Bloggers note: The opinions in this blog do not represent an official position of Park St. Brethren Church. They are correct, but they are my opinions, not necessarily the church’s. :)  Also, when I refer to “Church” from now on, I am referring to the whole community of Jesus-followers, not a particular congregation or organization of believers.

Over the past year, ever since the Presidential Primaries, I have become more and more frustrated and disappointed with the political landscape in America. Along with that comes a similar frustration with the Christian Community and its general confusion about the roles of government and Church.  Last night I was listening to both sides of the debate on the “Cap and Trade” bill and my frustration came to a hard boil as I realized how badly we’re missing the point of government in America. I feel like the beauty of the Constitution, and its foundations, are slipping away and that we will never be able to restore it. I also feel like the beauty of the Gospel, and its power that is independent of national boundaries, is being misrepresented and placed in a cage. Both of these prospects bring great sadness and discouragement to my heart.

As I’ve listened to Christian young adults’ views on government, as they relate to faith and life in America, it has occurred to me that most of you are sincere in wanting to live out your faith in a Godly way in all areas of life and there is a new “passive activism” among you. The activist part shows a heart-felt interest in areas of justice, compassion and renewal in society. The passive part is that you haven’t always invested yourselves in seeking out an understanding of the foundations of Christianity and American government to grasp the complexities and hard work that go along with becoming Christian-Americans with influence. In my opinion, this passive activism is resulting in a handing-over of our God-given role to others whose motives aren’t the same.

There are many people who lack the nerve to mix politics and religion. Some think that Jesus’ lack of direct teaching on the mix sets an example for us to be silent as well. I am compelled to believe that much of his silence was not a signal to keep silent on the mix, but more a sign that He saw all parts of life as related to all other parts. Too many specifics from Him defining separate roles of politics and spirituality would make them seem too disconnected.  I believe that His silence gives us a chance to freely represent him within the messy stew of politics and religion that changes with each age and form of government.

Others are too eager to directly link American political patriotism to Jesus.  Because America has been known as a culturally Christian nation, Americanism and Christianity have become interchangeable for some. Some preachers and authors confuse the two and make Jesus out to be an American.  Other editorialists and politicians use Jesus as the poster child for their programs and positions without really embracing the heart of His message.

Over the next two weeks I need to seek some balance and bedrock in this mess. I want to invite you along in the process as I think aloud.  I believe that there are a few areas where politics and our faith have t0 coexist.  I believe that we spiritual people are called to be political as well when it comes to some very key ideals. I want to put it out there right now that the two, politics and Christianity, come together in a place called liberty (a.k.a freedom). If we understand the spiritual source of this ideal, we will understand our political role in the world. A shared understanding of liberty should unite the Church in its political sense of direction and should make activism not only social but spiritual…and never passive. If young adults can begin to grasp the idea of liberty from God’s perspective, mission and activism will go hand in hand.

Here are some themes I’m going to dice up in the next two weeks:

Good vs. Bad vs. Evil - Before the Fall it was “all good.” The Fall opened a tendency in us to categorize everything into two basic groups: good and bad.  As each of us is decides for ourselves what is good and bad, it creates conflict between us when we don’t agree. When this conflict is left to its own, it’s the seed of all kinds of evil. Laws and governments exist to mediate these conflicts. Politics is about bringing balance to these laws and governments for the common good. Politics is unavoidable.

Rights vs. Privileges - Rights come from God. They define the things in life that He has provided for all people everywhere. They remain the same no matter how a government interprets them or ignores them.  They are not subject to people’s preferences. Privileges are the things in life that we are permitted to enjoy. They can change based on circumstances. They can be given and taken away. We become disappointed when we confuse rights and privileges.

Freedom and Liberty - Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Freedom and liberty are the states of being 100% able to pursue what is good in life.  Since the Fall has created conflict between people and groups as to what is “good,” God’s brand of freedom calls on us to look out for other people’s rights, not our own. When we reverse the Fall and act on behalf of others’ freedom, our motives are redeemed and good emerges.  The problem is that those that aren’t playing by the same rules create conflict for those who are selflessly looking out for others. While those people can take away our privileges, they can’t kill our freedom. This kind of freedom changes worlds. This is the ideal upon which the Gospel is based and our country was founded.

I hope you’ll be patient and process these ideals with me. I look forward to tons of conversation!

