real.faith blog

During the more difficult episodes of life, people will often say they need a good cry. I’m not opposed to a good cry, but sometimes I find a good laugh to be far more rewarding. For those who are not familiar with Tim Hawkins, he is a Christian comedian who has brought me great joy in the five or so months since I was first exposed to him.

Last week, he happened to be on TV and I laughed so hard I thought I was going to lose consciousness. The next day was far less stressful. Here is a short sample of his hilarious brand of insanity.

Setting aside the debate about whether or not Halloween is Satanic, a Catholic holiday, a night of pagan debauchery or an innocent night for costumes and candy for a moment, I would like to focus on the Halloween mischief conducted by some churches during the month of October.

Since some Christian persuasions believe Halloween to be evil and don’t desire to partake in it, they have chosen to take another tact. It’s essentially a haunted house for churches, only not nearly as much fun and far more frightening than a few ghosts and goblins. Every year, some churches endeavor to – quite literally – scare the hell out of people just before Halloween.

Using names such as “Judgment House,” “Hell House,” “Revelation Walk” and “Tribulation Trail,” these spectacles show those unfortunate enough to have walked in with a ticket what it might be like were they to go to Hell and suffer an eternity of God’s wrath poured out on the wicked. Some of the scenes depicted are often more gruesome than Hollywood’s best shot at violence.

The intent is supposedly to share the Truth of Christ with an unbelieving world. The method is the age-old tactic of scaring people straight. Having attended one of these little damnation walks before, I am convinced that regardless of how effective this might be, it isn’t the best way to introduce people to Jesus. From all I have seen and heard on this journey, I just don’t think scaring people half to death with consequences reflects Christ’s heart.

That should be our concern, shouldn’t it? If we are going to claim Christ’s name, shouldn’t we also make it a top priority to reflect His heart and His actions as much as humanly possible? Jesus didn’t go around frightening people into taking Him seriously. He went around loving outcasts, healing the broken, forgiving sinners and teaching those hungry for His words.

Anyone can manipulate people into coming around to their way of thinking through the use of scare tactics. Judgment Houses are not terribly different from being forced to join the local Rotary club at gunpoint. That’s not what Christianity is all about. It’s not how Jesus would do it. This is about heart change. It is about a person whose heart loves himself coming to a place where his heart longs for God. You can’t force that through fear. Jesus is the patient husband of an unfaithful wife. He is the father of the runaway son. He loves and He forgives, He doesn’t use guilt trips or fear-mongering. We shouldn’t either. Life itself is scary enough without having to resort to such tactics.

Some disturbing statistics:

• About 1.2 million children are sold into slavery each year.

• Human trafficking is the second most lucrative crime in the world, with an estimated market value of $32 billion annually.

• 27 million people are estimated to be enslaved worldwide.

• 2 children are sold every minute.

• People’s propensity to shoot the messenger: Not much has changed since the days when Old Testament prophets walked the earth. Also, if you tell me you always want me to be honest with you, don’t snipe at me when part of that honesty is to deliver bad news.

• Falling apart: My wife has a tumor on her liver. This is unrelated to her previous diagnosis. It isn’t cancer and her spirits are strong, but I surely can’t wait until the day we can shed these decaying bodies of death.

• Inadequacy: One of my job duties is magazine design. I’m not terribly good at it, and it causes me more than a little anxiety on the weeks I have to do it. I enjoy learning new skills, but I could do without the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy that hits me when I stare at a blank page with a head empty of ideas.

• Evil: Every year more than 1 million children are brought into the sex trade through kidnapping and being sold to prostitution rings. Of that 1 million, UNICEF estimates up to 325,000 children in the United States are being sexually exploited. Children.

• Wall Street: Most of us probably worry more about the economic crisis than the above fact.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI had some harsh words about the global economic crisis this week. According to the pontiff, a person who pursues money and success is building a house on sand. He also said money and the pursuit of wealth are worthless. “We are seeing now in the collapse of the big banks that this money is disappearing, is nothing,” he said.

It seems almost backwards, doesn’t it? In our society a person is often valued based on their investments or material possessions. We live our lives in excess and we don’t just work to put food on the table, we work to maintain a lifestyle. We work to hold on to our luxuries. We all have dreams of one day owning a bigger house or a fancy car. Some are working toward a beach house or a boat, and yet we have one of the world’s foremost religious leaders saying the wealth we spend our lives striving to acquire is fleeting and worthless.

