When Two World Views Collide

Dear brothers and sisters,

I have been reluctant to post a blog on this issue, but after watching facebook explode over the last day I feel like it is important to speak.  First, I do not support or indorse gay marriage.  As I currently stand (I say this only to leave room for a more clear understanding of what I believe in the future) I would not marry a homosexual couple in my church.  However, I do not know how I would handle a homosexual couple attending my church--isn't this the issue for all of us future church leaders?  Second, I say none of this with certainty.  What I want to do with this post is push us towards thinking about this issue from a different direction.

1. State <--> Church 

The United States government has already ruled on this issue in many ways.  Marriage in the church's eyes is a holy bond before God--arguably the closest we can come to experiencing the trinity.  One man and one women coming together as one in Christ, entering into a covenant with one another before God.  The United States government does not view marriage in this way--it can't because if it did it would be taking a stance with religious grounds as the basis.  With this view, marriage in the Christian sense is not what the government has to offer homosexual couples.  This sense is only offered by the church.  In short, marriage in the sense that the government is talking is not Christian marriage.  Further, it never will be because the government has already taken the stance of separating religion and the state.

2. Church <--> State

The church should not be functioning in line with the government.  We do not need to support the governments policies.  However, when I say support here I do not mean stand in opposition with legislation but, rather, not supporting their stance in the church.  There are problems with this issue.  If the government were to start forcing churches to marry homosexual couples then this would become a problem (I do not see this being an issue in the near future).  However, for the time being we can stand for our beliefs while staying uninvolved in the government's stances.  In short, the church should be just as separated from the state as the state is from the church.  (This view goes all the way back to Paul. If asked, I can write on this specifically.)

3.  Set Apart

The church is set apart.  Some of you may have read my blog about Rob Bell's support of gay marriage (you can read that here).  Since I have already written on this topic I will speak briefly on this issue.  Also, for many this seems to be the hinging point on the issue.

In my previous blog I shared that Rob's stance may push the church closer to American culture.  What I mean by closer to culture is that, if the church accepts gay marriage, then we will be becoming more secular to appeal to the secular world.  However, Rob may not be suggesting that the church accept gay marriage within but only accept it from the outside.  Those who are not in the church are not held to our standard and we should not expect them to be.

It is hard to tell what exactly Rob is referring to (typical Rob Bell), but the deeper issue is the church needs to be the called out ones.  Called out of society and apart from the government.

4.  Loving Out

My final point is a culmination of these ideas.  We, the church, are not the United States government (and we never will be).  We are Christ's body, and we follow his guidance in the world.  We are not bound by secular governments because our head transcends all secular governments.  With this we are called to love those outside of the body.  Those outside the body are not expected to live to our standards.  Further, after joining the body, the only hope we have is in Christ convicting and teaching us through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot expect our standards of them; we can only love.  Loving out...

Please remember, these are thinking points.  They are not the end all or the final world.  This is only the beginning of the conversation.

Yours,
Chris

Imagine Hope

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“When we talk about God, we’re talking about that sense you have—however stifled, faint, or repressed it is—that hope is real, that things are headed somewhere, and that that somewhere is good.”  –Rob Bell

Have you ever thought about hope?  Have you ever thought of where it leads?  How do we get hope?  What should we hope for?

My hope is for the Kingdom of God.  Even though this hope is a reality, I still find myself hoping.  This hope starts small and sometimes I don’t think it is actually there.  But aren’t we supposed to hope?  Isn’t that our call?  Wait, hasn’t Jesus already brought our hope?  Maybe... but shouldn’t we hope for others to find the Kingdom of God?  Maybe they already have... maybe they hope too...