One of the early speakers at the Q Conference in Austin was David Goetz, author of Death by Suburb. See more on this by visiting Jason Barnharts blog: Windmills

David Goetz immediately stirred my interest because he is not just an academic or unseasoned clergy with an opinion. He is He is president of CZ Marketing, a brand and strategy firm serving the nonprofit sector.  AND Goetz lives with his family in the very suburban Wheaton, Illinois. He is positioned within the culture he is writing about, and admittedly knows first-hand the struggles and temptations of suburban temptation.  For me, someone who is speaking out of their own experience and vulnerability has a special place.

To listen to David Goetz talk about Death by Suburb, download the MP3 file by going here Death By Suburb Audio

I am reminded over and over again how deceptive Satan is. This god we call the Suburban Dream seems so right and so heaven-like, and yet its very pursuit usually takes us in the very opposite direction from God. The more we find what we’re looking for in the suburban life, the more it creates an emptiness that demands to be filled.  The hamster wheel is a perfect, in overused, metaphor for the suburban golden calf. It is an idolatry of our own making that seems under our control, but that really puts us on an endless, empty, exhausting pursuit that makes us spin wildly out of control, yet demands that we look calm and happy and put-together on the surface. It’s an amazing device of the Enemy that few see through unless prayer or hardship pull back the corner on the real scene.

Goetz’s talk wasn’t all that profound or novel, but it did pull back the corner a bit and sort of jabbed its finger into a familiar, but undefined sore spot. Now that we know what the pain is caused by, we can work on the tough, thankless job of helping ourselves and others detox. The hardest part of this whole picture is that every addiction denies its own existence and resists its own cure. Addiction can’t exist in the presence of a cure, so it makes the cure look ridiculous and impossible. Many of us have come to the point of knowing our Suburban addiction, and we want to detox, but the question is HOW?

“When Jesus heard this, he said to him (them), ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.‘”

WRONG ANSWER! IS THERE ANOTHER WAY GOD?!  David Goetz humbly says that the other ways will be prayer (which most don’t like) or hardship (which no one likes). Addictions suck!

“When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.”

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So anyways, I mentioned in the last post that one of the tradmarks of the Q Conference is its understated treatment of times of worship. Normally, it consists of an individual playing an instrument (guitar or piano) off to the side of the stage. There are white lyrics on a black screen to help lead the singing, but there is no sermonizing, no cheerleading, no request to stand/sit/kneel just sort of natural invitation to enter into worship with the presence of God and and the simplicity of song doing the “work”. Below is a cell phone shot of David Hodges, former  member of Evanescence, leading worship from the side of the stage, plunking on a keyboard and singing softly.

You gotta read Jason Barnhart’s blog to get some of this. Go there now, by clicking here: Windmills

For me, Alan Hirsch remains credible because he presents good data and because what he says makes sense. He’s not just a bunch of bluster and unsubstatiated opinion. He also has been an observer of trends in England and Down Under that seem to be pre-cursors to what is happening in America. He can predict what will happen in America by explaining what happened in those parts of the world.

So, here’s the the tough part of putting Hirsh’s wisdom to work in the Church. We like to contain things and then measure them. As long as we are using an attractional or extractional model of church, we can put our arms around those who respond and we can count them, survey them, monitor them, etc.  Since we measure success in the church by numbers and dollars (c’mon, you know I’m right) we replicate those things that look like successful outcomes.  Bringing people into the church environment, and assimilating them into our culture, look like success as we do it on greater scales, so we keep doing it.  What we can measure we can manage, and the conventional attractional/extractional church environment allows us to measure and manage people and behaviors. And so we keep doing it. If Hirsh’s ideas of missionality are correct, which I believe they are, then we are going to HAVE to divorce ourselves from the old measurements of success. Not mask them. Not rename them. Not rewarm them. We need to detox from them and send them as far as East is from West.

How in the heck do we do that?  Some people say they have made the switch from measuring numbers of people in their programs to measuring stories. Huh? What? I don’t know what that means really.  I think it sounds really good, but we’re still qualifying and quantifying to measure success. I’ve heard others say that they measure inputs instead of outputs. Like, Statistical Process Control, if  the theology, training, message, experience, commitment of the Christian community is strong, then the outcomes will be strong. What outcomes? How do you measure how well a mom loves her kids or how effectively a boss relates to his employees or how purely a missionary serves his field? My instinct says that a true missional model has to be a total clean break from dependence on metrics as measures of success. We’ll always have metrics but our confidence in their integrity is indirectly proportional to our freedom to be missional. There will be much argument on this point, but no one can ever win, because we have no way to prove the answer metrically. Some things “work” in some places. The same things “fail” other places. There’s something really important about the Fall of Man and that has to do with categorizing everything as good or bad, but that is another conversation for another time.

