turn it inside out

Christmas is awesome.
I love Christmas.  I love Christmas music, and I love Christmas cheer, and "the best way to spread Christmas cheer is by singing loud for all to hear"- Elf.

I also love Christmas for the fact of little baby Jesus.  Yes, he is our savior and that is way totally awesome, but it is so much deeper than that.  It's ridiculous when you actually think about Christmas, like what went on.  It's not just that Jesus was born, but it's that Jesus was born... am I confusing you?
Let me put it like this, Jesus, Son of God and God incarnate, was born as a human.  That is impressive, and I think some get it, but many people don't get it.  Pithy phrases like "Jesus is the reason for the season" just don't capture it.   Most have this idea of Jesus being born in a barn to ultimately die for the redemption of humanity and this other idea of Jesus being one with the Father, and they never put two and two together.


This one thing has really been sticking out more and more to me lately, the sheer contradiction of Jesus a human and God a not-human.  When God comes into this world as Jesus, God essentially became not-God.  Think of it, God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, holy and glorious.  Jesus is finite in everyone of those areas, he had finite power, finite knowledge, finite presence, was born and raised not by a priestly family of affluence, but by an poorer carpenter family - there's is nothing holy and glorious about that.  The climax of the life of Jesus is even more ridiculous, he becomes sin; there is nothing more opposite of God than that.  God came to earth as Jesus to essentially not be himself, not just be not himself, but the polar opposite.

This is not to say that Jesus couldn't have been more like a deity.  Jesus most definitely had the capabilities, but Phil. 2:6 puts it like this "though being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped."  INCREDIBLE!  Think of what Jesus could have been, but what Jesus was.  He could have called on the angels to rescue him, but he didn't.  He could have.... done well pretty much anything to make him more glorious, and yet he didn't.  He remained a humble servant of not only God, but of humanity... the most high God became the most humble of creatures, and not only that but served them and is the sacrifice for them as well.

I just think its incredible that God turned himself inside out for us.  He not only bent over backwards, but became not-God, he became opposite his nature and character just to rescue us.  Why?  It'd be like me becoming last so that I may be first, or leaving 99 sheep to find one.  It is illogical and stupid, and yet its what God has done.  God went off and got illogical; he became the very opposite of everything he was to open the gates of the kingdom for sinners like me.

half of my heart

No I'm not thinking of the John Mayer song, but I do like it.  And if you're like me once you get a thought of something in your head you just have to get that taken care of.  So here, enjoy Half of My Heart by John Mayer:





I was praying through Jeremiah 29:11-14 and this idea of only seeking God with half of my heart hit me hard.  Most often when you look into this passage, only verse 11 sticks out, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." When I first started praying through it, that was what hit me too, but then I verse 13 really started sticking out to me, "You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."  


The word translated as heart in the original Hebrew is lebab; it means something far more than what we mean when we speak of heart.  Heart to us is a strong feeling of emotion, some might call it soul, but it does not connote much more than strong feelings and desires.  "I give you my heart," is an example where we are giving all of our emotions and feelings to someone.   Lebab on the other hand is far more than that; it is more along the lines of whole being, heart, soul, emotions, thoughts, mind, etc.  Everything that someone is is their lebab.  


Luckily, I knew this fact going in and it really opened my eyes.  I often speak of the pride I find in my knowledge, and it yet again rears its ugly head here.  I am only throwing half of my heart in my quest for God more often than not.  I find that when I seek, it is mostly a thought processes: a question of why or how something is, concluding in understanding.  Rarely is it a emotive or physical process, and when it is those, rarely is it ever holistic, it's always either/or.  This enlightenment frustrates me.  One of my greatest strengths is even more so one of my greatest faults.
This does have a silver lining though; in seminary, I am at a place where thinking takes a high priority, and so when I am wanting to meet God I simply don't want to do a study or think more.  I am already exhausted of thinking.  What I find myself wanting to do is rest and enjoy - a very physical and emotional thing I have found.  And thankfully my prayer life in this and for this is being blessed.


I wonder though if this is something that will stick with me or if I will default back to my faulty asset.  This is a fear of mine I admit.  I do not want to keep seeking God with half of my heart, because I simply will not fully find him.  I want to seek God with everything so that I can truly enjoy everything of him.  There is a delight that I am finding right now in seeking God with more than my mind through some sort of Scripture study.  This is something that I want to maintain, and whereas I have my fears I also know that God is faithful.

