Viral Faith

"We always love, but not always properly" Attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux I love New Years day as it is both a time of reflection and a time of hope.  It is the recognition of how blessed we have been as well as losses we have incurred.  We identify opportunities that we have both seized and ignored.  We gather these sentiments together and propel them into the next year, where we hope to keep momentum from the good, and make changes to the bad.  Interestingly, New Years Day calls us to make choices and define our values. I have been wrestling for several months with the concept of idolatry.  Even writing the word conjures up ideas of bowing to bizarre statues and chanting incantations while smoking hallucinagenic herbs.  Yet, idolatry is much more subtle, even sublime.  It is so common that we often think of it as normative.  I wish I could say that idolatry was foreign experience, but God is dealing with me and the community in which I...

A spirit of prostitution leads them astray;  they are unfaithful to their God.  Hosea 4:12 Then the angel said to me, "The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages Revelation 17:15 The book of Revelation has to be the most misunderstood book in the entire Bible.  With its incredible images of judgements, bowls of wrath, trumpets, scrolls, beasts, scorpions, armies, cosmic war and worship, it is often difficult to understand the message.  The book of Revelation is written in a style of literature described as apocalyptic.  Other books of the Bible like that are the book of Daniel and the book of Zechariah.  Apocalyptic literature uses symbols and metaphors to instill hope regarding the current and future interventions of God. Now, what in the world does the book of Revelation have to do with Christmas?  Christmas on one hand seems to be so joyful (I can hear a chorus singing "Joy to World" in my ...

See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:19 Recently, I had a spiritual breakthrough.  It was not that I received a new message or gained new information.  It was perspective regarding the nature of authentic faith.  I believe that God is continually doing new things in our lives and communities.  There is no room for complacency or commonplaceness in following Jesus.  So, if God is creating in us a newness of life, equipping us for new challenges, and sending us new journeys, why is the Christian faith so dull, life-sucking (instead of life-giving), and fear-based in so many people who identify themselves as Christian?  Here are four reasons why we may have misdirected faith: 1. We misunderstand the radicalness of the calling to follow Jesus .  In the Bible, Jesus asked his disciples to follow him. To follow, meant to leave lifestyles, vocations, and even relationships behind to fo...

 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:3 It has been said that Jesus' sermon on the mount provides the meat of his ethical system.  It is the sermon that articulates and advocates for a lifestyle that is uniquely counter-cultural and joyfully free.  Its an alternative vision for living, that Jesus simply describes as "the kingdom of God" The world blessed can be loosely translated as "happy" or "fortunate".  It means that because we experience the described state or activities, we are made happy and should count ourselves as fortunate. The initial state of being "poor in spirit" suggests a state of poverty of our souls.  A state of poverty means to be deprived of necessary things.  We recognize the effects of social poverty easily, but poverty of the soul is much more sublime and profound. Poverty of the soul is the state of seeing that you bring nothing to God.  It is the unders...

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans I Corinthians 5:1 I have had the privilege for most of the past 17 years, to train young physicians in both Pediatrics and Family Medicine.  One of the foundational aspects of their training is the establishment for what constitutes "normal".  These young physicians must quickly have an appreciation for the wide range of behaviors and presentations, that are all considered normal.  This is why pediatricians with children have such an immense advantage in their training.  Living with a child allows you to see the good, bad, and the ugly.  It is not until the sense of "normal" is understood, that disease detection and prevention can be applied. What a community affirms as "normal" has a huge impact upon its ability to evaluate its own health, and the health of its members.  We see this vividly in our own cultures where some damaging beha...

"Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." I Corinthians 4:2 According to New Testament scholar, Kenneth Bailey, in the Biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, there is no word for honesty.  Honesty is fidelity to an impersonal truth.  It is sharing something that is objectively true.  The ancient Biblical cultures did not understand truth apart from the divine.  In their understanding, truth was personified, and to live truthfully was to live in relationship with the divine. The concept for honesty is a Roman terms, which was indicative of western thought, that although virtuous, was not well understood in the Judaic worldview. This difference is relevant because the Bible continually rewards faithfulness above what we would objectively describe as "successs".  In a parable of Jesus,  (Luke 19:12-27), Jesus describes a rich man who gives several men the same amount of money and then checks on them aft...

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 1 Timothy 2:1-3 Over the past fifty years, there have been monumental shifts in how the American public sees its government and its purposes.  The Constitution of the United States was written as a grand experiment in democracy in a loosely held confederacy of states in a largely agricultural society.  The founding fathers had wisdom, but could not have anticipated the modern empire.  Government in the immediate post-colonial America was basic and austere.  The infrastructure of the nation was largely non-existent and states were largely responsible to promote commerce.  The military was very low tech, and was mostly dependent upon militias.  Initially, there was no Navy, Marines, or Air Force.  There were no public schools, health ...