Monthy Archive: May 2007
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May 07, 2007

Life : Docking With the Mothership

For several years I worked as an engineer for companies that developed third-party hardware and software for Macintosh computers. In those days when someone would go to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA; we would say that they were “docking with the mothership”. We all understood that we orbited and drew our strength from that central source and needed to return to there occasionally to get our vision refreshed.

Well, this week, I am spending some time docked at a different mothership.

For the last seven and a half years, I have been a part of churches that belonged to the Association of Vineyard Churches (a.k.a. “the Vineyard Movement” or “Vineyard Christian Fellowships”). That is a small percentage of the time I have been a Christian; but I have learned a lot from the Vineyard people, as I did from Foursquare, from Catholics, from Baptists, from Assemblies of God, and from the various independent churches I have been a part of. As you may have guessed, I consider myself a Christian and not a member of some denomination; but for now God seems to have me spending time working within the Vineyard Movement.

Which brings me this week,which I am spending down in Anaheim, CA (near Los Angeles) to attend the Vineyard National Leadership Conference along with a few thousand other pastors and lay leaders within the movement. It’s a chance for me to get some sense of what the denomination thinks God is doing and what their part is in it.

This is not just “the mothership” in terms of being a meeting of the denomination’s leadership; but also in terms of its location. In the 80’s and 90’s, the Anaheim Vineyard was the home church of John Wimber who was the key leader in the early years of the movement. This was the church you went to to get a sense of what Vineyard churches were all about. Now these days, the denomination’s headquarters has moved to Texas and the role of Anaheim Vineyard declined after Wimber’s death; but it is still interesting to visit this place for the historical role it played back when Vineyard was the fastest growing denomination in the world.

Posted by Steven at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 09, 2007

Faith : Cargo Cult Christianity

There is an interesting (and well documented) phenomenon that has occurred many times on various Pacific islands – the formation of “cargo cults”. While these have been documented as far back as 1885 (as a result of the British Navy), the classic cargo cults come from the U.S. Navy’s “island hoping” campaigns in World War II. A typical example goes something like this – the American Military shows up at a remote island and sets up a temporary base. They build an airfield and a pier at which ships can dock. Soldiers show up to guard the base and are led in marching drills to keep them ready for action. While the military is there, lots of “goods” flood into the island – food, clothing equipment, etc. some of which make it into the hands of the people who lived on the island before the military showed up.

Eventually the military abandons the base and moves on to the next strategic island; and here’s where things get interesting. In many cases, the local people who are left on the island pick up where the soldiers left off. They maintain the airfield; they create mockups of rifles and uniforms. They do marching drills, shouting orders at each other, and generally act like they saw the soldiers act while they were there. Why? To get goods to come to the island again. To the islanders, all of the soldiers activities seemed like religious rituals designed to appeal to the cargo gods. The thought is that if they could only do the same things, perhaps airplanes full of goods would show up for them as well.

What I find interesting is that this was not an isolated occurrence – some unique curiosity that happened one time on one island. There are instead dozens of documented examples of cargo cults. Nor are they necessarily transient in nature – something done by those who observed the soldiers that quickly passes from memory when the next generation comes to ascendance. The John Frum cult has been going strong for 50 years now, being led now by the grandchildren of the original founders. There is something in human nature that makes us susceptible to doing this.

Enlightened westerners often shake their heads at how foolish these cargo-cult islanders are. “Obviously” simply doing the same things they saw the soldiers do will not bring planes and boats to the islands. Yet these same people often go to church on Sunday and participate in cargo cult Christianity.

Go back into the history of almost any denomination or Christian movement and you’ll find that it started with some powerful move of God. Something happened that shook people up and convinced them that God was doing something special in that time and place. However, what you most often find today are churches that are frozen monuments to those times long passed. They sing the same songs as they did when God originally showed up. Meetings are structured the same way. Sermons are preached on the same topics. Why? Because people want to see God move just like He did 50, 100, 200, 400 years ago. The thinking is that if they would only act exactly like they did back when God first moved in their midst, perhaps He would return and move again. The truth however is that God didn’t show up because of the songs that were sung or any of the other forms or rituals, any more that the ships and planes showed up on the Pacific islands because of the forms and “rituals” of the soldiers. What many Christians practice is cargo-cult Christianity.

Of course, the converse approach is equally flawed. Repeating the forms of the past will not get God to show up; but neither will doing things in gratuitously new ways. Singing new “modern” songs, using multi-media presentations and new was of structuring church services may attract more people; but will in themselves do nothing to attract God’s attention. Making Christianity gratuitously new might help create huge churches; but they will be as devoid of God’s active presence as churches that insist on sticking with the old ways.

