What If…

Humanity

// August 17th, 2009 // Comments Off // Church

Humanity. It’s hard to be fully human in America. There are so many groups and factors leaning in to take up and consume parts of who we are. As a Christian I am convinced that we are wired to live in shalom (peace/wholeness) with ourselves, our God, each other and the creation. I am afraid that in our greed, self-confidence and strange sense of continued manifest destiny that we have not only robbed others of their humanity but we have been stripped ourselves as well.

What are somethings that we as a nation as a Christian community may need to confess?

Maybe this could be a great cleansing moment to start the new week.

When we don’t give a moment of our day to God or take a Sabbath we are building our own Tower of Babel.

When we think we are isolated and alone we have lost site of a God who is always reaching out.

When we think God honors national boundaries or sees one people group as more important than another, we cheapen the universal blessing of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

When we hold enmity in our heart against another person, we are dying on the inside.

When we torture, we not only strip others of their humanity but we strip ourselves.*

When we kill, other human beings we end their potential and damage as ours as well.*

When we purchase, with no concern for the systems that produce our cheap goods, we deaden the creative stewarding nature that is in us.

When we consume the earth’s resources with no inhibitions, we are not being the stewards that we were created to be making us less than the image of the creator God we worship.

When we make objects of people, when they become pawns in our game of safety & conquest, then we cannot fully love as God has called us to.

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I think this list could go a lot further. What are some of your “when we’s”

*Even when we believe our cause is just we are stripped of our call by our creator to live at peace with everyone when we kill or dehumanize others. When a person becomes an object for us to abuse or kill we strip them of their humanity and lose the chance to live at peace with them. They become less than human in our eyes and at that point there can be no peace because one has become the god and the other the object, once holds the power and the other is powerless. The strong is put into a position over another that he was never created to be in. Not only is the other person’s potential violated but ours is rendered a little less strong as the un-human side of us rears its head.

Consuming Kids

// August 13th, 2009 // Comments Off // Uncategorized

HT: Two Shirts

Enough by Will Samson (Book Review)

// June 17th, 2009 // Comments Off // Books

Will Samson hooked me early in this new book. He paints an image of the communion table where one person eats all of the elements. One person devours all of the bread and the wine and none is left for anyone else. The Eucharist, the beautiful good gift of God that was given to show us how to live is hoarded and misused.

“Surely Jesus didn’t die so some people could grab it all , while others are left out.”

“There was supposed to be enough. Wasn’t there?”

With that the book enters in to a very well paced and sourced discussion of how we as modern Christians need to deal with our poor stewardship of all that God has entrusted us with. Enough goes beyond a simple argument of how we manage tangible resources and digs deep into how well we steward who we are and how we steward our relationships (personally and communally).

One of the elements I love about this book is the pacing. The chapters move well and are just the right blend of insight from Samson who clearly has something to add to the Christian conversation about how much is enough. Samson also really uses sources well and the quotes and statistics really seem to land at the right spots. I have burned out a couple of highlighters on this book and the quotes he uses from other writers and thinkers especially seem to land Samson’s arguments and even take them further.

One section of the book that is really dear to me is where Samson moves the discussion towards our poor view of what it means to be a follower of Christianity and not Christ. He lands the idea of civil religion well and speaks to how we have been sold on the idea that the world will burn and how we steward it really doesn’t matter. We often more than we know are part of system that acts this way, even if this not what we believe at our core. I think he really lands well the idea that if you were watching us behave from 10,000 feet you would see consumers first and Christians second or maybe even third.

The final section of the book really ends well with a very thoughtful discussion that has some great suggestions mixed in. The suggestions for moving beyond being consumers are really simple easy ideas that could radically change believers, if they were embraced. I felt like I could go out and implement most all of them this week. It wouldn’t be easy, but it is possible. I could see how just a few simple steps could really change my family and effect those who live around me.

I really appreciated this book and will for sure be adding it to my “need to read” list for our community. As I read and read the Eucharist story from early on never left my head. It was the perfect backdrop for this book and is an amazing image of how we appear to live. This book with that image and much much more could be a great way for Christians to begin the discussion on modeling better stewardship to a culture that desperately needs to see it.

MAGL Consult Session 2 – Consumerism & the Missional Church

// March 11th, 2009 // Comments Off // Church, Leadership, School

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