Monday, October 31, 2011

Where is the Church?

Warning: I'm about to get a bit personal here.

There are days that I sit back and woner where the church is? Today is one of those days.

Many, many years ago (a bit over 22), I came into a felt relationship with Christ. I saw that I needed hope and deliverance from the life I was leading.

At the time, I had a vibrant faith community. These were truly incredible, truly awesome people with a deep and abiding love for God. They tried in so many way to reach out to me, but I losed myself off and away from them.

As the years went by, I went through various churches and began to develop an awareness of the fellowship I was missing. To this date, I have never found it again, and I can't help but marvel at the irony that when I didn't want the help, it was there; when I needed it, it was nowhere to be found.

I've tried to steer that need, tried to channel it into a ministry of my own, but I can't. There are aspects of it that I can't do, where I am ill equipped. And in the meantime, I've punched the clock on job after job that might mean something to someone else, but means very little to me.

I am exhausted. I am sick, tired, and fed up.

And yet, in all of this, I have to ask: WHERE IS THE CHURCH? God set a very specific plan in place, and charged His people with feeding His flock. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, housing the homeless, befriending the lonely...all...ALL of it fits under God's plan. Yet we'd rather fill ourselves with pithy feel good stories, show up on Sunday and put our money in the plate and all it good.

A few years ago, a famous author put out a book called "The Prayer of Jabez". It was a bestseller. Unfortunately, it was as misguided as it was popular. See, the author thought that Jabez was simply looking to get wealthy and that God rewarded him. Wrong; Jabez' prayer was that he would no longer cause pain to those around him.

I know that prayer because I've prayed it myself many times over. And I know that others know that prayer because you can see it expressed in the song "Hurt", recorded by Nine Inch Nails and later Johnny Cash.

We live in a world where we think "stuff" eases pain. Where is we create enough noise, perhaps we cannot hear the cry of our conscience when we see a hungry child, or a homeless man walking the streets asking us to spare just a pittance of the wealth with which we have been blessed.

We can do better. We MUST do better. Now is the time for the church to act. Never have we been more needed. Please take the time to reach out to your friends and family, to love them as Jesus loved them, and to just listen. You will give them more than you know.

Friday, October 21, 2011

The Square Peg in a round hole

why do I call myself a misfit Christian? A question with a pretty easy answer, really.

See, I've been a Christian since 1988. I went to a small independent Baptist congregation then. A wonderful congregation of people and one I dearly miss. Through them I received a solid foundation of Biblical instruction.

Over the years, though, I've found myself in congregations of various flavors, loving something about each of them, but never quite finding a home. Many I would find wee very strong on the word of God and on giving a Godly life, but weak on outreach and with a very little tolerance to the outcasts on society. There seemed to be a prevailing belief that because they brought much of their pain on as a consequence of their action, they were undeserving of the love and grace of God. I believe that much of our suffering is a natural consequence, but that we have to get through the surface and know and love the person. In other words, worry more about our own salvation and less about others.

Still other congregations were strong on the social gospel; they helped these folks, but Christ was never mentioned. I found myself caught in between, believing that faith should be mentioned, but it shouldn't be used as currency in how and to whom assistance is applied.

Some years ago, feeling bitter about never fitting in, I found a little gem by accident. I was contemplating moving to the middle of Alaska and living off the land, and i was studying nailless construction. In studying, I noticed something interesting. The book advised you to drill the holes in the timber and then cut the pegs square because a round peg will slip out; a square peg will not.

AHA! The origin of "square eg in a round hole", a saying we've used so often that it has no meaning. I began thinking about it and about myself, the ULTIMATE square peg in a round hole. And I realized something: That square peg may be a misfit, but it holds the building together.

Immediately, Psalm 118:22 came to mind ("the stone the building rejected has become the capstone"). For the first time in my life, I realized that being a misfit might be a productive thing and just the sort of person God wanted me to be.

