A Rant about a Church Sign

There is a Baptist church in our town that I drive by on my way to church at least a couple of times a week. For the past couple of weeks they’ve had a message up on their sign that has irritated me to no end. Now, sayings on church signs have a way of being trite and cutesy, but this one has surpassed that and gone on to outright misguided ridiculousness.

First, the quote from the sign:

“Don’t make me come down there!” – God

Here begins the rant.

I’m trying to think of ways this could be interpreted, and no matter how you do it, they’re all bad. Some things it could be construed to be saying:

  • God isn’t actually involved down here on earth right now. Apparently He’s somewhere distant, and just observing. That’s obviously incorrect.
  • People on earth are at some marginally-acceptable level of sinfulness right now. Wrong again! We’re all sinful. No one does good. We’ve all missed the mark.
  • If we cross some line of sinfulness, then… BLAM! God’s gonna come down and make us pay! No. God isn’t up there threatening to blow us away. He promised he wouldn’t flood the earth again and wipe everything out. (I have to remind myself of that when the springtimes get abnormally rainy…) And He poured out His wrath on Jesus. Jesus died so we don’t have to.
  • God coming down here to Earth is a thing to be feared. Uh, no. God coming to Earth in the person of Jesus is the best thing that’s ever happened to Earth and humankind.

I assume somebody at that church saw the message on the internet somewhere, thought it was clever, and put it up without even thinking any further about it. It pains me that the message has been there for weeks now and apparently no one at the church has discernment enough to recognize the gross error and get it taken down.

A message to church sign designers everywhere: if you’re going to put a weekly message on your sign, keep it informational, or, at worst, cutesy. This sign is a big steaming pile of pseudo-cleverness served with a nice heretical gravy on top. Make it go away.

Moving at the speed of love

Richard Beck has a great piece today on interruptibility.

Basically, interruptibility is a form of welcome and hospitality. It is a way of making room for others. This space we create is less a physical space than a temporal space, making room in your To Do list, making space so we can slow down and pay attention to others.

Interruptibility is, he says, “a sign that we are moving at the speed of love.” (What a great line!)

Beck goes on to explore some other traits that our interruptibility (or lack thereof) demonstrates. It’s worth reading the whole thing.

My 5K Playlist for Hog Wild Days

It’s been a while since I’ve reworked my 5K playlist. This latest incarnation may be a little heavy on Arcade Fire, but I’ve been listening to them a lot while I’ve been running this spring, and the tempos of the songs work really well. Anyway, here’s what I’ve got:

  1. “Modern Man” - Arcade Fire
  2. “Beautiful Day” - U2
  3. “Brighter Day” - Gungor
  4. “City With No Children” - Arcade Fire
  5. Someone Else’s Arms - Mae
  6. “After The Garden” - Andrew Osenga
  7. “Month of May” - Arcade Fire
  8. “Hometown Glory” - Adele

If I finish in the time I’m hoping for, I’ll be somewhere in the middle of “Month of May” when I cross the finish line. The Adele song is a fantastic cooldown song.

Here’s hoping for good weather in the morning and a good race time!

The right kind of tolerance

“Tolerance” is a much misunderstood word these days. I remember hearing a barn-burner of a chapel message back in college from Josh McDowell, warning us that the biggest sin in the worlds eyes in upcoming days would be “intolerance”, which they would define (roughly) as “saying someone’s beliefs are wrong”.

The fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to be tolerant if you don’t disagree with someone, since tolerance is, by definition, allowing the existence of something that you disagree with. I was recently witness to an illustration…

Our associate pastor, Robin, and his wife, Kathryn, hosted a foreign exchange student last year. His name is Ahmed and he is from Egypt. When I first heard about him (just a few weeks ago - guess I’m out of the loop!) I thought to myself maybe he’s Coptic Orthodox or something… that’d make sense if he’s living with a Christian pastor… but nope - Ahmed is a Muslim. Some experience that must’ve been, I thought.

Then two weeks ago, after the sermon in our Sunday morning service, Pastor Robin invited Ahmed to join him on the platform and they spent nearly 15 minutes discussing Ahmed’s year here. Ahmed told the story of his initial trepidation of being hosted by a Christian pastor. He told a couple of funny fish-out-of-water stories that had everyone laughing. He admitted that American high school was a much more laid back and pleasant experience than his all-boys French Catholic high school back in Egypt. And he spoke proudly of the Egyptian people’s overthrow of the Mubarak regime in this spring’s revolution.

Then Robin invited Ahmed to share with us the basic beliefs of Islam, and asked him to talk a bit about how Muslims view Jesus and what some of the key differences are between Islam and Christianity. Our church listened intently as Ahmed described the Five Pillars of Islam and that the Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet though they don’t believe that he was crucified and resurrected.

