Finding the Contaminated World “out there” Inside the Sacred “Here”

The first lesson we learn as we come into this world is that there is a world beyond our spheres of comfort. Unfortunately, we in the Church either have yet to learn this lesson … or we have forgotten it … or we simply have excommunicated it to the “no-man’s-land” of the barbarian wilderness.

Ironically this seems to be the main message of the recently released film “Doomsday.” An efficiently deadly virus “the Reaper Virus” has infected parts of Scotland. The government of the United Kingdom makes the decision to quarantine Scotland by building a wall that follows the old Roman wall, built by Emperor Hadrian. The government decides to simply let the people wallow and die inside the wall. The wall is efficient at keeping the people in … but not in keeping the virus at bay. It resurfaces some 30 years later in London. The government begins to take a similar route in dealing with London … keep the contagion (ie. virus, people, etc) inside the quarantined area, seal it off, let the people rot and die.

Satellite imagery shows vehicle activity in Glasgow, and the government decides to send in a specialized team to find a long-forgotten scientist who was supposedly working on a cure inside the walled area. However, the photos are three years old, and only now are being acted upon.

The team is sent in and are overcome by the barbarian inhabitants living in the forgotten area. They are lawless, cannibals. Indeed one of the last recordings of the scientist is his grieving over the loss of personal and social morality of the survivors being absolute. Some of the team escapes from the cannibal clutches with the daughter of the scientist. She was also being held by the Cannibals … evidently as some sort of ransom in dealing with her father … who we eventually find out as taken the role of a medieval despot (king with absolute authority).

They flee to northern Scotland and encounter the long lost scientist … and his fiefdom. His society is exactly that of a medieval kingdom … castle, robes, knights, toothless women and all. The team is taken prisoner and interrogated by the scientist-turned-historic-Dracula-type. He has no cure. He quit trying to find one. He and many others fled to the north. He had convinced them that life did not exist outside the walls. Indeed he had grown to such an agoraphobia that life did not exist outside the walls of his castle. He very poignantly says, “We have survived through evolution. We have earned the right to keep to ourselves, isolated from corruption.”

The team manages to valiantly escape the Scottish Dracula’s Castle with the scientists daughter. They radio back to headquarters in London that they are ready to be picked up. After evading the cannibals one more time they are rescued by helicopter … except the leader of the team (she remains in the walled-country). She records a conversation with the English head honcho who came to rescue them. He confesses his plan to let the Londoners rot and only later present the cure to the world … as if he developed it. The recording manages to find its way to the media outlets all over the world … and his career … possibly his very life … is roasted.

While this movie was quite hard to watch, it carries a certain veracity in juxtapositioning three “societies” (contemporary civilization, utter barbarism, and medieval draconian serfdom). The common thread running through is human greed and selfishness … what the Scriptures teach is good-ole human sin nature. Despite our technological sophistication, we are all not that far removed from utter barbarism.

I am Wesleyan through and through to the core. Wesleyan Christianity teaches that the process of Salvation is victory over sin and transformation into the righteousness of God and thus increasingly greater fellowship with the Community of the Godhead (Father, Son, & Spirit) and increasingly greater fellowship with the community of the saints. I believe this with all my heart. This is what wakes me up in the morning and sends me to bed in the evening … to get rested for another day of practicing this type of Christianity. However, many of my Wesleyan friends have too greatly underestimated that stubborn sin nature that persistently haunts all people … Christian and non-Christian alike. Certainly it is true that we are to walk with increasing victory over sin and self and Satan in our lives. Yet, we have to remember we are not all at the same level of holiness, nor are we even all Christians. Human sin nature has to be taken seriously in our ministry … to one another as believers and to the world outside the walls of our church.

However, we must never forget that we are saved by God’s grace and Jesus’s blood and the Holy Spirit’s transformation of us. We must be humble, treading very lightly on distinguishing ourselves from those in the world. We are called to be a separate people … but only in how we live our lives, not necessarily where we live our lives. Our primary duty as Christian believers is to love God and love our neighbors (which means walking among our neighbors). Jesus defined our neighbor as anyone in need. “Anyone” includes those inside our walls of comfort and those behind the walls of contamination. If we are not careful to practice a “Great Commandments” Christianity, we may find the contaminated world “out there” is actually inside the sacred “here.”

A Rip Van Winkle Easter Part II

Yes, Easter has came and went this year. I feel like I’ve just awoken from a long winter’s nap (filled with nightmares) to find that life has moved on, fussy children showered in hormones floating through the air, sermons were preached, sick parishoners were visited … all while I “slept.”

