Same-Sex Adoption

For those of you who read my blog, I'm publishing this post as a response to a video I posted to my Facebook and the conversation that ensued. Here are my thoughts, and here is the video:

Lesbians raising a child

Here's the video someone posted in response:

A lady talks about her homosexual father

While I appreciate the video response that this lady offers, her personal testimony addresses a homosexual father with multiple partners. I think most would agree that a heterosexual parent with multiple partners creates just as much confusion and instability for a child. Because of that, her personal experience neither validates nor refutes the issue of committed, same-sex partners raising a child.

My guess is most of us don't know a same sex couple raising a child. But here's a hypothetical situation. A same-sex couple shows up to your church having raised a child for several years, which they consider their own and who loves mom & mom (or dad & dad) very much. Is it really the loving thing to do to split that family apart because they are "living in sin?" I don't think so. That seems pretty contrary to a God who came to restore wholeness and demonstrate love.

Further, which of the 5 biblical passages do you want to use to condemn homosexuality?

The one where Jesus talks about it? Oh wait, he didn’t.

The one in Leviticus where homosexuality is called an abomination? That same book also says eating swine and shellfish and wearing multi-material fabric are an abomination (same Hebrew word). So if someone can't participate in a loving, committed, homosexual relationship, I suppose we also need to change our wardrobe and stop eating bacon and shrimp.

Or how about the one that condemns a grown man forcing himself on a young boy? Again, that has nothing to do with committed same-sex marriages. And the list goes on.

To grab onto something Tom said in the Facebook thread, an orphan (or a child living in an abusive, heterosexual home) would do well in the hands of any committed, loving family (or individual) who desired to pour into him/her as opposed to living on the street. Anything lost by not having a male/female mentor in the home can be picked up through the Church, a place where the community, not the parents alone, should assist in raising the child anyway. Individualism is causing more grief and harm to our nation's kids than same-sex adoption (which, frankly, causes nothing that a heterosexual adoption doesn't).

Jesus came to liberate people from an unjust social system, to bring love, and to restore wholeness. He met people where they were, and operated within his context to do the work that he did. Our context is changing, whether Christians like it or not. From within that new context, we must learn how to best demonstrate the Gospel of love and wholeness to people who still need it.

Whether you believe homosexuals should marry or not is irrelevant. Jesus says that Christians should not divorce (whereas he says nothing about homosexuality), but we've long come to terms with that. We now have divorce ministries, counseling, and pastors in their second marriages. It's not the ideal, but it's reality. In 10-20 years, gay marriage will be nationally legal. President Obama has already confessed, "America is no longer a Christian nation." We need to stop pretending that it still is. I think we would bring a lot of glory to the name of Jesus if we spent less time arguing right or wrong and more time figuring out how the Church will operate as an agent of love and transformation from within this new context.

Letter from a Disgruntled Follower

Dear God,

You’re kind of cramping my style. It used to be cool and fun to follow you. Now it’s costing me something. I wish you could understand. Every now and then:

• It’d be nice to take offense when someone insults me instead of turning the other cheek and forgiving.

• I wouldn’t mind enjoying some of the world’s pleasures instead of your peace, contentment, and joy.

• That money that I give to you every week could be used for such good fun.

• I could get so much more done if I didn’t have to take that day off that you claim is a gift.

• Certainly it’d be nicer to live in a cave than a community.

But God, as soon as I say these things, I’m reminded that I’ve seen too much. My eyes have been opened to your beauty and power. I’ve been a witness to your transforming of hearts. I know you can do more with my life than I ever could on my own. I’ve experienced eternity in the here and now. I’ve lived in your abundant life.

You’ve ruined me.

Your ways have become my ways and your thoughts have become my thoughts. And every time the grass looks greener on the other side, that nagging question of Peter’s creeps in from the shadows of my mind, “Lord, to whom shall we go? For you have the words of eternal life, and we have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God!” (John 6:68-69)

If you could please stop being so compelling, if just for one day you would cease to be so wonderful, my life would be mine again. Of course, since this is not the case, once again I will pick up my cross and I will stand for you today, reminded yet again that you are God and I am your blessed but unworthy servant that you have called to do greater things, by the power of your Spirit, than even your Son.

But seriously, thanks!

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sincerely,

Your at Times Disgruntled, yet Faithful, Empowered, and Transformed Follower

I Blame Brita...

A certain man, irate for having tasted yet another putrid glass of water, ripped open a new filter for the family's pitcher for a third time. "I've already called the water company and they say there is nothing wrong," the man barked to whoever cared to hear him. "If this keeps up, I'm calling Brita and demanding they make this right!"

Sure enough, a third filter, and still no quenching goodness. You see, the man had been missing one of the most obvious solutions: It doesn't matter how clean the water is when you pour it in, the water that comes out will never be good until the pitcher itself is cleansed.

