Jesus Christ, Stalker

Tactical maneuvers, little white lies
It's all beneath the surface and what it implies
Assuming that the end justifies the means
You hope that no one's looking behind the scenes
I think you should know, God sees everything that you do
There's never a time when He's not watching out over you

"Ooo, how creepy!"

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you just hear that song? It makes God totally sound like a stalker. Or a peeping tom or something."

"God's not a peeping tom."

"Oh yeah? Well it's still pretty weird to think that no matter where I go or what I do, even if nobody else ever finds out about it, God will know."

You can't escape, you can't hide
When He's looking at you with His infrared eyes
Deep in the dark, but the dark is light
When He's looking at you with His infrared eyes
There is no place where they won't find you
Don't turn your back, they'll be right behind you
Can't run away, no matter how you try
God is following you with His infrared eyes

"What's wrong with God knowing everything you do?"

"Well, what if He sees me doing something He doesn't like?"

"Why would you want to do something God wouldn't like?"

Out in the crowd you wear a charming facade
You're never concerned with being labeled a fraud
That friendly disposition is not the real you
But no one suspects; they haven't even a clue
I think you should know, God sees everything that you do
There's never a time when He's not watching out over you

"What about times when I want to do something a little... different? Maybe in a morally gray area. Sometimes I'd rather be anonymous; that way it doesn't matter what other people think. And sometimes, frankly, I don't want anyone to see me because I know better."

"You know better than to think that anyone can see you?"

"No, I know better than to do whatever I'm doing. I don't like to think about God always seeing me because I'm pretty sure that if He can see what I'm doing, I'm really in for it."

You can't escape, you can't hide
When He's looking at you with His x-ray eyes
Deep in your heart, but He can see inside
When He's looking at you with His x-ray eyes
There is no place where they won't find you
Don't turn your back, they'll be right behind you
Can't run away, no matter how you try
God is following you with His x-ray eyes

"But God's not looking at you to find reasons to punish you!"

"What do you mean?"

"He's looking at you because He loves you. When you're in love with someone, don't you like to look at them?"

"Well, yeah, I guess so... so that's why God's on the lookout all the time?"

"Yeah. God is on the lookout for ways to get you to come to Him. He's not looking for a reason to squish you for your sins."

"What was that part about Him seeing inside of my heart?"

"God sees your attitude and intentions before He even sees your actions. In fact, if you do the right thing for the wrong reason, He still knows that it was done with the wrong attitude."

"Ruh-roh... I don't like where this is going now!"

"No, wait a second. Here's the thing. God sent Jesus to take the punishment for anything wrong that you ever did or ever will do. If you identify yourself with Jesus, that means that you place yourself in a category with people whose sins are taken care of."

"You make it sound like someone from another table paying for your dinner!"

"Well, sort of! So when God looks at you, He doesn't see an unpaid bill... he sees a customer in good standing. Really, better than a customer in good standing. It's like... well, I have a cousin who owns a restaurant. When I go over there to eat and get ready to pay, he always says the same thing: 'Your money's no good here.'"

"Because you're family?"

"Right. because I'm family. Family always eats free there. And once you accept Jesus' sacrifice for yourself, you become God's family."

"And He can't see it any more when I do wrong?"

"Sure, God sees it when you do something wrong... but He's already forgiven you for it."

There is no place where they won't find you
Don't turn your back, they'll be right behind you
Can't run away, no matter how you try
God is following you with His infrared x-ray eyes

"So when God is watching me..."

"...It's to love you. Take care of you. Provide for you. Protect you."

"Wow! That sounds like someone I want to be stalked by!"

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
   and his ears toward their cry.
-Psalm 34:15 (ESV)



lyrics: "Infrared X-Ray Eyes"
from the Crumbacher album "Incandescent"
words & music: Stephen Crumbacher.

Oral Roberts Memorial Service

I don't know how I came to know about Oral Roberts University. I don't really remember Christian TV being on at my house that much when I was a kid; probably I first heard Oral Roberts on TV growing up, but I certainly don't remember much about it. When I was in high school I was a pretty Bible-thumpin' guy... I even hauled my NKJV Open Bible to school with me every day... but I was too shy to be very good at sharing my faith with people directly. I did know one thing, though: I wanted to go to college, but I wanted to go to a "Christian" college. If you had asked me why I wanted to go to a "Christian" college as opposed to the state schools that were way cheaper (or other private schools that were maybe more prestigious and which my SAT scores could have gotten me into), I don't know that I could have given you a coherent answer, but I knew what I had on my heart. And for some reason, ORU was the only Christian school that seemed like a likely candidate. (I did briefly consider a denominational school or two, but once I had visited the ORU campus on one of their "college weekends", my mind was made up.) I wound up on campus for classes not knowing too much about Oral Roberts, or Richard Roberts, or honestly, about Tulsa or Oklahoma. But I showed up, and I stayed for four years, and my life has been drastically different because of it.