So…if we are to be missional, the Church has to cease conforming to the patterns of this world.  The clergy system that depends on butts and bucks is in jeopardy. The facilities system that we’ve adopted to contain the Christian community is on the chopping block. The programs that we use to direct people in tracks of proper behavior might have to go. The worship-centered experience of the faith may have to fall into equal proportion with other less pleasant components. AND…when we become missional, the very metrics that Hirsh uses to show that we’re currently failing as a church will say that we have failed miserably, because to measure how non-missional we are, we are using non-missional metrics!!!

So, on to more important things… The first night there, we ate at a place called the Hickory Street Bar & Grill. It was good in spite of all the buckets scattered around to catch water leaking through the ceiling from the recent rains. It has sort of an indoor outdoor format and a hippish, grungish vibe.

Here is what I ate… Grilled Portobello with corn-salsa, rice and black beans. It was really tasty with its zingy seasoning and freshness. Pretty guilt-free too!

I am glomming.

Jason Barnhart, my friend and partner-in-ministry is blogging about the different presentations we experienced at the Q Conference in Austin in late April. I am jumping in the conversation by adding a second generation of thoughts and responses as he goes through the different topics. Think of this as the missing scenes or producer’s commentary on a DVD. Consider these the liner notes to Jason’s “music” about Q.

This first post is a bit more about Q and its context…

The Q Conference is organized by Fermi Project. Fermi is “a broad collective of innovators, artists, social entrepreneurs, church and societal leaders experimenting with ways to advance the common good in culture. The focus of this project is strategically placed on Christians and leaders throughout the Church. Multiple mediums are leveraged to push forward the essence of this project, including events, research, essays, films, books and culture shaping projects.” By clicking here, and coughing up your email address, you can download an essay, Influencing Culture: An Opportunity for the Church, developed by Gabe Lyons, Founder of Fermi Project.

The annual Q conference is a convergence of these innovators, artists, social entrepreneurs, church and societal leaders, who share a large scale brain-dump of ideas, dreams and methods for influencing culture.  The trademark of Q Conferences is their 18 minute time limit on almost all presentations.  This makes each session concise and limits the distracting sermonizing and self-aggrandizing that often accompanies conferences.  Other unique characteristics of Q are the relatively small group of attenders (350 -400?), the absolute resistance to Christian celebrity status for presenters, and the very low key, minimalist attention to worship (this year, David Crowder spoke, but didn’t sing. David Hodges, former  member of Evanescence, led worship from the side of the stage, plunking on a keyboard and singing softly. No one was asked to stand or sing louder…).

The Q Conference has convened for three years. Q organizers try to select venues that represent cultural significance in the cities that are culturally significant.  The first was in Atlanta, last year we attended the conference in New York City, this year we descended on Austin.

Q organizer, Gabe Lyons, explains why they chose Austin this year:

“There are just so many reasons. For starters, how about the music scene? Over 200 live music venues that bustle every night with jazz, folk, country, or rock make Austin the Live Music Capital of the World. And the food? It’s hard to top the mouth-watering beef brisket or authentic Tex-Mex you can find on almost any corner. The reasons for choosing Austin could go on: the largest university in the U.S. (go Longhorns!), flourishing arts and film industry, significant high-tech culture, influential political arena, and world-class environmental awareness. All in all, Austin is the perfect city for Q.

It’s also a city that hasn’t gotten too big. In fact, Austin is probably more like the place you live than L.A., Chicago, or New York City ever will be. It boasts no professional sports team and lives in the shadow of the much bigger Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio areas. Moreover, Austinites are trying to figure out how to grow a city well, how to maintain creative culture, and how to make suburban life feel, well, not so suburban. Perhaps the slogan of the city says it all: “Keep Austin Weird.” It’s against that backdrop – a city seeking to maintain and re-express the heart of its identity – that Q 2009 comes to Austin. It’s our prayer that as we gather there, new ideas and fresh expressions of the gospel will be born and cultivated among us.”

