Christmas Myth Busters

Weebles wobble, but...you know.

Okay, which of these statements are false?

The shepherds and wise men came to the stable to see Baby Jesus in the manger.

Jesus was born on December 25.

The little drummer boy played his drum for him, while the ox and sheep kept time.

Actually, all three are false. The wise men did not show up until about two years later. Jesus was born during a Roman census, which would not have been called in the dead of winter because of bad traveling conditions. (Probably in the spring, hence, April Fools.) Where the drummer boy thing came from, I have no idea.

But one thing we do know is this: God became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld His glory, felt His love, and heard His incarnate Word. The only reason Jesus could die in our place is because He became one of us. There is one mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. (I Timothy 2:5)

He is God and man. In Jesus, God touched every part of man so that man, through Christ, could touch every part of God. That’s amazing. That’s the incarnation. That’s Christmas.

Cultural Christianity

“Of course I am a Christian,” a co-worker in Arkansas explained,” This is America. It’s a Christian country.”

Somehow, I did not feel convinced by this rationale.

I thought I knew what a Christian was, also. Glib, shallow, and narrow-minded. That’s why I did not want to be one. Until I began to examine the New Testament for myself, I had nothing to go by except for good Ole Southern culture. But a lot of what goes for “Christian” is really culture. And that’s okay, as long as you do not confuse the two.

As a young follower of Christ, I was stuck in a car with a couple of pastors on the way to a service at a friend’s church. I was sixteen and they were seasoned theologians, which meant that I was not to argue the Bible with them. Unfortunately, I did not get the memo.

“All that rock music is of the devil.” They informed us. ” And I know you’ve got some of these bands that are supposed to be Christian rock, but there is no such thing. Rock music celebrates sex, drugs, and rebellion.”

“But isn’t Southern Gospel just Christian honky-tonk?” I asked, sincerely confused.

” No, it’s sacred music.”

“But the only music recorded in the Bible was the Psalms,” I replied. “God left us the words, but He did not leave us the tune. But we know it was Middle Eastern, not the Western scale (invented by Pythagoras in Greece), you know….that Arab sounding stuff.” They looked like they were alarmed. I continued,” Country music, as we know it, came about in the last hundred years. How could it be the only kind of music God could accept, when it was not even here until recently.”

Then the pastor’s wife chided,” Old Time Gospel music has always been around.”

“Not in Bible times, ” I answered, incredulous.

“That’s where you are wrong, “she told me triumphantly. “The Bible says, ‘There is nothing new under the sun’.”

Here, I held my peace. Fiddles and banjos were the Gospel to them. I was now a heretic. I know someone will read this and get all huffy about Christian Bluegrass, or Heavenly honky-tonk, or whatever…but I support those art forms enthusiastically. If you are holding services  in a nursing home in Kentucky, do not rock the house…finger-pick your way to their hearts.

I only point out that neither way is sacred. That the heart is lifted in humble adoration of God, that Christ’s Name is glorified among creation…this is worship. But some people genuinely believe that the method is the message, that the context is the content.

The problem is that most Christians are not even sure what Biblical Christianity is (or is not). We believe like our parents, our grandparents, our peers.  The confusion begins when we mistake our Christian culture for eternal truth. 

Break out the Bible and read it for yourself. You may be surprised that a lot of our firm beliefs are from man and not from God. But when you dig down to the words of Christ, they bring a power to change your life. Man-made Christianity can only make you religious, or obnoxious. Mere sentiment to ease your conscience, or prove to your damaged ego that you really are a good person….that is not Jesus. He will break all your preconceptions and put you back together as a new creation, transformed by His love and truth.

Beware hand-me-down religion. Go back to the Source, and get the Gospel first-hand. Trust me on this one.

Thanksgiving Hair Cut

This year my family, along with some friends, is helping to cook and serve Thanksgiving dinner for the local homeless shelter. One of our friends had the idea and we just let people in our church know about it. So Vanessa has been cooking all day while answering the door to receive pies baked for the shelter.  Two pies even showed up on our porch swing while she was on a grocery run. None of these things have escaped the attention of my five-year-old son, Josiah.

At a break in the chaos, Josiah was whisked to the downtown barber for a trim. After our service at the shelter, we were going to Arkansas to see Vanessa’s family, so the little sheep needed shearing.

While waiting his turn, Josiah talked about how he wanted to kill adeer and eat it, and how he did not like girls…well,except Mama. When the barber got to work on him, the small talk continued. One point of great concern to Josiah was that he could not have a gun until Daddy showed him how to use it (by the way, Mom, it will be a few years!), but maybe he could get a gun for Christmas, just not use it until later.

“So you need a haircut so you can look good for all your relatives at Thanksgiving,” the barber chatted. “And you’re going to eat turkey and lots of good food.”

“We are going to feed the homeless,” Josiah replied matter-of-factly. “We are bringing them food because they don’t have a house. We need to feed the homeless before we feed ourselves….but it would be good to look nice.”

