Enjoy this beautiful day, whatever it brings!

This winter, though, has been marked by unusually mild temperatures. We’ve only had a few days of snow showers, and I don’t think we’ve had more than about half an inch of accumulation at any one time. There’s been a little more in the mountains than down here in the Ohio Valley, but even in the high country where there was a 4-foot snowpack last year, there’s only the manmade stuff on the ski slopes. We did have one bad ice storm a few weeks ago, but within 2 days we were back into 50-degree temperatures. On Tuesday of this week it hit 66 here in Williamstown. Six more weeks of this, I could take!

There’s an old saying in these parts though: If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute. That old jet stream could dip any day and give us a blast of arctic air and bring snow all the way down from Canada. The last time I remember a first half of winter this mild, we had two March snowstorms of 18+ inches each.

But for now, we’ll all bask in the warmth of an unusual season…all the while waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop.

For many people, this is what our faith journey often looks like. Our good old Catholic guilt (even we Protestants have it!) never lets us really enjoy the good times, because we know we deserve so much worse. So we spend our days waiting for our misdeeds to catch up with us, for the sunny skies to end, and for a winter storm to blow in. God can’t just let us be happy. Punishment is bound to be coming.

Unfortunately, that’s a message that the church has allowed to seep into the culture. A message of judgement and condemnation. You only deserve grace if you follow the rules. God is angry at you, and he’s out to get you.

What if the church really lived like it believed Jesus, though? What if we extended the same grace to everyone that he extends to those of us who claim to believe in him?

The weather’s bound to change, but God doesn’t. There’s a love available that will weather the worst storms. It’s the church’s job to spread that love into the world…even to people who don’t agree with us. Not by condemning and scolding, but by serving and sharing.

Personally, I’m just going to sit back, fire up the grill, maybe do a little trout fishing, and enjoy this nice weather. And when it gets bad (and it will), I’m going to ride sleds and build snowmen. Because there’s more to life than changes in the weather. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for it. Because spring is coming. I trust the promise. I believe it’s true. And I’m going to do my best to live like it.

It is easy to say “Jesus,” much harder to see him through 2,000 years of history and church tradition and the prejudices of my own mind.

Jeff and I have spent many hours on trout streams, on forest trails, behind windshields, over lunches and coffees, texting, Facebook messaging, and chatting about matters of life and faith. And his musing this morning set me down a path of thought: How do we separate Jesus from the fog and clutter that we surround him with? How do we know him for who he is? Is our worship authentically directed to Jesus or to some idea constructed from our own imaginations and the imaginations of others, both now and over the course of history?

This is deep stuff.

For many of us, our mental image of Jesus is that handsome nordic-looking chap with long flowing hair, a gleaming white robe, holding a staff and petting a sheep while he stares off into some distant void. Or maybe it’s that dreamy picture of the Jesus with high cheekbones, a perfectly coiffed beard, and those sad eyes that betray a broken heart. Of course, logic tells us that those images can’t really reflect the physical appearance of Jesus of Nazareth who roamed the Palestinian countryside in the 1st Century AD. But they are nonetheless deeply ingrained in us by culture, history, art and tradition.

Beyond whatever physical appearance we imagine for Jesus, we also imagine character attributes. The Sunday School Jesus on flannelboards (remember those!?) who loves children and lambs, who touches the poor and the sick, who calls fishermen to follow him, who walks on water, who feeds thousands with scraps of leftovers, who turns water into wine. The haughty Jesus who flings over tables in the temple and takes a whip to the money changers, who angrily rebukes Peter, who scolds the religious elite on their own turf. The Jesus who prays so hard that his sweat turns to blood, who endures the pain and carnage of being whipped and beaten, who cries out helplessly at the betrayal of the cross.

Of course, Jesus is all of these things and more. The creator and sustainer of all things, cloaked in flesh and bones, revealing his nature, his character, and his passion to that which he has created.

But how are we, as broken, imperfect, finite creatures trapped in space and time, supposed to get our feeble minds around all of that? How can we possibly sort out what’s real from what’s imagined? Is it any wonder we have such trouble responding to Jesus?

All of us who try to take Jesus seriously are bound to be overwhelmed at times by these thoughts. Every train of thought leads down broken paths and rocky trails as we try to sort out the implications of the search for truth.

I don’t pretend to have answers to these questions, but I love the questions themselves. Because it’s in the questioning that truth is ultimately revealed. I’m not talking about facts, I’m talking about truth. A truth that is at once infinitely simple and hopelessly complex: Love.