I've noticed as I've lost loved ones through the years that there seems to be an astounding amount of clarity about the person's character after they die. Whether it's because I finally get to hear what people really think, or it's because I'm finally comfortable taking sides because the person is no longer able to change on me, I don't know. But whatever the reason, after attending the memorial service today, I feel like I understand Oral Roberts now even better than I did the semester he personally taught one of my classes in Mabee Center every week. (Aside: one of my favorite memories of that class is the first time Oral Roberts came up to speak, and started his trademark line, "Something GOOD...!" and the place went to pieces. Like the guy or not, it was fun to hear him say it! The rest of the line, for people born too late to be familiar with it, is "...is going to happen to you!") Anyway, in the newspaper articles that were in the Tulsa World last week and in the things people said today, a picture of Oral Roberts emerged for me that is much simpler, I think, than the one mentally painted by most people. Oral Roberts was born into poverty. He had some college work behind him, but he wasn't particularly sophisticated. It seems to me that Oral Roberts was actually a quite uncomplicated man; he read his Bible, chose to believe what it said, and... well, that's about it. If the Bible said it, he hung on until the world around him reflected what he saw in the Word.

Even in the immediate wake of his death, I've heard people blasting Oral Roberts as a charlatan. Saying that he bilked people of their money, saying that he trumped-up death threats for God to get people to enrich his coffers. I just don't think Oral Roberts was a complex enough character to have that kind of deceit in him. In interviews and in person, he just seemed to kind of say what was on his mind. I don't think Oral Roberts could have swindled people if he had wanted to. (In fact, I understand that the first time he asked people to give as a seed, he told people if they were unhappy about their gift, let the ministry know and they would give the money back. No one took him up on it.)

I do think Oral Roberts made a few colossal blunders in his day, the most public ones surrounding the City of Faith hospital, about which I blogged a few months ago. Oral Roberts planned a huge hospital complex for Tulsa, and then he went on TV and told the world that God said to him in a vision that if Oral didn't raise the money to build the hospital, God would take Oral home to heaven. It was the only thing approaching a scandal to ever directly hit Oral Roberts' ministry. Ultimately he did raise the money and he did build the hospital... but after only a few years of operation, it was basically closed down (later it became the home to a Cancer Treatment Center of America, and now I don't think there's a medical facility there at all.) Now, I don't know whether Oral Roberts' vision came from God or not, but I can see that the hospital failed. And I would also have to say that even if God gave Oral that kind of vision, it might not have been the right kind of thing to share on television... it sounds like a personal challenge to Oral himself to me. As in a marriage or any other kind of intimate relationship, some things are to be shared only between the participants. Maybe Oral felt like his partners were as close as family members. And maybe they were, but not everybody watching him on TV fell into the "partners" class. But it seems clear to me that whatever Oral Roberts heard or saw, he misinterpreted. Otherwise the City of Faith Hospital would still be seeing patients and preparing medical students to this day.

But the two biggest things in Oral's life that were not blunders were his healing/TV ministry, which reached millions or billions with the Gospel and with healing, and Oral Roberts University itself. Oral Roberts was given both of those dreams by God at the age of seventeen; one of them began to happen immediately as Oral began to hold evangelistic crusades, and the other took a bit longer, but Oral's obedience to God allowed both to come to fruition. Both reached countless people with the Word of God, and as an alumnus of the school who has seen the post-ORU lives of my college acquaintances, and knowing that my graduating class is only one of some forty that have passed through, I can tell you that the impact on lives has been enormous. Whether you agree with everything Oral Roberts said or not, it's hard to deny that he was able to reach people with his message. I loved how he summarized it himself in the biographical video today: "If God says to jump through a wall, jump! And trust God to make a hole in the wall!"

Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, right here in Tulsa, Oral Roberts made a trip to an area hospital. He went up to the pediatric intensive care unit and began to pray for the healing of the babies. I'm told that as he prayed for them, the babies began to improve immediately! One of the babies, a little girl named Linda, had been born with congestive heart failure. She had been in the hospital for weeks, and she was not expected to survive. After Oral prayed for her, her health improved, and she grew up knowing she had almost died but had been healed when Oral Roberts prayed for her when she was an infant. When I met her as an adult, she was going by her middle name, Cathy, and the only trace of her infant heart trouble was a minor case of mitral valve prolapse which was not life-threatening. And even that was healed several years later when someone prayed for her during her pregnancy... with our first child!

