeschooling?

8.  Rumors have been circulating about Hillary being secretary of state that are more than just internet whispers. The former rival recently met with Obama in Chicago, and one person is guessing why.

1. The Bible guys are not the missional guys which leads to irrelevence.  In other words, he said that there is a difference between being faithful and being fruitful.  He mentioned that there is a difference between knowing “our theological systems are straight” and “to be fruitful.”  In the talk, the only way I could understand what being fruitful meant was that you get a lot of people inside a church.  The funny thing is that Jesus rarely preached inside of a synagogue, and when he did, it was usually a critique.  Second, Jesus pushed more people away overall than he gained as followers.  Is Jesus not being faithful to God on earth?

2. The second thing he mentioned is that “socialism is bad” as is the “influence of Great Britain.”  His answer?  Be more entrepreneruial.  Basically he suggesting “cutting” all the weakest pastors.  How does he define weakness? Again, I can only gather that it came from above: numbers in the church.

3. The third thing was rewarding “good pastors.”  He called it a merit based system.  I can’t even begin to tell you what is wrong with this.  First, this makes church into nothing more than a business with some guys at the top looking at numbers rather than people and evaluating evangelism based on how many people come into the church.  Is anyone else upset by this?

4. Australian young men are immature.  How does he define immature?  Well, they live with their parents until they are 25.  It seems as though I am immature because I still live my parents and I am 22.  I am getting my fifth year credential and then I might live here even longer if need be.  Driscoll seems to be defining maturity and masculinity with individuality.  I would suggest that Driscoll search the scriptures a bit more on this subject and check his cultural and sociological baggage at the door.  He is basicallly calling all of Asia immature because their cultural values are different than ours.  This is a big problem with Americans going to other countries and “diagonosing” problems there.

5. Church planting is not wide-spread or welcome. He suggested they need more “pioneers.”  While this may be true, the way he described again is such an American way of understanding church planting.  Certain countries look to their denominations for understanding and this is not bad or wrong, it is just different.  Again, he seems to think that “new” is better than established denominational traditions.

All in all, Driscoll needs to be careful how quickly he is condemning things because they are different than America.  He needs to seperate his theology from his country.

One thing that we have not yet look at is the market anomalies within the “perfect” system of capitalism. Why do people consume at rates higher than they need to? Why do people sometimes go for the more lavish option when another option is just as good? Thorstein Veblen began noticing what he referred to as “conspicuous consumption” beginning to arise in nineteenth century Europe where middle to upper class citizens were buying things simply to show class and status. Because they had more money than they needed to simply subsist, they began to buy things they really didn’t need because certain items began a symbol of socioeconomic status. This begin to offset the “balance” of capitalism because people start doing things like building bigger houses simply because they can.

A good fictional example of this is found in The Great Gatsby. The main character Nick is living earlier in the 1920s and is living out in a rich area of New York City. Nick is introduced to a man who throws lavish parties named Gatsby. The long and short of it is, Gatsby simply has a lot of money and likes to throw huge extravagant parties, and it is, to an extent, a social symbol. There is a certain amount of mysterious surrounding him, but Nick, how is also the narrator says this about Gatsby:

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God-a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that-and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”

In a kind of “self-created” identity, Gatsby has “invented” the person whom he wants to be. Because he has money he is able to sell this identity to those who share in this identity. What does this say about Gatsby’s business skills or his ability to make more money? It says nothing at all. The ideas behind the book are that this “conspicuous consumption” that takes place in the West Egg where Gatsby lives is a self-constructed “platonic conception.” None of these people really needed the things they had, but they still had them nonetheless. They could have lived in smaller houses, but they chose to live in bigger houses simply because they could. This is, in a nutshell, the idea behind conspicuous consumption—buying more than what you need simply because you can.

I have also written at length about the economic decisions that face Christians. How can we prophetically deal with conspicious consumption in a prophetic way with the people in our churches? In the American church, we sometimes forget to realize that economics and spirituality are always tied up in the same dimension. We should not try to seperate the two.

This leaves me with some major questions that I want to pursue in future posts. Perhaps my readers can give some feedback to help formulate my thoughts:

1. Should Christians care about conspicious consumption?
2. Is the church spending too much money on luxuries? If so, what in your mind constitutes a luxury?
3. If Christianity is a viable option in America, should it endorse the capitalism of its nation? Why or why not? Make sure you understand the nature of capitalism before answering that question.