Jesus shares a very similar story early on in his ministry:

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. So they came to Jesus and said, “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don’t fast?” 19 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they do not fast. 20 But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and at that time they will fast. 21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins will be destroyed. Instead new wine is poured into new wineskins.” -Mark 2

I like Jesus' story better for 2 reasons. First, he talks about wine and wanting to make sure it tastes good for the party. Not something you expect to hear here in the South from a "good Christian man" like Jesus, right?

Secondly, and more profoundly speaking, Jesus makes it clear that this new thing that he's doing is so revolutionary that neither old systems nor our old selves are prepared to handle it. It's not just that the new wine that goes in will taste funny when it comes back out, the old wineskin doesn't have the power to contain this new thing at all!

Jesus is setting the Pharisees up for something big, something world-changing. And as he does that he makes it perfectly clear: "To be ready for this new thing, it's going to require a new you, a new system of faith, a new community of followers. Because right now, this old thing just isn't ready for what I have to offer."

A lot of us, though, are like the guy in the first story. Jesus wants to pour this new thing in, and to some extent we really want to enjoy it. So we change the water filters in our lives:

• We change our church attendance
• We change our t-shirts
• We change our radio stations

Like somehow this external act of holiness is going to prepare us for this life-giving, thirst-quenching gift Jesus has to offer. Some of us even call the water company:

• We blame our church experience growing up
• We blame those "hypocritical" Christians

• We blame pastors and preachers we don't like

You might have baggage there to work through, but those people still aren't the problem.

You and I have to be willing to take an honest look at the vessel that God's Spirit wants to fill. Yes, God's grace saves you, but we are also commanded to regularly be transformed by renewing ourselves as an act of worship. -Romans 12:1-2a

The next time this water of life taste a little rancid for you, stop looking at the water filters and the providers in your life and take a hard look at the pitcher itself.

God's new thing wants to fill up God's new you!

Silly Hate Groups....

Stream of Consciousness:

So I got to thinking about that verse in John where Jesus says, "Apart from me you can do nothing." It's John 15:5 if you want to check out what else is happening in this passage.

From there I thought, "Hmm. Lot's of people who don't love Jesus do lots of good things. How is this possible?"

Conclusion: God uses the good work of others, Christians or not, to build the Kingdom of God. If God is God, and God can do anything, certainly God can use people who don't love God to do the work of God, right?

So then I wondered, "Hmm. I wonder if there's an example of people who don't call themselves Christians doing God's work in the world?"

Thanks to Google, I found a host of links, the first of which kind of pissed me off. "Religion of Peace" as the site is called seeks to paint Muslims in the worst light possible, stating that really, it's a religion of hate and destruction.

I'm not a fan of groups that hate on various religions. In particular, I'm not a fan of sites like this one that bash Muslims who, according to the site, offer no disaster relief response to the victims of Hurricane Irene. "Muslims believe Allah causes disasters, so Muslims don't provide aid for those in need, especially infidels" says the site.

To this, I facepalm, and direct you to the ICNA, a Muslim organization designed to alleviate the damages caused from any & all human suffering or natural disasters. Feel free to give to the ICNA relief program if you'd like, or contact your local church to give there:

http://icnarelief.org/site/

God is going to continue to do God's work by whatever means necessary, and no artificial religious boundary that we construct is going to stop God from working. Because after all, apart from Christ, we can do nothing, and God loves those in any tragic life situation more than any of us ever could.

As a pastor and preacher, my prayer is for all to come to know Jesus, but please Christians, let's not get there by making villains out of Muslims!

Shalom to you all!

The End is Near...

The ground shakes. Divine clouds roll in. An eerie silence creeps over the earth. Light fades in the heavens above just before bursting into a phenomenal display of booming blasts of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning. The end is near. Have you made your peace with God?

These were the signs that so many predicted would come. Is Jesus really coming back today? If you ask the New Zealanders who already survived their 6pm, I think they would tell you that we are safe until the next apocalyptic prediction. But why is it that doomsday is looming around every turn of the calendar?

1994. May 21st, 2011. 2012. The list goes on.

Before I continue, I think it’s appropriate to give you a few disclaimers. I’d give the following blog post a PG-13 rating for some language and the use of adult cynicism. Secondly, there are probably scholars who have devoted a lot more of their lives to eschatology (study of the end of time) than me, and in writing this post, I have no desire to be considered an expert. I think it’s a safe bet, however, that if Jesus says, “I don’t freakin’ know when the end is coming,” -(Matthew 24:36, the Rick James Version) then we can probably say none of us are experts either.

In spite of the flak that Rob Bell has gotten, I think he has handled the subject of the last days and heaven really well. For those of you who don’t walk in Christian circles, Rob Bell is this preacher who recently wrote this “highly controversial” book called Love Wins, where he basically says God loves everyone. (Really rubs you the wrong way to think that God could do that, right?)