Why I do what I'm doing

I don't think I have ever fully expressed why I write things on here.
There are two reasons really, the first one is the secondary reason, and the second is the primary reason.  So I'll start with the secondary first.  I write because I think.  I am one of those guys that gets a thought and it simply stays in my head until it gets out somehow.  Well this blog is this somehow.  My head will seriously explode, I think and I dwell and think some more.  Its why some posts will have another post dealing with further thoughts. You think that after 25 years I'd be able to help, but unfortunately it's only gotten worse.  Seminary hasn't helped either, actually its only made me think more.  I am glad I started this at the beginning of the semester because I have seriously needed it.
Secondly, the primary reason I do this is so people whom I don't see or talk to everyday anymore can still hear my experiences.  One of the frustrating things that I have experienced having moved form Greensboro is that I no longer have those friends to constantly talk to about stuff that I am pondering.  Whether or not they enjoyed it... well I'll just assume they did, and I hope they are able to enjoy this as well.  This allows them to still hear me and be involved with me I guess.  At least this is my hope.
Perhaps what I really want is just a place to put my thoughts down and hope that this place is the same place that old friends still converse with me about ideas.....

And I suppose the most minor of third reasons... maybe someone important will read something and the world will be changed!!!!!
But lets not get ahead of ourselves....

another thought on liturgy

I know, this is another blog that provides concluding thoughts on the blog before.  Its like an unintended continuation.  But I just have these last words, so bear with me....

Liturgy means "the work of the people."  When we have a church service, however we do it, it is a liturgy, and as such it means that the people in the service are doing some sort of work, be it productive or slothful.  I drew a dichotomy between traditional and contemporary services last time, but admitted that both are doing a liturgy. I think my conclusion that both can be good holds true.

But the understanding of liturgy as work can help fill out what I meant.  To see it as work is rather contrary to much of how modern American culture, and western culture also, see church.  Church is not a place where you go to work; instead,you go to enjoy the service and get something out of it. If you work you're putting something into it!  This, unfortunately, is a problem that arises in a consumer culture.  We would much rather go to a place where we feel ourselves to be thoroughly satisfied.  It can be done in any setting, traditional or contemporary; it can feed off of music, architecture, symbolism, preaching, etc.  I can think of two ways this problem developed: one, the lack inviting people into the experience gotten out of the work of liturgy and, two, the development of worship formulated specifically to capture such a consumer mentality.

This is frustrating, because it not only allows for dead hearts, but it creates a dead church.  The work of the people does something, it creates a luminal space, that is a space in between the here and the there.  There is something spectacular and moving about being in a position that is caught between the finite, temporality of life and the infinite glory of God.  When the liturgy dies by feeding people their consumerism or becoming staid and dry this luminal space dies with it; people no longer connect with the infinite majesty of God, they connect with the depravity of their own souls.  This then limits the ability of the Spirit to enlighten and sanctify us. (Of course the Spirit is infinite in power and ability, I am simply saying that if we are not helping the Spirit we are working against it.)
People want to come to church to get something out of it, and by every means we should assist them in that.  That doesn't mean, however, that we should give them the consumerism they are looking for.  We need to open them up to the power of God through some type of good liturgy.  Only then will they realize that what they were looking for pales in comparison to what they get from the experience of luminality.  We need to give them God, and God is not found in a culture of sin, but in his glory.

to liturgy or not liturgy...

So I've been thinking a lot lately on liturgy, whether to have it or not to have it.  I started realizing that there really is no not having liturgy, even the more contemporary churches who don't do a traditional liturgy have a liturgy as this video expresses:

 

So upon coming to the conclusion that this contemporary style is a liturgy I began debating on which was better, the traditional liturgy or this "new" liturgy.
The pros of the traditional liturgy is that it is wrought with symbolism, its centered around meaning in absolutely everything even the most minute details; now I'll admit there are details lost on me and I have no idea what some things symbolize, but I would like to know nonetheless.  The symbolism gives this liturgy its power, the way the worship area is set up down to how the service proceeds.  If you could get tap into that symbolism and get people to "get it" then the experience of worship becomes amazing.
There are cons though, and ultimately churches, in my opinion, have done a down-right crappy job of helping people get it and because of that the service doesn't explode with meaning, but gets staid, tired and old.  The service drones on because people aren't emotionally involved.  Sure you can spice it up with some good songs and some good words and phrases in the right places, but if the people don't connect with the meaning behind everything then its all for naught and you have simply hit an emotional nerve.  Which is why people seek out the new liturgy, it taps into their emotions.