Oral Roberts' ministry has affected many, many people in as many different ways as there are individuals. What would my life be like if he hadn't driven down to the PICU that day? Would my future wife have survived? What if he hadn't built the university he had dreamed of for so many years? Would I have been able to formulate the solid worldview that I was presented with there? Would I have ever come to Tulsa at all? Would I have met my wife, or all the fantastic Christian people I've met? Would I ever have done the kinds of things I've been able to do? I don't know how my life would have turned out, but I am grateful that Oral Roberts listened to the voice of God and did what he did. Because he was obedient, "Something GOOD!" certainly happened to me.

http://www.oru.edu/oralroberts/

Romantic language between us and God, revisited

Forgive me now, 'cause I have been unfaithful
Don’t ask me why 'cause I don’t know
So many times I’ve tried, but was unable,
But this heart belongs to you alone

Forgive me, I’m ashamed; I’ve loved another
I can’t explain cause I don’t know
No one can take your place, and there is no other
Forever yours and yours alone
          -Skillet, "Forgiven" from Awake

How the faithful city
     has become a whore,
     she who was full of justice!
Righteousness lodged in her,
     but now murderers.
          -Isaiah 1:21, ESV

Several days ago I linked to a video where Matt Redman had some interesting points to make about "blokes" (guys) not necessarily being comfortable using "romantic" language in worship to Jesus... kind of a vaguely homophobic squeamishness to saying that you "love" another man. I think Matt has a valid point in that we as songwriters need to be sensitive to the kinds of things that the casual worshipper may not be comfortable saying as part of worship, but God has no problem with talking about us as though we were His wife.

- Isaiah chapter 61 was quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18-21; He clearly proclaimed that He was the fulfillment of that Scripture passage. If you look back at verses 3 and 10 of Isaiah 61, there is clear wedding imagery between Messiah and His people.

- Ezekiel 16 is a description of the relationship between God and Israel which is beautiful and erotic, heartbreaking and tragic, and finally quite brutal. Israel is portrayed as a woman who was rescued from death when she was born by God, grew up and became a beautiful woman, was married to God, became very loose and began sleeping around with anyone she could find, ultimately earning the accusations "adulterous wife" and "brazen prostitute" from God Himself.

- In Jeremiah 3:1-14 God again bluntly accuses his "wife" (Israel) of sleeping around like a whore. I am NOT making this up, and I am not exaggerating at all... take a look for yourself!

- Many Theologians see the Song of Solomon as not only a story of a love between a man and woman, but as an allegory of the love between God and His people.

- The book of the Revelation speaks of Israel as a woman (for example, Revelation 12:1-6) and the people of God, dwelling at that time in the New Jerusalem, as God's "bride" (Revelation 21:2).

- In Ephesians 5:25-27 it is made clear that the relationship between a man and wife is intended to be a picture of the love between Christ and the Church.

Men who are uncomfortable with the idea that they are loved by God in a way that closely resembles the way that a man loves his wife... well, they had better get used to it. I've read in C.S. Lewis that "What is above and beyond all things [God] is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it." Should we as songwriters shy away from saying "I love you" to God, or saying God is "beautiful?" I don't think so, although "beautiful" has been used in contemporary praise and worship music so much that probably different words would inspire a clearer picture at this point. I think that we should be sensitive to the congregations we are asking to sing our songs, but approaching God with a feminine frame of reference to me is like approaching a knife as if it is sharp, or approaching a campfire as though it is hot. God thinks of us as though we were his fiancé. We are loved, dreamed about, protected, and the inspiration of jealousy when we are "unfaithful" (isn't it funny that we use that word about our relationship with God all the time, but it never occurs to us how serious a charge of unfaithfulness in a marriage truly is?) We need to remember that when we betray Christ by willful sin, it is as though we have slept with another man on the eve of our wedding. That's how serious it is to God.

Praise God that He forgives us in our unfaithfulness, and dreams of the day when we will be finally and forever faithful to Him!

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
          -Jeremiah 31:31-33, ESV, also quoted in Hebrews 8:8-12

Now I’m in our secret place
Alone in your embrace
Where all my wrongs have been erased
You have forgiven
All the promises and lies
All the times I compromise
All the times you were denied
You have forgiven
          -Skillet, "Forgiven" from Awake

Root Beer

A few days ago Mikey got THE PREACH on him. Now, when Mikey gets THE PREACH on, we just sit back and listen, because by the time he's done, my wife and I usually learn something we didn't know before! This time was no exception. Mikey taught us something about root beer.

"The Holy Spirit is like root beer!" Mikey said. "When you shake it up, there's the same amount of root beer, but it overflows anyway!" In his class Sunday morning at church, they had talked about the Holy Spirit flowing out of you, and we had just been talking about the Holy Spirit in the car on the way home from the concert we had just been at.

"You know," I said, the Bible says to stir up the Holy Spirit that's inside of you. the carbon dioxide is already in the root beer, but when you shake it up, that's what makes the root beer overflow!" I don't know if Mikey realized how dead on target his analogy was, but it was certainly a perfect visual! "Mama," I said to Cathy, "This boy is a walking children's church lesson!"

It's not just a kid subject, though... I suspect that most of us adults can benefit from that lesson. That's why I'm posting it here. Let's be root beer today! Let's think about the Word, pray, and look for chances to bubble up and out!

