Sojourn

On Faith and Socialism

Over the summer I spent a significant amount of time blogging at www.keepusfree.net.  Much of my viewpoints addressed what I consider to be a very dangerous encroachment of socialism into American politics and upon the American way of life.

As a follower of Jesus I find myself in an interesting position on the issue.  On the one hand, I see in the way of Jesus (particularly the Sermon on the Mount and on through the rest of the Gospels) what could be considered a socialist impulse behind the way of the Kingdom.  On the other hand I am a student of history and see how government socialism has historically always lead to oppression and the eventual downfall of the civilization.  In the same historical vein I also see how individual freedom and personal responsibility (the antithesis of socialism) is the founding principle of America - a country that has, for much of her existence, been a "shining city on a hill" to which people hungering for a better life have streamed from every corner of the world.

In watching the evolution of Christianity in America I've seen us diverge into two prevailing groups.  On the one hand there are the evangelicals on the far right of the political spectrum.  On the other hand are the "emergents."  And I've been somewhat alarmed at the movement of those who are "emergent" toward the far left (socialist) of the political spectrum.  As Rick Warren's "Civic Forum" with Obama and McCain began a couple of weeks ago this divide was brightly illuminated by a commercial endorsing Obama that featured Brian McLaren and Kirbyjon Caldwell.  And though I don't consider myself a far-right evangelical, for the life of me, I can't understand how a follower of Jesus can align themselves with the socialist agenda of the far-left that includes the killing of unborn babies.  Could it be that these "emergents" see the socialist impulse in the Gospels and the church of Acts and are confused about how it should play out in society? 

Perhaps a definition of socialism is in order.  Dictionary.com offers the following three definitions:

1.	a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2.	procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

3.	(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

It's easy to see that the early believers did live their lives in a collectivist sort of community.  They shared their food, their belongings, and sold property to make sure that everyone was taken care of.  This makes sense to me as such behavior is the natural outworking of sincere love for God and sincere love for one another.  I believe this should be our way of life.  If I have two shirts and you have none, then yes, I should be moved by the spirit of love to give one of mine to you.

But when "emergents" look at this and then connect it with politics I think they are making the same mistakes that Israel made when asking for Saul instead of Yahweh, or that the Roman empire made through marrying church and empire.  I guess the question is this:  Who should be the administrator of a Biblically socialist way of life, a king (or president in our case) and his government, or the King of Kings and his priesthood (all believers).

In electing a socialist government we are appointing a human ruler to, by force of law, make us share our possessions with one another.  When the far better way is to live as free people under the reign of Christ being moved solely by the Spirit of God to succeed, prosper, and care for others.  Human rulers crave power and are prone to exercising their power to oppress others and pursue evil agendas.  The way of the Kingdom is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.

If we were to apply the "emergent" political ideology of today to the church of the first century, Acts 2:42-47 would read something like this:

They devoted themselves to the ideology of Caesar, and to the collective, to the redistribution of bread and to debate.  Everyone was filled with contempt for those who had more bread than others.  All the believers were together and shared the same allotment from Caesar.  They sold their possessions and goods to pay taxes to Caesar who would distribute the wealth throughout the empire.  And every day they enjoyed the favor of the government.

Folks, when we read the way of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and read about the way in which the early church lived, we have to understand that this way of life is meant to be fleshed out through hearts redeemed by Christ and renovated by the Holy Spirit, not through the force of a human king and his government.  If you believe that the wealthy should share with the poor, then start sharing.  There's always someone poorer than you.  And then teach others to do the same.  Don't take the easy way out by demanding that everyone give what they have to the government in the hope that the government will do with it what is righteous.

Hurricane Gustav Response

It's becoming more and more likely that I will be leaving sometime Wednesday, with a truckload of emergency supplies, and traveling toward Pass Christian, Mississippi where we have an organization that's been in place since shortly after Katrina. This organization has been rebuilding people's homes and providing them with food and shelter during the building process.