The truth is, God shows up when he find people who are humble and willing to do what He wants to do at that time and place - people who are not interesting in getting God to do anything; but rather are interesting in getting themselves to do what God wants. That’s why so many movements fail so quickly – as soon as God shows up in power, the people start to think it’s about them and not God. They become proud and start asking God to “do it again” or “do it some more” as if it was their position to command God. Then God departs to find some other group that is humble and contrite. Meanwhile the original group continues practicing the forms that used to work in hope that God will show up again, someday.

Posted by Steven at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 13, 2007

Faith : Is X a sin?

As someone who doesn't hide my Christian faith, I periodically have people ask me "So, do you think X is a sin?" where X is usually some cultural hot-button issue. Their tone and body language tend to communicate that this is some kind of litmus test – if I answer "yes", then I am some kind of religious fascist to be discounted and avoided, while if I answer "no", then there is hope that I might be a reasonable human being.

The problem is, as I understand Christianity those are completely the wrong questions to be asking, so in fact my answer (whatever it may be) is not a good means to understand what I believe. Despite the loud proclamations of many well-intentioned people, Christianity isn't about "sins", lists of things we must do or not do – it is about relationships. This is why I can provide my own answer to the question "Is X a sin" without actually bothering to say what X is.

First, for the non-Christian, whether any specific X is a sin is irrelevant.

The only thing God asks for non-Christians to understand about sin is that we all do it. We have all done things (or taken up attitudes) that have (or have the potential to) hurt ourselves and others. We have all done things which are not the best for us. Someone might disagree whether a particular activity falls into that category, that's OK as long as they acknowledge that some of the things that they do are (potentially) harmful, not the best. If they don't, I would claim that they have proven themselves to be guilty of the sin of pride (which leaves you open to all sorts of harm).

As a Christian then, the sins of those who have not made a commitment to Jesus are a non-issue. It is what is expected. Nowhere in the Bible do I see Christians called to respond to the sins of those outside the faith. The fact that people sin is often acknowledged, and Christians are encouraged to behave differently; but there is no call to try and change the behavior of non-believers. I only care about the sins of non-Christians to the extent that they hurt people – I do believe that Christians are called, out of compassion, to treat the hurts caused by sin. Otherwise, non-believers are just doing what comes naturally.

So, what then about Christians? Does it matter to them if X is a sin or not? Well, yes and no. As Christians, we are called to be obedient to God. To become a Christian one must "accept Jesus as Lord and Savior" (as the Baptists used to say). The "accepting Jesus as Lord" part of that means that you commit yourself to obey Him. I claim that a proper understanding of obedience means that Christians don't need to keep lists of do's and don'ts.

As an example: John Wimber (the key leader in the early days of the Vineyard movement – he's on my mind since I just got back from an Association of Vineyard Churches conference) was a quite successful musician before he came to know Jesus. Soon after he committed his life to Jesus, God led him to give up music. So he packed up all of his instruments, notebooks, etc. and drove them to the local dump and left them there. So, is doing music a sin? No! Many Christians are involved in both secular and Christian music. But would it have been a sin if John Wimber had continued to do music after sensing that God wanted him to stop? Yes! It would have been disobedience. I can speak from my own life that there are many thing that God has led me to give up either temporarily or indefinitely that aren't "sins" in the sense that no Christian should do them. They may not be harmful for everyone; but I trust (because God told me to stop) that they would have risked harm to me (or to someone else through me).

So when a Christian comes to me and asks "Is X a sin?" my reply is to ask "Whether it is a generic sin for everyone or not, would you be open to God asking you to stop doing it?"

If their answer is "no", then I claim X is in fact a sin for them (regardless of whether it is for anyone else); because it is something they value more than their relationship with God. The Bible has a word for that – idolatry, and idolatry is most definitely a sin.

If on the other hand, they search their heart and are honest with themselves and come to the conclusion that if God asked them to stop they would in fact do so, then my response is that they shouldn't ask me if X is a sin; but rather ask God. Only God knows the future and understands the possible harm or benefit of an activity or attitude.

But (you may ask) aren't there things which are "obviously" sins (murder, theft, etc.) for which I should simply respond "yes, that's a sin"? Well certainly there are many activities and attitudes that the Bible unambiguously describes as sin. What I can not answer so clearly is: what sins in a person's life are most important for them to address?

To make this point clear, I'll share a story of a friend of mine. Before he came into a relationship with Jesus, he was what pretty much everyone would consider a "bad man". He was a violent drug dealer, slept with a gun under his pillow, etc. Then he came to know Jesus. One of the first things God led him to do was to start tithing (giving 10% of his income to his local church). Now I don't want to get into the question of whether tithing is a requirement for Christians or not, that's not the point. What matters is that my friend was called to start tithing, and he did so – on the income he earned dealing drugs.

Yes, my friend was still dealing drugs as he started tithing as a Christian!

