The God's Aren't Angry (are they?).

I drove up to DC on Friday to see Rob Bell on his third speaking tour--The God's Aren't Angry: How Humans Invited Religion to Make Themselves Feel Better. (Fantastic interview with Rob about the tour and more here.)

I'm always moved by Rob. He brings ideas forward and says things out loud that I invariably find myself saying...why didn't I have the courage to say that? I am en-couraged when I hear him. Literally, courage is put in me. Thank you Rob!

I've been wrestling this idea about religion--ready to give up at certain points. Brian McLaren notes that the word itself means to 'rejoin ligaments.' In other words, to repair and restore. But my experience is that religion is in most parts seen, experienced and heard as anything but. More of a way to 'keep the man down' or 'drug the masses into submission' than lift us up to high places of the human spirit and bring about the flourishing of the human family.
So his premise intrigued me.

Here's a summary of his 1:30 talk (my notes won't do it justice).

Cavewoman and caveman started out noticing that there were things
beyond their control. 'The Forces' controlled what they couldn't: Plants needed for survival. The spirit of the hunt. The cycles of the sun & moon, mimiced in the cycles of a woman's body and in the bursting forth of life from the womb.

These forces were 'up' and they controlled things down here. So the altar became the 'high place' that was used to interact with 'The Forces.' This is the emergence of a priestly class who became the experts in how to deal with The Forces and get them to do what you wanted and to appease them.

A sort of primal anxiety emerged about relationship to The Forces.
When can we be sure we have properly appeased the forces? If we had a bumper crop and we did certain things in the high places, then to guarantee the same thing next season, we needed to do more. If things didn't go well, the crops failed, or a child died, then we would need to do more. When was more enough? We couldn't know.

The need to appease these forces still exists today. The prophets of Ba-al cut themselves to show their seriousness, hoping this would appease Ba-al. Rob met three young women in a short period of time who all cut themselves to feel better about themselves and their lives. This primal anxiety has not dissipated with time.

The Israelites introduced an entirely new idea (I think Rob used a helping hand here from Thomas Cahill and his excellent The Gifts of the Jews). The god's weren't angry and didn't need to be appeased. In fact, God (singular) was interested instead of blessing us. This revolutionized religion.

Abraham and his sacrifice of Isaac and his strangely automatic compliance with God's request got Rob's attention. Abraham would have likely thought "Well this, this is just the way you interact with the forces." What is revolutionary in the idea of religion is what happens next. (See Genesis 22 for the rest of the story.)

He then took a brief tour through Hebrews showing how the ritual of a sacrifice is for us--for the inner workings of the human heart that need some way to move beyond a grievance, a dissapointment, a sin--not for God. At the culmination of the ages Jesus reworked forever our relation to the forces.

Rob then spent the rest of the evening (I'm leaving a lot out) talking about how we are now invited to do good in the world. This is the one "sacrifice" remaining. His stories gripped me on a heart level. A family who bought a home for a single mom recently divorced and abandoned, an out of work family loaded down with groceries, a friend sitting across the table from him at a dark hour telling him his life could be different. His close felt a bit like a Nooma video (complete with music & and a blessing)--but it was powerful.

He never mentioned grace. Never mentioned atonement. Never mentioned church (except to paint a picture of the good done through God's people)--yet the ideas were vivid and present. See the movie when it comes out.

Anothenon and Other Useless Greek Words

I wrote this short article for a newsletter our Church is getting ready to launch. It's some thoughts that have been rolling around in my brain.
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I've been thinking of late about birth. Maybe that's because Andrea is getting ready to go through, for the second time, the bloody, messy, somewhat terrifying experience of birthing a child.

Seriously, it's not pretty.
But life is the result.

And so that's got me thinking about the whole process of birth and rebirth and how to get at the real experience of the thing we call life. There are many systems of belief that talk about this. Let me name a few (pardon the gross oversimplifications):

Fashion :: Ever bought a new shirt or shoes and felt like you were a whole new you? Somehow better? A little more valuable? Be reborn at J. Crew.
Health :: Have you been to the gym on January 3rd? You can barely move for all the breathless New Year's Resolutions sweating their way to rebirth.
Business :: Beating someone else is the key to the life of your business. Don't let any one take advantage of you. If you've been doing that, stop it and you'll be reborn as business.
The East :: Do well in this life and maybe you won't come back as a toad in the next one. Rebirth is the result of my efforts in this life.
The West :: Do well in this life and you'll have a big house, fancy car and all the happiness you can possibly want. Rebirth is the result of my efforts in this life (huh, that sounds familiar).

My point is that the discussion isn't actually a religious one. It's a human one. How do I experience life and be reborn into something more than I am? It's basic human longing 101.

Enter Jesus into this whole discussion. He is talking with a religious leader about the subject in John 3 and makes this interesting statement. "No one will see the Kingdom of God unless he or she is anothenon." And in saying it he characteristically reorders the discussion.

Anothenon, often translated "born again", is more accurately translated "born from above." When the whole discussion of rebirth is on how I can make some fundamental change and change myself, I am literally left to my own devices. And so out of practical necessity I adopt the story of fashion or health or business or the East or the West. A story that's 'down here.' A story that gives me some way forward to what I want. They become my birth canal to a new life. In themselves fashion, health, business are fine...just don't go looking to them for rebirth. They make wonderful friends but terrible gods.