They are preparing for the worst with Gustav. My plan, if they do indeed take a hit and need help, is to arrive Wednesday with supplies and stay until Sunday. If you would like to contribute to help purchase the supplies and provide on-the-ground assistance, you can send a check to:

Christ Community Church
1819 Midtown Drive
Columbus, GA  31906
memo line: Gustav Relief

If you do decide to help with the relief by sending a check, send me an e-mail to let me know so I'll have an idea of how much we can purchase.

Dysfunctional Family

The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family.  There is the authoritarian presence of the minister - the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots - whom few ever challenge either because they don't dare to or because they feel it would do no good if they did. 

There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. 

There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety's sake are kept more or less under cover.

There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done.  ~Frederick Buechner

When the church is functioning properly as a loving household, a living organism, the corporate expression of Jesus Christ, and the community of the KIng, if offers

• interdependence instead of independence
• wholeness instead of fragmentation
• participation instead of spectatorship
• connectedness instead of isolation
• solidarity instead of individualism
• spontaneity instead of institutionalization
• relationship instead of programs
• servitude instead of dominance
• enrichment instead of insecurity
• freedom instead of bondage
• community instead of corporation
• bonding instead of detachment

~ Frank Viola; Reimagining Church

Borderline Anarchist Follower of Jesus?

A couple of weeks ago I succumbed to the culture and opened a Facebook account.  While filling out my profile information I got to the part where it asked about my religious views.  The best description I could think of for myself was, "Borderline Anarchist Follower of Jesus."  I'm sure many who've since seen this description on my page have wondered what such a phrase could mean.

I guess I have to begin with a definition of anarchist.  Dictionary.com offers the following three definitions:

1.	a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.

2.	a person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.

3.	a person who promotes disorder or excites revolt against any established rule, law, or custom.

These definitions are all a bit clumsy for me, which is why I have to include the "borderline" qualifier in my self-description.  I would describe an anarchist as someone who sees no value in, and works to dismantle, law, government, and order. 

After 22 plus years in the church system, I am closer to an ideology of ecclesiastical anarchy than I've ever been.  And in so doing I take a seat at the table with Soren Kierkegaard, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Ivan Illich, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Desert Fathers, the Quakers, and many others.  Yet, in some ways, I remain not fully seated.  Let me explain.

As a person who has placed my faith in Christ, is set free from both the penalty and the power of sin, and believes that the book of Galatians is inspired by God, I believe that I am no longer bound to the necessity of a religious life that has "keeping the law" as its redemptive nexus.  Even so, I am not antinomian in totality as I see great benefit in living by the spirit of the law.  Being a person who doesn't steal keeps me free.  Being a person who doesn't commit adultery keeps me relationally and sexually alive.  Observing the Sabbath keeps me rested and refreshed.  As Jesus compared the law to the way of the Kingdom in his Sermon on the Mount he did not dismiss the law.  Instead, he encouraged his hearers to understand, embrace, and live freely in the spirit of the law rather than the powerless word of the law.  Where I am fully antinomian is in the dozens, yea hundreds, of ancillary, extra-Biblical laws erected and enforced by systems of organized religion over the centuries; Like the membership card I had to sign with one denomination promising that I would never dance or drink a glass of wine.

It is in the realm of ecclesiastical government wherein I find myself becoming more and more anarchist.  As I search the New Testament over and over again, I find no sign of church government.  What I do find is a rapidly multiplying community of people who have encountered Jesus, been set free of the penalty and power of sin, do life together in the most common and love-infused ways, and (as my friend Billy puts it) are devoted to inviting others to the table.  Among the community are those gifted as teachers, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors who serve the community.  They don't rule the community.  They don't create ever-expanding hierarchies of management, command, control, and bureaucracy.  They are free people helping those around them to live freely and fully in the grace of Christ.  And the ethos of this community is one of mutual and voluntary love, encouragement, accountability, and correction.  The only King and Sovereign Ruler before whom every knee must bow is Jesus himself, the Head of the church.  Since that time, Jesus followers have left the trail he blazed for us and have given themselves to the creation and violent protection of religious nation-states ruled by clerical despots. Woe!

