life-giving

leaving behind…

4/19/2006 · 0 comments

in meditations

I Saw the Lord : A Wake-Up Call for Your HeartI started reading Anne Graham Lotz’s I Saw the Lord a few days ago. Lotz uses the word revival to describe what she hopes to inspire; I would use the word passion. She makes an interesting point that Isaiah preached before his famed encounter with God in chapter 6, but he became passionate after seeing the Lord on His throne. As a modern counterpart to Isaiah, Lotz offers the story of Carole, whose already good life was transformed by a new vision of God and the resulting new perspective on herself. Carole states,

Revival, for me, isn’t about leaving behind what the world has to offer. It’s about leaving behind sin so that I can embrace the richer life the Lord has to offer.

What a wonderful, life-giving approach! I grew up in a denomination defined by don’t: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t do what other churches do, don’t, don’t, don’t. Such a perspective leads to, among other things, a sense of loss, of missing out. It’s all about the negatives. I suspect for many, salvation is about loss: let me leave behind my friends, my fun, my pleasure so I can go to church and be safe–I mean saved.

Certainly, Jesus does call us to leave some things behind, and loss is involved in the life of the disciple. “Take up your cross daily” is about sacrifice. Jesus tells us to not look back, to leave family and houses and fields behind. But what often gets left out of that teaching is what Jesus also says:

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age…” (Mark 10:29–30)

That’s why Carole’s statement is so refreshing: she flips it around and says “look at what I get!” The don’t approach implies that we’re giving up fun and pleasure. The life-giving approach reminds us that we’re leaving behind sin–the thing that was killing us–and embracing life, the thing we really want.

So, what are you leaving behind?

Tagged as: choice, cross, life, life-giving, loss, passion, revival, sacrifice, sin

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above the political fray?

10/5/2005 · 0 comments

in books, culture

Chri Sumberg, in an essay called “The War on Common Sense” (published in Orion), writes, “why not begin by stating what we already know: The Good Book is not a conservative text. Neither is it a liberal text. It is a spiritual text; and as such it is–or should be–above the political fray.”

Though I doubt I agree with where Sumberg takes his thinking in the rest of his piece, this is worth pondering. The issue as I see it is that while the Bible itself may be outside politics, what believers do with its teachings is not. No one can claim that God is Democrat, Republican, or anything else–but His followers have to choose a party or candidate to vote for, and that choice should be informed by an understanding of Scripture.

The question for me is how to make those choices in a loving, life-giving, and consistent way. And related to this is the ability to articulate clearly the rationale for those choices–articulate clearly to non-believers or to believers with different understandings of Scripture. “Just because” is not an acceptable answer in the public arena. Consistency is key, and one that conservative Christians often seem to fail in. Here in Alabama, for instance, it was a challenge to explain why a tax plan that would have greatly benefited the poor was so strenuously opposed by those espousing pro-life views. There may have been very good reasons for opposing the tax plan, but those reasons were never articulated in a way that made sense as part of a bigger picture of faith and public policy. The question from some of my politically-left coworkers was reasonable: “how can someone claim to be pro-life and show so little concern for the poor?” It’s a fair question. Unfortunately, I don’t think its been answered here in Alabama.

Tagged as: Alabama, Bible, consistency, life-giving, politics, poverty, taxes, voting

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