So, we arrived in Austin, and as we pulled up to the Paramount Theater, Q’s meeting place in Austin, I was smacked by maybe the most profound moment of the conference.  In front of the theater was a bench. On one end of the bench were two Q participants, drinking Starbucks and going through their participant’s gift bags which were stuffed with books, coffee, a water bottle and other hip booty.  Sitting on the other end of the bench was a lonesome looking homeless man half-shielded from the morning chill by a blue sleeping bag and hoodie.  Seperating Homeless Man from Q Men on the bench was a plastic bag with all of Homeless Man’s possessions in it, along with a gulf of difference and indifference that prevented even a shred of interaction to occur. The ends of the bench could have been ends of the world.  It was a sight symbolic of the church’s struggle to be influential in a world that has drastically lowered its expectations for us to be of any good. It was an irony that seemed lost on too many people at the conference.

This is the context that we gathered in and in which we live in this place and time. Hopefully these scattered points of interest will help bring the test-tube world of Q to the streets where you live.

Three years ago, an unlikely hero stepped up and became a Crossing legend by handing me $100 and challenging me to see what our church could do to grow the $100, with the hope that we could help some needy people in the area. This man, Merle Mercer, has little money and has even less desire for recognition, but his generosity and dare to our church inspired the name “Merle’s Challenge” for this grassroots endeavor. That year, we had 20 volunteers take $5 dollars each and they “grew” their share of money by making and selling jewelry, washing windows, trading pennies for dollars, roasting and selling coffee, etc. We ended up raising $2,100 to help three families with medical bills and Christmas presents. Word of the challenge spread to other churches and groups and many more dollars were raised for needy people all over the Ashland area. Merle’s Challenge became an expression of the love of Jesus as His people reached out to those in need.

This year, Merle did it again! This time, I was sitting with Him at the Ashland Breakfast Center one Saturday, and he told me that he really feels badly for the kids in the area who suffer because their families are struggling financially. He gave me $350 and dared us again to grow the money to help kids with basic items that would contribute to their health and quality of life. On Sunday, April 19, at the Crossing, ten people came forward and each selected one of ten envelopes containing various amounts of money from $0 to $100, totaling $350. Each of them accepted the challenge to take the money and creatively, legally, quickly grow it to help out kids of the area. One of them is an artist and will create and auction a painting, one is having a car wash, one is selling garden plants, one is selling photographic portraits for Mother’s Day…and so on. On Sunday, May 3rd, they will return the money they started with, along with the money they “grew.” The money will be used to purchase items that will be assembled to provide basic health kits to children of needy families. The kits will include things like toothbrushes, dental floss, oral thermometers, ibuprophen, antibiotic cream, etc. - all things that can prevent or ease preventable health issues in kids.

I am inviting the ten people who are growing the money to post a comment on this blog to allow them to raise awareness of their own project. Stay tuned and check out the posts. Maybe you can help the cause by supporting one or more of these projects.

I have a feeling that we will be overwhelmed with the outcome of this challenge as God moves us to compassion.

Now, let’s go!

Healthiness might be the sexiest attribute in the world. God designed our sexuality so that people who are spiritually, physically, and emotionally healthy are unbelievably attractive at the deepest levels.  While healthy people attract other healthy people, those that are unhealthy attract others who are unhealthy and that’s where God’s plan for our sexuality breaks down into selfishness, drama and abuse. But, people who are spiritually, emotionally and physically healthy are the kind of people that God wants involved in relationships. Their positive sexuality calls to others like them and leads to committed sexual relationships that result in healthy marriages, homes and ministries that honor God.

The following is a novice, incomplete list of ways to get/be/stay healthy inside and out. Some are more weighty than others. Some aren’t very profound. The whole list seems impossible to get right all the time, but it’s worth a try.