When the discussion time was over, Pastor Robin prayed for Ahmed, asking God to guide him and watch over him as he returned to Egypt. Then Ahmed was presented with a parting gift: a McDonald’s gift card. (Apparently Ahmed has developed a taste for Big Macs.)

This, my friends, was a beautiful display of the right kind of tolerance. There was no pretense in the entire conversation (or, clearly, in the entire relationship between Ahmed and his “parents” Robin and Kathryn) that they agreed religiously. However, the love and respect between them as they discussed their differing beliefs and shared experience of the past year was evident and obviously real. Ahmed was also quite gracious in his willingness to be prayed for by a man who believes so differently. (I sometimes wonder whether I and my Christian brethren would be as gracious if the roles were reversed.)

That Sunday morning discussion between Robin and Ahmed was valuable for all of us in several ways. We learned a little more about Islam. We gained a better appreciation for seeing our own Christian practice through foreign eyes. And whenever some rabble-rousing politician or media fear-monger wants to stereotype Muslims, we’ll be able to look back to this handsome, genial, friendly young man and remember that those who follow Islam are, for the vast majority, like him, and not like those extremists that we are told to fear.

My friends, this is true and good tolerance, and I am all for it.

Awesome morning music mix

My music playlist is full of awesome this morning. (Thanks as usual to Geof for the playlist algorithms.) Here’s the proof:

  1. “Just As I Am” - Andrew Peterson, from Love and Thunder
  2. “Saturday Sun” - Nick Drake, from Five Leaves left
  3. “Winter Winds” - Mumford and Sons, from Sign No More
  4. “Springtime Indiana” - Sandra McCracken, from Gypsy Flat Road
  5. “Walkin’ Home” - Billy Crockett, from In These Days
  6. “Nobody’s Fool” - Avril Lavigne, from Let Go
  7. “Four Horses” - Andrew Osenga, from Letters to the Editor, Vol. 2
  8. “Heaven Can Wait” - Charlotte Gainsbourg, from IRM
  9. “Sad” - Eisley, from The Valley
  10. “Please Be My Strength” - Gungor, from Beautiful Things
  11. “Furr” - Blitzen Trapper, from Furr
  12. “Blue Bayou” - Norah Jones and M. Ward, from …Featuring
  13. “Alien Conspiracy, Or, The Cheese Song” - Andrew Peterson, from Appendix A

Within the next 15 upcoming, I’ve got Simon & Garfunkel, Derek Webb, Fleet Foxes, Leigh Nash, Ryan Adams, Coldplay, Adele, and Harry Connick. So good.

Bad Christian Art

There’s a great post over on Image Journal addressing the concerns of “bad christian art”. Author Tony Woodlief is clearly fed up with movies and books that pander to “good Christian people who judge art by criteria like message and wholesomeness and theological purity.”

Bad art derives, he says, from bad theology:

To know God falsely is to write and paint and sculpt and cook and dance Him falsely. Perhaps it’s not poor artistic skill that yields bad Christian art, in other words, but poor Christianity.

He goes on to address Christian books specifically, noting “common sins” including “neat resolution”, one-dimensional characters, sentimentality, and cleanliness. (In my opinion: any reader of books marketed as “Christian fiction” will immediately recognize these issues with pretty much any such novel.)

He brings it home with some piercing questions about how the proliferation of bad Christian art reflects on the state of the evangelical church that embraces and consumes it:

In short, if Christian novels and movies and blogs and speeches must be stripped of profanity and sensuality and critical questions, all for the sake of sparing us scandal, then we have to wonder what has happened that such a wide swath of Christendom has failed to graduate from milk to meat.

And if we remember that theology is the knowing of God, we have to ask in turn why so many Christians know God so weakly that they need such wholesomeness in order for their faith to be preserved.

My friend (and talented songwriter) Andy Osenga often talks about two approaches to songwriting as a Christian (and I’m sure this isn’t original to him, but I heard it from him): you can either write about the light, or you can look out at the world and write about what the light shows you.

What strikes me is that the art that Woodlief is talking about here doesn’t fall into either of those categories. The purveyors of this particular flavor of Christian art have rather chosen to ignore the reality of what the light shows them. Instead, they paint an unrealistic fantasy world that reflects what they hope might be.

We, and all of creation, are broken, and in need of redemption. If we pretend through our art that this Christian life is neat and tidy and that all the threads resolve by page 350, not only do our stories ring hollow, but we fail to acknowledge the greatness of the work of redemption that Jesus Christ is doing in the world. Christians must do better.

Postscript: after passing along a rant like this, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend the work of Christians I know who are creating good art. Hit up The Rabbit Room to find excellent art, books, and music that may not always be “safe” but will always be good.

