Man Up

There is a surge of energy in the evangelical church to “reclaim the male identity” (as I interpret it) that many lament has been lost in the flattening of gender roles in contemporary Western society.  Leading the effort is well-known, no-nonsense preacher Mark Driscoll.  For a quick peek at his representative view check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddFbELpXTcg

Do men have to fight to be men?  Must a true man have an aggressive mentality, a relentless urge to dominate others?  Am I a sissy or a ninny or have I lost my y-chromosome because I don’t have any desire to fight with or inflict harm upon another man?  Have true manhood and Americanized masculinity been confused for one another?

As Christians we believe the greatest example of a man, the purest personification of humanity, is Jesus.  So we should look at the New Testament to see if Jesus more resembled a cage fighter or crusader on the one hand, or if his “manhood” is best described in other ways.  We’ll briefly survey Jesus’ example and teaching.

His Example.  No one who has ever lived has been quite as compassionate, merciful, patient, and loving as Jesus.  In Israel’s tradition they referred to God’s character as “compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”  Jesus put this description into motion, giving it flesh and substance as he dined with sinners (Luke 19:1ff), defended the accused (John 8:1ff), played and prayed with children (Mark 10:13ff), and forgave his executioners (Luke 23:34) to mention a few examples.  Jesus refused to retaliate, rejected putting on a spectacle to impress the religious authorities, and didn’t clamor for political power or personal prestige.  In his life and ministry as well as in his suffering and death Jesus demonstrated a seamless witness to the unequaled love and unqualified mercy of the Father.  And what about his emotional side?  Did he repress or hide feelings of fear that men in our culture aren’t supposed to have?  Not at all!  He wept at the death of his friend (John 11) and trembled in fear at the prospect of his suffering and death (Matt. 26:36-39).  He was a great man because he showed great love for others through service (John 13:3ff) and sacrifice (John 10:17-18).

His Teaching.  Let’s next consider Jesus’ teaching, which he perfectly embodied in his own example.  The Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matt. 5-7, is the best summation of Jesus’ teaching, laying forth the way of discipleship in the kingdom of God.  There he proclaimed God’s blessing on the humble, meek, merciful, peacemakers, and those patient in persecution (5:3-13), preached against all forms of murder including hatred (5:21-22), urged forgiveness and reconciliation (5:23ff), prohibited retaliation in all its forms (5:38-42), and called his followers to love enemies and pray for persecutors (5:43ff).  He taught that the way to treat others is to treat them as we ourselves want to be treated (7:12).  If you want mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and love, then live in these ways towards others, regardless of how they live towards you.  In his teaching Jesus didn’t define manhood so much as he defined discipleship for all, whether men or women, old or young.  This way of discipleship is the way of the cross (Luke 9:23), the way of selfless, sacrificial, suffering love.

Finally, let’s explore the most frequent biblical objection to this meek Savior: “What about when he turned over tables in the temple?—Jesus was aggressive, confrontational, and even violent.”  You can read the record of this incident in all four gospels (Matt 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John 2).  We have to ask if we are reading this story as aggressive men, excited that Jesus brandishes a whip and overturns tables, or if we are reading the story in its first century context.  Let’s consider that setting.  Jesus was outraged because people used the temple (the place of God’s presence and worship) for personal profit.  Jesus made a statement that day about the priority of worship, prayer, and inclusiveness in God’s kingdom: his father’s house is a house of prayer for all nations.  And note that none of the gospel writers mention that Jesus did physical harm to anyone.  He was upset and rightfully so, but he didn’t resort to violence.  He was honest with his anger and manifested it against the items of a corrupt system, not against the corrupt people themselves.  In this episode Jesus showed that a true man (or better said, a true worshiper) has strong conviction and courageous action to preserve the purity of worship and the honor of God’s name.

So where does this lengthy essay leave us in defining manhood from a Christian perspective?  People today sometimes use the phrase “Man up!” to encourage a man to “act like a man” defined as bold, fearless, and aggressive.  Rather, Jesus, as seen from his example and in his teaching, encourages us to be true men and women of God.  We “Man up” by walking the downward way of the cross.  We “Man up” by serving others, not demanding to be served.  We “Man up” when we use our words and actions to heal, reconcile, and bless, not to hurt, put down, or destroy.  We “Man up” when we show mercy, extend grace, and exhibit genuine love, not when we demand our due and insist on our way.  We “Man up” through humble submission to God and others (Eph. 5:21; Jas. 4:7), not striving for personal glory.  We “Man up” when we put weapons aside, resist seeking revenge, and bestow kindness upon our enemies (Rom. 12:14-21), not taking vengeance into our own hands, perhaps under the guise of “self-defense.”  We “Man up” when we’re honest with our emotions and authentic in our relationships, not when we feign confidence and display arrogance through a show of childish masculinity.