Physical Health - Outward Statement of Inner sense of Sexuality.
Your appearance tells a story about you…
- Shower everyday. Water is cheap. You look better and don’t stink.
- Don’t let your hair get that hot-buttered look. Keep it clean.
- Wear deoderant.
- Any clothes that reveal any cracks anywhere should be avoided.
- Guys, really, nobody wants to see your underwear. Ladies, the whaletail eliminates too much mystery. Mystery is good.
- Ladies, do you know what you do to men when you wear garments that have to stretch around something that has anything having to do with a curve? Help a guy out and be a little modest. Keeps you both healthy.
- Guys: know the difference between a date and a workout and dress accordingly.
Watch your mouth. The mouth is the gateway for indication of your physical, emotional, spiritual health.
- Brush your teeth at least twice a day. Nobody wants to smell your road-kill breath or look at those little gray sweaters on your teeth. If brushing doesn’t do the trick carry tick-tacks.
- Drink all the water you can! Hydration makes a lot of things better!
- Don’t put anything in your body that is illegal.
- Don’t drink alcohol if it makes you act stupid, if it’s unsafe, if you HAVE to have it, or if it’s illegal.
- Eat more vegetables and fruit than fat, starch and sugar.
Physical Activity
- Those ideal body weight charts are not a conspiracy or a cruel joke. You feel a lot better when you are within the ideal weight range.
- Get regular exercise. 30 minutes a day. If you like to eat a lot, you gotta exercise more. Exercise hurts and then makes you feel great.
- Have regular sleep patterns.
- Get outside. Get some fresh air and sunshine…Vitamin D from sunshine is a natural upper.
- Be classy. You don’t have to be brilliant or rich to have class.
- Don’t have sex or intimate contact with anyone that isn’t your spouse. No pre-marital romp is worth an STD. Some things are not good to share.

Emotional Health - Inward Reponse to Things That Happen
Some of emotional unhealthy is self-imposed, some is the result of other people:
Get rid of Baggage:
- If others have abused you in the past, do everything you can to work through it and overcome it.
- If people you trust are telling you that you’re screwed up, listen to them…and do something about it.
- Don’t subject yourself to pornography or masturbation…set unreasonable expectations that no one will ever live up to. Creates baggage!
Expand beyond yourself
- Do things that you’re afraid of, as long as they aren’t stupid.
- Read books, especially fiction. Imagination is healthy!
- Be informed…check out the news… being informed is interesting…being interesting is healthy…healthy is attractive
- Get your hands dirty: Help other people as much as possible, Do hard work. Keep a garden
- Do artistic stuff, even if it’s just listening to music.
- Challenge your brain with ideas, puzzles, concepts that are hard.
- Be part of a group of friends. Figure out how to fit in and get a long.
- Surround yourself with upbeat people.  Don’t let yourself get jaded or cynical
- Don’t talk about yourself too much

Spiritual Health: Most important for life and healthy sexuality. It is the bridge between holy and hot romance.
Practice the Reality of God
- Immerse yourself in the story of the Bible. Knowing the story intimately will help you see where you fit.
- Be relentless in asking God to show you His purpose for you.
- Live as if Jesus is with you. (He is)
- Learn to be silent. Listen to/for God constantly.
- Have a Sabbath.
- Be undignified in worship.
Do what Gods says to do
- Be brave when it comes to following Him.
- Feed the hungry. Care for the sick. Visit the lonely. Defend the helpless…Nothing is clearer in the scriptures.
- Talk about God as if He’s the best thing that ever happened to you.
- Go to where people need God and represent Him.
Have Spiritual Relationships
- Join a small group.Allow yourself to laugh and cry with people.
- Learn to forgive
- Pray regularly with other people.
- Let other people more important than you.
- Be accountable to someone older and wiser in the faith.
- Don’t compromise your sexuality. Dedicate it to God and His plan.

After sharing this list at the Crossing yesterday, a couple people mentioned to me that this list of reminded them of a song from the early 2000’s called Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen) by Baz Luhrmann. Check out the video below:

…so I have two friends who are pastors. One is a Brethren pastor. One used to be. Both are solid, savvy guys. Both are committed followers of Jesus. Both are totally respectable in my book. One is voting for Obama. One is voting for McCain.

So, what’s the deal? Is one of them voting God’s way and the other has been blinded by the Enemy? Is one a liberal and the other a conservative? Is one hearing from God and the other is ignoring Him? Hmmmm… such good questions.