If we believe the truth that God is love, we can believe that Jesus is love personified. And so all of those attributes of the person Jesus was are all rolled up into that ultimate truth of who he is.

Lately I’ve begun exploring a little exercise to help cut through some of this clutter and fog. It’s admittedly overly simplistic, but I find it immensley helpful in getting past the details of facts to the heart of truth. Take a selection of scripture, and wherever it says “God” or “Jesus,” or “Lord,” substitute that word with “Love.” If you have one of those red-letter Bibles, remind yourself that where Jesus speaks, Love speaks.

“LOVE said, love your enemies.”

“LOVE said, forgive and you will be forgiven.”

“LOVE said, love LOVE with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.”

“LOVE said, you are healed. Go and sin no more.”

Try that exercise during your study time for a week, and see if it helps you form a different image of Jesus. A timeless image. A true image.

John’s Revelation is a daunting book for even the most seasoned theologians. Little in scripture has generated as much discussion, debate, argument, interpretive challenges and misunderstanding.

For a semi-amateur theologian and lay speaker, teaching from Revelation presents some unique challenges. One’s credibility is on the line, if for no other reason than the many and various preconceived notions people have about its meaning. I’ve seen seasoned ordained pastors totally intimidated by the task of making sense of it. Scholars with decades of study and experience disagree vehemently on many points. It’s a tough nut to crack.

Yet, at its core–whatever you believe about its intent to John’s original audience, its apocalyptic symbolism, or its prophetic nature–the Revelation is a message to the church. It’s a message about what Jesus promises that his church will be.

The opening verses of Revelation 21, where we’ll be focusing Sunday morning, present this beautiful picture of the church as the bride of Christ, perfected and presented as the new Jerusalem as Jesus re-makes the heavens and the earth (heavens being literally interpreted as “skies,” not as the dwelling place of God).

Whatever else you believe about what Revelation says, then, Jesus tells us that he envisions a magnificent future for his church. Not only does he envision it, he promises it.

And therein lies our challenge.

One of the reasons so many people in 1st Century Israel missed what Jesus was doing was that, although they were expecting a Messiah, their expectation was always pointed to the future. It was something that was going to happen, but not in their lifetimes. After all, it hadn’t happened in the lifetimes of their parents, their grand parents, their great-grandparents, their great-great-grandparents…you get the point. It was a promise for the future, not the present.

And so it is with us today. We know the prophecies, we know the promises, but that’s for the next generation, or the one after that, or the one after that. We live with this sort of nebulous understanding that the second coming could happen at any time, but we don’t really expect it to happen to us.

The result of all of this is that we forget that while we are centered in the present, with no real knowledge of what is to come and when it will come, we are still actively building the future…whether that future is tomorrow or next month or 2,000 years from now. We who have accepted Jesus’ kingdom invitation, and the church we are all part of, betrothed to an eternal unity with Christ, should be about the business of participating in creating the future that Jesus has already envisioned and promised.

And so, if we believe what we say we believe, if we trust that God’s promises are true, the life of the church should be actively leaning into the promise of perfection John imagines in Revelation 21.

Imagine for a minute the implications of that…of living as if God’s promises are already being fulfilled, because we are actively creating the future he has promised.

For today’s post, I thought I’d share a quick list of my top 10 books from the past year or two. In no particular order:

1. The Challenge of Jesus, N.T. Wright: Fascinating insight into the historical cultural context of 1st Century Israel.

2. The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard: Quite possibly the most insighful exposition of the sermon on the mount available today.

3. Prodigal God, Tim Keller: A fresh perspective on the two sons and the father in the classic passage from Luke 15.

4. Angry Conversations with God, Susan Isaacs: An honest assessment of conflicts between people, faith, God and the church.

5. On The Road and Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac: Okay, I know that’s technically sneaking two books in one slot, but in so many ways it’s really one story. Powerful insight into the underpinnings of the late 20th Century cultural revolution.

6. Mere Discipleship, Lee Camp: This book has done more than any other to make me seriously consider how to live as if Jesus meant what he said, and as if his promises are true.

7. East of Eden, John Steinbeck: Somehow I missed this particular part of the Steinbeck library during my years as an English major in undergrad. A stunning portrait of the human condition.

8. Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton: Still relevant over a century after its original publication. Why we believe what we believe.

9. The River Why, David James Duncan: Saving my favorite flyfishing books for the end. Duncan’s Kerouac-esque coming of age story about a  young man’s discovery of himself and the reason for everything. An annual part of my reading regimen.