So the pros of the new liturgy are that they do indeed touch our experience and emotions, they seek to connect with us in that way because the symbolism and ritual, all wrought with meaning, is lost on these worshipers.  Thus, they set up the worship setting and service in a way that enables people to connect... a rock concert.  Don't deny it, you don't go to a concert/show/performance of some band/artist you love and don't get totally caught up into the songs/lyrics/moment.  So as I was saying with the symbolism, you tap into people's experience of things and they get caught up into it and it moves them.  This can connect with people, its why a lot of traditionally traditional churches are moving to it.  They want to reach the unchurched and dechurched who are turned off and repulsed by the perceived deadness of traditional churches because the symbolism didn't connect with them.
But there are cons to this too.  Where is the meaning?  Its essentially flip flopped from the old liturgy, it hits people's experience, but by purely emotional means and not by the power of ritual and symbolism.  There's a reason traditional churches look completely different than the boxes of new churches, one is built around symbolism and ritual, and the other is built around experience.  So I am frustrated by the lack of symbols and ritual.  They reach these unchurched and dechurch and get them caught up in the experience of joy found in a relationship with Christ, and yet they don't get at the nuances and the beauty of the minute things, which are actually big things, in Scripture that the symbolism gets at.

So the conclusion that I have come to is, well, I prefer neither or I prefer both.  They both have amazing strengths, but those strengths become their weaknesses. We need a mix of both, and that has been done, I've experienced it.  Unfortunately, that experience after a while became staid and dull as well.  Ultimately, I would prefer to some how mix the two, but it can be just one type of mix.  I love having the experience of a church rock concert every now and then just as much as I enjoy having the experience of a high church service every now and then just as much as I enjoy the experience of a blended service, so long as they are done well.

I guess what I am trying to get at is what we don't need is a liturgy that we can plug in because it works well and then forget about it except for changing the songs and prayers each week.  Nor do we need a service that we use because it gets across what we want it to get across without somehow inviting people into what we want the liturgy to do and what it means.
Liturgy needs to be dynamic, because God is dynamic.  One set of symbolism and ritual doesn't get at the complexity of God and it never can get at it unless we load it with so much stuff that we need to make a reality show of it on A&E.  We should not only be willing, but needing to change up how we do church more frequently than we do.  We need to change it not because membership is dropping or because we want a new format, but because we need to, want to express the glory of God in a new way.  Heck do it every week if you can, but don't even do it on a time table, make it haphazard, cause really that's how we experience God, and that's kind of how God revealed himself, in crazy ways that we look at and are like "huh?"
Liturgy also needs to be done well.  It can be the most dynamic, amazing, symbolic, emotional experience ever and still be terrible and isolated from the congregation.  We can't just do it and hope people get it.  We need to invite people into it every step of the way, with a sentence or paragraph at the beginning or at every point in the service that we do something.   And it needs to be done IN the service, not have a class on it, or a Wednesday night study on it.  It needs to be able to invite long time members as much as first time visitors from other traditions or lack of tradition.

That's my conclusion, now the problem is.... how do I get this to "work?"  How do you get a church in on this and what are the practicalities?  Personally I have never seen a church service done like this except here at Candler, but that's only during the non-communion services and I kind of wish they could figure out a "new" way to do communion than just going between different traditional liturgies.... So I guess I have more to think on for now.

Further thoughts on agrarian

So I have had a particularly interesting discussion with my brother, of course, I don't know if you can't have an uninteresting discussion with him...
He made the comment that agrarian is fine and all, but that I shouldn't expect it to feed the world.  I think its a good point, if I am going to propose a way that is a more ethical treatment of the land, it should also be an ethical treatment of the people the land feeds.  In this case, ethical in that it actually does feed everyone and not force people into starvation simply for the sake of ethical land practices.
I agree with that, and if agrarian farming can't feed the world then we have a whole different ethical issue on our hands... which I'd love to, but won't, get into... right now.