Imperialism, the Original Ponzi Scheme

For those who are not Christian, I want to warn you I am writing from a Christian perspective. Feel free to disagree with my position, if you must, but not to attack my faith:

There’s been a fair amount of talk in Republican debates about whether Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. To put it bluntly, as it currently stands, it basically is.

In defense of Social Security, though, while it certainly qualifies, it is not history’s newest, nor history’s largest. That honor belongs to imperialism, the idea of building empires that has existed through the ages and evolved into modern American economic structure.

Throughout history, most generations have had the luxury of living near large unclaimed pieces of land. If they didn’t want to follow the rules of a certain society, they could either migrate to another city or strike off in the wilderness and start their own. In fact, when Paul’s admonition in 2 Thessalonian 2:10 that “if a man does not work, neither let him eat” was penned, this was largely true; a person COULD strike out on their own.

Following cultures had that option, and our nation was founded on that option. Following our nation’s independence, and even long after the Louisiana Purchase, there was still more land unsettled than settled, and in the 1800’s, the Homesteading era ensured that anyone who was willing to brave the wilderness could stake their own claim to a piece of land and make their own way.

Gradually, settlement succumbed to greed and homesteading lands were sold to corporate mining interests, and industrious successful homesteaders bought the land off of those who couldn’t make a go of it. And they bought cheap. As a result, they soon controlled thousands of acres.

But land is finite, and the opportunities presented our ancestors don’t exist today. As a result, the power balance changes less and less, as those who control land and wealth are not inclined to surrender it willingly. Basically, the Ponzi scheme of imperialism paid off to thousands of generations of investors, but reached the point some time back where it could no longer pay out to the existing population.

So there’s the problem, what is the solution?

Ironically enough, a nation that prides itself on being a “Christian nation” must turn to the supposedly secular world for Biblical answers. I say “supposedly”, because while secularists hold this viewpoint, there are also a good number of Christians who do as well. Christians that Glenn Beck has demonized, yet whose philosophy is pulled straight from the pages of Scripture.

First, our nation should observe the Jubilee. I’m sure even many liberal scholars will disagree with me on this statement, but I firmly believe that had we followed the Bible’s economy (up to and including the Jubilee), we would probably not have the cycles of boom and recession that have led to so much deep hurt. I hate to say it, but in this instance, I do believe that the economic hardships we are going through are a direct result of our own sin and refusal to follow God’s law.

Jubilee was the year when slaves were to be returned to their family, but more importantly, it was the date when land was to revert to its original owner and debts were to be cancelled. In America today, while there certainly are millionaires who have come from next to nothing, the vast majority inherited some land and title. While the industrious did increase it, they nonetheless began in a better position than many who did not have the luxury of such inheritance.

Leviticus 25:23 advises the believer: “The land must not be sold permanently, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners, my tenant farmers.” This would indicate, then, that a society following God’s instructions, particularly one where a strong plurality consider the US to be a “Christian nation”, would be inclined to allow the land to revert back so that someone else could own it. History has shown us that is not the case.

In addition to observing the Year of Jubilee, we should do away with corporate ownership of land. Isaiah 5:8 tells us: “Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!”. We can take from this what we will, but it is a pretty strong rebuke to the idea of corporate ownership.

There are a lot of further steps we could/should take, but if we want to address the immediate problems before moving forward, these two would be the place to start. Ending corporate ownership of land ensures that land will be resold. If an individual holds onto a sinking asset, eventually they want to rid themselves of that asset, and they will sell it. The property taxes as well make the idea of holding on to thousands of acres without getting a return an untenable solution. But when a corporation is involved and individuals are shielded from the risk of poor investment, these become a tax write off and are no longer a consideration.

As to the Year of Jubilee, it has long been called for among the circle that Glenn Beck detests, and it is past time. We ARE our brother’s keeper, and it is time to begin making things right. Such isn’t socialism, it is in fact the very core of Christian teaching