Finally, on the issue of order, I find myself not nearly as anarchist.  A properly functioning body of believers living under the influence of the Holy Spirit will not be chaotic or disorderly.  Where there is chaos, I suspect there is either an absence or quenching of the Spirit of God.  That said, I do believe that when forms, structures, orders, and liturgies arise out of the surpremacy of preference or an ego-driven need for control, an anarchist impulse is not only justifiable, but remedial.

This has been a difficult transition for me.  I have always been somewhat of a renegade who eschews compliance simply for the sake of compliance.  But my observance of and participation in oppressive and contentious religious environments has inspired me to embrace the shaking of such superstructures.  May that which honors Christ and frees people to follow Him with unencumbered passion be all that survives the shaking.

For more information about Christian Anarchism, click the link.

Spiritual Listening and Action

We are in touch with God every moment that we live, for the simple reason that God is life; not religious life, nor church life, but the whole of life.  God is the Life of life.

Spiritual awareness, then, is about being aware of God in the midst of the change and movement and flow of life, in the rising of the morning sun, in the work and relationship of daily life, in the great struggles of society and nation, in alertness to the interior life of the soul, in times of rest and sleep and even dreaming.  God is at the heart of all life, in both the visible and invisible.  We don't have to try to reach God through acts of devotion, for God is closer to us than our very breath.  We have been given union with God whether we like it or not.  Our flesh is his flesh, and we can't jump out of our skins. This is not pantheism.  It is rather to believe, like Scott, Eriugena, and other Celts before him, that God is the Being on which all being rests, the Light within all light, the Life at the heart of all that has life.

The true mark of Christian spirituality, according to George MacLeod, is to get one's teeth into things.  Painstaking service to humankind's most material needs is the essence of Christian spirituality.  In other words, to move more deeply into life, and especially into its places of struggle and suffering, is to move closer to the life of Christ, the light that is within even the darkest of situations.

What most debilitates our prayer life is not bad prayer technique. It is our presupposition that the pressures of life are on one side while God is on some other side.  Instead, it is precisely at the pressure points of life that God is to be looked for.  God is to be found on the high street of life, in the busyness of our lives.

~J. Philip Newell (on the teachings of George MacLeod)

Contrasting Church Experiences

I was particularly aware of a stark contrast this past weekend.  Sunday morning my wife and I drove to the building where our church gathers.  We walked in and waded through the two-way crowd of people, one lane rushing out from the 9:00 service and one lane rushing in to the 11:00 service.  We took our seats, smiled at a few people, and the service began.  The music was good.  The sermon was good.  And then it was over.  We waded through the crowd of people and, without any real conversation with anyone, ended up in the car driving back home where we later spent the rest of the day watching television, surfing the internet, and playing a computer game.

One day earlier, on Saturday, I received a complimentary copy of the new book, Reimagining Church, by Frank Viola.  While Lynn was in Target I read the introduction, specifically, this letter written to Frank by an international marketing and business consultant.

I was raised in a Christian home and attended church every time the doors were open.  I knew how to live and behave like a Christian should.  You might say I was the poster child.

Late in high school and early college, I met some Christians who sparked a passion in me that I never knew was possible.  I saw their passion to know Christ in deep ways, and more than that, they actually seemed to know Christ much more deeply than I.  In meeting them, I discovered that my own faith and knowledge of Christ was very shallow.  You see, I realized that although I enjoyed going to church to be with my family and friends, I really viewed church as an obligation to endure in order to "hang out" with them before and after Sunday school, services, or youth group meetings.

I quietly sat through sermon after sermon hoping it would hurry up so we could go to the restaurant afterwards.  Minutes after the sermons I couldn't actually remember what was said.  I already heard that I needed to go to church more, I needed to tithe more, I needed to read my Bible more, and I needed to witness more.  It wasn't until I met these other Christians that I realized that all of the previous churches that I was a member of didn't fulfill my thirst for Jesus.  They gave me rules and regulations instead of something that gave life.  Instead of growing in Christ, I was "dying on the vine," filled with fear, shame, and inadequacy.  I didn't actually enjoy talking about the Lord.  Nor was I near as bold to share Jesus with nonbelievers.

