At the Margins

1 Corinthians 10:31 “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” is such a wonderful challenge to us as followers of Christ.

Unfortunately, I’ve often heard these verses misappropriated as a carte blanche for someone to do anything they want. “As long as I do it to the glory of God, I can do whatever I want.” Far from it. At times, doing something to the “glory of God” means not doing it.

That aside, I find it really exciting to ask what it means to do each thing I do to the glory of God…

What does it mean to eat to the glory of God? Perhaps, as John Wesley argued, not meat, since it is resource intense? Perhaps it means not over-eating (or under-eating for that matter)? Perhaps it means buying local?

What does it mean to work to the glory of God?

What does it mean to shop to the glory of God?

What does it mean to drive to the glory of God?

What does it mean to shower to the glory of God?

What does it mean to vote to the glory of God?

What does it mean to watch TV to the glory of God?

While these questions may seam simple to begin with, they are in fact quite difficult to answer. They even might vary from season of life to season of life. Praise God we have a lifetime to try to understand them and grace to fail.

I’m speaking with Brandy about my difficulty in loving some people. I’m someone who loves almost everyone. I find it quite easy to love the large majority of people. There are a few people I don’t and I believe that those are the people I should particularly be seeking to love. Still I fail.

Yet the Bible calls Christians to an even higher standard. One should seek to “love your enemy as a yourself.” So often I think of this as a personal and heart thing. “I love my enemy in my heart.” This is certainly wrong. Christ is calling us to actively love our enemies. To love our enemies in action and heart. What an incredible thing for Christ to tell us to do. How rediculous in the world’s eyes?!?! What does it truly look like to do such a thing? I pray that I may learn to actively love my enemies as myself.

I’m sitting at the Boston Rescue Mission with my friend Jen. It is a wonderful morning. Last night we went to an evening service with some of the workers and residence. During the service (and this was not related to what was being said and this is not a new idea), it occurred to me “What Would Jesus Do?” The answer is simultaneously simple and immensely difficult, John 5:19 “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Put even more straightforwardly, it is to obey our love and grace showering Father. We are not called to simply emulate the life of Christ (though He provides many amazing examples for us), but rather to, like Him, listen to the Holy Spirit and obey the Father. It’s less of a question of “What Would Jesus Do?” and more of a question of what the Dad who loves us has shown and said for us to do.

Often the Bible is seen as a rule set. This view of the Bible is hugely problematic. Why? If nothing else, because it eliminates the need for a personal relationship with God. That is, if all I have to do is read and obey, I no longer need to seek God’s guidance and revelation.

Instead, I have been thinking about the story of the Bible in different terms. The Bible provides a default rule set for our lives and we should seek to obey. However, at times He calls us out of this default. I would site a few examples:

• Peace is a Biblical directive, however God calls David to war (interestingly, David is not allowed to build the temple because of the blood on his hands route from this obedience 1 Chronicles 22:7-9).
• The Bible commands us not to sacrifice our children, yet He calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
• The Bible forbids us to marry whores, yet He commands the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute.
• The new testament indicates that only men should be in leadership, yet He calls Deborah to lead Israel.

Any time we seek to read the Bible simply as a rulebook, we deny the working of the Holy Spirit and make a book an idol above God. If Israel had enforced the rule that women were never allowed in leadership, then they would have disobeyed God by not allowing Deborah to lead. That is we must acknowledge the fact that God may call us out of the Biblical framework (certainly not to something against His character) and that we must seek him out in all things.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that it is unusual for God to call us out of Biblical rule-set and thus if we believe that God is calling us out of the default (note: silence is a call to the default), we must take great care to ensure that we are hearing the Holy Spirit and not false spirits. A couple of questions useful in this endeavor are:

• Does the calling align with the character of God? Can you undertake it righteously?
• Are your trusted advisors who you are in community with confirming that this is what the Holy Spirit is saying?

If the answers to either of these is no, then there are problems. There are a few possibilities:

• A false spirit is confusing you.
• It is not yet time for the specific calling you are hearing.
• You are seeking to do it on your terms.

I would like to take a moment to address the latter (most because I like this story and feel it teaches a great lesson):

My friend’s Dad Stew tells a wonderful story that illustrates this point. He was in Africa preparing to speak to a congregation. The Pastor was standing behind the most ornate pulpit he’d ever seen. He hears the Holy Spirit tell him, “when you step up to speak, speak from there (a location down in front of the platform).” The Pastor proceeds to usher Stew into the pulpit. What should he do? If he turns around and leaves the pulpit it is culturally parallel to slapping his host in the face in front of his flock and conflicts with loving his brother. If he insists upon staying in the pulpit, he fails to obey the Holy Spirit. What would you do?

My tendency would have been to simply obey the Holy Spirit. I would be wrong however. Stew said to the Holy Spirit, “these two things are in conflict, please provide a way for me to obey you and to love my brother well” and he stepped into the middle of the pulpit. Before he could get a full sentence out of his mouth, someone called up to him, “they can’t hear you in the back, would you step down to here (pointing to the exact spot the Holy Spirit said) and speak.

I often dismiss or disobey the Holy Spirit because of my attempts to do things my way.

The alternative to this view is that the Bible speaks general revelation and provides an unalterable framework for our lives. We must rely upon God for the specific articulation of this framework in our lives, but he never calls us outside of the rules of the Bible. For example, we are all called to missions however God must guide us specifically where. This has historically been my view, however, it doesn’t square with the Biblical storyline of God calling people out of the default.

Perhaps, the best is a merger of these two views, that the Bible provides a default framework for His people, God tells us how to specifically articulate this framework and sometimes calls us outside this framework. Our ultimate responsibility is obedience to the Holy Spirit not to elders, not to ourselves, not to a book, even if the book is written by God.

Anyone have any thoughts or comments?

I spent the last weekend cooking for my college choir’s retreat (it’s a way alumni serve the group). I met lots of wonderful new people and had some great conversations with old friends.

While I was there, I got to hear yet again how God is speaking to so many people in our generation. He may call us to different specific things, but it is apparent that God is uniting a generation of believers to seek after Him and inhabit His promises and commands with wreckless abandon. It’s amazing!

Unlike our parents, the people of my generation much more typically are either hot or cold with their faith. Either we desire to give up everything and follow Him or we don’t and realize that it’s not worth going through the motions. That’s an exciting thing for a generation who, more oft than not, grew up in a luke warm American gospel of cheap grace–a faith in which we could have both Christ and all our personal preferences–a gospel without sacrifice and a gospel without love.

We have inhabited a church so long that forgets that Christianity is more about having a relationship with our loving Father and Creator today than about salvation (route by phrase) tomorrow, that Christ calls us to daily take up the cross and follow him, and that our God is worth dying for (and thus worth obeying and worshiping).

It is a time of rebirth in the Church, when the poor, the fatherless, and the stranger will be welcomed into our homes (and more importantly our lives), when we will love the unlovable and heal the broken, when God’s revelation will flow in abundance and we will see Him with new and glorious clarity, when we will be persecuted for living a life in accordance with Him, when we will give up comfort, control, safety, and success to boldly follow after our Father, our Savior, our Creator, our Lover, and our King, and when we will see glimpses of Heaven breaking forth among us!

It is a wonderful and amazing time! Praise the Living God!

I was at the Urban Prayer Breakfast this morning and had a long conversation with one of my friends, Shawn. Shawn is about my age and I always look forward to seeing him. He has a severe speech impediment (I think do to a brain injury of some sort). Today, he told me about his cousin who was murdered in the street last week. He related how he was a great guy and how his immediate family had reacted at the funeral. He also said that they didn’t know who did it and none of the witnesses were talking. He wanted to know who it was that killed him so that he could return the favor.

This cycle of revenge is age old. In fact, it’s a simple reality for most of the world, from the internal fighting in Iraq and Sudan to the age old battle between the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Isaac (hear an exegesis on this from my friend Tripp Sanders at http://www.newcity.org/audios/sermons/2006-07-09.mp3).

To be honest, often reprisals seem to me as just and right. Why should my friend not take the life of the man who’d taken the life of his family member. “An eye for an eye.”

Christ calls us to another way and I actually don’t think it’s because revenge is wrong or not within our right. As is often the case, Christ calls us from what is within our right to what is obedient. This sacrifice, this forfeiture encompasses much of the lesson of the Gospel.

His call does not stop with do not revenge, but continues with turn the other cheek and love your enemy. How would the world be different if we took His calling seriously?

Christ substituted His life for ours, and in that vain He bids us to sacrifice our lives for Him.

For some Christian Peacemakers this means volunteering to trade themselves with hostages seeking to incarnate the life and death of Christ. Many folks find this practice at best odd and ridiculous and at worse stupid and offensive. They fail to see even the practical implication that these Christian Peacemakers know our Savior while the hostages may or may not. What’s more, what a loud and resounding statement about Christ, that someone would give their life for someone who they don’t know and who may not even deserve it!

I’m inclined to agree that it is ridiculous, but certainly no more ridiculous than the creator of the universe leaving heaven to be mocked and murdered by His own creation. Christ will use the ridiculous to thwart the plans of the wise of this world for “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 NIV).

Under the Overpass: A Journey of Faith on the Streets of America

Rating: 5 out of 5

Author: Mike Yankoski

Year: 2005

Publisher: Multnomah

ISBN: 1590524020

This is a great chronicle of a student who felt called to spend 5 months on the street as a homeless man. Wow!

Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 4)

Rating: 5 out of 5

Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Year: 2003

Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers

ISBN: 0800683242

My favorite book. In this incredible work, Dietrich Bonhoeffer dispels the myth of cheap grace and calls us to extreme devotion.