Sick

I was reading this article about the legal aspects of faith healing cases and a thought occurred to me. I'll preface this by saying that I believe that God does heal people miraculously when they are prayed for. But I also believe that God has given us tools in nature that allow us to make medicines that relieve suffering and can speed healing, and those tools should be taken advantage of when they are needed. I take a 'prophin when my head hurts. I take Claritin when the pollen counts are high. And when children are involved, parents should always have the common sense to take them to the doctor. Pray for them, yes. Then take them to the doctor unless they immediately lose all sign of the symptoms of their sickness. If you pray for a child and they still are obviously experiencing the sickness, to not take them to a doctor is child abuse, no matter what your religious beliefs are.

The article references James 5:14-15 as a common justification for prayer-without-medicine: "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." I fail to see how that passage of Scripture prohibits use of medicine. In actuality, not even medicine truly heals the sick, as any doctor can tell you... the medicine simply helps your body to heal itself. Pray, believe God, and then if you need it, take some medicine. Get a procedure done, get surgery, take a pill or a shot. My pastor just got knee replacement surgery. You can bet that he has been praying, his wife has been praying, and his whole church has been praying for him. It is not a lapse of faith to allow clever medical practicioners to do what they do best in addition to praying in faith. You may just find that after your procedure, God "raises you up" and you recover so quickly that even your doctor is surprised!

The thing that actually came to mind, though, was a parable Jesus told, recorded in Luke 10:25-37. It's a very familiar story... a man gets robbed and beat up, and two religious people see him but refuse to help him. A non-religious person comes along and helps the man, and is commended by Jesus. I don't think there is anyone who would argue that the "Good Samaritan" did anything sinful or wrong in helping the man; again, Jesus basically commended him for his actions. What did he do that was so great?

[The Samaritan] came to where [the injured man] was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

The Samaritan was commended for administering first aid! He gave the man medical attention! He didn't "pray in faith" and then put the man in the hotel to wait for his miraculous healing... he "poured on oil and wine" (first aid with medicine) and then "took care of him" (additional medical attention).

[Jesus asked the man He was telling the story to,] "Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

Speaking of radio silence...

This week Tulsa lost yet another Christian radio station. Let's review this decade so far, shall we?

2001: a new Christian Rock station turns up in place of an underappreciated and undernoticed pop/rock station. Live 101.5 is on the air for about a year and a half, and then in July of 2002 suddenly Christians all over Tulsa wake to their clock radios unexpectedly playing foul-mouthed hip-hop songs. Thanks for that, Clear Channel. I'll bet those urban beat fans were surprised one day a couple of years later when suddenly they tuned in their station to hear people speaking Spanish! Ha ha, ha!

2003: the same people who run the local Christian pop station, KXOJ, introduce The Kross, a new Christian rock station. Signal isn't that good in certain parts of town, but it gains a lot of popularity... until April of 2007, when, citing lack of advertising revenue, the station is converted to a repeater station for the programming on the mother station. Oh well... at least it wasn't Coolio this time.

2006 - A new competitor in the Christian pop market turns up. Spirit 102.3 plays the same kind of stuff as KXOJ. My family likes Spirit 102.3 better than KXOJ, but sometimes we jump back and forth a little. I have a Spirit 102.3 sticker on my car. Last Monday, suddenly Spirit 102.3 turned into a repeater for a sister station, formerly AM-only talk radio KRMG. So Cox Radio can't see their way clear to keep a Christian station on the air either, huh?

So now we're back where we were at the turn of the millennium... KXOJ or nothing. Well, not quite... we have some Air 1 stations now. They're national stations, so it's not like having a local Christian rock presence, but at least it's something. And if you're really desperate, there's that Southern Gospel station with the preachers during the day. :)

R.I.P, Spirit 102.3 and The Kross and Live 101.5 . You were on our station presets when you were with us. We hope now you're in a better place!

Breaking Radio Silence

It's been a while since I've posted... reason being, I haven't "felt like it." And it's been over a month since I've made a real post to my family blog... the one where I post about family events and stuff like that. Things like birthdays (my daughter's was five weeks ago, and my dad's was last weekend) and Christmas (it was... well, you know when it was). I've actually posted here once since I've posted there, and written about half of another post for this blog that I haven't completed yet.

I haven't "felt like" posting because, frankly, I haven't had the time to catch up on rest. Ever have a time when you feel like you haven't had a full night's sleep EVER, much less recently, and caffeine is the only thing that keeps you from falling asleep whenever you sit down? That's me right now. Part of it is probably still some post-holidays slow-down, too... you run and run, and then in January there's nowhere you need to run and you have to get back to paying your bills and the regular mundane stuff. It can be a rather uncomfortable shift of gears. Today it's 8am and I'm drinking Coca-cola, which I do not normally do this early in the day, but hopefully it will help me keep alert until lunchtime.

Feeling like this starts affecting you emotionally, too. You start wondering about things, second-guessing yourself. Did I make a mistake with the car I'm driving, with the job I'm working at, with the town I live in, with what I ate for breakfast? With my house? With my church? Should I change any of those? Those are things I would probably never question when I was my non-tired self, but at the moment some of them seem like valid questions. And I don't like to air my muddled questioning thoughts before just anyone on the Internet! (Plus, it's kind of hard to keep a thought going long enough to even complete a... hey look, a butterfly!)

