To Dare to Keep Moving Forward is to Dare to Ask Questions...

One of the great problems of organized religion is that it traps us into forms and mindsets that no longer serve God's purposes. This is true of the most vibrant movements in the church. The setting up of organizations to facilitate the fresh work of God begins the downward move towards dependence on systems to run and control things. This is hard to avoid, but the biggest danger of it is that we are generally unaware of what is happening and give ourselves completely to what we have established. This then tends to set in concrete something that is meant to remain dynamic and ready to change in any given moment as new generations come along. Even when a new generation comes along with vision to bring positive change, they encounter a system that has hardened and unable to change in any significant way.

One example of this is the charismatic movement that burst on the scenes in the '60s. I was in on the beginnings of that movement when it was fresh and vibrant. Today, although much of the language has remained the same, it has gone the way of all movements and is stuck in its own traps.

There are always 'prophets' who are alert to this hardening and address it in a variety of ways. That is true today as it has been throughout history. I'm not referring to people who are labeled prophets or to people who may have 'prophetic ministry' but to those who are awake to this reality and are calling God's people to new ways of seeing and understanding God and others. There is a great wealth of writing that is going on now that is challenging the status quo of the Christian world. Among them are people like Albert Nolan, Brian McLaren, Sharon Baker, Renee Girard, Walter Wink, Walter Brueggeman, Phyllis Tickle...and many more. These are not stereotypical prophets but are scholars and pastors and leaders calling for God's people to look at God through a different set of eyeglasses and realize that God is constantly moving forward and moving us with Him. If you read the Bible through the lens of a trajectory, you begin to realize that God has had His people on a trajectory that has continued to this day.

To dare to keep moving on that trajectory is to dare to ask questions and to sort through what we have inherited.

One well-known man in more recent Christian history, Watchman Nee, understood this concept and wrote the following:

"...We cannot overestimate the greatness of our heritage, nor can we be sufficiently grateful to God for it. But if today you try to be a Luther or a Wesley, you will miss your destiny. You will fall short of the purpose of God for this generation, for you will be moving backwards while the tide of the Spirit is flowing on. The whole trend of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a forward trend.

"God's acts are ever new. To hold on to the past, wanting God to move as He has formerly done, is to risk finding yourself out of the main stream of His goings. The flow of divine activity sweeps on from generation to generation, and in our own it is still uninterrupted, still steadily progressive."

Unlearning and Relearning in Order to Keep Learning

We often hear about the importance of being lifelong learners; a necessary ingredient for lifelong learning is being lifelong "unlearners" and "relearners" as well.

Alvin Toffler says, 
"The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those that cannot learn, unlearn, relearn." 

In order to continue learning and growing, some things have to be unlearned and relearned in a new paradigm. 

In the approaching new year may we, God's people, experience His grace to "unlearn" and "relearn" in order to continue being renewed in our mind concerning who He is and how He thinks and feels and operates. 

Happy New Year! 

Great Things or Great Love?

In conversation with a friend this week about the things that life is made up of that really count, I was reminded of something that Mother Teresa said:

"We do no great things; we do small things with great love."

Be blessed and know that it's the very little things that are done in love that count most in our journey of living our lives the way Jesus lived His.

No-Strings-Attached Giving and Receiving

Recently as I was thinking about our response to God's unconditional love when it came to us in Christ Jesus, I realized that we fallen humans don't really want to be loved unconditionally. Our response was that of rejection and finally crucifixion.

On the one hand, we crave to be loved and yet something in us hates to be loved with no strings attached. I have a Korean friend who is over-the-top generous towards me. She lives in another state, and I see her once or twice a year; it never fails that, for no reason at all, she sends me back home laden with goodies! One time when I was with her, she insisted that we visit a Korean grocery store and she took me down all of the aisles and pulled off the shelves 2 or 3 of each item that she was sure I needed or wanted and filled up the grocery cart.

The whole time that she was doing this, I was thinking about frugality and how much she was spending and racking my brain to know how I could "pay her back" for this generosity. It made me very uncomfortable!

Later as I was complaining in my heart about all of this, the Lord spoke to me something to this effect: "Nita, I want to show you extravagant, no-strings-attached love through her undeserved generosity towards you. Receive it with thanks...and then you do the same towards others." I'm slowly getting it but I'm not yet there, because each time I see her and she loads me up with good things, I cringe a little inside; I want to deserve the gifts or have some way to pay her back! It's very humbling to receive with no way of paying back.

So deeply ingrained in us is the idea of pay-back or "evening the scales" that we, the human race, couldn't tolerate perfect unadulterated love when it showed up in Jesus. In this season now of gift-giving and receiving, it's not easy to receive a gift from someone that you didn't give to; even if the giver had no strings attached to the gift, our inner drive is often to feel like they expect something back or that we should give something back. This may be a good time to pause and remember the extravagant, no-strings-attached Love of God in Jesus and by His grace, humbly and gratefully receive the gift...and then give to others in the same way.

Next Book: Telling God's Story...

I'm reading a wonderful book by Peter Enns about how to teach the Bible to children. Because I'm concerned with how I was raised to think about the Bible (see introductory post on The Bible Made Impossible - http://nitasbookclub.blogspot.com/2011/12/increase-of-truth-looks-like-error.html), I have a strong desire to see children raised now with a better idea of what the purpose of the Scripture is and thereby later in life find the Bible able to stand under scrutiny rather than to find it a stumbling block when doubts about it arise.  (Statistics show that young adults are leaving the faith in huge numbers now, and one reason for that is their sincere questions and doubts about what the Bible is presented to be by their parents and Bible teachers.)

I also have great respect for Peter Enns whose writings have had significant influence on me in the very recent years, particularly as they relate to what God's intentions were in giving us His Word.

For these reasons I'd like to go through his book, Telling God's Story, a Parents' Guide to Teaching the Bible.  It's available at amazon.com:  http://www.amazon.com/Telling-Gods-Story-Parents-Teaching/dp/1933339462/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354116103&sr=8-1&keywords=telling+god%27s+story

My prayer is that those who are raising and/or teaching children would find this book a blessing and encouragement.

(I hope to begin this early in 2013.)

The Superiority of Jesus

I'm listening again to the wonderful book of Hebrews and so will repost what I wrote a couple of years ago in line with this:

I want to share a thought about the big message of the book of Hebrews - the superiority of Jesus to the Old Testament rituals and systems and practices, He being the fulfillment of them all.

As I went through this book several times recently, I was struck as never before with how those human systems and practices were done away with in His coming in the flesh. In fact, without the removal of the human systems, Jesus' beauty was obscured.

With this in mind, I saw the well-known chapter of Hebrews 11 on faith in fresh light; a couple of simple things stood out to me about faith:
1. With the removal of external props in worship, the true believer is forced into a life of faith at many levels.
2. Faith thrives and grows in the absence of external props because there is nothing left to lean on but the Person of Jesus.

Knowing our proneness as fallen humans, I wonder what systems and practices we modern evangelicals have that hinder a life of true faith? Holy Spirit, we need Your help to be able to see, and we pray that You will magnify Jesus and remove whatever You need to remove in order for us to see Him as He is and to grow in faith. Thank You for hearing and answering!