Said simply: real men follow Jesus through imitation and obedience, with love and devotion.  Man up.

Going Deeper – James 5:7-11

Title and Text: “Patient Faith” – James 5:7-11

Connect:

• Do you consider yourself a patient person?  In what ways do you practice patience?  In what areas are you more likely to be impatient or impulsive?

Cultivate:

• James encourages the church to wait patiently for the return of Christ (v 7).  How can we patiently wait for Christ while not becoming lazy in witness or escapist in hope?
• What alternatives to patient endurance through present suffering does the church commonly choose?  Why do you think these ways aren’t commended to us in the scriptures? (Or are they?)
• What good character develops in us through patiently enduring hardships?  Compare what James says in this passage with the opening section of chapter one.
• As “an example of suffering and patience” James cites the prophets (v 10) and Job (v 11).  What contemporary examples of patient faith have your witnessed?  What opportunities have you had to cultivate and demonstrate patience and steadfastness?
• What considerations (theological and practical) can help us endure the present chaos of this world and maintain eager expectancy for the world to come? (Hint: Your responses can begin with what James writes in this passage but need not be limited to it).

Commission:

• In Rev. 13:10 and 14:12 the apostle John calls for endurance and faith through suffering.  We wish for escape from or destruction of the world, but God desires its redemption, and he uses our patient endurance to bring it to pass.  Consider your own present pain and pray for the Holy Spirit to fill you with spiritual fortitude to endure with faith to the end, and that by your steadfastness, God may bring others to repentance and salvation.

Who’s Your Neighbor?

The title of this post is a form of the question asked by a religious scholar to Jesus.  The man first asks Jesus what he must to do inherit eternal life, to which Jesus returned with a question about how the scholar understood the way the Hebrew scriptures spoke to this question.  He replies wisely: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).  Jesus affirms his answer but adds something to it: “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (v 28).  You know the right answer; now do the right thing, Jesus says.  Love God and love my neighbor – easier said than done.

The lawyer retorts with another question, this time hoping to keep this radical love command tame, to limit the scope of whom he has to show love: “And who is my neighbor?”  Jesus then tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, as we know it.  And in the story he answer’s the man’s questions (perhaps our question as well) in a surprising way.  Take a quick listen to Stephen Sizer’s excellent explication of Jesus’ point in the parable:

http://vimeo.com/35068417

God cares about human rights?  Of course!  He created human beings, created them in his image, and he loves – even cherishes them – all of them.  He wants all to be provided for, all to be protected.  And here’s the kicker: he wants us to offer this provision and protection for one another.  He wants us to offer this love and care, generosity and mercy, without condition, reservation, or qualification – to all.

So: who is my neighbor?  That’s a long list, but we can sum it up with one word: everyone.  Or perhaps a better word: each one.  Each human being is your neighbor and mine.  Will we love God with all that we are and all that we have by loving each and every neighbor – every human being – with the extravagant love God has shown towards us?  Jesus’ words both challenge and console, provoke and promise:

“Do this, and you will live.”

Going Deeper – James 4:11-5:6

Title and Text: “Humble Faith” – James 4:11-5:6

Connect:

• Discuss the following statement: “Humility claimed is pride renamed.”  Are humility and pride mutually exclusive? How can we cultivate humility without becoming prideful?

Cultivate:

• Like Jesus in Matt. 7:1-3, James instructs Christians not to “speak evil against one another,” (4:11) which is a form of judgment.  What are some ways we might be prone to speak against others in the church?  (E.g., gossip, slander, to name a couple).
• The royal law (Jas. 2:8) is reflected in Jesus’ own life and in his summation of the Old Testament in the great commandment (Luke 10:27).  How does critical or harsh speech undermine this new commandment?
• The “Protestant work ethic” is part of our national identity; we encourage people to become self-reliant, hard-working, ladder-climbing, over-achievers.  James observes that we can easily become arrogant in the way we assess our abilities and what they can bring us.  How can we balance a proper work-ethic and diligent planning with total dependency on God?  To what degree can we live “self-sufficiently” and still humbly trust the Lord?
• James addresses the danger of materialism in 5:1-6.  Why is it impossible to live humbly before God and others when material possessions and financial concerns rule our lives?  How can we guard against the influence of our materialistic culture?
• Which of the attendant problems of greed and materialism is most troubling for you: a possessive spirit (vv 2-3), taking advantage of others (v 4), or self-indulgence (v 5)?  Have you confused wants and needs?