But you know what? If this blog is "Christian Life With Michael" then it should be representative of the real life of a real human being Christian, and doubting yourself is sometimes part of that. So I thought I really should share a little bit of my life with you today. I know once I get a good 8-10 hours of uninterrupted sleep (hey, it could happen!) those thoughts will evaporate... I know good and well that they are magnified by what my body is feeling. Until then, maybe say a quick prayer for my weak body to become strengthened. Next time hopefully I'll have some complex profound truth from the Word to talk about. For now, staying awake is about as profound as it gets!

Jesus' Debating Technique - Part 2 of 2

Yesterday I started talking about Jesus' debating techniques in Luke 20. This is the other half of that... if you missed it yesterday, you might want to read that first!

Second question: Those same scribes and Pharisees sent flunkies to first butter Jesus up, and then to ask Him, "Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" They must have figured that either Jesus would answer that Caesar should get tribute, thus angering the crowd, or that he shouldn't get tribute, thus opening the door for them to have him arrested. Instead, Jesus knew they were trying to trap him and answered in a way that not only demonstrated that the people should follow the law, but also taught them that whatever has an "image" of someone belongs to that someone. Although Jesus did not explicitly mention this verse, it is the logical basis for His answer; whatever has God's image belongs to God. What has God's image? You fill in the blank! The answer was so perfect that it literally shut up the people who were trying to trick him.

Third question: Some people brought a complicated story based on a rule from Deuteronomy to Jesus, trying to trick Him into being on their side on the subject of life after death. It's not really clear to be if they were trying to do away with Jesus, but they were clearly trying to trick Him. The final question they asked, "In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife" was apparently meant to allow only the answer "None of them will be her wife, because after people die they are dead and gone and it doesn't matter any more." The unexpected answer, that marriage is not an issue in the afterlife, was so clear and such a good explanation that even the people who had been trying to trick Jesus commended Him on His answer and "...no longer dared to ask him any question." Once again, Jesus shuts the mouths of His opponents.

Did Jesus stop there? No, He did not. He continued by asking His own Theological question, on that from the perspective of a Christian is simple to answer, but from the perspective of one of those religious leaders must have seemed like an insoluble riddle. Anyone who still had any idea of trying to outfox Jesus by that point must have been too scared to speak another word to Him!

The whole exchange ends with Jesus cautioning His disciples to be careful around people who are always looking for approval and financial gain at the expense of others, and making a comparison with someone who was somewhere close to the bottom of the social food chain, a widow with almost no money to live on. He basically said that she was closer to God's will than rich people, obviously referring to the scribes, Pharisees, and Saducees He had been verbally sparring with.

In the course of one chapter, maybe 15-20 minutes' worth of dialogue containing three questions and answers, not only had Jesus silenced his critics and made them afraid to say another word, but He had managed to teach several critical kingdom principles to His disciples. He never stopped teaching them, even in the middle of a heated theological debate, and kept turning things around to exactly what He wanted to talk about! Is that some great debating technique, or what?

Jesus' Debating Technique - Part 1 of 2

There have been a lot of debates lately in the U.S.... "official" Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates, unofficial water-cooler debates over the merits of the candidates, debates in Congress over the economy. This morning I read about my favorite debate of all... one between Jesus and the Scribes/Pharisees which is recorded mostly in Luke chapter 20 (it kind of laps over into chapter 19 and 21 a little bit, but the main part of it is in chapter 20). A while back I read the chapter and was seriously impressed with Jesus' unique debating style and how he flummoxed his opponents, and today when I read it again in my new ESV Study Bible I remembered why I like it so much. It's got to be one of my favorite chapters in the Gospels!

The debate actually starts in the last few verses of chapter 19 when Jesus "cleanses" the temple. This of course made the religious leaders pretty upset: they "...were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words." So I suppose they decided to try to discredit him on credentials, or destroy the people's faith in Jesus' teaching abilities by outfoxing him with questions. Bad idea! You can't out-question the Son of God!

First question: "Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority." I guess they religious leaders figured they had official credentials and Jesus didn't. Instead of answering their question, Jesus answered, I've always assumed, by deftly changing the subject. "Now tell me, was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?" The religious leaders were too afraid to answer what they really believed (that John was a wacko out in the desert somewhere) because they knew the people thought John was a prophet (for the record, yes he was!) and they were afraid of a riot. So they refused to answer, and so Jesus refused to answer their question as well.

Was Jesus really changing the subject? He was not! Jesus' authority came from the same place John's came from, and if the religious leaders weren't willign to recognize John's authority, they weren't going to recognize Jesus' either. So he refused to answer, but he got them to refuse first! Smart, huh?

