Which Lens Do You Look Through?

My, my, how things have changed in the world we live in . I'm speaking specifically to the United States of America, American churches, and American Christians. Back when President Clinton was in office, the mid and late 90's, he signed into law the defense of marriage act. In just over a decade things have changed drastically. In fact it wasn't that long ago that President Obama's stance on marriage was "evolving". Now today he is poised to throw open the social flood gates of this country through his stance on same sex marriage. Some churches are doing the same and others are considering joining up as well.

These issues are not going away but I'm not going to address the cultural/political issues here. My charge in this post is to address how people who claim Jesus as Lord think.

If you claim Jesus as Lord of your life, you are now entering a point in history where your point of view is not shared by the majority of people and in some parts of the country only a relatively small minority of people share it. Gone are the days where your neighbor's worldview was the same as yours. So my question to you, "Christians," is What Lens Do You Look At Life Through?

The people you come together to worship the Lord with on the weekends don't often hold the same worldview as the person sitting next to them or in front of them. I'm not saying we all must have the exact same thoughts, but they don't see life from the same lens. When I say lens, I mean that they don't project their life from a Christian worldview standpoint. They may be born again Jesus followers but they do not understand Jesus or the Bible to the point that they think, believe, and act from a biblical perspective. This is why I asked the question about which lens you look out of.

Let me explain what I mean. As a follower of Jesus I must look at everything in life through the lens of the bible and then interpret what I see in life and filter it through the scriptures. So I begin believing the bible is the authority on all things and then work from there trying to understand how to respond to situations, people, and issues. But what I see in the American church today is people who claim Jesus but look to the bible for justification for what they believe about life, society, relationships, politics, etc... If they can't find the justification then they distort the scriptures to make them fit what they want to believe. What they do is assume that something they believe is true or acceptable or our culture says is right and then try to figure out how to wrap the bible around what they believe to be true. The lens they work from is what our culture has taught them rather than what the bible has to say.

Herein lies the problem, once you say "yes" to Jesus you are a new creation, the old things are gone the new has come. (1 Cor. 5:17) We cannot stay the same, we must as Paul said in Romans 12: 2, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will".

Paul says we must change the way we think. We must change the way we view life, we must change the lens through which we look through. The life that comes after you've said yes to Jesus is a life that is in preparation for life with Him in eternity. It is a life that He has called us to participate in. But it is so much more than just preparation for eternity. Jesus spoke about His kingdom in the future, but He also spoke about His Kingdom that is now. We are to usher in that kingdom with him. We are to love and care for people on the margins of society, and to help heal the hurts of this life and move people towards how we were originally created. We are to point people back to the way things were supposed to be and remind them that those things will come again at Christ's return. Romans 8: 29 says that "... he predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son". Becoming like Christ is what is to be going on now and will continue until we go home to Him. So it matters how we view this world. It matters how we think and believe. 

Unfortunately people aren't the only ones with this approach, many churches have adopted the same kind of thinking and reasoning. Except the greater calamity of the church, is that they have exchanged a biblical lens for a cultural one. They are changing positions on issues like homosexuality, same sex marriage, living together before marriage, sex before marriage, evolution, and so on. (An example would be a message on creation and evolution that was presented through the science/evolutionary lens with the bible then wrapped around it, rather than through a biblical lens with the science wrapped around it.) When this happens in churches it is scary because they have begun to forsake Biblical truth in an effort to gains man's approval (Gal. 1: 10). It's scary because people come to church looking for answers to these issues or subjects and the answers they receive confirms what culture says. This corrupts the average believer because unless they figure things out on their own they'll continue to believe it because the church said so. This is a serious failure on the churches part and they will one day have to answer for leading people astray.

Churches today have a handy cover story that they use to justify their position; it's called love and that Jesus loved and accepted everyone so we should do the same. The problem is that the person of God doesn't change and things like justice and personal holiness  and righteousness are expected as well as love and other things. Jesus told people he demanded more. Read the new testament if you don't believe me. He never left someone they way He found them. There was always a command or an expectation to "Go and sin no more".

As a follower of Jesus everything in life is looked at through the lens of the bible. It is impossible to separate your beliefs from the issues of this life. For example, the election in November was an exercise in worldview, as stated by Albert Mohler. And there are Christians who say they can separate politics from their beliefs. They lie to themselves if they believe this, because a person can only have one core belief system, there isn't room for two. This isn't about Republican or Democrat it's about where you project your life from and the lens that you look at life from. You can't separate how you believe from how you respond to anything in life, including an election.

It's a scary thing to think about how our culture has changed, and I believe it will shape the American churches for years to come. As American Christians we haven't been challenged to understand why we believe what we believe. We just believe, because that's what most of America believes. But not anymore. If we don't come to grips with Biblical truth and the reality of what our culture is saying is acceptable, we will be washed away like so many individuals and churches have in the stream of moral relativism. If we don't recognize that Jesus expects our minds to be transformed and not conformed to the patterns of this world then we'll continue to accept things in our lives and our churches that are in direct opposition to him. We'll make our God smaller and smaller until He isn't big enough to do anything anymore. (We can't actually change God, He doesn't change) But the God we will convey to others is small and weak and isn't worth following. As followers of Jesus are we going to own our faith and begin to look at things through the lens of the bible and transform our minds or are we going to continue to look through the lens of our culture, not change the way we think, and then try to wrap the bible and our faith around it?

Vending Machine Jesus

A few weeks ago I was reading a book by N.T. Wright titled "After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters". I've not finished the book yet but the basic premise of it says that we are saved for a purpose and what we do from the time we place our faith in Jesus till the time we die, matters. It matters very much.