Think the above to be a rather abrasive account of a cute, soft, and cuddly holiday? Therein might lie the problem which often plagues our churches, especially here in the Deep South. We take great pride in our nice, new Easter outfits, our Easter egg hunts, and our Easter Bunny visits to our children. We also like to pride ourselves on being the Bible Belt, while we have no idea what is actually in the Bible. Our statements of faith have become abreviated accounts of what our knowledgable elders told us was in there. Hey you could check it out for yourself. Just turn to the Pop-Psychology Gospel According to Joel Osteen, the Acts of the Racial Segregationists, or the Revelation to St. Tim LaHaye.

Liberals would like to check out their statements of faith, but their one sole statement of faith reassures them that they ought not to be bound to the moanings and groanings of antiquated cultures. Theological liberals simply laugh off their moment of weakness and set out with new zeal to prepare their next series of lectures to convince (uh…er…I mean “help”) their male students get in touch their femine sides … just like David and Johnathon. Evangelical liberals (who attempt to convice the world they are really theologically conservative while maintaining secular-progressive views on nearly every other facet of American socio-political life) would have checked their statements of faith, but Brian McLaren told them everything must change. So they excommunicated their statements of faith. They smile, thankful their Emergent “Christianity” has broken them out of their absolute prisons of “Modernism,” and joyfully load up in their Hybrids to go listen to Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis at the Democratic Party’s outreach to “Evangelicals.” Yes, their Postmodern, Emergent, Evangelical “Christianity” allows them to believe that McLaren and Wallis truly want liberals and conservatives to abandon their platforms and form a new and improved agenda together … so long as we all accept and embrace Contemporary Western Liberal Socialism. Oh, just a side note, they had to cancel their tickets to the International Conference on Person-made Global Warming … due to record cold temperatures and snow falls in the area.

This Easter we must move past our emotional comforts and delights as being the sole determiner of the worship that the Jesus of Scripture and orthodox Tradition demands.

(Yes, I know that Easter was last Sunday, but if you had that feeling, you need to reread this posting … for Easter is not simply that lone Sunday in the Spring when Peter Cottontail brings me my next diabetic coma. Easter is a year-round lifestyle of worship of the Jesus of Scripture and orthodox Tradition. Unfortunately, though, most of us don’t celebrate the Easter-Jesus, we celebrate the Easter-Bunny.)

A Rip Van Winkle Easter: Part One

Easter came and went in our home … at about the time it took to read this sentence. No doubt our little bundle of joyful colic (a month old by now) contributed to this Rip Van Winkle Easter. Yet this Easter, ole Rip didn’t sleep much. In fact the only thing lulled to sleep in our home lately is our 2-year old (who could sleep through Nuclear Holocaust) and my patience.

In a word, things have been tough … I mean roasting-and-eating-the-Easter-Bunny-tough.

And yet, I’m supposed to show up at church and preach about the love that conquered Sin, Death, and the Devil. How am I supposed to encourage people that Jesus defeated the Devil, when I feel like a devil?

But therein lies the fallacy that most believers … and would-be believers buy into. It comes in various forms:

• I’ll come to Jesus … when I can clean myself up.
• I would have come to church today, but I had a terrible fight with my husband …. I’d feel like such a hippocrite!
• The church would burn down if I came in.
• God knows what I think and feel when those idiots at work crowd in on me. I don’t think God likes it.

The fallacy we buy into is basically believing that if we cannot be perfect right now then I can have nothing at all to do with the God-stuff (church, worship, Jesus, Salvation, etc.). But in reality that is what Easter is all about.

We read in Mark’s Gospel (15:37, 38) “And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” Why does Mark think it necessary to include this detail? Mark is not a camcorder, recording infinite details that may or may not have anything to do with the story. Mark chooses details for a significant purpose.

Until Jesus came God’s presence lived in an inner chamber in the Jewish Temple called the Holy of Holies. No one could enter here … well no one except the Jewish High Priest. He could enter only once a year … and for the express purpose of making a sacrifice for the Sin of the people. When Jesus died he paid the penalty for the Sin of not only the Jewish people but also for the entire World. Jesus has paid the penalty for Sin, and now not only Jewish people but also the entire world can have access to the presence of God. (http://www.followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=2134)

I am accepted by the blood of Jesus. Yet, that is not the whole Gospel. Not only am I accepted by God because of the blood of Jesus, but his Holy Spirit seeks to transform me into the righteousness of God. It’s not “just as if I were righteous.” I am becoming the righteousness of God … because of the Holy Spirit’s changing me.