I do disagree with him on the facts that he's using and the land ethic such a conclusion comes from.  No one can claim that agrarian farming can't feed the world.  We have no model to judge it by, agrarian farming is completely different from small scale, family farming.  It is an ethical practice that informs farming practices, it is not a farming operation type.  Agrarian farming can cut across all sorts of operation sizes and produce; therefore we have no agrarian model to compare to the current corporate farming model.  The green revolution wasn't changing an agrarian system that couldn't feed populations to a corporate system that could; it was the import of technology that enabled the small farmers to get bigger and produce more.  Any one that argues that agrarian farming can't feed the world is coming from the same place as I am when I say it can, a reasoned hypothesis.  I do not doubt that corporate farming looks like it can feed the world, but I also do not doubt that it looks that way simply because it is the way that we have known for so long that we don't know how any other way would work.
I am not an advocate of getting back to the "good ole days" of farming prior to corporate take over.  That won't work, because the purpose then was the same purpose as now, and that's evident of the dust bowl.  The dust bowl was the result of unagrarian farming practices: using the land to get produce.  I could be able to say that most of human history has farmed in similar ways, but I don't want to because I don't want to justify the statement!  So instead I will go on... Corporate farming is just fine, I have no problem with the ideas of corporations owning and running big farms, I do have a problem with how they run them, and why.  This is where agrarianism, at least as I see it, cuts across all farming operations, a corporate farm can be agrarian, it can farm the land ethically, it can treat the land as God's gift to man and rule over it as God rules.

Perhaps agrarian farming can't feed the world, but I would also say that neither can corporate farming.  Agrarianism might not be able to do it because its practice won't produce enough yield; Corporatism won't be able to do it because it is unsustainable and will eventually farm the land to a point to where it simply can't produce enough yield.  But I think the underlying issue here is the idea of the land's purpose to serve us.  So long as the world views land in that selfish light it will never be able to feed the world; the population will continue to live beyond its means by way of over-population with the idea that they can force the land to keep up, leading to over-production.   This is why I mention the creation story's idea that humanity is created to exercise dominion how God does, and the perfect picture of how God does that is Christ.  There is nothing selfish about God, he does not demand things from us, instead he seeks only to do everything for us.  There is a difference between how God desires fellowship with humanity, and how humanity demands produce from the land so that it can live how it wants to.

Christians should be organic.

     This is a relatively new view for me.  I mean I've always leaned toward the green perspective due to my parents leaning that way, but I've always kind of seen the whole organic thing as a healthy diet type of thing, not really as a way of viewing the world.  And so discredited it.
     Perhaps a better way to say it isn't so much Christians should be organic, but be agrarian.  Scripture, Culture and Agriculture has opened my eyes more to this perspective.  I've been telling everyone that I have been wanting to read a book like this; one that looks at Scripture with an environmental hermeneutic, not simply pulling out verses here and there and then pulling them together for some sort of exhortation.  Finally in this book I have it!  Also, in some of my classes is an individual who majored in organic farming and shed light on the fact that its not about a healthy diet but how to treat the land, unfortunately most people don't look at it this way.
     Like I said, I've always leaned green; I've viewed the creation story in Genesis 1 as saying, among other things, that we should take better care of this planet.  God has given us the task to "subdue the earth" and "rule over" all of the animals, but just before that it tells how God created humans in his own image.  It says quite obviously that we are to subdue and rule in the way that God would.  So the question I ask is, "How does God rule?"  And the place that  am brought to most easily is how God exercises dominion over humans... by serving them, doing everything he can for them to give them all of his glory and riches by going to the cross and suffering in their place.
     The amazing thing about this book is that it goes way beyond that, it gets into Leviticus, among others books, and all the dietary laws and other laws that seem haphazardly put together and looks at them through this agrarian perspective.  Most of what I have read so far I have really enjoyed reading.  I'll admit in some places I feel like she's stretching the analogies and perhaps reading into something that's not there, but the overall view really works well.  I would and I am recommending this book to people to gain a new perspective or develop one they already have.
     The view that we should be living on this earth, by ensuring its well being and not ours.  After all the world is God's and he has entrusted us to take care of it, unfortunately we mostly look at it as full of resources to be had, which s reflected in the way we farm, raise cattle, mine, etc.  Christians should be intent on caring for this world better.  Let's just thank God that he exercise dominion over us far better than we do over creation.