A few weeks back the pastor was talking about treating God like a vending machine in our prayer life. He was dead on, as far I'm concerned, because it seems like that's how we treat Him. Deposit coin, God help me with..., deposit coin, God get me this job..., and so on and so forth. Now I want to say that these prayers are perfectly fine, however, if this is the only way we go to God in prayer then we do treat Him as a spiritual vending machine.

Now there are a ton of reasons that people who are way smarter than me have come up with to explain this. Entire books have been written about it. So why am I going to tackle it? Because I think I have a different idea about why some of us might do this. I'll begin with a portion of Wright's book.

"...part of the problem is that for many centuries Christians have assumed that virtually the only point in Jesus's death was 'to save us from our sins,'...But for the gospels themselves, that rescue of individuals (which of course remains a central element) is designed to serve a larger purpose: God's purpose, the purpose of God's kingdom. And in God's kingdom human beings are rescued, are delivered from their sin, in order to take their place (as Jesus already called the disciples to take theirs) not only as receivers of God's forgiveness and new life, but also as agents of it."

"...for Paul the whole point of the achievement of Jesus and his death and resurrection is that, through Jesus, a redeemed people has come to birth, and that through this people the creator will ultimately set the whole world to rights." 1 Cor. 5: 17 and Gal. 6: 15 come to mind in reference to new creations.

Now for my original thoughts about God the vending machine. The American church has spent a considerable amount of time focusing on communicating love to its congregations and the people they are trying to minister to. God is love after all as 1 John 4: 8 says. All of this is absolutely true. When people continue to hear over and over again how much God loves us and that he died for us and that he wants what is best for us, our sinful nature, I believe, begins to twist these amazing truths. How so? I think somehow being told over and over again that God loves us so much that He died for us we start to believe that God exists for our purposes and not us for His. Like He created us so He could serve us. In someway we start to look at God like He's hanging around waiting for us to ask him to do something for us.

Another reason I believe we treat God this way is because only one side of the salvation story is told. The salvation story is often told like this; God created man in His image, man sinned and it corrupted all of mankind because of that sin, sin is what separates us from God, we can't get to God with our own efforts, God loves us so much that He sent His son Jesus to be a ransom for sin, Jesus never sinned and was therefore a lamb worthy of paying for our sins, His death and resurrection means that once we place our faith in Jesus we no longer have to pay for the sins that separate from God. Jesus died so we wouldn't have to, end of story. And that is often where the salvation message ends with people.

And then this is how we start to think: How nice of God to love us that much, how important must we be if God sacrificed His own son on our behalf. I must be really important because God loved me that much. So since God loves me that much He must want what is best for me, so I can ask anything of Him and He'll grant it to me. I'm saved now, I'm good to go. What I do after this doesn't matter. Do you see how this thinking can start to happen?

Wright does a wonderful job of helping us to understand the other side of the salvation story. God does love us in a crazy sort of way, He loves us with the plan that we are delivered and declared not guilty so that we can help usher in His kingdom that is now. We can't help usher in His kingdom when we are still separated from God by our sins. We are saved for His purposes. What we do with our lives from the day we decide to follow Jesus till the day we die matters.

I have 4 children and I've been telling them about Jesus and how He died for our sins so we won't have to pay for them. The scary thing is that I'm telling them something that is true, but I've realized I'm only telling part of the story to them. I personally love the fact that I get to help usher in the kingdom of God that is here and now. That I get to be are part of God's transforming work on this earth as it is today. That every time a person turns from sin they are getting a glimpse of how God created us to be originally before the fall and how we will be after He returns. I must tell my children and others that when you accept Jesus as Lord you were saved to be part of His kingdom that is here and now, not just so that we don't have to pay for our sins. It is the reward that we are promised that motivates us to love others and tell others about Jesus... so that they can be part of the reward that is motivating us to tell them about Him.

This is good news and a truth that I want to be a part of. It's important for us to communicate this truth to people about why we were saved. My kids are now starting to understand this. I'm happy for that. Now, do I believe that because they are starting to understand this that they won't treat God like a vending machine, no, but I believe that if we elevate and only speak about one aspect of the person of God that we begin to distort the immensity of who He is and wants to be for us. Specifically I'm saying that God's love has been or can be elevated above other characteristics of Him. God is love, but he is so much more and demands so much more. (1 Peter and Leviticus says "Be holy for I am Holy) I'm not trying to lower the love of God, but what I am saying is that God has bigger plans for us and his kingdom and that everything is about Him. Love is His instrument that He has given us to use for the ushering in of His here and now kingdom. Love is not the end of the story, it is the beginning and it is what transforms us into vessels that He can use to transform others. When we realize this truth we can begin to stop treating God like a vending machine and more like the Lord that He is.

Demand Excellence: The Beginning

One of my favorite movies is High Fidelity, staring John Cusack and Jack Black. The movie centers around John Cusack's character Rob, who owns a record store and spends the movie recounting the top 5 relationship breakups of his life. In the meantime he works with Jack Black's character, Barry who is a music elitist that thinks everyone's opinion is terrible and he's not afraid to tell you. Todd Louiso plays Dick, the third character of the music elitists. All three of them go rounds about what is good music and what isn't, great 1st songs, top albums, and organizing your record collection autobiographically.

I bring this up because their arguments/discussions are the same arguments I have with myself about society, church, God, relationships, parenting, music, movies, food, beer, wine, and pretty much anything else. This blog is dedicated to the "Elitist" in all of us that demands excellence in one way or another.

Check out the clip of High Fidelity. Rob sort of sums up fantasy and reality in this clip. I love it because too many of us spend our time chasing a fantasy, and it screws up all that is good about reality. 

I will be blogging over the course of the year on many of the things I've mentioned above. I hope it challenges you and I hope that you'll challenge me on some of the things I have to say.

Excellence begins with each decision we make everyday. Here's hoping that 2013 is Excellent and not just Average.