But, from an eternal perspective – the pope is right. Jesus warns against storing up treasures on earth, telling us instead to store up treasures in Heaven by doing good and by being obedient to His teaching. The idea of the money that often defines our worth actually being worthless is also found in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Few people in the United States ever explore this corner of the Bible. Part of that is because Ecclesiastes has an odd name and doesn’t sound particularly interesting. The other reason is the book is fairly clear in its assertion that most of what we live for in America is meaningless. If we were to give the book a name befitting of its content it would probably be, “Life Sucks.” It is one of the most direct assessments of what life is about in the entire Bible.

In our present financial times, it would do every citizen in the United States – both rich and poor – good to read this book. The perspective offered in it is life changing. It’s themes are the opposite of the way most of us think and live in our day to day lives, but it is truly wise. Here is an excerpt from it on the topic of wealth.

If you love money, you will never be satisfied; if you long to be rich, you will never get all you want. It is useless. The richer you are, the more mouths you have to feed. All you gain is the knowledge that you are rich. Workers may or may not have enough to eat, but at least they can get a good night’s sleep. The rich, however, have so much that they stay awake worrying.

Here is a terrible thing that I have seen in this world: people save up their money for a time when they may need it, and then lose it all in some bad deal and end up with nothing left to pass on to their children. We leave this world just as we entered it—with nothing. In spite of all our work there is nothing we can take with us.

It isn’t right! We go just as we came. We labor, trying to catch the wind, and what do we get? We get to live our lives in darkness and grief, worried, angry, and sick. Here is what I have found out: the best thing we can do is eat and drink and enjoy what we have worked for during the short life that God has given us; this is our fate.

If God gives us wealth and property and lets us enjoy them, we should be grateful and enjoy what we have worked for. It is a gift from God. Since God has allowed us to be happy, we will not worry too much about how short life is.

I have noticed that in this world a serious injustice is done. God will give us wealth, honor, and property, yes, everything we want, but then will not let us enjoy it. Some stranger will enjoy it instead. It is useless, and it just isn’t right.

We may have a hundred children and live a long time, but no matter how long we live, if we do not get our share of happiness and do not receive a decent burial, then I say that a baby born dead is better off. It does that baby no good to be born; it disappears into darkness, where it is forgotten. It never sees the light of day or knows what life is like, but at least it has found rest— more so than the man who never enjoys life, though he may live two thousand years. After all, both of them are going to the same place.

We do all our work just to get something to eat, but we never have enough. How are the wise better off than fools? What good does it do the poor to know how to face life? It is useless; it is like chasing the wind. It is better to be satisfied with what you have than to be always wanting something else.
-Ecclesiastes 5:10-6:9

photo credit: openDemocracy

I was honked at in the church parking lot this morning.

I confess, I had it coming. We ran out of coffee yesterday and this morning I was not exactly the world’s happiest or most alert person. The fact that I was moving despite my headache was a miracle in and of itself. I was delaying much longer than I needed to making a left turn out of the parking lot.

However, this was after a particularly moving sermon about how following Jesus isn’t only about worship, but about reaching out your hands to those who are in need. The intent was to move the congregation out of the church and into the community with a compassionate heart. No more than 5 minutes later, I was being honked at by another church member in a menacing SUV.

After angrily passing me on the road after we left the parking lot, the driver zipped into a prestigious country club. I will give the driver the benefit of the doubt and assume he or she was either eager to go serve a meal to a hungry family, or perhaps attempting to make a needle large enough to fit a camel through its eye.

I read an op-ed yesterday that truly sickened me. It was written by a local religious columnist who is – to be kind – a bit of a nutjob. His latest work of literary art is so troublesome, I will not reproduce it or link to it, but I couldn’t let it slide without comment.

I am often shocked by some of the opinions other followers of Christ have. A few months ago, I was shocked when some people from my church confessed they found it difficult to see non-Christians as having the same value as believers. This viewpoint shocked and grieved me, because it didn’t reflect Christ.

The op-ed was along similar lines, as the struggle my friends mentioned, only the writer didn’t see his perspective as a struggle, and had amplified it to some form of Xenophobia against non-Christians. The message of his scholarly work is that God doesn’t just hate sin, but he has it out for sinners. In fact, Christians should pay no attention to non-Christians because in God’s economy they are a “type of worthless goat or rodent.”

How did we get here? How is it that some who claim the name of Christ can totally ignore the dignity God has bestowed on all men from the beginning. We are created in God’s image and we all have worth. In fact, the Bible points out that our acts of righteousness are worthless, because they come from impure motives.

The message of the Bible isn’t about some being worth more than others. Paul teaches that because of Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor master. We are told by Jesus Himself to love not just one another, but to love others. We are also told to go one further and love our enemies. When Jesus forgave His captors on the cross, He showed love for His enemies. That is not a God who hates people. It is a God who hates sin with a passion and has compassion for sinners. As His followers, we would do well to love in the same manner.