I would ask myself, "If I was such a good Christian like I thought I was, why do I feel so far behind the curve?"  The more I was with these believers, the more I wanted to know Christ like they did.  I was drawn to Christ like a moth to a streetlight.  I gradually began to spend more time with them and started going to their meetings.  Their meetings were free and open.  There was no liturgy.  There were no clergy.  They didn't actually need them.  There were plenty of believers who had encountered the Lord and had encouraging things to share with the others.

They didn't need someone to give them permission to speak.  They didn't need someone to buy them in rules and lifeless duties.  They wrote many of their own songs.  They prayed together, taking turns talking to Jesus unrehearsed from the heart.  They met together as if Jesus was actually in the room.  They treated each other like a family that loved each other.

After just a short wile, I realized that this organic experience of Chrst was exactly what was missing from my own experience.  I began to crave gathering with these believers.  I would go to their meetings and see a much bigger Lord than just someone who died for my sins.  I would see Him in much deeper ways.

I was no longer satisfied with watching a performance.  In this organic meeting, I began to want to share with my brothers and sisters what I had seen of the Lord.  Instead of being passive, I now thought it was easy to function and contribute.  Every one of our meetings was free to be different.  Sometimes we sang for hours.  Sometimes the believers were bursting at the seams to share what Jesus had done in their lives that week.  Sometimes we revered the Lord's awesomeness in silence.  No one had to tell us to do these things.  The Spirit was moving in these ways and they just spontaneously happened.  We often ate together as one family.  Sometimes we shared scriptures with each other.  Other times we enacted scenes and stories from the Bible that shed light on Christ.

We met all throughout the week.  In the mornings, the brothers would find another brother or two, and the sisters would get together with sisters.  And we would pursue the Lord in prayer and contemplate Scripture together.  We would start our day with Christ.  In the evenings, wome of the members would open up their homes and share Christ over dinner.  We had brothers and sisters meetings where we could collectively decide on matters relating to the church.  and we would share responsibilities for caring for one another.

If there were no pressing needs, we would just sing to the Lord and pursue His presence together.  If there was a member in need, we would think of ways to help them.  Sometimes we would just plan ways to bless each other for the fun of it.  Sometimes the single people would babysit for the parents and give them a night out on the town.  Sometimes when one of the brothers or sisters went away on a long trip, the whole church would show up at the airport to greet them upon their return.  And we would have a church meeting right in the airport.

There was always something happening where you could share Christ and love the Lord together.  We would also have spontaneous times of outreach to the lost.  Everything we did, the Spirit was free to move and change the direction of the event.  When we did get together, I saw a Christ glorified and magnified.  We were constantly making new discoveries in Him.  Every time I saw Him in a new way, I wanted to see more.  The feeling of guilt, shame, and unworthiness was gone.  I had a passion to know Christ in deeper ways.

I am through with dying on the vine.  I have now seen the freedom that Christians can really have in meeting together organically, just like the early church did.

Watch Me Daddy!

I spent most of my years growing up in a little town in Illinois named after some guy with the last name of Willis who had started a coal mine. The town grew up around the coal mine and flourished to a population of a couple thousand. But by the time I arrived, the mine had closed, businesses had left, and a remnant of 600 or so people were living simple lives surrounded by alternating patches of corn fields and jagged landscapes that bore the scars of being violently raped by thoughtless strip-mining machinery.

We lived in a double-wide on a couple acres of land just south of town in a little neighborhood called Dolly Hill (I assume someone named Dolly used to live there at some point). There were four of us; mom, dad, my younger sister, and me. When you walked into the front door of our home you were walking straight into the kitchen. Take a few steps and look to the right and you would have seen the sliding glass door that led into a large backyard. Look to the left, and you would be about to enter the family room; fully equipped with a color console television, an Atari 2600 system, a C.B. radio in the corner shadowed with bulletin boards on the walls holding postcards from people in far away places whose voices had at some point crackled through the radio speakers clearly enough to be able to share mailing addresses, and a big cabinet housing a AM/FM radio, turntable, 8-track cassette deck and an assortment of 8-track tapes by Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Billy "Crash" Craddock, and several others whose music still makes my skin crawl.

