Ted Haggard is a Crook?

When the news broke, and everyone was hard on him, I felt sympathy.

You see, I know what it is to be a hypocrite. I know what it is to say one thing and do another. I know I have it within me to completely disgrace the name of Christ with my failure. It frightens me.

I took it as a reminder of the need for accountability. I took it as a reminder that, no matter where God may take us, we are still able to completely fall.

I felt bad for him. You see, I get this guy. I know what it is to preach louder against the things that I hate about myself. That is why, even when comedians ran over him, like this (or, if you like jerks, this), or this especially funny one, I tried to reflect on how hard it would be to hate oneself as much as he must have.

Then he asked for money again.

This man had a $700,000 home in Colorado, an $135,000 severance package from the church he ‘faithfully served’ (being paid by them to get rub downs from a gay prostitute while they put him up in a hotel to work on his book), and continuing book royalties. Yet, he had the audacity to send out a plea for support from other Christians while he and his wife went to University of Phoenix.

Didn’t this guy understand that those outside the Christian community are already skeptical of the way churches ask for money? Didn’t he realize that his hypocrisy would cause many outside the community to suspect he was only in it for the money? How could he have the balls to ask for money?

This leads me to my question. When, if ever, is it acceptable to write someone off as a crook that faked it? Is it possible that we can say that, at least from every observable angle, this man was a fraud? Do we have an obligation to quit calling him a fallen brother and label him a crooked peddler? Will this protect the name of Christ?

Make no mistake. I see the struggle with making this assertion. I recognize that if Christ weren’t willing to associate with hypocrites, I would be out. At some point, though, I think we must be willing to call it as we see it. I think this man was a crook. I think he used the gospel to get rich and famous. At least according to anything I can see—and as much as it sickens me to say it, realizing the darkness of my own heart—I must say I think Ted Haggard was not a fallen brother with a dark side, but a crook.

Love and Vindication

I watched A Good Woman tonight. I learned a valuable lesson.

True love doesn’t need vindication.

At the end of the movie, Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt) makes an incredible sacrifice. She allows people to believe she was waiting for a man in his room to protect the reputation of another. Everyone had been gossiping about her. Now, their claims had been vindicated. Mrs. Erlynne had not changed. She is still a slut. She silently walked out of the room.

Another aspect of the work of Jesus became clear to me tonight. I think this aspect of his ministry makes his sacrifice so much more profound.

On the cross, Jesus wasn’t vindicated.

Jesus made a claim and everyone believed he was a liar. They killed him for being a blasphemer. They mocked him and told him to get off the tree if he was who he said he was.

When he breathed his last on that cross, everyone knew he was a liar. The Messiah was to be a conqueror, not a common criminal. Even his closest friends doubted him. One of them pretended not to know him.

The thing is, if what Christians say about Jesus is true—and I believe it is because I am a Christian—Jesus could have come off the cross. He could have been vindicated. He could have jumped off and he would have proven to everyone, right then, he was who he said he was.

But love doesn’t need vindication.

Not 'Devisors' but 'Participants'

Prophets serve a difficult function. They are asked to speak out against injustice. They are asked to speak out against the majority. They are asked to buck the system.

Micah, a country boy, did this. He came with a message of justice that shocked his people and called them to behave differently.

In this section, he is pronouncing ‘woe’ or ‘death’ upon a certain group of people. These people ‘plan evil’ on their beds. They then execute their plans in broad daylight. They are able to do this because they are powerful enough to do it. These are the rich they are the powerful.

Their evil is the oppression of the poor. They are taking land from people, probably through an unfair borrowing system. They are loaning out money and when people are unable to repay, they are taking their land. This is particularly important because land was the visible sign the people had that they were in the community of those being saved. In fact, God built into the system a right of redemption of the land.

Because they are planning evil, Micah announces that God is planning evil. They won’t be able to escape. Because they are confiscating fields, Micah announces their fields will be confiscated. It is a case of poetic justice.

The ultimate result is the most difficult part. These people are told that they will have no portion of land in the future assembly of God. This is an incredible claim because, as I said, land was the visible sign that a person was a person of God. God is saying, “You are not my people.”