I think they do... When I look around I see a lot of hope in the world.  However, much of this hope doesn’t come from the church, it comes from the world.  Recently my father and I watched the documentary Imagine.  Imagine is compiled home videos from John Lennon and his life after the Beatles and, being huge Beatles fans, my father and I always find hours of enjoyment learning more about one of “fab” four.  Early in the documentary the song sharing its title was played.  In this song, John sings these words:

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Many who hear this song are instantly turned off by the first verse, “Imagine there’s no heaven... no hell below us...” Their anger only builds going into the second verse, “...and no religion too...” However, notice how John ends the song, “a brotherhood of man” “...sharing all the world...”  “and the world will live as one.”  How can we say that John did not hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God?  Well... he may not have known it by that name, but John did hope for something huge...

What happened at the resurrection?  Have you ever wondered this?  For years I never stopped to think about what Christ’s resurrection meant for the world.  It always came to heaven and hell for me.  However, what Jesus truly did was conquer death, ushering in the Kingdom of God.  We do not need to hope for it because it has already come.

The Kingdom of God is how Rob described God above.  A place where we can hope that things are going somewhere...and they are.  John sensed it.  In some ways I believe John wanted to be a Christian.  Many times he talked about Gandhi and the peace he brought.  However, Christ brought true peace first; even Gandhi accepted this.  Instead of worrying about heaven, hell, or religion, let us look towards the cross and resurrection.  Here we find hope for all...

Rob Bell and Same-sex Marriage

For those of you who have not heard, Rob Bell has publicly endorsed same-sex marriage (if any of you are interested you can find the Huffington Post article here).  My interest in this post is to discuss what this could possible mean for the church.

Rob Bell is one of the Christian giants of modern, Christian pop-culture and this is also not the first time that Bell has stepped over the line for many conservative evangelical Christians.  Further, Bell is one of the most influence and publicly known Christian leaders today which is a blessing and a curse for the church.  In this case I do not want to come out with a stance against Bell.  Rather, I want to think about the sort of implications that his endorsement could have on the church.  The church can either respond in one of two ways:  (1) standing behind Bell and his statement or (2) rejecting Bell and maintaining the current stance it has (this current stance will look different for each individual church).

From my vantage point there is only one response for the church.  We must stand strong and maintain our current stance, whatever it looks like.  However, this does not imply that we neglect to show the love of Christ.  The church is not a social club or political institution.  It is the body of Christ.  We are to be different.  The New Testament (especially Paul's writings) is littered with the idea that Christ's body is called and separate.  We no longer act in the ways of the world.  Our stances may not always be popular but we are called to be different.

Bell's actual statement is typical to him.  Rather than speaking in absolutes he leaves room for interpretation with ambiguity.  However, I will not deal with this myself.  The following blog deals nicely with Bell's style of communication (see the forth paragraph).

So...what is the take away?  We, the church, must be different.  We will not (and should not) look like the rest of culture.  However, our calling is to meet culture (the world) where it is and move it forward.  Those who choose homosexual lifestyles are no different than the rest of us.  We are all broken and in need of grace and love.

Christian books...

Why do we have have Christian books? This is a question that I have been dwelling on a lot lately. Perhaps before I say more it will be helpful for me to define what I mean by "Christian book". By this I mean popular, pop-cutler Christian books with little substance and lots of rhetoric. These sort of books come out and dominate Christian book store shelves and are raved about in average church Bible studies.

I do not write this post to put down my Christian brothers and sisters who read these books. Rather, I write it to suggest (with a little help in style from pop-culture Christian books) that we move past milk to solid food (1 Cor 3:2). If you were to look up my reference to the previously sentence you might notice that I failed to correctly reference this verse. However, this is what many of our brothers and sisters do in their pop-culture books. We need to move past these books. Yes, many speak truth, but this truth is also found in Scripture. Instead of having "Bible" studies where we read books maybe we should have "book" studies where we study books of the Bible.

Many times these pop-culture books have positive things to say, but they do not move the church forward. These books often times speak of surface level issues that poke us in places that sometimes hurts, but many times they end up with a very similar message that we should have learned when we were in middle school. Lets move past our middle school Christianity towards adulthood and maturity in our faith.

-Chris