Then Jesus immediately launched into a story. Is the story unrelated? No, it is not! The story is a parable about some tenants who are given the task of keeping a vineyard for the owner. Every time the owner sent a servant to pick up some of the fruit, the tenants beat the servant up and kicked him out, until finally the owner sent his son, whom the servants killed, thinking they would be able to keep the vineyard for themselves. The story is really about God giving authority to the temple rulers, who misused it and abused the true prophets of God, and who would shortly have God's son executed. At the end of the parable, the tenants are "destroyed" and the vineyard taken away from them. The story completely relates to the question of authority, although the people it was leveled against probably didn't get it.

Come back tomorrow for part 2!

Angel Visitations

I was reading the first chapter of Luke in a sample of The ESV Study Bible that I picked up at Mardel this weekend, and I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before. Zechariah and Mary both had visitations from an angel with very similar circumstances surrounding it, but their reactions and the result were quite different:

Both were visited by the angel Gabriel.
Both were "troubled" by the visitation, but while Zecharaiah was fearful, Mary sought understanding (although it could be argued that Mary was afraid also.)
Gabriel told them not to be afraid.
Gabriel told them they would "bear a son, and you shall call his name..."
Those sons would "be great" and do amazing things.
Zechariah responded by asking for a sign (which he then received, to his chagrin). On the other hand, Mary asked for details of what would happen, but then she accepted the Lord's assignment without resistance.

Why was a priest surprised by or afraid of an angel appearing in the temple where the Presence of God was expected to be, when a little girl in her house seemed to take the appearance of the same angel almost as a matter of course? Maybe Zechariah was thinking about how priests could face death for entering God's presence unworthily (although he was not actually in the "Holy Place inside the veil" but on the other side of the veil where incense was burned) and that sometimes angels were sent to kill people. Why was the priest struck mute (and probably deaf as well) for asking for a sign? Maybe it's because he doubted the clear word of the Lord ("How shall I know this?" Because GOD said it, fool! Don't you see the angel??) Mary did not doubt, but did ask for clarification. Even then, she did not demand an answer, although she did receive one.

People in ministry are sometimes held to higher standards by God than the rank and file, and that may have been part of it, but I think Zechariah reacted to the word of the Lord in fear and doubt, while Mary reacted in submission. I think that's why Zechariah spent the next nine months in silence, while Mary got to spend it glorifying God!

Confidence

Today I was crossing the street on foot at the intersection of 21st Street and Garnett. This is a fairly busy intersection, with three lanes of traffic coming from every direction. I didn't just walk out into the street; first I pressed the button to get the "walk" signal, and then I waited until I saw the indicator light up that said that it was my turn to walk across the street. When I stepped out into the street, all the cars stopped for me. I didn't even have to raise a hand; they just stopped. Was it because they saw me coming? Nope; it wasn't my power that stopped them. It was the power of the rule that says when the light is red, you stop your car and wait. Because I was following a signal and rule as well, the "walk" sign, I was confident that I could walk safely across. I didn't have to run or be afraid of getting run over. (Of course, it's wise to be cautious and still look both ways before crossing! But for the sake of argument let's pretend that all drivers are completely competent and always paying attention.)

The Holy Spirit is our signal that we can move in the power of God. He is a deposit placed on the inside of us that tells us that when we move by His prompting, we can have confidence not only to come into the presence of God, but to do His works on the Earth. The Holy Spirit is the signal (like my "walk" sign) that lets us know that the power of God is our protection when we do something that might ordinarily be dangerous (like walking calmly out into the street at a busy intersection). If I had walked out into the street without the signal, I would have been in terrible danger. But when I walked out with the proper signal, I walked out in confidence and safety. And when I move by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I can walk in confidence and safety, because I know that the power of God is infinitely greater than the power of a traffic light. If I can trust a traffic light to keep me safe from a couple of automobiles, how much more can I trust God to keep me safe from anything in the universe that would try to stop or harm me?

Purified for Service

In Sunday school this week the teacher was discussing the story of Isaiah's commission in Isaiah chapter 6. In a nutshell, Isaiah had a vision of the Lord in all His glory, and Isaiah immediately assumed that because of his impurity, he was going to die. An angel brought a glowing coal from the altar fire, so hot that even the angel had to hold in in tongs, and touched Isaiah's lips and purified them. God then spoke a question: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Isaiah immediately answered, "Here am I! Send me."

The thing that struck me was how quickly Isaiah went from "Woe is me! For I am lost..." to "Here am I! Send me." From fear to boldness in one single step... the purifying power of God. What is it that purifies? What is it that the sacrifice on the altar represented? The sacrifice of Jesus, the shedding of His blood. When the power of God touches us, it immediately inspires us to service!

(By the way... I can never read that story without thinking of this song...)

Something Remarkable

Yesterday I was listening to Galatians Chapter 2 on my MP3 player and I got to verses 15-16:

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to have been an all-star in your religion from childhood, knowing all the ins and outs of how it worked and becoming a leader who was so zealous that he would even physically exterminate those of conflicting belief, and then to have an experience that was so powerful that you would completely make a 180° turn and become a member of the religion that you had killed the members of before? To actually preach that the things you used to think would bring you close to God were in actuality not capable of doing that? Paul had clearly experienced something very powerful. He had no reason to leave Judaism, where he was already superstar clergy, and join what (from the perspective of Jewish leadership) amounted to a cult... and not a "safe" little cult, but one that was being actively persecuted by both religious and political authority. It would be like the Pope becoming a Mormon or Billy Graham embracing Islam (although neither of those groups is currently experiencing anything like the persecution the early Church was experiencing). Paul was a thoroughly-educated man, an intelligent man, a highly devout man... and he believed in Jesus. If he was ready to risk his life for Christ, what about you and me? How ready are we?