While you are counting your blessings this Thanksgiving, do not forget to be one for someone else.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What’s In A Name?

Why is this blog called Post-Modern Pilgrimage? Good question.

Post-Modern is a very popular, yet, vaguely-defined term. Actually, there are lots of good definitions for the term, but I have had trouble finding two alike. In general, the Modern Era has a lot to do with rationalism, scientific method, etc. We have gotten away from the Age of Reason and now live in a very experientialist time. Thus, Post-Modern.

 Question everything. Experience everything. Especially in the church, this has led to a lot of rejection of orthodoxy. Post-moderns do not want the same narratives. They want to touch, taste, and feel what they believe.

Now, I must admit that I am not a Post-Modern…nor am I a Modernist. I am a follower of Christ Jesus. But I am following Him in the midst of emerging Post-Modernism.

Pilgrimage refers to a journey…usually a very arduous and long journey to a far away place. To quote Larry Norman, “This world is not my own. I am just passing through.”  

More on this later…

 

10 Things Your Trash Man Wants You to Know

10. By the curb means….well, by the curb. Not twelve feet from the road.

   9. When your trash can gets so old the handles are falling off and you tear up the grass dragging it across the yard because you can not lift it, you need a new one.

  8. Do not believe that all honey is produced by bees who are on a flower-only diet. I’m just saying.

  7.If you do not close the lid during a rainstorm, your can will fill with water, making it weigh more than 200 lbs. I know this is shocking, but trust me.

  6. If you miss the trash truck, putting your can out on any other day will NOT result in your garbage being collected. It will only feed small animals.

 5. Please teach your rottweiler that the trash can is NOT his personal domain, to be guarded at all costs.

 4. Do not come out and yell, “Just a minute, I have another bag in here!” and hold up your sanitation engineer while you clean your house. This will cause serious resentment issues among most garbage collectors. Next time, he will not hear you, but only wave and smile dumbly as the truck rolls away.

 3. Similarly to #4, if you must run out to catch the trash man, please put clothes on. No, that nighty does not count. Neither is a long t-shirt, unless accompanied by, oh..pants, maybe!

 2. Guess what, if you throw away incriminating evidence by putting it in the bottom of the can and then placing the trash on top of it, the stuff you are hiding will be on top of the pile when the trash can is dumped. Yes, the trash man knows all about it.

 1. Trash bags may be purchased at any local discount store for a low price. So use them! And I do not mean putting twenty pounds of scrap metal in a see-through thin plastic bag. It will be left wherever it busts out. You have been warned.

Back at wordpress….

Well, now I have two blogs. What’s up with that?

I think I like wordpress better, anyway. But when I googled my name (don’t ask) my year-old wordpress  entry pulled up online, but not my new stuff. Anyway, I like the controls on this one better.

 

Contemplating Revival

Thank God for revival. Real, soul-wrenching revival. Not everyone agrees on what it is, but most of us in the church believe we need it. Is it God’s response to man’s impassioned prayers, or a sovereign, unexpected move of a holy God? Like everything else in God’s plan, I can’t nail down a simple answer. I can only tell you that there are times that I seek Him with a new hunger (hunger He alone can give, by the way) and the Holy Spirit brings me into a fresh experience of the love, power, and majesty of Jesus Christ. But other times, I am really caught up in my routine and find myself arrested by an inescapable grace. The blows of sweet love break my heart like a twenty pound sledge. I’ll take either.

Even so, Lord Jesus, come.

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A Coke and A Smile

We decided last night to get the salt out of the shaker. So me and three crazy guys from my church made a run to K-Mart. We bought a cooler and a couple cases of cokes, iced them down, and hit the road. We met up on the shore of Lake Ponchartrain and had a short devotional. We worshipped to the sound of the waves and my accoustic…just long enough for the drinks to get cold. Then we headed to the public fishing pier that juts out more than the length of a football field into the water. There we delved into one of the questions which plague human-kind:

“Diet or regular?”

No, it’s free. Really. Here’s my card. If there’s anything else we can do for you, let us know…

We saved nearly 45 people (from dehydration).But in the meantime, we entertained the questions of several genuine seekers.

What do you practice? Are you reborn? Can you drink alcohol? What about wine?  Really? Why?

My friend Todd saw a man he had tried to witness to before. The fellow had shut him down pretty hard. But tonight he chose regular Coke and asked,”How did you get in church?” Todd was able to tell his story. (Which would make a pretty good blog itself!)

I offered a man named Steve a coke. He asked if we had alcohol. Then he dismissed us. Moments later he came over to hear us chatting with a young couple. Entering the conversation, it was obvious he was drunk.

He told us about doing a tour in Iraq, and being sure it was his time to die. Then he lived. And thought about God. Then he did a tour as Military Police in the 9th Ward after Katrina. He said he was shot at more in New Orleans than in Bagdad. He told us he had watched a man drown in the industrial canal, unable to save him. And he thought about God.