But Jesus describes rebirth as happening outside the system. He describes a renewal of who I am that comes from Someone Else. And, as he continues to tell the religious leader, it's a mysterious thing, like the wind. "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." Maybe we could say it like this: 'We don't find life, if we are open to it, Life finds us.' And since Jesus described himself as "the life", I would take that to mean that this whole process of being born from above has to do with trusting Jesus.

But because wind isn't clear cut and easily nailed down, rebirth can be messy and terrifying. But as Andrea and I discovered with our first child, life is the result.

So how many birth canals do we have to go through?
How many New Year's Resolutions need to fail?
How many times do we have to reinvent ourselves?
What's the way forward we are counting on?
Are we instead open to the mystery of birth from above?

Quotes from the Beginning

Phineas F. Bresee was one of the founders of the Church of the Nazarene (of whose succor I have been a life-long recipient). I ran across these quotes of his and thought they were worth sharing:

“The first miracle after the baptism of the Holy Ghost was wrought upon a beggar. It means that the first service of a Holy Ghost-baptized church is to the poor; that its ministry is to those who are lowest down; that its gifts are for those who need them most. As the Spirit was upon jesus to preach the gospel to the poor, so His Spirit is upon His servants for the same purpose.”

“We want pastors who will go out and find the poor that nobody else cares for.”

“That a people are poor and weak and despised is no shadow to dim their hope. If theyhave God’s gift of the Holy Spirit there is nothing to which He calls but that they may do.”

"Let the Church of the Nazarene be true to its commission; not great and elegant buildings; but to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and wipe away the tears of sorrowing, and gather jewels for His diadem.”

“Our church is a missionary church. It knows no difference between home and foreign fields - in these days all fields are near.”

When Nothing Else Works, Try This

The news agency Reuters ran this story: Airline sacrifices goats to appease sky gods

It can be a bitter truth. In this case, bitter for a goat. In other cases, bitter for a family, or a relationship or a nation: However, whoever or whatever you see as ultimate determines your actions.

Left Behind (The Rapture Song)

This is too good not to share. Remember the "Thief in the Night" movies about 20 years ago that scared everyone and their mother into heaven?

This is called poetic justice.

Team World Vision 2007

15 million children have been left orphaned by HIV/AIDS. It's not just an 'issue', it's a pandemic.

I'm running in the NYC Marathon this Fall as part of Team World Vision. You can be part of it here.

What Makes Community Suck

It seems that diversity is bad for community.

In a recent massive study, Harvard's Robert Putnam (of _Bowling Alone_ fame) found, much to his chagrin, that diversity is a detriment to real community.

The more diverse, the less volunteerism, the less trust, the less social capital. It seems that homogeneity is good for community.

He did find one exception that actually gives me hope, since what I do for a living is about creating community out of diversity. But you'll have read the article at the Wall Street Journal to find out where that place is. Hint: Can anyone say "resurrection?"

Pizza, Prayer and Leadership

Ate at John's Pizzeria in New York City, just off Times Square this week. My wife and I were on a short vacation to the Big Apple while Grandma watched Hudson, before baby #2 (name and sex TBD) arrives on the Marshall scene.

Many hail it as the best pizza in NYC. I'm not one to argue, it was pretty freakin' good.

What interested me more was the setting. It used to be home to the Gospel Tabernacle Church, led by AB Simpson in the 1880's. Stained glass and an balcony grace the open and airy setting--lending a sort of 'heavenly feel' to the place. Who knows, maybe the heavenly taste is a physical manifestation of metaphysical realities?

The place is beautiful. And that got me thinking: This used to be a place of worship, and now it's a pizzeria (discussions of the eschaton as a wonderful meal notwithstanding), why? I'm sure wonderful things happened during it's former incarnation. Lives were transformed. People lifted out of destructive lifestyles. Families restored. In fact, AB started the place to reach "the neglected peoples of the world with the neglected resources of the church." But now, a 100 years+ later, the only vestiges of the ministry I can see is the pizza pie gloriously gracing my table.

Is this okay? What can we learn from this? Here's my short working list. What do you think?

• Leadership is about the next generation. Transformation is as much about future generations as it is about our generation. We've lost the sense that our children to come will inherit our work of today. Evidence? I don't hear this topic in books or seminars. We are very moment centric (how though, to reconcile with Jesus'--"tomorrow has enough trouble of its own."??)
• Building a ministry to last for a 100 years must be different than building it to last my lifetime. Is that what we are to be about? Deep roots into the past, strong presence in the present, long reach into the future? How do we prepare for this without getting in touch with the past?
• Sometimes its okay for a thing not to last. In fact, maybe this is necessary. Is wisdom the difference? For instance, Nyack College and the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church are still functioning parts of his legacy.
• I'm thinking of changing my name to SW Marshall. It just sounds so impressive.

Running Poverty into the Ground

November 4th I'll be in the Big Apple with 35,000+ other runners in the ING New York City Marathon. It'll be my third marathon.

I hope to finish the race in $1,000. You heard that right, $1,000 is my target pace.

I'm running for World Vision and hope to raise $1,000 (all of which goes to World Vision's relief efforts). You can donate $1 or all $1,000 by visiting the mini-site I created to give to that cause.

I'll do the running, you do the paying--and a child's life will be saved.

Things You're Not Supposed to Find in Your Office

This slithered past my desk this morning. It was about 2 ft long and sat nicely in the box until I returned him to his woody environs.