Commission:

• James identifies three threats to humility: criticism (4:11-12), arrogance (4:13-17), and materialism (5:1-6).  Which is the biggest threat to the growth of humility in your heart?  Consider the example of Jesus: how do his life and teaching point you in the direction of humble faith, away from the area of struggle you identified?

Flourishing Faith

There are two voices: the word that speaks God’s promise and the word that speaks human reality.

There are two sources of data: the raw, creative power of God and the common experience of human weakness and limitation.

There are two possibilities for the future: joyful fulfillment and relentless emptiness.

There are two paths in the present: hopeful faith and humanistic disbelief.

Abraham knew these dualities.  Paul theologically interprets Abraham’s experience in Rom. 4:18-22: “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.””

On the one hand the human data: Abraham is old, his body is “as good as dead,” his wife is barren, and years have passed since God promised a son with still no fulfillment.

On the other hand the divine promise: You will be the father of many nations, offspring like the sand on the shore and the stars in the night sky.

Which does Abraham believe?  The natural tempts us into its pessimistic unbelief beneath the veneer of “being realistic.”  The supernatural tests us to see if we believe God really can do all things (Gen. 18:14), even those beyond the scope of our present conditions.  Does the natural rule the supernatural or does the supernatural rule the natural?  Or does anything exist beyond what I see and have experienced in the physical world according to natural laws?

What impresses about the Lord is that he delivered on his word.  What impresses about Abraham is that he waited with patient faith.  He believed in God’s word above his own physical weakness.  He believed that the God who spoke the world into existence could overcome his own limitations to create again.  Abraham’s body was as good as dead, but his faith was vibrantly alive.  “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

What about you?  In seasons of waiting for God to act, do you scurry about to find an adequate answer on your own, or do you let his promise sustain your hope and nurture your faith (Psalm 119:49-50)?  Do you give glory to God through longsuffering trust?  Even if your body is as good as dead or your circumstances are as dire as the grave, is your faith alive, even flourishing in the soil of silence and suffering?

As Paul interprets, Abraham’s faith revealed his righteousness, in the sense of his right standing with God.  Abraham was right with God because he had an accurate understanding of God’s character and capability and his trust followed that knowledge.  Abraham didn’t have to solve the dilemma of his childlessness, of Sarah’s barrenness; but he had to trust that God could, that God would.  And as always, God did.

May you see that God doesn’t require you to solve your life, to fix your problems, to eliminate your weaknesses or escape your limitations.  And may you come to find a healing relationship with the Lord as you trust in his power, his faithfulness, and his love, all of which know no bounds.

Going Deeper – James 4:1-10

Title and Text: “Submissive Faith” – James 4:1-10

Connect:

• Respond to the poll below.  If in a group discuss your responses:

Cultivate:

• James identifies the root of conflict in the church as “passions” (Eugene Peterson rightly expresses the gist of the Greek word in The Message: “You want your own way”).  What selfish desires commonly lead to church conflict and division?  Which, if any, of these is most likely to manifest through you?
• What negative effects does selfish striving have upon the rest of church?—upon the individual who expresses this selfish drive? (See vv 2-3).
• James labels this selfish, divisive behavior as worldly (v 4).  How is the problem described in vv 1-3 indicative of worldly values?  What other ways might those in the church be in danger of acting like those in the world?
• James gives a string of imperatives in vv 7-10:
  • Submit…to God (v 7)
  • Resist the devil (v 7)
  • Draw near to God (v 8)
  • Cleanse your hands…Purify your hearts (v 8)
  • Be wretched and mourn and week (v 9)
  • Humble yourselves before the Lord (v 10)

What relationship do you discern among these instructions?  How do the first and last (submit and humble yourselves) function in relation to the interior commands?  What is the main point of this section (vv 7-10)?

Commission:

• Like it or not the Christian life is shared in community.  In what ways are you presently withdrawing from or undermining community-building in your church?  In what ways can you contribute to the sense of unity, fellowship, and love within your church?

