06.03.09

Aliens

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:21 pm by skipper

This week I received an email from a friend, asking me to sign an email petition. The petition went like this:

We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on recently which would allow illegal aliens to access our Social Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the United States …

We further demand that there not be any amnesty given to illegal aliens, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal immigrants.

Maybe you received a similar email. Its arrival was timely for me, as I had just been studying “aliens” in the Bible. I did a search for all verses where all the words alien, fatherless, and widow occur. Here they are:

1. Deuteronomy 10:18
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.

2. Deuteronomy 14:28-29
At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

3. Deuteronomy 16:11
And rejoice before the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, the Levites in your towns, and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows living among you.

4. Deuteronomy 16:14
Be joyful at your Feast—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.

5. Deuteronomy 24:17
Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.

6. Deuteronomy 24:19-21
When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow.

7. Deuteronomy 26:12
When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.

8. Deuteronomy 26:13
Then say to the LORD your God: “I have removed from my house the sacred portion and have given it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow, according to all you commanded. I have not turned aside from your commands nor have I forgotten any of them.

The upshot is that God appears to view aliens in the same category as widows and orphans. Also, God has a history of taking land AWAY from the legals and giving it to the illegals: Gen 17.8 says, “The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

I notice that God didn’t say in the above passages, “Help out the alien as long as it doesn’t affect your pocketbook”, or “Be nice to aliens but you don’t have to give them anything.” No, he’s pretty explicit that he intends us to be affected personally and financially. That part about not harvesting every single olive, or being sure to invite aliens to our parties — there’s no getting around that.

We seem to be pretty high-and-mighty when we protest that our aliens are illegal — as if that somehow makes it right to treat them poorly. However, didn’t Jesus condemn the Pharisees for this very thing — creating rules that allowed them not to support those in need? (See Mk. 7.9-13)

There seems to be a trend among the evangelical Christian community to parrot some of the politically conservative voices on the internet and talk radio regarding this issue. Shouldn’t we instead be parroting God?

05.13.09

Giving

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:08 pm by skipper

I’ve read a few articles today about how much or little Christians give…mostly little. It’s depressing. However, there are some assumptions I’ve seen that I don’t entirely buy into.

Here’s a typical line:

Had giving been at an average of 10 percent in 2005 rather than 2.58 percent, there would have been at least an additional $168 billion available for the overseas and domestic mission work of churches.

The assumption is, of course, that if churches only had more money, they could do more mission work. But what I’ve seen is the opposite. When churches get a lot of money, they don’t ship it out the doors. Instead, they tend to build huge, multi-million-dollar campuses. The stated purpose is to reach the neighboring community, and sure, that’s a good idea. However, millions of dollars to build a place just so people can have meetings….

So if suddenly everyone started tithing and churches had all the money they could ever use, would we see an increase in giving money away? Sure, the total dollars would go up, but I doubt the percentage would increase. Use yourself as an example: when you got your last raise, did you increase the percentage you gave away, or just the total amount — or maybe neither?

Churches are the same as people. We (American churches) only give 3% of our money to non-Christians; the majority stays in the building. I doubt it will change just because we have more.’

The articles are here, here, and here.

05.01.09

What is knowledge?

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:00 am by skipper

I’ve heard two different definitions of the spiritual gift of knowledge from Paul’s letter to Corinth (1 Cor 12.8), and one of them just doesn’t make sense. I saw it again yesterday in a post from Mark Driscoll.

Mark defines this spiritual gift as “the ability to research, remember, and make effective use of a variety of information on a number of diverse subjects”. He then gives examples of where he sees this gift in operation in various Bible characters, including Jesus.

Mark points out that Jesus studied and memorized the Old Testament, saying this is an example of the gift of knowledge in operation. If this is the case, though, then didn’t the majority of Jesus’ peers also have this gift? The memorization of the Torah was a common feat among the scribes and Pharisees of his day, and even his own disciples had memorized large portions of Scripture. To say that memorizing a huge text is an example of this gift seems to be a reading into the phrase “word of knowledge”. (Oh, and did Jesus have knowledge of “a number of diverse subjects”, as in Mark’s definition? If so, he apparently kept it to himself, and focused on a few narrow subjects, namely Israel and his own role.)

Mark had a couple of other examples in the Bible. He points out Timothy because of a line in Paul’s letter to him (2 Tim 2.15). To state that “rightly handling the word of truth” is an example of the spiritual gift of knowledge is a stretch I cannot make.

