The Rolling Stones were right

The Rolling Stones wrote and sang, I can't get no satisfaction. That is the anthem of the age in spite of the reality that it was meant to be a corrective to consumerism and superficiality. We live in the most superficial age in history. Advertising appeals to our vanity and our desires and as Christians the one thing we should know is that those desires are ultimately the problem, they are misordered and misdirected. We believe that stuff or people can satisfy the desires that exist in our lives yet if I said that out loud we would all know that it isn't true.

The message of the Rolling Stones was meant to be a cynical condemnation of the age of consumerism and yet it became an anthem without a message. There are places in Scripture, particularly in the prophetic literature, where God says the same kinds of things to His people and yet they don't get it, they simply can't be satisfied, they want more and because they can't be satisfied, they seek someone or something to give them what they want and they fall into idolatry, worshipping that which they believe will provide satisfaction of their desires.

The problem isn't that we can't get no satisfaction, the problem is that we don't know what it takes to satisfy our desires. We fail to feed on God, fail to understand His greatness and goodness. We are superficial people with superficial desires. God knows that about us, and His Word tells us that. The first man and woman weren't satisfied with everything on earth at their disposal and God walking with them in the Garden, they wanted more and believed it could be found in a piece of fruit which they were promised would satisfy that desire they previously hadn't identified or even known existed. There was something good that God had kept from them, ergo He wasn't as good as they might think. What is it you are thinking right now would fulfill your life, would be the difference maker in your life? It's a lie.

Do we really have a Christian worldview?

Christianity is a distinct worldview in the best sense of the term. It is a way of understanding the world around you, your place in the world and the purpose of life. Christianity says that the world matters to the one who created it as good, you matter to the God who created you in His image, and the purpose of your life is bound up in Him and your life matters and has meaning, but not a meaning you determine independently of your creator, who alone knows the purpose for which you were created.

A Christian worldview allows me to see creation, time and space, as coherent and moving towards something. Science says that in beginning was an explosion and that everything that is the universe was set in motion moving away from everything else and that expansion continues to the present day. What Christianity says is that this particular planet and the life on it matters to God enough that HE came in the form of Jesus and died in order that this life form might continue to live forever. There is something unique about us in the cosmos.

It is that worldview that impels Christians to go to places and do things that are dangerous and that might cost them their lives. Even extreme sports measure risk better than Christians. Base jumping might be risky but no one does it without a parachute. Since the day of Pentecost Christians have chosen to take risks that they knew were likely to result in death but not with the despair and hopelessness of suicide, but rather in affirmation that my life matters. It matters enough that I am willing to risk it on behalf of the Gospel and on behalf of others.

It is easy to pick on Richard Dawkins but the truth is that Christianity as a worldview is different from Dawkins' worldview in that people who have a truly Christian worldview will take risks that Dawkins' worldview would never demand. The one thing I will say is that Dawkins is willing to risk popularity for his worldview and most western Christians aren't willing to do the same. It is easier to keep your head down and not speak out. If some are willing to risk their lives for the sake of the Gospel, it should shame the rest of us into at least speaking up and speaking out and risking people's opinions of us in order that they might hear the Gospel.

The cowardly sophistry of Richard Dawkins

I was reading an article about the most famous atheist in the world, Richard Dawkins, in the Times and realized there are significant differences between Christian missionaries and Dawkins. Dawkins muses that he would like to "convert" Muslims to evolution, odd language to begin with, but his proposed methodology is to have his books translated into Arabic so he can sell them. He "wishes" someone would do it and then complains that his books have been censored so no one has ever been able to read them in the Middle East. If they were able, he believes they would immediately see his point and come round to his way of thinking.

There are several things that separate Dawkins in this proposed missionary endeavor or actually desire, from Christians. The first is that Christians haven't simply waited and wished for someone to translate the Bible so that others can read it, they have actually gone about the work of either translating it themselves or paying for the work to be done. They haven't complained about censorship of the Bible or it being banned in these countries, they have risked their lives smuggling it. They haven't sought to make the Bible a bestseller, they have given them away for nothing.

Another distinction is that Dawkins gives only a second hand account about what may have happened to his Turkish publisher. He "may have been arrested." It seems that Dawkins hasn't actually gone to try and convert anyone in person. Christians have risked their lives on their beliefs because they believe that it is eternally important to others that they take these risks in the belief God loves those other people. Dawkins rests easy, hires a publisher, stays home, gives lectures to fawning audiences, attempts to sell books and bemoans the failure of the enterprise.

