Why Church?

More than ever, people are asking why they should attend church. There are good theological reasons, obviously, but folks tend to look for the practical reasons. Broadly speaking, I see three primary reasons for church attendance.

On one level, church attendance give you resources for more successful living through scripture, prayer, and fellowship. Life works better when you do things God’s way, and having friends makes everything better. You feel better if you believe you are cooperating with God. It is a way of loving God.

On another level, church involvement gives you mission opportunities, so that you can make a difference in the world. Churches organize food pantries, clothes closets, marches for justice, mission trips, homeless ministries, prayer meetings for important causes. You feel better if you are actually doing something to make the world a better place. It is a way of loving people.

But if church only makes life work better, or connects people with causes, then it is not going deep enough. Faith is not about feeling better. It is about being better, through Jesus.

On the third level, church involvement should help us see that our own daily lives are a mission from God. In this journey, he helps us to love him, and he helps us to love others. But along this journey, he is changing us, making us more like Christ.

Church is the delivery system God designed for drawing us into relationship with him. He wants fellowship with us. He wants us to become like him. He wants us to experience the deepest levels of fulfillment. He wants us to have real life.

Time Zones and Urgency

My wife and I just spent a day in Blowing Rock this week to celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary. We left our hotel about 10 a.m., walking through downtown. Most of the stores open at 10. At least they say they do. But at 10:05, about half of the stores had not opened. No signs of life through the windows.

One proprietor who had opened on time said that stores open "10ish." And that suits me just fine in a place to unwind. We did not come to Blowing Rock for a tight schedule.

Many years ago we spent our anniversary in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. Now that is a place to chill out. With a 6-hour time difference from home, all the day's news seemed old by lunch time on the island. Without the constant drumbeat of news updates and "breaking" stories, we found that we cared less about the latest crisis.

The time difference actually allowed us to think about the news, and decide if it mattered. So often the urgency of news convinces us that it's important. That 6-hour lag provides a step back from the frenzy. No wonder Hawaii is so relaxed.

With a more careful consumption of media, I find that here and now I can provide some distance between myself and the urgency of this world. That helps develop personal peace, and it gives time to think and understand. It allows time for God to get my attention. It helps me tune into reality.

Anarcists

I read in the paper this week that a group of anarchists protested the calling of a grand jury. A fellow anarchist was being compelled to testify, and these supporters oppose the use of grand juries. There are no records kept of the contents of grand jury proceedings, and this bothers the anarchists.

Now, maybe I don't know what today's anarchists believe, but true anarchy would get rid of the entire justice system, not merely grand juries. Anarchy would necessarily devolve into the tyranny of the strong over the weak. With no laws, and no justice system, life would be worse than unfair. It would be brutal.

As imperfect as our justice system is, it beats anarchy. After all, doesn't the pursuit of justice rule out anarchy? Christ calls us to pursue true justice, and we have a long ways to go. But anarchy is not the answer.

Falling

We fall asleep, fall in love, and fall for a joke. Of course we can fall literally, when we stumble. But all of these falls have something in common: losing control.

Sleep comes when we let go of all the cares of the day. We voluntarily release our worries, our plans, our regrets, our eager anticipation. At least ideally we do. The harder we hold on to those concerns, the more difficult it is to fall asleep.

When we fall in love, we abandon our defenses with our beloved. We let go of selfishness and willingly lose control, trusting in that special one. Some people, even married people, never fall in love. They still cling to control as much as possible, believing that warm feelings are the same as falling in love.

Falling for a joke can be embarrassing or humiliating. It happens when we trust in a person or situation, surrender control, and discover that we were wrong to trust. In the best of cases, we can laugh at ourselves, which shows a good bit of maturity.

Falling is all about losing, forfeiting, giving up, surrendering control.

I want to fall for Jesus.

The World's Oldest Profession

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. But there’s a profession even older than that one. After God created Adam, he placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and instructed the man to care for the garden.

So, the world’s oldest profession is that of gardener. Of course our first parents made that job much more difficult for all of us. With their disobedience in paradise, they experienced a kind of death, and God expelled them from the Garden. In this fallen world now, our work comes through thorns and thistles with sweat and pain. So this is the inheritance of mankind: a fallen world where death reigns.

But God’s command to tend creation remains. As God’s only creatures made in his image, we—humans—have the unique responsibility to care for this world. The flora and fauna, the rocks, rivers, and oceans really do matter to God. It is part of the creation he called “good.” But unfortunately, some Christians consider this world disposable. The physical world will be ultimately be destroyed, they reason, so who cares what happens to it now?

Tree huggers carry too far the responsibility to care for creation. Many virtually worship the natural world. But those who abuse the environment err in the other direction. Maybe they think that the quicker we wear out this world, the sooner God will give us another one. And so the resources of Earth are used for selfish gain, rather than harnessed for good.

Whether we choose to accept it or not, we are responsible for this garden called Earth. And all creation groans in anticipation of the day when God will renew everything.

Search Me

At CentriKid camp this morning, the personal devotions material pointed us to a very familiar verse, Psalm 139:23-24:

²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.


I have read and heard this passage so many times before. But today I read it as a deeper prayer. The psalmist is asking God to search him and test him, to look for any wrong thought patterns, then to lead him in the way of truth.

We all have wrong thought patterns, and rarely do we want others to point them out. But a healthy soul requires healthy thoughts. Who better to find the wrong thoughts than God? I prefer to ignore those issues and work around them. God wants to find them and disarm them. He wants to expose them to the light of truth.

We can stop hiding from our messed up thinking. We can get God to find those corrupted, false patterns of thinking and free us from them. That's the only way to walk in the way everlasting.

Good at Being a Person

Life is not easy. There are all kinds of ways we can mess up life. And we all do. Personhood is harder than it looks.

Who is really good at being a person? And is that the same thing as being a good person?

Personhood entails a wide range of skills: walking, talking, listening, loving, eating, serving, creating, working, sharing, confessing, confronting, exploring, explaining... The list is endless. So personhood is about doing life. Some people are better at personhood than others.

I'm still learning how to be a person: how to navigate through life, how to keep (gain?) my sanity, how to develop my strengths, how to love others, how to worship.

It's not easy, but it is rewarding.