The alternative definition of this gift is something like this: information revealed to a person by the Holy Spirit, which the person would not otherwise know. This is more palatable to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that Paul is describing spiritual gifts, which I take to be abilities given by the Holy Spirit. They aren’t enhanced natural abilities, and they aren’t commonly seen in people who do not have the Spirit. (Again, if the ability to memorize and make use of large amounts of Scripture is indicative of this gift, then my atheist religion professors in college were all gifted by the Holy Spirit.)

The second reason I prefer this definition is that it helps explain what we already have seen in the Bible. There are a number of times when Jesus or someone else knows things that they have no earthly way of knowing (Jn 1.47-48, Lk 11.17, Acts 8.20-23, etc).

The third reason I prefer this definition is it makes more sense with the rest of the gifts listed in the Corinthian letter. If we go with Mark’s definition, for consistency it would seem to me that the gifts of healing that Paul mentions must refer to physicians, and tongues must mean those who excel in learning foreign languages.

Not to knock the people who love knowledge, researching, learning and sharing new things (I am one of them), but this desire and ability doesn’t strike me as a spiritual gift…at least not the one mentioned by Paul.

01.29.09

Honey

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:11 pm by skipper

My buddy Derek sent me this email:

Hey Darren!

I’ve been sending this email to some people asking them to help us out… let me know what you think!

My friend Chris and I are trying to compile a 56 day devotional for a challenge we are giving the 5th and 6th graders in March and April. The whole thing is centered on connecting with God. So we are trying to get 56 days worth of people’s short stories on their experiences with God. These are really short (less than 300 words) and only take a little time (I’ve already done 3). But I know our kids will grow a ton from them. Then if you have a Bible passage and some questions about it for the kids, that would be awesome!

Let me know if you can help! I know it would be way more beneficial for the kids to hear a lot of different people’s perspectives, rather than just 15 of mine, and 15 or Chris’s. Can you also tell me if your story will relate to one of the 8 weekly themes listed below? Feel free to just send it in Word, or in an email. We can worry about formatting.

Your devotional should relate to the mission of 56 Connect:
For the next 56 days, try to stay in a continuous, honest conversation with God, willing to do whatever he wants you to do moment by moment.

Your personal story, along with the Bible passage should go along with one of these weekly themes:

1. Surrendering and God’s Will
2. Reading the Bible & Memorizing Scripture
3. Silence & Prayer
4. Community & Accountability
5. Worship
6. Solitude & Places of Holiness
7. Forgiveness & Grace
8. Great Commandments, Great Commission, & Serving

Here’s my reply.

My brother Kevin has a beehive in his the corner of his back yard, and has harvested honey for several years. One fall, a bunch of leaves were accidently piled up against the beehive entrance. The bees were trapped inside the hive, and they all died. When my brother opened the hive in the Spring, it was full of dead bees, bugs, and rotting honey. Ugh! He cleared away the leaves, but left the hive just as it was, wondering what to do with it.

The next season, he looked again and saw that there were bees flying in and out of the hive! He opened it up and saw that new bees had moved in. They had cleaned out all the bugs and bee carcases, and had begun making new honey!

When Kevin told me that story, I heard God speaking to me. My life is like that old hive. The junk and sin in my life had trapped and killed the life inside. Jesus, however, set up house inside me. He cleaned out the junk and began creating something new.

Unfortunately, it seems that I still end up piling leaves on my hive on a regular basis. I need Jesus to clean me up and make something useful out of me – every day.

Kevin made up a jar of that honey and gave it to me. On the label was the name “Heavenly Honey”. When I pour it over a homemade roll, I remember that those bees took something useless like that dirty old hive and created out of it something wonderful, something that adds flavor to to life.

– Darren

2 Cor 5.17 says: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

1 John 1.9 says: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Questions:

1.Some people think they’ve done things that are too bad to be forgiven. Jesus says he can forgive us no matter what we’ve done. What do you think?
2.Sometimes we pile up the “leaves” around our lives that start to kill us. Sometimes it’s other people or circumstances that do it. What can we do when either of these things happen?
3.Does Jesus ever get tired of forgiving us for the same thing over and over?
4.What does it mean to “confess” our sins? To whom do we confess?

01.06.09

The Fight of Our Lives

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:50 am by skipper

At my company, we are launching a major initiative to compete against a significant market threat. The rhetoric for this initiative is pretty dramatic: one executive said it was “the fight of our lives!”

I immediately thought of a friend who lost his sister to cancer recently. The challenges for her children and family could well be described as the fight of their lives.

Perhaps my company’s executive meant, “the fight of our corporate lives”, or something like that. I have a hard time thinking that my company’s competitive pressure compares with the dramatic life struggles going on all around us.