Forced Shackin'

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse.  A law prof at George Washington U is suing his institution because they are going back to single sex dorms and away from the current co-ed dorms that breed binge drinking, casual hook-ups and utter chaos.  But the law prof thinks this is a violation of 'human rights'? (Read article here)

Our colleges and universities have always been a place of rebellion and experimentation in every realm, but now their very structures almost demand promiscuity and a very unhealthy blending of the sexes.  Did you know that now many of our leading universities not only have coed dorms, they have coed bathrooms and showers (MIT, Columbia, Stanford and many others).  Are you kidding me?  Does anyone want to send their 18 year old daughter off to a school and have her share a shower area with random 18 year old dudes from around the nation, as pictured to the left from a Stanford admissions site?  The world has gone crazy, no doubt. 

So do you homework on your child's living situation before you send them off to school and don't be a victim of the system.  You don't have to submit to insanity just becuase some 'professor' subscribes to it.  I would advise following the paths of Jesus, who's teachings thrive today 2,000 years later, not the paths of some prof who is going to be forgotten in a decade . . .

Pride and College Football Recruiting

Sorry for all the college football news here, but there is so much to be learned by watching the combination of people and power.  I just saw that Terelle Pryor is leaving Ohio State in disgrace, just as his coach Jim Tressel did.  Both men leave with a very tarnished legacy and will not be welcomed back to their alma mater for a decade or more because they couldn't play by the rules.  Here is the thing of interest to me, though.  Terelle Pryor was the first #1 high school recruit that I remember who demanded his own signing day.  All other lowly recruits signed on national signing day, but since he was the number one recruit in the nation he chose to extend the process by almost a month and be the center of the nation's attention as he was courted by multiple schools.  I remember watching this process and thinking of the biblical proverb, "pride goes before a fall."  Well, several years later, we now see the fall.  

But here is the really interesting thing.  Every year since Pryor set up his own personal "decision day", a la Lebron James, other recruits have followed suit, and often with similar consequences.  The year after Pryor it was running back Bryce Brown, who eventually signed with Lane Kiffin and Tennessee.  He made it there one year, Kiffin bolted for USC and then Brown tweeted to the world he was leaving as well, but he forgot that it wasn't his decision alone to make.  For a long time Tennessee wouldn't release him to play elsewhere and I don't even know where he is today.  After that there was Seantrel Henderson, who signed with USC initially, but got out of it when USC went on probation and later signed with Miami.  He seems to be doing fine in Miami at this point and maybe he can break the cycle?  This year's 'decision day' recruit was Jadeveon Clowney, who signed with South Carolina on his very own decision day.  Time will tell how these two fare, but history seems to show that an ego that demands its own 'decision day' as an 18 year old kid is often an ego that can't be tamed enough to play by the rules in a team sport that requires a brotherhood between 85 scholarshiped athletes who all contribute.  Just an observation.

On the other hand, if you want to see how a top recruit handled this process with class and in turn translated his no-nonsense humility and work ethic into an oustanding freshman season, watch how Marcus Lattimore, also of USC, handled it.  

How to Respond to a FALL!!

So the news is out.  Jim Tressel is apparently guilty of multiple NCAA violations over a period of years as head coach at Ohio State.  I say apparently because it has not been proven, but Sports Illustrated (SI) and others have a bundle of evidence pointing that way, and as far as I know Tressel hasn't repudiated any of it.  Thus far, he has only resigned in disgrace after admitting he lied to the NCAA about violations he knew about and did not report.

So when you are a top public figure like Tressel and you are known throughout the nation as a Christian man (just last year Tressel was inducted into the 'Hall of Faith' by Athletes in Action, a very large and influential christian ministry to athletes), how should you respond when you are exposed as someone whose walk does not equal his talk?  That is the question here and I think I have an answer.  HONEST AND COMPLETE CONFESSION!  That is all anyone wants, honesty.  You just man up and stand in front of the podium and plainly confess the unethical, scandalous things you did wrong, resign your position as an admission of that guilt and ask for the forgiveness of the people.  We all know what it is like to fail to meet our own expectations of ourselves and we are quick to forgive if we can just get a full and complete, spin-free confession.  But it seems that those are as rare as Al Gore "discoveries" these days.  