In the Beginning

It strikes me that God didn’t have to make this world.  He didn’t have to create human life, or anything for that matter.  Debate swirls regarding whether or not God created the world or how he did it.  But there is another penetrating question to consider: why?  Why did he make it?

Read Genesis 1:1-5 and John 1:1-5.

God didn’t create the universe as a science experiment.  He didn’t make it out of boredom.  He wasn’t coerced; who can force God to do something against his will?  God didn’t make the world because he was incomplete; God is complete, full in Godself.  I suggest that he made the heavens and the earth and all that fills them out of his desire to share his love in an ever widening circle.  We confess that God is love (1 John 4:9).  And indeed, God shares that love among Godself (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).  But God wanted more.  He wanted to express his love through creativity and to share his love with free agents who would embrace, enter, and extend his love.

Love was in the beginning, the impetus behind creation, and certainly the motivation behind God’s work of redemption through Jesus Christ.  Furthermore, not only does love drive God’s work but love will bring it to completion.  Love was in the beginning and will be in the end.  What’s more, love fills every moment of our lives, shifting shape through joy and pain, yet always God is there, offering love every day and every night, every summer and spring, every autumn and winter.  The love of God (even the God of love) never leaves us, never lets us go, never fails us.

What implications can we draw from this world-creating, life-saving, future-making love of God?

• Know that God loves you.  The most basic reality of our lives—that we are made and loved by God—is ignored or disbelieved by many people.  Be one who relentlessly believes in God’s unconditional love for you.  Live out of this awareness.
• Look for and lean into his love.  If you believe God loves you and creatively and constantly manifests that love to you, look for it.  Be alert for the ways his love reaches out to you, speaks to you, and sustains you.  And in every season of life, whether on a bright mountaintop or in a bleak valley, lean into the steadfast love of the Lord.

Going Deeper – Romans 6

Title and Text: “Out with the Old & In with the New” – Romans 6

Connect:

• If you’ve made new year’s resolutions pertaining to your spirituality, what are they?  If you haven’t, why not?

Cultivate:

• Have you ever thought “God’s grace has saved me so it doesn’t matter if I continue to sin in various ways” (v 1) or perhaps “I’m under grace not law so I don’t have to worry about living with strict morality” (v 15)?  On what grounds does Paul argue that this logic isn’t valid?  What important contribution does Romans 6 make to our understanding of grace?
• In v 11 Paul urges believers to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.”  What practical disciplines can help you to keep this consideration active in your mind and impactful in your life?
• Paul assumes that human beings are intrinsically meant to serve a higher authority.  Many people today, however, strive for total autonomy, the kind of life in which oneself calls the shots without outside restraint.  How can it help you to accept that you are designed to serve someone/thing?
• How does Paul’s comprehension of freedom differ from our American understanding of this concept?  What does Christ free us from and what does he free us for?  (vv 18-19).

Commission:

• What unhealthy or unhelpful desires, behaviors, or habits are ruining your life, even though you think you are controlling them?   Prayerfully turn this over to the Lord in repentance, surrender, and trust.  Seek his ways and walk in them as you lean into his grace and love for you.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Let Us Love One Another

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:7–12, ESV)

In the season of Advent we’re waiting for Christ, expectant and awake.  On Christmas morning we’re ready to receive him, but where is he to be found?  John knew that the Christian experience was preeminently about love because the Christian life begins with God and “God is love.”  How do we know God’s love?  We may read of it in scripture or hear about it in a sermon, but the way we truly know his love manifest among us is through the coming of Jesus: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son.”  Love is revealed in Jesus, born this day many years ago and yet still coming to life among us in fresh ways.

But again, where is he?  We can display a nativity scene or watch a film about Christmas, but where is Christ?  John acknowledges this apparent difficulty: “No one has ever seen God.”  Certainly, not one of us has seen his very presence.  Or have we?  John applies the love of God shown through Christ’s incarnation to love among one another, and he says that though we haven’t seen God, “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”  God’s love comes to me when I love you; God’s love comes to you when you love others.

In the final line of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” we sing “O come to us, abide with us, O Lord Emmanuel.”  And God does abide with us, in us, among us, when we love one another as God in Christ has loved us.  We see God, we know him and his love, when we love one another: the hungry and hurting and helpless, the prideful and smug, the kind and the curt, the weak and wounded, the poor and the wealthy, the tax collector and the Pharisee.  So this Christmas, may we embrace and follow St. John’s invitation, even our Lord’s example: “Beloved, let us love one another.”