Why Read Isaiah?

In Acts chapter 8 there is a story of a man, an "Ethiopian Eunuch," who is reading the book of Isaiah and is supernaturally visited by Philip, who explains to him that the passages are about Jesus. Recently I was listening to this chapter in audio form and I wondered something. Why was this guy reading Isaiah in the first place? He said himself that he didn't have any idea what it meant:

...Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”

Not only was the Ethiopian reading Isaiah, he was reading it out loud. Now, most Christians I know don't do much muddling around in the Old Testament. I imagine I've spent more time there than most, but even I don't just sit and read Biblical prophecy out loud to myself when I don't understand it at all. And yet here's a guy who is reading Biblical prophecy, to himself, out loud, without knowing what it meant, and knowing that he could not understand it unless someone explained it!

Why would someone do that? I can't say that I can read the Ethiopian's mind, but I can hazard a couple of guesses:

1. The text was beautiful to read. Some sections of prophecy are, I understand, written in poetry in the original languages, and even in English, Isaiah 53 (the chapter he was reading) is quite beautiful to read. Maybe he was a lover of poetry.
2. Maybe he actually understood more than the book of Acts lets on. This passage is widely understood to be about Messiah, and was even then. Maybe the Ethiopian knew it was about Messiah but couldn't understand what it meant about Messiah.
3. Maybe the Ethiopian was a believer in God and had such a desire to know about God that he was just plowing through, hoping that something would stick for him, even though most of it was just looking like black words on a white page.

My money is on #1 and #3, but #1 specifically because otherwise why would he read it out loud? I think he was enjoying the beauty of the passage. Is it bad to read the Word for aesthetics's sake? I don't think so. The Word is "food" for a believer, yes, but when we eat, we enjoy the flavor of our food, don't we? If God wanted it to be only about meaning and never about beauty, He would not have inspired guys like David to write pages and pages of poetry, and Jesus would probably have not delivered a lot of his teaching in entertaining story format (A LOG in someone's EYE??? hehe!!) I appreciate my ESV so much partly because the translators worked hard to balance fidelity to the originals with beauty in English... or, rather, they sought to preserve the beauty and character present in original languages when they brought it across into English.

Read your Bible today. And don't just read it for meaning alone. Read it for meaning, but while you're getting the meaning that God is speaking to you through the text, enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, stop by a bookstore and look into an ESV or some other translation that makes it a joy for you to read. Make it part of your life, like the Ethiopian was doing. God has provided it for you to enjoy!

Good News Is Not News

I'm reading a book called The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth by Madeline L'Engle, and she said something that got my attention. She was talking about how seldom we see anything positive on a news broadcast. Usually it's all about crimes, or tragedies, or unpleasant trends and statistics. If there's nothing heinous enough locally, the local newscasters will tell you about the crimes and tragedies in other states or other countries... they're not particular. We rarely see stories about, to quote Mrs. L'Engle, "love, and marital fidelity, and friendship, and compassion, and concern." "Good news is not news" is part of one sentence in that paragraph, meant to indicate something negative about society... but when I read that sentence, I thought... GOOD! I'm so glad that good things are so commonplace that they are not newsworthy. Every day the sun comes up... it never makes it on the news. It is commonplace. I take a shower every morning... thank GOODNESS that one never made it onto the news! Common things are not newsworthy. A man helping his brother out of a financial jam. An older man stopping to help a young woman out by pulling jumper cables out of his trunk. A little girl helping her crying friend up from a fall on the playground. The men and women working day in, day out in soup kitchens and fire stations and police squad cars and free medical clinics and all the other places where people help out other people. If those things were unusual, they would be newsworthy. Let's pray that we never see the day where the news items are all about the one guy in town who did something nice for someone else, because everybody else was doing bad stuff all day long. It might make for a rosy newscast, but it would make for a lousy life.

Free Will

I've been reading Scott Adams' book called Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice, and although I have trouble recommending it (it's hysterically funny in places, but it's pretty full of profanity and sexual/scatalogical humor... not particularly edifying reading) something in it caught my attention. Scott Adams does not believe in free will; he believes in what he calls "pleasure units." Basically, his theory goes, everyone has a minimum number of "pleasure units" that they need to obtain to be happy with their life. Some have more and some have less, but everyone is driven to do whatever it takes to get the pleasure units they need, thus "free will" is an illusion. If you'd like to read the shorter version of the book chapter that previously appeared on Scott's blog, someone has reproduced it here.