Now many people would have said that the first thing he should do was stop dealing; but that wasn't how God worked with him. As my friend explained to me in hindsight, what God understood was that the root of many of my friend's problems was greed. It was why he dealt drugs. It was why he was violent (to protect his wealth), etc. Until God could deal with my friend's greed, progress would be slow on the other issues (and he would likely just trade one bad behavior for another – perhaps becoming a dishonest sales person). So God's first step was to get my friend to loosen his grip on his money. Once that was done, God was able to get him to change the other things as well.

The lesson I take from that is that we can never know which of someone else's problems are the most important for them to work on – only God can. We may look at someone's obvious, visible sins and say they should work on them first; but God, who sees what is going on inside of them, may know better. So yes, there are things I can confidently say "X is a sin"; but as long as the Christian is open to God's work in their life, I am comfortable leaving it up to God when to address that issue. Only when someone is resistant to what God wants them to do, does it become an issue for other Christians to address - address with both love and humility as we all have our issues.

Posted by Steven at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 19, 2007

TV : 2007 Up-fronts

It is Up-front season again – the time when the television networks announce to the affiliates and advertisers what their fall lineup is expected to be. There are usually a few changes between the up-front announcements and what actually airs; and it is often difficult to determine the actually quality of show from what the networks send out; but for TV fans like myself this is a good opportunity to see if there are any shows with interesting concepts coming down the pipe.

Last year there was a very promising set of announcements. There were ten new shows that I thought had promise. Last year was also a good example that promise is no guarantee of success. Of the ten shows I thought had promise, only three turned out to actually be good; and of those, only one, "Heroes", survived to the end of the season.

Which brings us to this year, whose announcements are, in my opinion, nearly devoid of promise. If last year (inspired by the success of shows like "Lost") the networks were open to trying new things, new concepts; this year they are being far more conservative, with a multitude of re-hashes of older shows and ideas.

In terms of trends, the networks seem to be balancing the growth of "reality" shows with an increase in "unreality" – there are eight new Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy shows planned. Unfortunately, almost all of those shows appear to be retreads of earlier series. So you have "Reaper", which seems to be a reincarnation of "Brimstone", "Chuck" which borrows from "Jake 2.0", "Journeyman" from "Quantum Leap", "New Amsterdam" from "Highlander", "Moonlight" from "Angel"; and of course "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and "The Bionic Woman" which are at least honest about their derivation.

The only new SciFi idea seem to be "Pushing Daisies" about a private investigator who has the ability to bring dead people back to life by touching them – but if he ever touches them again, they die permanently (which is a problem since his girlfriend is one of the people he has saved). An interesting idea for a short story, or perhaps a movie; but a series? I just don't see that this can go very far.

The non-sci-fi shows exhibit a similar lack of originality. So is this fall devoid of hope? Well, not quite. There are a few shows that caught my eye:

The IT Crowd
This is an import of a British comedy about computer system administrators in a large corporation. Think live-action Dilbert. I haven't seen the UK version; but everyone I know who has, raves about it. Now UK to US imports have had a mixed track record – Coupling failed horribly; while The Office seems to have translated well. In general it seems to be better to watch the original version than the US remake; but one can always hope.

Kid Nation
A reality show with a new concept. Take forty kids and put them into an empty town without parents and find out what kind of society they create on their own. I assume the producers will step in if it become too "Lord of the Flies"; but I admit I'm interested to see how they do this and how it works out

Bionic Woman
When I heard they were going to do a remake of "The Bionic Woman", I really wanted to hate it. I never liked the original series and saw no reason to do it again. Then I found out that David Eick, who is one of those responsible for the excellent "Battlestar Galactica "remake is involved, so I checked out the trailer and clips NBC provided at the upfront and this is now the show I am most looking forward to this Fall. As with 'Galactica, the new series looks much darker and more complex and appears to be set up to address a lot of tough questions. The proof will come this Fall; but they've already got me for the first 3 episodes.

Posted by Steven at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 21, 2007

Faith : Modernism, Postmodernism and the Christian Church

I've been reading a lot of books lately from the Emergent/Emerging Church movement. While that "movement" seems more to be a convenient label applied to a variety of disparate views and not what I would consider a cohesive movement, there is one aspect that everyone under that umbrella seems to agree upon – that they all are reacting to our culture's transition from being a "modern" society to a "postmodern" one. I agree that such a transition is taking place and that Christians need to take a look at what parts what they think of as "Christianity" are in fact central to that faith and which are cultural artifacts accumulated in the Modern Age (or before).

Modernism really started with the Enlightenment in the 18th Century, and there are many good definitions for it out there (check out Wikipedia for an example). To me the central concept of modernism is that everything in life can be taken apart like a mechanical clock - its parts classified, placed into a hierarchy of subassemblies – and then with the understanding of how it all works, can be put back together better, stronger, faster. It is an optimistic view that everything can be understood by breaking it down into smaller pieces and everything can be improved with that understanding.