Running again

I started my dalliance with running nearly 4 years ago. I was looking for some motivation to get off the couch and lose some weight, and figured that if I signed myself up for a race that the potential embarrassment of walking the whole thing might motivate me into action. I didn’t train too hard, but I made it through my first 5k in around 32 minutes.

I never devoted too much time to running. I’d hit the gym maybe once or twice a week when the weather was bad and do a couple of miles on a treadmill; maybe run a couple of miles outside if the weather was good. And I didn’t notice huge improvements in my times or endurance, but I kept at it, albeit intermittently.

Then came April 1 of this year. I don’t know what possessed me, but I was on the treadmill at the gym and ran 5 miles in 49 minutes. And, as with a few other times in my life, it was as if some sort of mental switch flipped. Suddenly running is enjoyable, something I don’t have to do, but rather that I want to do. (I wish I could figure out what it is that causes that switch to flip. There are other places in my life it’d be useful…)

I started tracking my runs on Runkeeper, which was great. (Android app + GPS in phone = easy run tracking!) I ran 16 times in April, for a total of just over 52 miles. I’ve been a little bit of a slacker in May so far - have only run 3 times for 12+ miles, but that included a 6-mile run. I’m losing weight (slowly), definitely building endurance, and feeling great doing it.

I’ve been tossing around ideas for a season-long motivator to keep me pushing this summer, and the one that’s tantalizing me is the New Bo Fest Half Marathon, held Labor Day weekend in Cedar Rapids. I don’t know how quickly I can add endurance and distance, but it seems like it’d be doable if I’m committed to putting in the time. I found a great little training app for my phone (Epic Runner) and I’m using it to push me along. I’ve not yet been brave enough to sign up for the race, but I think I will… soon.

Love your enemy: within a divided self

It’s been at least a week since John H. linked this James Alison essay on Twitter, so it’s high time that I passed it along with my recommendation. It’s not light reading, but it’s quite an insightful consideration of Jesus’ command to love your enemies.

In the first half of the essay Alison explores “mirror neurons” and infant imitation to bring us to an understanding from science that our minds and actions are influenced by those around us. He summarizes:

With this we are well on the way to being able to understand, for the first time rigorously, how it is that what we normally call the “self” of each one of us is constituted by the desire of another. How it is in fact that the self of each one of us, rather than being something hermetic, locked into itself until we choose to enter into relationship with what is other than us, is in the first instance a real but malleable construct which is a symptom of the way this body has been brought into being and is held in being by the relationships which preceded it.

With the remainder of the essay Alison then brings home how Jesus’ instruction to love our enemies beautifully works within this scientific understanding…

But, Jesus says, this being run by the adulatory other, or the excoriating other, which is the same thing, has nothing to do with God. What God’s love looks like is being creatively for the other without being defined over against the other in any way at all. That is what is meant by grace and freedom. It is going to involve breaking through the strong-seeming but ultimately fragile dichotomies of “in group” and “out group”, “pure” and “impure”, “good guys” and “bad guys” which are quite simply the ambivalent functions of our cultural identity, and coming to love other people without any over against at all. Living this out is going to look remarkably like a loss of identity, a certain form of death. And living it out as a human is what it is to be a child of God, and to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect.

If you’ve hung in through those two quotes, I really encourage you to go read the whole thing. Alison has much good insight here about how the attitudes of the groups we’re in and the attitudes we take towards those around us affect us… well worth the read.

Good Things in April 2011

01 - Ran five miles in 49 minutes. Longest run ever for me. 02 - Beautiful day, lots of garden and yard work 03 - Top-notch message from Pastor Keith 04 - Planned audits were canceled! Happy Monday! 05 - nice chance for a walk in the sunshine mid-day 06 - Up early and got in a 2.5-mile run 07 - little sister came to visit! 08 - Hung out with mom and sister 09 - A nice 4-mile run in the afternoon 10 - Worship team and a good chat w/ Pastor Phil 11 - Corporate jet to Melbourne, FL 12 - Two sessions of teaching went really well 13 - Ran 2 miles on the beach 14 - Flew back home on the same spiffy jet, got home early! 15 - Lunch out with the family 16 - WT practice and lunch w/ Phil and Jim 17 - great Palm Sunday worship - kids leading You Alone Can Rescue 18 - discovered new video driver for the HTPC - much better netflix/hd performance (Iamsuchanerd!) 19 - good run and then dinner out w/ the family 20 - date night w/ Becky! 21 - Finally getting caught up at work 22 - Headed to Wisconsin for Easter weekend 23 - fun day hanging out at my brother’s house 24 - He is risen! 25 - Audits went well 26 - Had Marc over for dinner, nice visit 27 - Last Wednesday night of kids’ church activities - fun end-of-year program 28 - Impromptu lunch w/ the family 29 - Took the afternoon off, mowed the lawn for the first time 30 - Fun relaxing day with the family