Tomorrow at the Crossing, we will have the chance to hear why some other respectable people are voting for McCain and why some others are voting for Obama. We will see why this issue of voting for a President is not as cut-and-dried and black-and-white as we wish it would be.  Maybe we’ll even see that God calls people to vote for different candidates for different reasons, and our “rightness” comes more from seeking His will and following it than it does from voting for a particular candidate. I dunno…

What I do know for sure is that there is a whole spectrum of emotion behind this presidential election. Some of us truly couldn’t care less. Some used to care but have been burned and have lapsed into indifference. Some of us feel a great responsibility to exercise our freedom to vote and others find it a great temptation to draw lines, judge and indulge in hatred. Our purpose at the Crossing is to allow our passion, or lack of passion, to be a part of our Kingdom citizenship. It is to gain understanding and then seek direction. It is to see the presidential candidates and process inside the will and nature of God, not before it.

I saw this story on ABC’s Good Morning America yesterday:

‘Foreclosure Angel’ Saves Stranger’s Home

This is the kind of bail out we need to see more of in our neighborhoods!  I totally believe that our resources within the Kingdom are to be shared. “Love your neighbor” is right up there with “love God.” Those who have extra should give to those who are in need or in trouble.  It’s sort of the way things were meant to work and is a picture of the unique and scandalous Kingdom.

It will work best, though, if we take personal responsibility instead of depending on the government or someone else to do it! If we do this on a personal level, we have the ability to work from within a personal relationship that is the best environment for encouraging responsibility, accountability, and follow-up. It’s more efficient and effective then an impersonal, governmental program approach.

Lately, we Jesus-follows have become intoxicated by a government that offers to extend compassion on our behalf.  People who live in the Kingdom need to show our culture that we are the leaders in applying ample, progressive, responsible compassion when, where and how it is needed. We don’t seem willing to take that role as long as something/one else is assuming the role.

It was a freaky weekend… first, on Friday, Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, was selected by John McCain to be his running mate (which shocked the world), then hurricane Gustav taunted the Gulf coast with possible devastation, then the rumor that Palin’s four-month-old baby was actually her daughter’s was leaked, then the Republican National Convention’s hoopla was delayed due to the hurricane, then came the revelation that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is engaged and pregnant. Political and meteorologic news swirled together and even interacted all weekend.

Fortunately, Gustav was not as devastating as it was feared to be (unless you were one of the people in the more rural parts of Louisiana who lost everything), and now this swirling hurricane of news and petty revelations about Gov. Palin can continue to taunt the McCain campaign with a lot of wind, but with little damage. It’s probable, as was the case with Gustav, that the gossipy tidbits may only unify and strengthen those on the receiving end of the political storm surges.

The 2008 campaign has been numbing and zombifying up until Friday.  The same old cliche rhetoric has been chanted. Predictable strategies and words have been engaged.  Both candidates try to look radical and moderate at the same time (fooling nor impressing anyone).  Obama made a torturously mundane VP pick in Joe Biden. I was nearly lulled into an apathetic doldrum until this Friday…

Now, I am just so…amused - I think that’s the best way to put it - I’m pleasantly amused by the whole scenario, blowing out of no where, as McCain announced an unknown engima, Sarah Palin, as the potential second-most-powerful-person-in-the-world.  This was like a hurricane that only a very few wonks had on their radar. It blew in stealthfully, with swirling winds of fresh air, knocking over some established political structures and uprooting some assumed entitlements.

I’m totally shocked that McCain chose her, and I’m enjoying that shock! I’m amused at the idea that the Obama people are circling the issue carefully, going “Dang, how are we going to approach this woman?” I’m amused that her husband is registered as an independent. I’m amused that the whole story seems like a Disney movie: housewife, turned PTA President, turned mayor, turned governor, turned VP!  I’m amused that the stodgy Grand Old Party has this irony to deal with: a conservative reformer with a stiff backbone and a pretty face! I’m amused at the feminist reaction that uncovers their obvious hypocritical belief that the only real woman is a liberal one.  This current campaign seemed so laborious and joyless and run-of-the-mill.  Now, like Hurricane Gustav, there’s something demanding our attention. Something to track. Some element of suspense and prayer for hope. I’m really enjoying it.

These thoughts might not surface blaring biblical analogy or God-inspired epiphany, but as one Grand Rapids metro-prophet says, “Everything’s Spiritual.” I’m observing a lot of spiritual winds swirling and churning up exhilaratingly choppy waters.

One of the most controversial, intriguing, popular, misunderstood, and powerful sections of the Bible is the Book of Revelation. For good and bad, people’s entire lives are affected and even plotted-out according to the words the apostle John wrote in this body of scripture. If nothing else, Revelation is one of the biggest curiosities of the 20th and 21st centuries, drawing people within and without faith in Jesus into conversation about its meaning.