Standing in the kitchen with the living room to the left and the sliding glass door to the right, you would then look straight ahead and behold the architecture common to all double-wide homes of that day; the long narrow hallway leading to the bedrooms. This was the place - the hallowed ground of athletic achievement - where I would demonstrate to my parents, my grandparents, and anyone else who cared to humor me, just how fast I could run. I think I even had people clock me with a stopwatch as I would run as fast as I could 30 feet down the hall and 30 feet back . I remember one particular time I had just gotten a new pair of tennis shoes and was sure that these shoes alone would knock about 2.7 seconds off the time it took me to run the orange shag-carpeted track. I remember many times taking position at the end of the hallway and saying, "Watch me daddy," before launching like the six-million dollar man down the narrow corridor.

As kids, we want our parents to watch us perform; but only when we know we are going to perform well. Hearing the loving affirmation of a proud parent is to the soul what oxygen is to the body. I remember a lot of those times when I knew I was doing something well and loved to hear the praise of my parents. But I remember other times when I was ashamed and embarrassed for my parents to be watching. Little League baseball is a good example. I played one season and during that whole season I only got one hit; and that one wasn't quite what the coach wanted. I hit a fastball with my left eye socket. As if my baseball career wasn't embarrassing enough already, I was forced to wear this stupid looking protective helmet for the rest of the season because the doctor said my eye would explode if that happened again...or something like that.

Not only was I embarrassed for myself, but I remember being embarrassed for my parents. I could almost feel what they had to have been feeling knowing that they were surrounded by other parents in the stands who were biting their tongues to keep from saying something like, "Man, your kid really sucks."

I'm 40 years old and I still think about these things. I still enjoying hearing my parents say, "Good job!" or "We're proud of you!" But my thoughts these days tend to go more in the direction of wondering what God thinks of me. There are times when I'm happy to know that God is watching me. I pray, "Watch me Daddy!" when I'm making a strong effort to be more sensitive toward my wife. "Watch me Daddy!" is easy for me to say when I'm standing in church singing a song or when we're going to a particular passage of scripture and I'm the first one in the row to get there. When I received my ordination as an elder in the Free Methodist Church I thought, "Watch me daddy!"

But then there are other times when He is watching, but I wish he wasn't. Like the time (okay...timeS) when everything in me wanted to flip off the guy who was driving like an idiot in front of me. I would prefer He not be watching as my fuse grows shorter and shorter with "Wanda The Wonder Slug" who is taking a half hour to check out the two people in front of me at Wal-Mart. See...I just did it again. I called that cashier a name. Hopefully He won't read this blog.

What does God think of me? I mean really...what does He really, really think and feel when He observes my life, my heart, my mind. I know all of the theologically correct things to think and say. "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven" (okay, that one's from a bumper sticker). But I gotta tell you, there are a lot of times that I find myself wishing that I could just meet God at Starbucks some morning and spend a couple of hours just laying it all out on the table. Surely there have got to be times when He is just flat out pissed off at me...right? That may have been a bit irreverant. See how adept I am at this?

Mike Bickle asks some of the same questions in his book After God's Own Heart. In chapter four he invites us to ponder:

"How does God feel most of the time? Is He bored? Worried? Blase? Happy? Concerned? Detached? Engaged? Mad, glad, or sad? It sounds lighthearted, but it's one of the most important questions of our entire spiritual journey. How does God feel when He looks at you? What wells up in His heart when His eyes turn upon your life? I have asked many people this quesion over the years, and they usually respond in one of two ways:

God is mostly mad.
God is mostly sad.

And in both cases, they think it's their fault. Many Christians believe very strongly that God is angry and grieved with each of us.

Mike goes on to illuminate passages of scripture that lead us to the understanding that God is not mostly mad with us nor is he mostly sad with us. He is mostly glad! Deuteronomy 30:9 says, "The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand...For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers." Zephaniah 3:17 is another that he points to, which says, "He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."