10. A River Runs Through It, Norman MacLean: Pure scripture for every fly fisherman. Like TRW (above), I make it a point to read this one at least once a year. It’s good for my soul and my sanity.

The link was to an article written by a guy named Matt Papa (find it here), a musician who takes the Christian music industry in general, and Christian radio specifically, to task for being, as he says, “altogether banal and shallow in both a musical sense and a spiritual sense.” Much of what he says is hard to argue with…that “mainstream” Christian music is (with some notable exceptions), shallow, insipid, formulaic, theologically questionable, and largely self-centered from a lyrical standpoint; and is weakly composed, arranged, performed and produced from a musical perspective. The deeper criticism is that this kind of music fails to reach listeners with an accurate presentation of the Gospel.

The question I want to address here, though, is one I raised in the original Facebook conversation: Is weak Christian music a case of art imitating life or life imitating art? Does shallow Christian music breed shallow Christians, or does shallow Christianity breed shallow Christian music?

The popularity of the so-called “prosperity gospel” (Jesus wants you to be happy, healthy and wealthy) is certainly reflected in much of what plays on Christian radio. Listen for less than an hour and you’ll pick up on the formula: my life sucked, Jesus came along (just for me!), now I’m happy. All set to a simple 4-chord progression. Wade says it’s like prom music to Jesus, making him sound more like a girl you want to date than the Lord & savior of the universe.

Hence the art-imitates-life-imitates-art conundrum. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Certainly, the shallowness of mainstream Christian music is reflective of much of mainstream evangelical Christianity in America today. Whether it’s the prosperity gospel or the “fire insurance” message (say a prayer to stay out of hell), the American church has failed in many ways to take people into an authentic understanding of Jesus and the gospel. The message of personal happiness, comfort and contentment fails to recognize the socially and politically subversive life, death and resurrection of Jesus and his message of radical love and forgiveness. In many ways it reduces God’s grace to a happiness pill. Just swallow this and you’ll feel better.

At the same time, there is a propensity for the kind of music that pours out of Christian radio to influence the church. Go into almost any church with a “contemporary” service, and you’ll hear many of the same shallow songs opening the worship service. (We even do it in my church, where I play acoustic guitar in the band.) The songs are easy to play, easy to sing, elicit happy emotions, and don’t require much in the way of mental or spiritual investment.

To be fair, there are, thankfully, many exceptions. Artists like Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, John Mark McMillan, Phil Wickham, and others do write songs that are theologically and musically rich and sophisticated, and they get their share of airplay on Christian radio and from church praise & worship bands. Our praise team at FUMC Williamstown likes to joke that we’re a Chris Tomlin cover band because we perform so many of his songs out of appreciation for both his theology and his musical complexity.

And as long as I’m on the issue of fairness, even some of the shallower offerings of Christian radio have value, especially for people who are new to the faith and need encouragement on a very basic level. Babies need milk. In fact, it takes awhile before they can consume anything else. But eventually you’ve got to introduce some meat into your diet.

Personally, my biggest issue with most mainstream Christian music is that it doesn’t reflect Christ. I know musical appreciation is a very subjective thing, but I find most of it to just be bad. And if Christ is to be glorified, the music that celebrates him should be nothing short of excellent.

Yes, music is entertainment and Christian music is Christian entertainment, and every song doesn’t have to be dripping with atonement theology to have value. But bad music with bad theology reflects badly on Jesus just as shallow teaching in superficial church settings does. It’s a barrier to the gospel. We deserve better from our music and from our churches. Jesus deserves better from all of us.

Shane Claiborne on Theology

The first thing you may notice, in addition to the updated theme, is a new page for scheduling speaking engagements & events. As my understanding of my ministry calling has grown over the past several months, I find myself more and more called to share with people from a wide variety of backgrounds in a wide variety of venues. So, if you have an event coming up and you need a speaker or presenter on some aspect of a life in faith, I’d love to talk to you about it. See the contact info on the “Speaking & Events” page for how to get in touch with me.

The other new thing I want to try to do this year is to start sharing shorter tidbits of insight that I’ve picked up here and there in addition to the longer essays that will continue to appear here. Along with that, I’d like to invite readers to submit ideas, articles, links, etc. for inclusion here on the main blog page. Just use the contact info from the “Speaking & Events” page to send me your ideas.

Finally, a reminder that the purpose of faithrants.com is to ignite conversation. If you have a thought in response to anything that appears here, I encourage you to submit comments either here or on my Facebook page. All I ask is that we keep the conversation clean and free of personal attacks.

Thanks for tuning in and please stop by occasionally to see what’s new. I’m looking forward to some great conversations in the coming months!