My kind of stupid!

“Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform.“

G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

Jesus seems agitated. (Using relational language to explore scripture)

My last post proved to be the basis of my Sunday morning lesson with the youth at my church. Following the time for imaginative prayer I asked for gut check reactions to how Jesus seemed in the passage (a question I stole from the practice of spiritual direction). The answers were great and opened the door to a deeper relational exploration of scripture. Jesus seemed agitated and firm. The words felt like discipline. The students felt nervous and worried. One student articulated how the words both brought hope and dread because they revealed the reality that our circumstances and death can not be tied directly to our sin. In other words, “we’re not in control”.

Then I asked if they could imagine Jesus saying this with tears in his eyes. Somehow in the hardness of the words they were the fullness of love – not only for those who listened but for those who had died. Jesus was saying that worse than tragic death was the failure to repent. This is about when I stopped asking questions and poured my heart out about the reality of hell and how if we truly seek to have God’s compassionate heart we must not ignore the fact that some will perish apart from Christ and will suffer eternity for it. Those words hurt me to say and still hurt me to write. Yet they are truth and I can not imagine living life in ignorance to them.

Mildly related tangent:

I think my aversion to teaching on eternity has been my experiences with people who ignored the damage they did on Earth because all of their energy was focused on the afterlife. But we as Christians have the strange reality of following the ever-present God. The great I Am. So we are called, once again, to tension in the Christian life. A tension between this life and the next. A tension between the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven afterwards.

Imaginative Prayer Prompt

At it’s most basic, imaginative prayer is reading scripture and then prayerfully imagining that you are actually an observer in whatever was described in the passage.  If Jesus is speaking you might imagine what his voice sounds like and what emotion he is showing.  Asking questions like who you are in the story or how are those around you reacting to what is going on can also be useful.  To give you an opportunity to try this out I’ve chosen a pretty hard to swallow teaching of Jesus in which he responds to the question of suffering due to injustice and disaster.  My hope is that imaginative prayer may prove to be the chewing that prevents choking.

There were some present at that very time who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Luke 13:1-5

Make known his deeds

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day:

“Give thanks to the Lord,

call upon his name,

make known his deeds among the peoples,

proclaim that his name is exalted.”

Isaiah 12:3-4

How’s that for evangelism? Go share with the nations what God has already done, reveal his character to the world by his word and his works, and exalt his name (which has to be one of the easiest tasks ever assigned because it is so incredibly worthy of exaltation).

Brothers and Sisters, it is your joyful duty to show God to be great and glorious in all you say and do.  The yolk and burden don’t get much easier or lighter than that.

Sorry if this post seems a little basic but every once in a while its good to step back from the complexity and enjoy the simplicity.

Let the Nations be Glad!

All in all I would have to say that John Piper’s Let the Nations be Glad! 2nd ed. was a worthwhile read, but the first two thirds were at times a struggle.  Piper spends much energy on setting up (and at times defending) his view of Christ centered biblical missions. This is an excellent thing to spend time and energy on, however when I was reading it many of the arguments he found necessary for a correct theology of missions just bogged down my hunger for a better biblical understanding of missions. At points it was extremely dense as he picked apart a few defective theologies. All that said, if you have theological questions about missions, and already have a grasp on some of the arguments I recommend reading the entire book. If you are primarily looking for a powerful, insightful, biblical introduction to missions or simply for encouragement in world missions I suggest you read Part 3 and the afterward. Then you can decide if you want to read the rest of the book.

Interesting Word Study

In my preparations for Sunday I came upon an interesting set of words in English that come from the same Greek word-family.

Eucharist, Eulogy, and Euphoria.

Just something I found interesting.