These are good. But there's another scripture that pretty much settles the issue for me. It reveals to me the incredibly understanding nature of God. It helps me to understand that there is nothing about me, my character, my weaknesses, my future sins that can surprise God. There will never be a moment when God will say something like, "Well, if I had known you were going to mess up like THAT I would never have wasted my time with you." There is nothing in my past that He hasn't seen. There is nothing in my future that He doesn't already know about. And because of that, I can rest in the reality that the same love and affirmation and acceptance I feel when singing a song in church will be unshaken in my worst, darkest moments of human frailty.

Praise the Lord, I tell myself; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, I tell myself, and never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He ransoms me from death and surrounds me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle's! The Lord gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.

He revealed his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.

He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west. The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he understands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust.

Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone - as though we had never been here. but the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children's children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments!

An Introduction to Celtic Christian Spirituality

One of the best books I've read this year is a small volume entitled,Listening for the Heartbeat of God.  One day in January that beautiful brown box with the curvy Amazon arrow showed up and greeted me upon coming home from work.  After dinner Lynn and I turned off the television, curled up on the love-seat by the fire, and spent the evening reading.  I nearly finished the whole book before bedtime.  I couldn't put it down.  In a way, it was almost as if my soul had returned to a long forgotten place where authentic intimacy with and worship of Christ had not yet been swallowed up by institutional religion.

This book provides us with a glimpse into Celtic Christ-centered spirituality as contrasted with Roman Christendom.  Let me share with you a bit of the journey I took through its pages.

The first thing you need to understand is that nearly all of our Christian experience in this country finds it's roots in the Roman Empire.  Catholic and protestant expressions of faith all emerge out of the Roman branch of Christianity.  What we don't often hear about are the branches of Christianity that emerged outside of Roman influence and managed to remain untainted by the abusive, oppressive, and often heretical Papal influence and the later hyper-Calvinist system of isolation and exclusion.

A purely British, non-Roman Christian stream began around the early fourth century primarily through the ministry of a man named Pelagius whom the Roman church later declared to be a heretic (yet a careful reading of his own writings may leave you convinced that perhaps he wasn't as much a heretic as he was a threat to Roman control and domination). This stream of Christianity flourished and managed to remain free of Roman infection until the Synod of Whitby in 664 finally pushed it to the margins where it eventually faded, though never entirely disappeared.

First, some contrasts between the Celtic stream of Christianity and the Roman stream of Christianity, in which most of us today remain:

Celtic Christian spirituality emphasizes the ability to listen to the voice of God and experience His presence in all of life.  Roman Christian spirituality emphasizes that the voice of God and the experience of His redemptive presence is only to be found within the church, her doctrines, and sacraments performed by a "properly ordained" priesthood.

The Roman church's view on humanity and creation begins with the fall.  Therefore, everything human and everything natural is viewed as evil, sinful, and entirely void of God's goodness.  The Celtic view on humanity and creation begins with creation and the Creator's pronouncements of "It is good" and humanity being created in the "image of God."  Where the Roman stream believes that humans are an entirely evil species which must be transformed into a new creation by God's grace, the Celtic believers believed that the goodness of God remains in creation and the human condition is that of God's image-bearers imprisoned by sin, yet longing to be freed by God's grace and restored to the righteous species we were created to be.  Roman spirituality declares that the fall erased the image of God from our humanity. Celtic spirituality believes that the image of God remains, though it is imprisoned by sin.

The Roman church locates it's authority in the person of St. Peter as a symbol of faithful action and outward unity.  The Celtic church honors all of the saints, but resonates most deeply with the person of St. John, the beloved disciple who leaned into the chest of the Savior at the Last Supper and listened to the heartbeat of God.

Next, I'll simply share with you a series of quotes from the book.

"Celtic Christian spirituality is one of deep and rich perspective, with origins in the mystical traditions of the Old and New Testaments."

"How many of us were taught actually to look for God within creation and to recognize the world as the place of revelation and the whole of life as sacramental?  Were we not for the most part led to think that spirituality is about looking away from life, so that the Church is distanced from the world and spirit is almost entirely divorced from the matter of our bodies, our lives, and the world?"

"In the old Celtic prayers the lights of the skies, the sun and moon and stars, are referred to as graces, the spiritual coming through the physical, and God is seen as the Life within all life and not just the Creator who set life in motion from afar."