Modernism loves the quest for "fundamental" truths – those that all other truths are built upon – that are found by breaking down everyday concepts into their constituent parts. Modernism loves categories and hierarchies – it values knowing that the common house cat is Animalia Chordata Mammalia Carnivora Felidae Felis Catus (F. Catus for short).

Postmodernism is however a bit harder to define (again, the Wikipedia entry on Postmodernism spends a lot of time talking about how unclear the definition is). It is acknowledged that it is in some way a reaction to the failings of modernism; but that often leads to definitions of what Postmodernism isn't as opposed to what it is. This is perhaps inevitable since we are just at the start of the transition from Modern to Postmodern society. If you asked someone back in the 1700's what kind of world-view the Enlightenment would lead to, they might be hard pressed to come up with answers other than how it wouldn't be like Medieval society.

To me, Postmodernism has a few key points. First, it recognizes that "the whole is greater than the sum if its parts" - that something is often lost when you break things down into their constituent pieces. This is not a matter of having missed some part in the analysis; but that there are things which are by nature holistic and therefore can not be broken down. Second, it recognizes that not everything can be neatly categorized into hierarchies and not all things have "fundamental" concepts on which they are built – that the relationships between things are far more complex than modern-style taxonomies can handle. The process of "deconstruction" that many associate with Postmodernism is really just looking for places where "fundamental" concepts identified by Modernism are in fact built on top of cultural artifacts that are less fundamental – in other words Modernism's neat hierarchies actually have loops within them.

If the disassembled clock with all its pieces neatly arranged is the metaphor for modernisms, then the world wide web may prove to be the ultimate metaphor for Postmodernism – everything is related to everything else with no clear hierarchies. In fact, the original Yahoo web site that tried to organize the web into a well-ordered directory is a great demonstration of the failure of Modernism while Google demonstrates the triumph of Postmodernism, defining things only by their relationships to each other.

So how does this relate to the Christian Church?

Modern Christianity takes Christian Theology and breaks it down into categories and doctrines and eventually down to "fundamental" truths with the expectation that understanding and believing in those fundamental truths is what makes you a Christian. In many respects, "Christian Fundamentalism" is the Christian counterpart to Modernism's disassembled clock. It provides a neat hierarchy of doctrines which must be accepted and has discarded any doctrines that do not fit cleanly into the hierarchy. However, as with many Modern artifacts, there is often something lost in the process – the whole of Christianity is greater than the sum of its doctrines, and a version of Christianity that has been built bottom-up from its "fundamental" doctrines is often just hollow religion.

To be very clear (before someone cries "heretic") I am not saying that the fundamental doctrines of Modern Christianity are somehow wrong. My own beliefs are actually fairly orthodox. The issue is not that the whole does not include all of the identified parts; but that it is more than the combination of those parts – that there are aspects of Christianity that can not be decomposed into simple doctrines that can be easily taught and believed.

Modern Christianity also tends to rely on clear categorizations – sinner/saint, clergy/laity, etc. – and on hierarchies – pew-warmers report to lay ministers, lay ministers report to pastors/priests, pastors/priests report to overseers and so on up until you (we all hope) get to God at the top of the hierarchy. But are these categorizations and hierarchies really intrinsic to Christianity or are they cultural artifacts we have accumulated in the church – perhaps from as far back as medieval days? I am a Christian (and therefore by Modern Protestant Theology, I am a Saint); but I also sin, and am therefore a Sinner. If all Christians are called to "do the work of the ministry" (Ephesians 4:11-12), then where does the distinction between clergy and laity come from?

A Postmodern Christianity would then find a more holistic representation of the faith that recognizes the truth of central doctrines while understanding that Christianity is more than believing those doctrines. A Postmodern Christianity would discard strict categorizations of people in favor of more relational definitions. An example of this is the distinction between a bounded set and a centered set. A bounded set draws a clear line and defines things as either in the set or out. A centered set defines a clear center and then identifies thing by how they are related to that center – are they moving towards it or farther away. Modern Christianity categorizes people based on whether they are "in the church" or not; but often abandons them once they cross that boundary. A Postmodern Christianity might well be more focused on if someone is moving closer to Jesus or father away, regardless of whether they are "in the church" or not.

So how do we start finding what Christianity may become in a Postmodern world? First we must begin with the process of deconstruction – asking ourselves what aspects of Christianity as it is practiced today are merely cultural artifacts picked up in the Modern (or even Medieval) world, and which things are central and unchanging about Christianity. That is a scary question for many Christians who might find that things they hold dear are in fact not "Christian" at all; but rather merely "Modern". Then we must go looking for those aspects of Christianity which have been abandoned by the Modern Church because they either did not fit into the neat hierarchy of doctrines or could not be categorized to begin with.

Posted by Steven at 07:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)