Amazing Indeed

This past Sunday night I took a group of high school students to watch the movie Amazing Grace... which is essentially the life story of William Wilberforce. Quite frankly, I did not know much about Wilberforce's legacy until I began studying up so I could let students know about why we were seeing this movie. My studies led me to a man who gave his life to living out the principles that he believed were paramount to following Jesus. In his case it happened to be the anti-slavery movement.

The challenge I gave my students ahead of watching the movie was, "What is God calling you to give your life to?"

The movie's title hearkens back to the title of the famous hymn by the same title... Amazing Grace. It is the life story of John Newton, the former slave ship master. It leads us to discuss the very nature of grace which communicates special favor given to the undeserving.

The question I was left with - in a rather overwhelming way - was the same question I left with my students... what does God want me to give my life to in this way?

As noble as abolishing the slave trade is (and I mean that), there is a far more important work to which I aspire. My life's work is very simply to help people see the reality of who God is and the difference I can make in the way people choose to live their lives!!!

Freedom!

I love being a teacher! Almost every time I open God's Word to teach students I receive much more than I could possibly give. This week as I prepared for my 2 talks that I would present Sunday I was struck by the similarities in theme. The irony is that they did not come from the same text and at face value, have little to do with each other.

The AM lesson was from the all-too-familiar passage in Luke 15 where Jesus gives the parable of the lost son. We looked at the response of the father. It was really a study of forgiveness. We talked about the freedom that is found when we are willing to let go of past hurts (even legitimate ones).

The PM lesson was a completely different track. We have been working our way through some of the classical spiritual disciplines of the faith. Tonight was a discussion of the discipline of simplicity. Learning to simplify our lives for the purpose of having a singular focus on the Kingdom of God. Our main thought came from Kierkegaard's book entitled Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. We learned to cut away superfluous (even sometimes good) things for the sake of focusing on what Jesus says ought to be the main thing... the Kingdom.

In both lessons I heard freedom. Freedom from anger and bitterness in the morning. And freedom from things that distract me from Christ in the evening. Lord, help me to live free!

Wrestling with Violence

Vengeance... how can something that feels so good be so wrong?

Recently I have been debating with many well-meaning Christians on the whole just-war concept... they usually speak as if this were a biblical term. I am struggling with war as a solution for many reasons:

1. I do not find war to be a biblical solution. Now I can just hear you saying, "Is he crazy? What about the Old Testament?" And that would be a great argument if you also continue to practice stoning your children when they are disrespectful... you have to be consistent.
Grace changes everything. You will be hard-pressed to find a New Testament example of war being seen as favorable (let alone commanded by God... as the OT argument usually goes).

2. I do not find war to be a theological solution. I find human vengeance an ultimate expression of a failure to trust God. So even in the Old Testament cases, I do not believe that God was condoning war as much as He was allowing it... in similar fashion as He allows divorce. It is not His desire. Nor does it suit His character. Instead it can be understood as the boundary response given to sinful man. If He says "vengeance is mine - I will repay", then my taking vengeance is nothing less than an assertion of my belief that He will not adequately take care of it.

3. I do not find war to be a practical solution. Let's just deal simply with this war that is before us. A TIME magazine article dated September 3, 2006 reports that we have now lost more United States citizens in Iraq then in the 9/11 tragedy. And this staggering testimony only counts those of our own country... not the foreign innocents stricken in the name of "fighting terror"... anyone else seeing the irony of that phrase?