What is worse, is that in this case Tressel very openly wore the Jesus uniform as much as he wore the Ohio State uniform, so Jesus is getting as much shame out of this as OSU (for example, see this article).  However, the shame that is accruing to Jesus because of this apparent hypocrisy could be easily erased with a humble, honest admission of guilt followed by a promise to rectify the situation.  That is what God demands and that is what people respect, but so often when we are caught in a lie our natural response is to confess a part of our guilt, but not the whole.  We know we have to confess that which is obvious, but more often than not we stop short of confessing it all and thus we cut ourselves off from the forgiveness of both God and man.  Society winks and nods at a man who confesses that which has already been reported in Sports Illustrated, but we are quick to forgive a man who confesses that which is true but not yet published.  The difference is huge. 

Tressel, as your brother in Christ, I call on you to 'USE YOUR PLATFORM' one last time and model for our world just how a follower of Jesus is supposd to confess his sins.  There is much more at stake here than sanctions for OSU.  And hold on to this truth - This expose of your past failures could offer you your greatest public opportunity to model a Christian value, the value of authentic confession.

The final TEXT questions from Sunday

Alright, i said I would answer all the questions texted in to us this past Sunday as we did live text questions during service.  Well, I severely underestimated just how many text questions we would get!  As it is, we got a lot more than I can properly answer, so some of my answers will be so short they seem trite, but I am going to list them here and answer a few of them along the way.  So here they are:

How do you push someone to keep believing through their sickness when that individual wants to give up and feels he can't go any further? My dad has liver cancer and everyday he says he wants to give up and I feel like I'm running out of words, what can I do to help him have faith and hope instead of giving up?  I don't have a great answer for this, you just keep calling him to believe, to have faith and to know that this life is not all there is.  Our faith only makes sense if eternity is real and heaven and hell are real.  Death is not the end of life, it is the beginning and we believe that by faith as we face death.

What's your view on the book of revelation: preterist, futurist, or idealist?  I am familiar with these terms, but quite honestly, I don't know what they mean.  In reality, I spend very little time in the book of revelation.  I get the big idea of it that Jesus is coming back and before He does there is going to be a horrendous judgment (bowl judgments, etc.) by God on the earth and then there is the great white throne judgment of God where he judges all men and cast the devil and his demons and all non believers into the lake of fire, but beyond that I understand very little of it so I major on the portions of the Bible that are clearer for me. 

What is the role of the pastor and other leaders? In other, words who do I go to for what? Who has which spiritual gifts? Who is safe to confide in? Safe as in Compassionate and speak the truth in love. We believe in the priesthood of the believer, which means we are all to be shepherds of those around us, so any partner within radius is to be a safe person to confide in and a good source of advice.  Of course our staff play this role for people as well, but we are no different than others, we are all priests.

How does the leadership plan to shepherd newcomers and help them integrate the inner circle of the church?  Through small groups and smaller venues of connection, this is the only way it happens.

What is the criteria to serve in the nursery and/or children's ministry?  You have to be personally approved by our staff members to serve and we have a policy manual that provides safeguards to all of our children (never allowing one on one contact in any setting, only females change diapers, etc.)

Why does my family find more acceptance and love from unbelievers than in the church?  Now that is a great question . . . but you are obviously hanging out with the wrong people in the church as this should not be the case unless believers are trying to help you with tough love??  Don't know the scenario but it should not be this way.

How can you lead someone to Christ when they keep pulling away from him and are happy with sin?  You can't.  You can only present the Gospel and trust God to convert the heart, only He can do that, don't take that weight upon yourself.  Sin is glorious and fun for a season but it always eventually leads to the pig pen.

How do you convince a non-believer that multiple girlfriends at once is wrong? Even when the girls say they are ok with it?  You don't try to convince him of this, he already knows it is wrong.  When he says it is ok he is lying to you and lying to himself so no need to argue.  Just ask him if that arrangement is also ok for his mom and sisters and you will see what he really believes about how a man is to treat a woman.