The only risk Dawkins takes is that Christians will disapprove of his work and disagree with his writings. The price he pays for that risk is that his books sell well to those who agree with him and even more so because of the controversy. Christopher Hitchens, Dawkins fellow in arms against religion, characterizes Christianity and Islam as equally dangerous, but this article puts the lie to that false equivalency. Dawkins work isn't censored in the west, he is at no physical risk and he openly speaks his opinions. To do so in a Muslim country would require a greater level of courage of conviction. That courage takes a committed Christian, someone who truly believes that this life and the next are important, that other people truly matter, and that what they believe is worth dying for.

Parenting for/from relationship with the Father

I went to a funeral this past week and what I heard was something that always frightens me a little bit, the effect of parenting on children. I heard grown children reflecting on the shortcomings of their father and the lasting impact this had in their lives. I happen to know this father and understand the reality they were talking about but I also know my own shortcomings and imperfections. In my time in ministry I have counseled quite a few people whose lives and their walk with God are deeply affected by their relationship with their earthly fathers. I always wonder how my own failings as a father will keep my children from fully knowing God the Father.

The effects of sin in my life are such that I lash out in anger and withhold affection at times when I am upset with my children. I have a responsibility to raise my kids in a way that teaches right and wrong and so I know that sometimes that means we have difficulty with one another and yet other times my anger is for reasons other than that. One of my kids carelessly backed out of the driveway and in the process hit my car. He was certainly remorseful for what he had done but that wasn't good enough for me this time. I was tired and emotionally worn out and my reaction wasn't Godly to say the least.

It amazes me always to read in the Gospels when Jesus has gone through tough times and still has resources and reserves of compassion with which he continues to minister when the crowds come to Him. I believe that abiding is the secret to that and yet I allow other things to take away my focus on Him and communion is temporarily interrupted and then I am prone to sin against others. Abiding is work but the work has a gigantic pay off. Parenting requires more abiding than I ever realized.

Faith and fear

I had a friend whose biggest concern about heaven was that when she got there God would play a movie of all the horrible stuff she had done in her life and she would know the shame of it all. I told her two things, one was that if she had confessed and repented those things were forgiven and forgotten and the second thing was that God wouldn't be watching filth like that.

My greater fear was in the Gospel lesson for today, Mark 6.47-56, the disciples in the boat on the lake. Jesus comes walking to them on the water in the midst of a storm that has them scared out of their wits and now they don't know whether to be scared of the storm or what they take to be an apparition. In the end Jesus calms both the storm and the disciples. What we are also told is that they didn't understand because their hearts were hardened.

I am prepared to be embarrassed by looking back on those times in my life when I felt completely overwhelmed by life's difficulties and like Elijah decided I had had enough and was prepared to quit and it was fine with me if my life ended then. God sometimes allows us to be in the storm in order that He can come and prove Himself, hopefully strengthening our faith and trust so that the next time we will not react with the same fear. Somedays I wonder if I will ever get it right. As John Prine once wrote, "its a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown."

Spiritual pandas

Because I have been teaching through John 6 the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about Jesus' statements that He is bread and water for life. As Christians we know the truth of those statements yet frequently we continue to live as though we were searching for sustenance elsewhere. Too often we are nothing more than spiritual pandas.

A panda is actually a carnivore and its digestive system is designed to eat a widely varied diet yet it more or less subsists on bamboo shoots, which have all the nutritional content of cardboard. The failure of bamboo to adequately provide for the nutritional needs of the panda requires it to consume great quantities of bamboo in order to provide what it needs for fuel. That need requires the panda to spend nearly all its waking hours finding and consuming bamboo which causes the animals to be ever more lethargic, conserving what little energy they derive from their food in order to find more of it.

A panda was made for more yet it has settled for less. Too often we live as Christians as spiritual pandas who relentlessly consume either spiritual junk food or no spiritual food at all in a fruitless search to fill our time and our souls with something. We are meant to feast on the richest fare and yet we fail to live into the new creation we are in Christ Jesus simply because we fail to take advantage of our new nature.

Hungry and thirsty?

Do we as Christians hunger and thirst after righteousness or do we satisfy our hunger and thirst in pretty much the same way the rest of the world does? More often than not it seems, we satisfy our hunger and thirst with that which is not bread and water. Oddly, that is the road to gluttony because those other things fail to satisfy the hunger and thirst and we simply need more and more.

I know that I am guilty of this very thing and I sense in myself the need to get away and spend time alone in what the Gospels refer to as a desolate place with the Lord. I can attempt to satisfy the thirst with people or books or other activities or things and what I really need is time alone in the Word and with the Word.

Summer is particularly difficult because we have so many other things going in our life and it seems that I lurch from one thing to another and all of them are good things (well, most of them), but they leave me with less and less time to spend just feasting on the Lord. When I examine the way I spend my time I realize that I am spending time and money on what the Lord says through Isaiah " that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?