Starting Sunday morning, April 20, at 9:30 at 710 Park St., Dr. John Byron from Ashland Theological Seminary will be leading a short series exploring ways to read and understand Revelation. John will help set framework through which an honest, responsible pursuit of meaning and application can be made. Any young adult is invited and encouraged to attend.

In order to prepare for this series, John would like to share an article he wrote for a local paper. Even if you can’t attend the series, please read the article below to gain an understanding of the perspective he will be sharing. Feel free to converse on the article’s content by entering a comment below the blog post. I hope to see you on Sunday!

Here’s Dr. Byron’s article:

The Middle East Crisis and Bible Prophecy
John Byron Ph.D.
jbyron@ashland.edu

The current Arab-Israeli conflict has caused some Christians to wonder if this is the end of the world as we know it. Indeed, one only has to turn on the TV to find any number of televangelists declaring that this is the beginning of the end. These televangelists are sometimes billed as ‘prophecy experts’ who effortlessly weave together modern events in the world with apocalyptic elements found in the Bible. Each time the Middle East heats up another series of predictions, books and movies are made each connecting the politics of the region with the end of the world. The problem, however, is that when these events fail to occur they have to be reconfigured to explain why that last prediction was not incorrect. The fact is, there have been countless predictions made about the end of the world and none of them have been correct.

My reason for not viewing the current or any prior Arab-Israeli conflict as the end of the world is predicated on how I understand the nature of Bible prophecy. The major source used to predict end time events is the New Testament book known as Revelation. The reason Revelation is often used to predict end times events is because this is what it seems to do. But that is an oversimplification. Revelation represents a genre of literature found in antiquity intended to encourage those who were oppressed both politically and socially. The book of Revelation was written to a group of Christians suffering persecution under Rome and looking for a day when God would turn the tables on Rome and the evil in the world. This literature was intended more to give hope to people in their current situation rather than to serve as a 2000 year old road map to the end of the world. The book of Revelation is an historical document written to a particular group of people at a particular time in history. Moreover, we have a number of examples of this literature from antiquity demonstrating that Revelation is not unique. It is also a religious document that belongs to a certain genre of literature just as epistles belong to the genre of letter writing and gospels to the genre of biography. Since Revelation is particular type of literature, I interpret the symbolism according to that genre. Thus stars falling out of the sky, dragons, conquering armies, plagues and armies of demons or angels are all part of the world of apocalyptic literature. Just as a person going to a horror movie would expect certain elements to occur in the movie (blood, screams, scary monster etc), so to a reader of apocalyptic literature would expect these elements to be present. Therefore, I interpret none of it as predicting actual events but as symbolic descriptions of how the ancients perceived God working in the world. Apocalyptic literature was a way to deliver a message of hope that God would one day act on their behalf.

So is Revelation prophecy? Yes, the author identifies it as such. But the label ‘prophecy’ is not necessarily synonymous with predicting the future. In the Jewish and Christian tradition prophecy had more to do with what God was doing in the present age. Prophecy was more a critique of the people of God than a promise to annihilate their enemies. Even when future events were predicted, it was more about the imminent rather than distant future. Revelation fits this definition. Besides giving hope to persecuted Christians, Revelation is also a social critique intended to warn Christians not to become enamored with the Empire. It opens with letters listing the problems among some churches that seem to reflect their comfort level of living within the Roman social and political system. Revelation reminds the Church that the only true king is God not the Emperor. In the end, whenever that may be, one has to answer to God and not the Emperor.

So what does this mean for the modern Middle East conflict? We should not be watching in expectation for the end of the world by trying to connect the dots between Revelation and modern events. To do so is to betray a lack of appreciation for the kind of literature Revelation represents. I am uncomfortable with Christians who are quietly celebrating the current humanitarian crisis as the fulfillment of God’s end time plan. The teachings of Jesus promote peace and compassion not the celebration of war and death. Even if a Christian does believe that Revelation is a road map to the end times (which I do not) they should still be striving for peace. As Christians we should be working for peace between Jews and Arabs rather than finding theological satisfaction from the horrible ravages of war. I think a better use of Revelation would be to critique the Church and our comfort level within society rather than as a way to plot the world’s demise. Jesus said love your enemies, not plan their extinction.