“I’m really a good person,” he explained.”I didn’t used to drink like this. But I have nightmares. I guess that’s how I handle it. I drink, and I smoke weed. But I’m gonna check into rehab tomorrow…” 

Before we left, I asked if I could pray for him.

“I think a word of prayer would be good…But I’m not holding your hand.”

“Fine, you don’t have to hold my hand. Do you mind if I put a hand on your shoulder?

“Yes.”

“You would mind?”

“Yes, I would mind.”

So I just bowed my head and asked Jesus to make Himself real to Steve.

Then Steve said, “Just put your hand on my shoulder!”

I did, and I felt the presence of God come over him. He seemed startled.

After I finished the short prayer, Steve looked at me and said, “That’s good stuff.”

Then he asked if we had a church. I left him one of our cards. Maybe he would find it in his shirt pocket when he sobered up.

I prayed for Steve as I got home.

Diet or regular?

Give Thanks

Well, today is Thanksgiving.  I am thankful for all the blessings that God has brought. Of course, one of the great secrets of the faith life is knowing how to recognise a blessing when you see one. 

In the course of life, every action, occurrence, accident or circumstance weaves into the fabric of fate..or happenstance, whichever you believe. Remove the one, you alter the whole. Irrevocably. For instance, most of the success I saw in my second pastorate was directly related to the mistakes I lived through in my first church. But I wish sometimes I would have done or said something differently then. The could-have, should-have, might-have-beens…But the pain I carry from my unkind words, or the embarrasment I feel from my foolish presumtions never totally leaves me. But I carry it a better man. Blessing? You bet. But I would rather escape a few more like that.

They say you live and learn, but all this living and learning has nearly killed me at times. I am reminded of the young married man who told me he sometimes felt like hitting his wife. I rebuked him sharply. He never confided in me again. He was divorced sometime later. Why didn’t I have compassion on him, tell him I understood how frustrating relationships could be, and help him get a grip on God’s grace? But I am a more considerate, and careful, counsellor for it. Blessing? Sure doesn’t feel like it. But maybe this festering, decaying regret has served to fertilize the roots of fruitful ministry.

I also remember going to the nursing home to visit an avowed agnostic. His son, worried for his soul, had asked me to share the Gospel with him. He was on death’s door. But by the time I got around to seeing him, he was better. I found him very friendly and delightful. “I need to build some report with this fellow and build up to talking about his eternal condition.” We laughed and chatted. I left him with the promise to check on him in a week. He died three days later. This fuels my righteous passion for lost souls. So it is a blessing, right? I do not think so.

The true blessing is that God is still gracious to use me, even after my callous ineptitude. Even when I have sinned. When I was well-intentioned but wrong.  In the end, His grace is the only real blessing. In a world that is cursed with Adam’s fall (and my fall…and yours) only the interjection of His Cross could bring the possibility of blessing. Paul told the Galatian Christians that Jesus endured the curse of hanging on a cross so that we could be blessed of God. It is not my regret that causes me to be a better pastor, but rather His forgiveness and His Holy Spirit redeeming my foolishness.

In light of my list of failures and regrets, I truly am blessed.

Happy Thanksgiving.

What’s up with that?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the tension between the culture and the gospel. We are all children of our culture. It may be as impossible to remove culture from our perspective as it is to prove to a fish that he is wet. It’s all we know. It is reality. It is common sense. It is the only reasonable conclusion…and it is biased by a hundred different factors and experiences.

 Jesus taught in a relational way. He called twelve “to be with Him.” His model was based on proximity. Paul took Timothy and Titus as travelling companions. They shared life together, to the point that Paul could say that Timothy had his heart for the churches.

But we are products of Greek thought, as all the Western world. Rather than following the steps of a teacher, we have learned to gather in classroom settings and listen to seminar-style teachings.  Certainly Jesus did teach large crowds, but He always pulled His disciples aside and explained the lesson in the context of relationship.

So now we have a Christianity where being an “active” Christian means we sit and listen to sermons two or three times a week, but do not really know those who teach us, nor do we have opportunity to see these ideals worked out on the dusty streets of real life.

I remember learning in Bible school that “familiarity breeds contempt ” and that “If you get too close to your people, you can’t minister to them.” This is reasonable to me. It’s also classic Western thought.

But Jesus taught us that to be a leader we must serve the lowly, even washing their feet. Also, the Greek word translated pastor is literally shepherd…and shepherds smell like sheep.

Of course, this is one of a thousand examples I see all the time that make me ask,”Is this Gospel, or is this just my culture?” Of course, we can’t discount culture. It is not bad, it’s just peculiar to a particular group of people. The problem is that the Gospel is universal, while culture is transient and local. We usually get ourselves in trouble when we  confuse our culture for the Gospel.

One laughable example is that of colonialist missionaries in the 1800’s. They believed that Western culture was dominant because it was God’s best for mankind. They considered it impossible to be a Christian and to maintain native culture. So every convert in tropical Africa was told to cut their hair, wear a suit, and celebrate traditional European holidays.

Of course, I have been told that if I preached in jeans I would grieve the Holy Spirit and commit sacrilege…