When you are searching for Gods will in your life how do you decifer Gods will and my will when opportunities arise?  Read this book, seriously, Just Do Something, by Kevin DeYoung

As far as your relationship goes with your spouse, how do you NOT bring the hurt and pain from a past relationship into your new one?  You make sure that you have done the hard work of confession and forgiveness and healing from the previous relationship.  There has to be some honesty with your spouse about past relationships so it is not a secret.  Not all has to be divulged, but enough to work through it or else it will rear its ugly head, and the fact of the matter is that any past relationship that got sexual becomes a part of us (the two become one in sexual union) so you do bring that into future relationships and that has to be worked through.  it can be done, but it is not fun or easy.

Can we as christians have hope that all men can be saved(universal salvation) given verses like colossians 1:20  ABsolutely not, otherwise all of the warnings of the New Testament are foolish and wrong.  We wish this were true, but it is not.

What do you have in place right now to help those church members that have hard times when it comes to paying their rent?  When we have funds available we are always open to helping those in our radius, whether they are members or not.  But before we help we want to do our homework and see if the person is currently working and earning something to take care of themselves so that we don't reward laziness and apathy, both of which are epic in our country.

How can a couple get through one half of the relationship being obsessive,and possessive,and jealous?  Hard, honest conversations with a counselor or a trusted friend who can call the sin of jealousy sin.

Does Radius offer counseling?  We have no licensed counselors on staff, we only do pastoral counseling not clinical counseling.  We do have a list of licensed counselors we can recommend to anyone who is interested.

What are the views on me and my boyfriend living together and becoming a member of the church?  We would say you are settling for less than God's best in this scenario as we want men and women to take marriage seriously and not bypass it with relationships that are 'less than marriage', since sexual relationships produce children and we want to create safe places for children.  As to how this relates to church membership, we would handle that relationally with you if you are interested in joining radius. 

How do I respond when someone says God is punishing the world through weather, disease, etc?  He has done this in the past (think of Noah's flood, the earthquake when Jesus was crucified, etc.), so maybe He is doing it now, but we can't know for sure that these things are direct correction from God.  So my question would be how do you know??

We do small groups great - any plans for "Adult Sunday School/Education"? Why or why not?  No plans for this because we don't have the space for Adult Sunday School.  Building Sunday school space is what drives church building programs, as you have to build a ton of square footage to facilitate this and that is not in our plans.

Who can take communion?  Any follower of Jesus.  Do those who are not followers take communion at Radius sometimes . . . yes, I am sure they do.  But we don't feel like it is our responsibility to 'guard' communion, we will let God do that since only He sees the heart anyway.

How does God talk to us? Do people hear an audible voice or how does that work?  Rarely do people hear an audible voice, though it happens.  More often it is a thought, an impression, the unsolicited advice of a friend, a passage from the Bible that relates, etc.  Again, for this I would recommend, Just Do Something, by Kevin DeYoung.

1 timothy 3:9 - in your opinion, what is the mystery of the faith and how is this verse lived out at Radius?  I think he is referring to the deep truths of the Gospel here and it is lived out by making disciples and passing this knowledge on to the next generation of disciples

What is Radius' position on gifts of the spirit, i.e. speaking in tongues, prophecy, etc.  We don't have an official position on these things.  We believe the Bible and people interpret it differently in regard to these things and within our body we would have people who greatly disagree on these things and we are fine with that, we don't all have to agree on these divisive issues.  I lived and worked overseas for 3 years and even on my teams we have some people who practiced tongues and some who believed that tongues had ceased, and yet we all loved one another and pressed forward to tell people that Jesus is alive and He wants to save you from your sins and make you his child.  On that we could all agree.

As we grow and expand, how will Radius maintain a sense of community and avoid becoming just another "megachurch" in an already saturated area?  Make no mistake, our area is saturated in religion, it is not saturated with disciples.  Our mission is to make disciples and as long as we stay focused on that mission we will maintain community and we will maintain impact outside the walls of our church.  And there is nothing wrong with becoming a megachurch, as we have some good megachurches in our local area here who do some great things.  We hope to continue to grow and we want to leverage our growth for the planting of new Radius churches in the future, one in the White Knoll area, maybe one downtown, and in other areas.  We need more people to invest in our mission as we go forward so that we can start new churches.