Rob’s basic view on heaven is this: heaven is not some far off place somewhere else that we all would like to “get to” when we die. The ideal of heaven is something that we should strive each day to bring here. Bell writes,

“So is it true that the kind of person you are doesn’t ultimately matter, as long as you’ve said or prayed or believed the right things? If you truly believed that, and you were surrounded by Christians who believed that, then you wouldn’t have much motivation to do anything about the present suffering of the world, because you would believe you were going to leave someday and go somewhere else to be with Jesus. If this understanding of the good news of Jesus prevailed among Christians, the belief that Jesus’s message is about how to get somewhere else, you could possibly end up with a world in which millions of people were starving, thirsty, and poor; the earth was being exploited and polluted; disease and despair were everywhere; and Christians weren’t known for doing much about it. If it got bad enough, you might even have people rejecting Jesus because of how his followers lived.

That would be tragic.” -(Bell, Love Wins, p6-7)

Kudos to you for making it through that paragraph, and in case you skipped it or you don’t pick up on satire, that’s exactly what many Christians have done. We have become so worried about being damned that we don’t give a damn. We don’t give a shit about poor people. We don’t give a shit about world hunger. We don’t give a shit about loving the people who hate us. We don’t give a shit that millions and millions of people are living in hell on earth already.

You know how I know we don’t give a shit?

Because if you’re a Christian reading this, you’re probably more upset about the fact that I said “shit” a few times than you are about poverty, hunger, people not loving their enemies, or the living hell people are experiencing right now. To you, I’d say this,

“Awake, O sleeper! Rise from the dead (the deadness of your futuristic, fluffy, floating, foe-hating, rule-following faith), and Christ will shine on you!” – (Paul, Ephesians 5:14)

We have made our faith so much about “getting” to heaven that we have forgotten Jesus cared about here and now more than there or then.

Jesus said things like, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on EARTH as it is in heaven.”

Jesus even talked about eternal life:

“Now this is eternal life – that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.” -John 17:3

I’m pretty sure we can know God, and know Jesus, right now. And here’s the thing with knowledge. As we come to know Jesus, we actually start to do some of the things that Jesus did. “Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know."(Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, p12).

Christians, Jesus didn’t come and die and give everything so that you and I could tell everyone else they were going to hell. That’s a pretty shitty story!

Jesus came to give life, and give life to the full (John 10:10). If more of us lived like that were true, I think people would start to see the real Jesus instead of this poser we’ve presented. Jesus actually gave a damn about our health, our finances, and our families. Jesus didn’t come to drop a bunch of rules on us, (Here’s a link where I preach on this same subject: www.wix.com/northridge/northridgejc/messages) Jesus came to transform and to change us into people who cared as much about life and living as he does. Jesus says we’re ambassadors, that we’re witnesses, that we are His Body in a world that needs Him. It’s our job to LIVE like it!

So here’s a thought. As 6PM comes and goes in your time zone, be grateful that God is not a god that is just waiting for the right moment to press the “Damn You” button. We have a God of love and grace, a God who desperately wants the church to step up and execute plan “A” because there is no plan “B.”

For those of you who aren’t following Jesus, please don’t get frightened and turn to the Jesus that a lot of these misguided prophets are presenting to you. That’s not Jesus. That’s manipulation.

On the other hand, there is a Jesus, the real Jesus, who had a whole lot to say about how we live this life now. This Jesus put it all on the line to bail you out of the hell you might be living in so that you could feel heaven, right here, right now. If you want to know that Jesus, let’s talk.

The end is near, but not the end of the world. This needs to be the end of us living in fear, living in blind expectation of an ethereal escape for the elite. In turn, this is the beginning of hope! This is the beginning of us bringing heaven to earth!

Just Look Back

Life gets hard, and when it does, people tell you to just keep going. Don't look back.

But you're overwhelmed. You've bitten off more than anyone thought you could chew. Your enemies laugh at you. Your friends stopped encouraging you. And where's God? Shouldn't God have done something about this by now? Shouldn't God have figured this and everything else out already?

That's how this guy felt:

  My heart meditated and my spirit asked:  
7 “Will the Lord reject forever?
   Will he never show his favor again?
8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
   Has his promise failed for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?
   Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”
 10 Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:
   the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
11 I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
   yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
12 I will consider all your works
   and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”
 13 Your ways, God, are holy.
   What god is as great as our God? (Psalm 77)

This guy did something we're told not to do. He looked back. Not with a desire to quit. Not in doubt or fear. But in remembrance. Almost immediately, God transformed his perspective on his situation.

If you have time, grab your Bible and check the rest of this Psalm out, it really is amazing. God has shown up before. God will show up again.

If it feels like you're failing, if it feels like no one is with you, if it feels like God is letting you drown, just look back.

Think about the passion you had when you decided to follow Christ.
Think about how good the freedom felt when God freed you from that addiction.
Think about that miraculous event that you couldn't explain.

God has shown up before. God will show up again. You may not be able to see it right now, but that is often when God is closest to us.

God has shown up before, God will show up again. Just look back.

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

As you stop and reflect, may God give you the wisdom and discernment to discover your "something." Check this prayer out and that'll make more sense:

Prayer by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador
Martyred on March 24, 1980

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen