Oops
11 chapters into Luke in my New Testament reading project and I can’t find anything that resembles church as we do it today in the western world.
That’s not hyperbole.
Okay, maybe it is a tiny bit of hyperbole, but not much.
Yes, I know that statement is unbalanced. What are 11 chapters of one book compared to the whole New Testament? And why should it church look like what Jesus did? The church wasn’t even established yet. And if we don’t do church like we do it now, what are we going to do? How will anyone be taught? Jesus taught. Jesus preached. Anyway, the world has changed…
Yep. I know. It’s hard to imagine anything different. I’ve been in church all my life – I help pastor a church! – and my head hurts when I try to imagine something different. All I know is that when I look at the practice (industry?) of western church, I see very little that looks like what Jesus did.
I can say the same thing about my life. I’m so steeped in the culture of Christianity that all my relationships are tainted with it. When I look at my husbanding and parenting I see a heck of a lot of the religion of the Pharisees and not nearly enough of the life-giving attractiveness of Jesus.
I think I am understanding the significance of the title of Rob Bell’s book Jesus Wants to Save Christians
I think Jesus is trying to save me. I think the more I read, the more the Holy Spirit will have to work with and the more hope there will be for me to imagine without my head hurting. And that gets me closer to the goal actually following Jesus, whether it looks like church or not.
I’ll finish with a quote from this remarkable post by Brant Hansen:
And I want to convey how remarkable Jesus is. How smart he is. How he understands our nature. How infuriating he can be to those in power. I want to subvert a culture that turns the church into an incredibly expensive and remarkably harmless spectator sport. I want people to understand how revolutionary the love of Jesus is.
4 March 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
kingdom of god,
nt
Seth Godin on Doing
I like this post by Seth Godin because it fits very well with the things I’m seeing in Luke about the doingness of following Jesus.
If it acts like a duck (all the time), it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if the duck thinks it’s a dog, it’s still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.
Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not ‘being who you are’.
That’s because ‘being’ is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. Internal vision is always blurry. Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.
As the Internet and a connected culture places a higher premium on authenticity (because if you’re inconsistent, you’re going to get caught) it’s easy to confuse authentic behavior with an existential crisis. Are you really good enough, kind enough, generous enough and brave enough to be authentically a hero or leader?
Mother Theresa was an atheist, filled with self doubt. But she was an authentic saint, because she always acted like one.
You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That’s good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later.
16 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
nt,
quotes
On narrow theology
Remember the bit I wrote about reading the New Testament in three to five weeks? That’s not going to happen. First of all, I haven’t had close to enough reading time. Second, I’m stopping to take notes every four words.
I’ve got lots of notes. Some of them are pretty radical. I’m not going to write about them yet though. The point of this exercise is to get a picture from the whole New Testament of living in and for the kingdom of God. It is too easy to build a practice or doctrine on the interpretation of a single verse. I’ve seen it done on a single word!
It is easy to find a statement of Paul or Jesus or one of the others that looks like The Formula for Life. But the kingdom is not a formula. It is God on a mission. It is God’s people joining that mission. It is the salvation of the world. It is a family. It is a marriage. It is a building. It is a body. It is a field, a vineyard, a garden. It is a master and his bondservants. It is…
See what I mean?
Notes about specific scriptures will come later. For now I will just say, it feels like I’m reading the bible for the very first time.
15 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: nt
Catching the bias
Reading the New Testament is going well. I’m only five chapters into Luke, but I have two excuses: sick family members and the near-irresistible lure of Greek word studies. The most interesting thing of many interesting things so far is that twice I’ve had to go back to my notes and change them because what I wrote was based on a received interpretation rather than on what the text actually said.
Did you get that?
At least twice in five chapters of reading I unthinkingly wrote a note that was based on my theological bias rather than on what the bible actually said!
It’s got me thinking, how much of what I think I believe is not actually based on the bible? I’m pretty sure everything you believe is completely based on the bible (or maybe not), but as for me, I think I’m in for an amazing, life-changing ride!
So now in the spirit of looking for what’s really there, I’m off to pour a glass of wine and drink a toast to Galileo and Martin Luther and Chuck D (happy 200th birthday!) and everybody else who is doing their best to see what Really Is, not just what their bias says must be.
12 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: nt
Beware of bold pronouncements
Over the last few months I have enjoyed some serious world-rockage thanks to Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright, Starting a House Church by Larry Kreider and Floyd McClung, and The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, plus a bunch of podcasts from Greg Boyd and Rob Bell. Now it’s the bible’s turn.
Over the next three to five weeks I plan to read the New Testament. I will be looking specifically at what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, both individually and as a community of Christians on a mission. The purpose of this is not to know more stuff, rather, I want to make whatever changes are necessary to orient my life around God’s mission on Earth (John 3:16) and my place in that mission through the new birth (John 3:3).
This is more of a read-and-reflect than a study, so I will be using my handy dandy TNIV Books of The Bible. I plan to write about what I read here. And I’m off…
10 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
books,
change,
church,
community,
kingdom of god,
nt