When I see ugly stuff pop up in my life, I don’t need to avoid God. I certainly don’t need to celebrate it, but I don’t need to avoid God, either. Rather, I need to run straight to the Father in worship, pleading for Him to cleanse me and transform me. That is part of the Easter message.

Slow-dancing to the Past Is Orientation for the Future

Sitting with my 2-year old at lunch, I found myself lost in thought and caught up in video clips about the Eliot Spitzer debacle. However, my thought bubble was busted by high-pitched demands for Elmo.

“Wanna watch Elmo!!!” Lips poked out and all.

You know, I’ve become increasingly desensitized to her cuteness lately, especially when the “terrible twos” are howling from sheep’s clothing and pony tails. Yet today, the pb & j painted on her face in ways reminiscent of bad make-up artistry made my heart melt.

So, if I’m going to concede to her wishes for an Elmo video clip on Google, then I’m going to at least choose the video!!! I love the sound of the Goo Goo Dolls, and their clip with Elmo is adorable. (However, I’m not too keen on the secularized self-esteem movement … another post for another day.)

The video ended before I could finish cleaning up. So I chose another … after all that is my prerogative!!! For whatever reason, I had a hankering to hear the late 80s hair band, Cinderella. Half way through their video to “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone),” we found ourselves slow dancing to the music. I’m a sucker for sad songs, especially “love” songs.

Listening to the lyrics, while holding her, and while still thinking about Spitzer’s escapades really hit me. I can only wonder if he truly appreciates the gravity of what he’s done to his family, New York, his own career, and … helped to “contribute” to “Kristen’s” situation. I wonder would he have been as sorry if he had not gotten caught.

Then I began to appreciate the gravity of my responsibility to my beautiful gift from God I was holding. Apparently “Kristen” came from a bad home situation. Despite however willingly she chose her “occupation,” Spitzer was merely using her for his own pleasure. And despite whatever she thinks of that for her own life, that breaks my heart for my own daughter. I simply cannot entertain even one quickie of a minute’s worth of consideration that my daughter might be “used” one day. My heart breaks harder than Spitzer’s bank account has over the past few rendezvouses with his “sweetie.”

I don’t want to have to wait until she’s gone to truly know what I’ve got right now.

Enjoy the song:

Integrity: A Timeless Concept

Last Friday, I watched the recently released, “10,000 BC.” While this movie seemed to demand that organized religion be sacrificed on the altar of extinction, the producer-priests may not have been able to get the fire started. Self-sacrifice for the community, the very value-system of the movie, is the heart and soul of the community ethos in Christianity.

One scene in particular comes to mind. Dei-lay (sp?) is a young boy competing in his village for the lead hunter position as well as for the right to marry his secrete sweet heart. The group of boys coxes a group of mammoths to charge. The boy who is successful in bringing down the chosen mammoth will be the winner. A mishap occurs, and the netting used to trap the beast gives way. Several boys, including Dei-lay, jump on the net hoping to find a way to kill the mammoth. Shortly all boys jump off, but Dei-lay gets stuck. Eventually the beast is stopped by the edge of a canyon, and throws the remaining netting off. Dei-lay attempts to spear him, but is unsuccessful. The mammoth charges him in between some rocks, but is stopped due to a large spear stuck in the ground (left stuck in the netting). The other boys come running and congratulate Dei-lay for his successful kill, crowning him the winner of the coveted position and woman. However, his conscience bothers him, and a short while later he relinquishes his position and woman. He explains that he did not truly win the contest, so he cannot truly claim the coveted position nor the woman (though he loved her more than life itself … she loved him as well).

“It is not the way of the Egal to claim the White Spear with a lie.”

Later in the movie he gets the opportunity to demonstrate his love for her with the solid integrity that is the character of his people. Social and personal integrity … what a novel concept for Christianity and Christian leaders.

Since organized religion was successfully presented in a very oppressive light … and nature/tribal spirituality was presented with great fragrance, there is the possibility that many people in our culture will be further discouraged from fully embracing the Old Time Religion of their grandparents. We have this rather unpleasant issue with our skeptical youth today.

The challenge for us who truly love the Church (holy warts and all) is not to completely shrug off our teenagers’ complaints. They are actually drowning in our hyper-individualistic culture and are seeking a liferaft of personal and social integrity in others, especially adults.