"Pelagius maintained that the image of God can be seen in every newborn child and that, although obscured by sin, it exists at the heart of every person, waiting to be released through the grace of God.  He argued this despite increasing acceptance throughout the Western Church of Augustine's teaching that every child is born sinful.  Augustine believed that the image of God can be restored to us only though the Church and it's sacraments.  He thus developed a spirituality that accentuated a division between the church, which was seen as holy, on the one hand and the life of the world, perceived as godless, on the other."

If you're interested in looking at the book for yourself, click here.

On Being a Phony

To me a Christian is either a man who lives in Christ or a phony.  You Christians do not appreciate that it is on this - the almost external testimony that you give of God - that we judge you.  You ought to radiate Christ.  Your faith ought to flow out to us like a river of life.  You ought to infect us with a love for him.  It is then that God who was impossible becomes possible for the atheist and for those of us whose faith is wavering.  We cannot help being struck, upset, and confused by a Christian who is truly Christlike.  And we do not forgive him when he fails to be.

~ A 23 year old woman in grad school at the University of Paris (quoted from The Importance of Being Foolish by Brennan Manning)

Anointed One or Empowered Many

A while back I had lunch with a full-time pastor for whom I have the utmost respect.  We eventually began discussing my struggle with whether or not to remain an "ordained" elder in our denomination.  That led to a deeper discussion about my struggle with the separation of clergy and laity into two distinct classes of Christians:  Those who are authorized to do ministry and those to whom the ministry is done.

We covered all the bases around the field of ministry leadership. And finally he said something that, on face value, made sense.

"Bill, if you look at the Old Testament and the great leaders God put into place, you'll find that most of the times when things went wrong, it came out of the masses, not out of the leaders."

After lunch I found myself thinking about this throughout the afternoon.  It seemed to make sense.  God raised up Moses as the anointed One to lead the masses out of captivity.  God raised up Joshua as the anointed One to capture the Promised Land.  God raised up David as the anointed One to lead Israel as a man after God's own heart.  God raised up the prophets as anointed Ones to speak truth to the wayward masses.  On the other hand, it was the masses that caused Israel to wander in the wilderness for forty years.  It was the masses who made the gold calf. It was the masses who decided to leave the Godless nations in place as a snare to Israel.  It was the masses who decided that Israel needed a human king like the other nations and got Saul as their king.

I see clearly that this principle of the anointed One leading the needy masses is present in the Old Testament.  But...

Enter Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

I see a fundamental change in the order of things with the coming of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit.  As soon as Jesus came on the scene and began his ministry, he began to overturn the old order and put a new order in place.  Jesus certainly was the anointed One to atone for humanity.  But he seemed to be saying with his life and teaching that the focus will move away from the anointed-One mentality toward the empowered many.

He immediately began raising up twelve men to do what he did and promised that they would even do more than he did.  Those empowered twelve became an empowered 120 on Pentecost.  On the same day the empowered 120 became the empowered 3,120.  Shortly thereafter, the empowered 3,120 had grown to the empowered 5,000. 

The church grew exponentially with thousands and thousands of believers being filled with the Holy Spirit.  But it wasn't long before they began trying to reverse the order that Jesus had inaugurated.  The Corinthians began to shift the focus away from the empowered many back to the anointed One.  They began exalting certain people with certain gifts, and they began dividing and grouping themselves around the "celebrity" ministers.  Paul finally had to write a letter to instruct them to knock it off, function as a body, and recognize only Christ himself as the head of the church.

Fast-forward to the fourth century.  By the end of the century you find a complete shift away from the empowered many to the anointed One in the form of Popes, bishops, and priests.  And throughout the church age, nearly every heretical movement or act of treachery (crusades, inquisitions, indulgences) came not out of the masses but out of the elite community of the anointed Ones, while most of history's recorded spiritual awakenings came out of the masses, not out of the elite community of anointed ones.

Isn't it time that we returned to the revelation that Christ alone is the head of the church, and the church is a body of many parts - a temple of living stones - with every member being empowered by the Holy Spirit to live lives of holiness as participants in the redemptive mission of God to a wayward humanity?