The theory does make some sense. We all try to do things that make us feel happy. We try to avoid things that make us uncomfortable or unhappy, unless by enduring those things we achieve something that ultimately makes us feel happy. Scott is basically saying that those kinds of reasons are why we do every single thing we do in life.

I don't know if he's right or not, and I'm not totally sure that Christianity actually fully explores the nooks and crannies of this kind of thought satisfactorily. But this morning something struck me. Does it really matter if free will "really" exists or not? It seems to us to exist, we act as though it exists, and so whether it is an illusion or not, we can at least consider it a useful concept and leave it at that. It's like... do we really "think" or do our brain cells just have chemical and electrical responses to stimuli? Well... does it matter? It SEEMS LIKE we're thinking. And it seems like we have free will, so for all intents and purposes, we do.

Surrender

On a recent Sunday at my church, we sang a series of songs containing the following lyrics:

"I surrender it all for the love of my King."

"I'm surrendering my all;
I surrender to the King"

"All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands."

It started to sound kind of sad to me, actually, all the talk about not being able to have autonomy in what you did. I mean, what if I want to climb a mountain and God wants me in a ship on the ocean? I would have to go my whole life knowing I would never get to climb that mountain. Wouldn't that be a kind of personal tragedy? There are definitely things I've wanted to do in my life that haven't happened. Do I have to wipe those things clean, clear them out of my mind, surrender them to Jesus like I was giving up my pistol to the arresting officer?

Of course not.

I realized that that's not what those lines mean at all. When we give "our plans" to God, God will either reveal to us how silly they are, or (more likely) make them come to pass... and when He makes them come to pass, they happen at the best possible time and in the best possible way.

Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart. -Psalm 37:4

God creates us specifically for certain things. If I could create something out of nothing and I needed to cut something, I would probably create a knife or scissors. If the thing I created was going to have consciousness, I would create it so that it was the happiest when it was cutting something that I needed cut. God's not me, of course, but I think God creates us predisposed to the task He has in mind for us. If it's a desire you have deep inside of you, there's a better than average chance that it has something to do with the call of God for your life.

I think when we surrender our plans to God, we don't surrender in the sense of giving them up. We surrender in the sense that we don't force them to happen in our own timing. We surrender to God's wise timing, and we know that when He makes it happen, He'll make it happen right!

Commit your work to the Lord,
and your plans will be established. -Proverbs 16:3

Barnacles!

I love Spongebob Squarepants. It's a silly cartoon that doesn't ever get too gross, although I admit lots of times they push the envelope. Well, at Christmas my son got a Spongebob music CD called The Best Day Ever. It has lots of fun and funny songs on it, and he (and his parents!) really enjoy it! But today one of the songs came up in my random playlist and it gave me pause:

We all know that the alphabet has 26 letters... count 'em!
You can mix and match to make many nouns and verbs
But if you say the wrong one to your mama, it may upset her
So in Bikini Bottom, we have a word that's preferred

We just say "barnacles"
It's a word that's okay to scream
When you want to let off some steam
And say what you really mean
We just yell "barnacles"
And go on our merry way
Barnacles is the way we say what they say we can't say.

A cute lyric, isn't it? The music is cute, too... click here to listen to a clip. The only problem is that Jesus made it clear that evil comes from the inside, and although it may be displayed on the outside, the evil is really in the heart. I don't actually see anyplace in the Word where it specifically says that some words are evil, but I do see that it says anger (which is not of the "righteous" kind) is evil. So if I shout "barnacles!" in anger, is that any better than shouting "s**t!"? Sure, the word "barnacles" is less likely to offend those around me, but if the anger is there, the anger is there... and that's where the sin lies.

The reason that the song gave me pause today is that it struck me as a good way to teach children to swear at an early age. Once you are used to releasing your anger through speech, it's that much easier to start doing it with real profanity later. I won't take away my son's CD... I don't think it's inherently malevolent (well, except for Plankton, but that's his job!) , but it's one more thing that as parents we might have to deal with later. Thank you too much, Nickelodeon.

Nature

From this article at ABC News (emphasis mine):

This evidence of an innate revulsion toward incest, coupled with the general avoidance of incest in most cultures around the world, suggests that the taboo may be nature's way of helping us avoid the multitude of problems that come with inbreeding -- which include rare genetic diseases and defects.

Question #1: When did "nature" become a personality that could have a "way?"
Question #2: Doesn't the sentence make just at much sense if you replace the word "nature's" with the word "God's?"
Question #3: When did nature become God, anyway?

Come on over!

This morning my pastor was making a point about the word "overcome" in 1 John 5:4-5 and I noticed that it wasn't quite the same in my ESV as it was in the KJV he was reading from:

ESV: "For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?"

KJV: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Notice that middle "has overcome" in the ESV? It reads that way in most of the modern translations. I think it's an interesting distinction that those who are born of God are already world-overcomers... that is their identity... and their faith is what has already overcome the world. It's an interesting distinction from the KJV way, which seems to indicate that the faith is still overcoming the world in the present.