Although we may not be ‘devising wickedness’ when we go to sleep like these people, we may be in a similar place. We are the beneficiaries of a corrupt system. We live in extraordinary wealth, and part of the reason we do this is because of corrupt systems that continue to oppress the poor. We may not ‘devise’ this oppression, but we often choose to remain in blissful ignorance, deciding not to become aware of the gross injustice that makes us rich because it would be too costly for us.

This passage then, should serve as a sharp rebuke. Micah seems to say, “People that continually participate with injustice are not people of God.” What we can learn from this is that part of what it means to be a ‘Christian’ or a person that is rightly related with God is proper social concern and action. A Christian simply cannot continue in blissful ignorance. Let’s repent, and discuss ways we participate with God in his redeeming the entire world from the damaging effects of the Fall.

An Autumn Day

Listening to a little Jason Mraz "I'm Yours" as i'm sitting at my dinning table looking outside. Feeling the cool breeze come in and tousel my hair around and give me the goose bumps on my arms. Children outside running and hearing their laughter echo. How can you not smile and thank God for this day. Will heaven be like this?

Ileana

Election Season

Good News! It’s Election Season! It is the time of year when everyone becomes supremely confident that she holds the key to fix all the world’s ills.

Political process in America in four, simple steps:

1) Pick a candidate to vote for based on his or her party affiliation
2) Listen to a bunch of the chosen candidate’s sound bytes condemning an oversimplified, unfair version of the opponent’s plan.
3) Convince others (and yourself) that this unfair caricature is the opposition’s actual plan and that you have rationally evaluated both candidates (Proceed to step four if religious).
4) Convince yourself that God agrees with you and that the opposing candidate would greatly reduce morality in America, thus bringing on His judgment.

In all seriousness, I don’t care who you vote for. I really don’t. I think there are good, Christian reasons to vote for either candidate in this election.

This election season, I ask that we try to remember a few things:

1) Evaluate the actual plans of the candidates, laid out on their websites
2) Hold opinions with humility, not allowing yourself to become convinced that you fully know the mind of God.
3) Remember that, while the power structure is important, it is not the primary way that change takes root. The pattern of change is to become weak and humble, not strong and powerful.

Thank you for hearing my prayers Lord

This weekend i found out that my Grandfather who is 81 with a pace maker was sent to the hospital. I was told that he would have to get surgery. He had gall stones that were very infected; a pall op that they thought was cancerous, and an enlarged prostrate. When i heard this i flew out to Portland as quickly as i could. See my grandparents helped raise me as a child and so they are like parents to me. The thought that if something were to happen during surgery and not being able see him terrified me.

Before the surgery i was able to pray with my family and Grandpa and lift up all of our prayers to him. I was nervous in praying because some of my family members are not believers. In my heart i was asking God to give me wisdom and the right words to speak. I was praying that this would be an opportunity to share Christ with them. I am not known for many words. I do know that the Holy Spirit lives inside me and can use me as an instrument in many different ways.

We waited about three hours and found out that he was in recovery and did very well in the surgery. The doctors told us that they didn't find a pall op or any cancer. They took out his gall bladder and all the gall stones. The stones were so infected that it looked like ground beef. It could have killed him. They had to wait to do anything about his prostrate but that his other doctor would be helping him out with that. Thank you God for hearing our prayers and bringing him out of surgery safely.

We all went to his room to see him and he was in a lot of pain. It was hard to see him laying on that hospital bed. As you all know that when people get older they don't want to say that something is wrong or to appear weak. I will say that he is a strong man and he was able to come through that surgery and know exactly who everyone was and who came to visit him.

Thank you father for hearing our prayers and bringing him through that surgery. I pray that he will recover quickly and regain his strength. Thank you for bringing the family together and let this be a way to bring my family to know you and serve you.

I Took a trip to the bar with Dave Matthews

I took a trip to the bar with Dave Matthews. I enjoyed a drink with him and listened while he taught me about something I thought I knew more about than him. I heard this song on my pandora radio station. I had forgotten about it completely. I hadn't listened to the song in years.

