Everything That's On My Mind

I greatly enjoyed Michael Spencer's recent essay entitled Grace and The Gospel in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” over at InternetMonk.com. I love Shakespeare's plays as well, although I originally came to them through the study of theater rather than literature. It's been many, many years since I've seen a staging of "The Tempest". I was too young to grasp what is possibly Shakespeare's most complex work. Reading Michael's analysis makes me hungry to see it again. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a decent version on DVD, so I guess I'll have to wait until the Hilberry or Stratford Festival stages it.

(Yes, yes, I know. I can just read the play...and I will. But plays are meant to be staged, not just read.)

Michael's essay got me thinking about faith and the arts again. Shakespeare spoke to the human condition. His tragedies, in particular, were cautionary tales addressing the besetting sins of mankind. Macbeth warns against greed and lust for power, Romeo and Juliet: revenge, Hamlet: falsehood and deception, Othello: envy. Even his comedies often addressed similar themes from a different perspective. We need more art like that today. Art that inspires and challenges assumptions, rather than simply feeding the monster or numbing the brain.

I was all set to get up this morning and write a blog entry about Groundhog Day, one of my all-time favorite movie comedies. Imagine my surprise when, lo and behold, Keith beat me to it. I don't know whether to thank him for saving me the effort, be angry that he cheated and posted it on February 1, or wonder about his strange mental abilities. (Get out of my head!!!) Anyway, enjoy his post. I'll try to beat him to the punch next time.

When I was in my 20s, there was a weekly Sunday night pilgrimage to a place called Carlos Murphy's after church. (There's a flashback for long time Detroit suburbanites. It's now the Southfield Fishbones.) Each week there would be 8-15 semi-rowdy 20-somethings sharing a too-small table and laughing loudly. All the wait staff there knew us and knew where we came from. They were always friendly and accommodating even though I'm sure we were not the easiest group to accommodate. Yet every week when the hat was passed to cover the bill, we were always woefully short in the tip department. This always got under my skin and I worried about the impression we Christians were leaving with the wait staff. I usually ended up kicking in extra to make up the difference.

I'm reminded of this by Trevin Wax's "5 Tips for Good Tipping" over at Kingdom People. IMHO Christians be notable for their generosity (Proverbs 11:25) and that includes tipping. Not just to be a witness for Christ, but as a spiritual discipline. Unless you're dining at The Capital Grille, you're only saving a buck or two by tipping light. Personally, I start off at about 18%. I only go down to 15% if the service is really bad, and I can't remember the last time I tipped less than 15%.

Rick Meigs has a good post this morning over at The Blind Beggar about the tyranny of personal preferences. For too long Christians have considered the church service to be their refuge from the outside world, just like the "hideout" most little boys have growing up. It's a place to escape, to feel comfortable and safe, to be reassured and "fed". It's a place where we can pretend we're superheroes without actually having to fight any monsters. We've turned the church service into a clubhouse meeting.

Don't misunderstand, we need to be safe and reassured. We need to be comforted and healed. The church (i.e. the body of Christ) needs to perform that function. The church service (i.e. the main meeting where we invite the community to show up) should be a time when we set aside our personal preferences and do our best to communicate the Gospel in terms and forms that the "uninitiated" can grasp. Of course, that assumes that we actually care enough to invite the community to show up.

Rick quotes Breaking the Missional Code* which is a book I've just finished reading. There's a whole lot there to digest, but I'll probably reference it more in future posts. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is concerned about the growth of the Kingdom of God in North America. We no longer have the "home field advantage" trying to reach our community. We're living in post-Christian society and we need to start acting like it.

* You may be asking "what in the world does 'missional' mean?" You could just read the book to find out but if you just can't wait, check out Rick's other site, Friend of Missional.

Erika Haub has a great post on the simplicity and difficulty of servanthood. I particularly liked the insight about the situations ("dipstick moments") that reveal the depth of our commitment to servanthood. To paraphrase her post, the measure of a servant's heart is not how often you take on the role of a servant, it's how you react when someone else treats you like a servant. That's powerful stuff.

HT: Jesus Creed

Baptism is a joyous occasion, but this is probably taking things a little too far. Fortunately, I don't have to worry too much about it. This would be pretty difficult in our tank.

HT: Monday Morning Musings

Along the lines of our January prayer emphasis, here's a good article on praying for parking spaces. Come on, you can't tell me you haven't done it at least once.

On New Year's Eve, I preached a sermon entitled "How Deep Is Your Love?" and challenged our congregation to pursue a deeper commitment to loving God, loving each other, and loving the lost in 2007. I intend to blog more on this topic throughout the year but for now I highly recommend checking out Keith Schooley's variation on a theme from that message over at The Schooley Files.

Skye Jethani has written a very thought-provoking article on the Out of Ur blog. Here's a quote:

"Seeking survival and fearing irrelevance, have we clothed our faith with the forms of our American culture to the point that our Christianity has morphed into something entirely different—a folk religion altogether consumerist in spirit and content?"

This is an interesting question, but I think it's the wrong question. Is there a folk religion in the U.S. masquerading as Christianity? Without a doubt. When 80+% of the population self-identifies as Christian, there's clearly some poor definitions of Christianity being used. The real critical question is, what is the cause? I don't think survival and relevance are the issues.

I suppose you could say it's semantics but as I define it, relevance is not evil even though some treat it as such. It can be overemphasized but that's a symptom, not the disease. Relevance in proper balance is simply communicating and applying the Gospel to an existing culture. This is what Paul did on Mars Hill, it's not a new phenomenon indicating the arrival of Laodicea.

The real problem is not a desire for relevance but a desire for comfort. We want to be comfortable in our world, and we want our world to be comfortable with us. We want to live just like our neighbors so they won't feel uncomfortable around us and we'll feel accepted. Too often faith is compromised for the sake of fitting in. Peer pressure is not just a problem for teenagers, it's just as bad or worse for adults. We must realize that this world will never be comfortable with the message of Christ, and we cannot be (or shouldn't be) comfortable in this world. I don't think we need to beware relevance OR irrelevance. We need to beware becoming comfortable. If we become comfortable, we cease to be salt and light.

I'm not saying we need to go back to the days of Holiness legalism just so we can make people uncomfortable. That's not the kind of discomfort I'm talking about. We're not called to find creative ways to make people uncomfortable around us. We're called to be Christ-like by loving, sacrificing, healing, caring, giving, praying, and worshipping. If we can even come close to accomplishing that, it will create plenty of appropriate discomfort.