Dave Matthews writes some incredible lyrics in Bartender. Check some of them out.

"Bartender please, fill my glass for me with the wine you gave Jesus that set him free after three days in the ground."

'I’m on bended knee I pray… bartender please"

What an awesome line. What is he asking for? Does Dave ask for the Holy Spirit? There is a place I can think of in Scripture where the Holy Spirit is compared to wine, although there wine (and specifically, drunkenness) is the antithesis of the Spirit's power.

What’s with Dave equating this power that rose Jesus from the ground with wine from a bartender? Is he attempting to be provocative? Perhaps. Is he making an obscure allusion to the sacrament of Communion? That may be. Whatever the case, he desires some power that picked Jesus up from the grave, but there is a problem:

“Bartender you see, the wine that’s drinking me came from the vine that hung Judas from the devil’s tree its roots deep, deep in the ground.”

This is the problem that faces every person. Dave Matthews is more perceptive to the depth of his condition than most people. Here, he describes wine of a different' vine’ than the wine that Jesus got from the bartender to get out of the grave. It is interesting that this wine drinks him, he doesn’t drink this wine. The wine that hung Judas is drinking and consuming Dave.

We all have wine ‘drinking us’ from the moment we are born. Because of it, we will do things that seem right to us and seem to give us pleasure, but they will ultimately kill us. The wine, which may seem so delicious, will end up drinking us and hanging us from the devil’s tree.

The only hope is to ask for a different wine. We ask the bartender for the same wine he gave Jesus that caused him to walk out of the grave. This wine is offered to all, and if we drink it, we will become co-laborers with him in redemption, and ultimately walk out of the grave just like he did.

Repentance in Luke (A Weird Definition)

If I were to walk down the street, and see a person with a sign that says REPENT, I would think primarily about my relationship with God. The man would be telling me that I need to get right with God. Usually, the message would be coupled with some impending judgment of God. God is mad about all the evil things I have done. I need to be sorry and get right with him. He would include a message about believing in what he would call the Gospel. It would actually be one, important facet of the Gospel, the death of Jesus and the work it does in your life if you believe.

Luke, however, defines repentance radically differently in his Gospel. He does this through the character John the Baptist. This guy was a man that walked in the wilderness and ate locusts. He was a freak. He was that guy with a sign on the street. The people that were not in his closest circle would have been very annoyed by him. John the Baptist comes and tells people to be baptized and to repent.

So the scene is set. We have the man screaming, “REPENT!” in the wilderness. The way he defines repentance, however, is surprising. He tells people to “produce fruit that proves your repentance” (3:6). The word “produce” is the same word that is often translated “do.” If we were to give a super literal translation, it could say, “do stuff worthy of repentance.”

This is kind of important because Luke repeats the same word, “do” throughout the rest of the section. The crowds come and ask him, “What should we do?” After him telling the crowds to do repentance stuff, they ask him, "what should we do?" He has the opportunity to define repentance and he does it in a surprising way. He says “The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none…” (10-11). The reason this is surprising is that it has less to do with our relationship with God than it has to do with our relationship with other people. Luke is saying, “Do you want to repent? Give your stuff to people that don’t have enough.” This continues with the tax collectors and the soldiers asking the same question, “What should we do?” Every response has to do with our relationships with other human beings.

Luke, then, defines repentance “fruit” as dealing with others with justice and mercy. This makes sense, because the work of the Christ that Luke is introducing in this narrative is going to be one that extends mercy, justice, forgiveness of sins, and the reversing of the damaging effects of the fall.

Repent, then, means something much more than believing right things about the Gospel. It means something much more than behaving ourselves so that God is not mad at us. Repentance, according to Luke, is joining with the Christ in his work of bringing of redemption to the entire world. The world is broken. God is fixing it. We have the opportunity and responsibility to participate with God in the work of redemption. This is how the people were to prepare for the coming of Christ. This is how we must continue in his work.

I love James Kevin Linton.

Boo