With so many churches in the area, why is a new church like Radius needed?  Radius is not a new church, it is 7 years old already, as it was planted by John Reeves in 2003.  But in answer to your question, approximately 35% of the people within zip code 29072 attend church on Sundays, so there is another 65% of our local population that isn't currently worshiping or connected to Jesus, so we could use another 20 churches like Radius.  In addition to that, every new church involves itself in different ministries to make our community better so new churches equal a better community.

Does todd have a predicted date for the Rapture? If I thought I could take in $20 million dollars in donations like Harold Camping for setting a rapture date, I might develop some mathematical equation to forecast it down to a day and hour!!!!  This whole fiasco was utter foolishness and is a stain on the universal church, but I will let God handle the discipline in the universal church, it is not for me to worry about.  But don't lose the fact that Jesus will return, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, He will return and most will not be ready for his return.

Can you furthur explain predestination?  No way to type an answer to this one, books have been written on it. 

DNA question: why does radius not have a fuller doctrinal statement? How can you guard and keep that which you do not define?  We have just never had the need for it.  If we just list out our positions on 25 issues it is inherently divisive.  If someone wants to know our position on some certain thing, they are free to ask, but if they want to know our stance on the end times we are going to ask them if they know their neighbor's name first, as it is clear in the Bible we are to love our neighbor, but the end times scenarios are far from clear and they often become a source of division.  As we have issues that surface in our church that need addressed, we will look in the Bible to see what it says about certain things, but we just don't feel the need to define a comprehensive doctrinal statement just to let everyone know where we stand.  For now we are content to stand as a group of people that believe in the inspiration and authority of the Bible and we believe that the Bible is TRUTH, without any mixture of error, and thus it is our guide.

DNA question: is it an advantage or disadvantage that most of the staff is not seminary trained? Or are they?  it is neither an advantage or disadvantage.  I am the only one who has been to seminary and I have a Masters degree in church planting and biblical languages.  However, the qualifications to lead a church are listed in 1 Timothy 3 and seminary is not there.  Leaders are to display the fruits of the spirit, they are to know God and be adept at sharing His Gospel and they are to be competent in leading their family and their peers.  That is what we are looking for in leaders.  If they have a seminary education that is great, if not that is fine as well, it is not the most important factor because earning a seminary education today says nothing of your character, your calling or your leadership ability, it only says you have the intellectual ability to absorb a lot of information and write decent papers.  Many people finish seminary because they have intellectual ability, but they don't have the gifts and calling to lead in a local church.  We would rather find people with those gifts and provide further education to them if it is required in their particular ministry area.

DNA question: why was the bible (or the bible in relation to preaching and small groups) not a focus of the DNA series? What is radius' stance on preaching and teaching the Word of God? Not just the gospel or ethics but the whole counsel of God.  We believe the Bible is the Word of God, and it is truth without any mixture of error, so it is our rule and guide for how we follow Jesus.  It was not a DNA Sunday because it was the basis for all we said on each of the Sundays so it was kind of a given.  We have preached through Romans, Malachi, the parables of Jesus and Ephesians in the last few years.

Does radius baptize into the trinity?  Yes

What r the avenues 2 get involved @ radius besides cafe & greeting?  You can work in the parking lot, Radius Kids, Radius Students, audio/visual team, play in the band if you are a musician, join a small group in the fall or participate in outreach events like our upcoming kids camp or a future trip to Allendale.  Also, we encourage you to find things in your radius that you know Jesus would want done and take the initiative to do those things as well and invite us to come and help you in that.

Is there a fund the church has set aside to assist active church members when they hit a financial crisis and are unable to pay their electric bill or any utilities, to prevent the utilities being disconnected?  There is no specific "fund" for this, but as God is generous with us and gives us extra funds we use them in a variety of ways to help others, including situations like this.  Just happened a few days ago where we paid someone's power bill.

Alright, as I said, I could only do short, simple answers to these questions due to time, but I am glad you asked.  We want to be an open book to all who call Radius home so that you can have full confidence in who we are and what we believe.  Always feel free to ask your question, any question.  Now let's go and make some disciples for Jesus!!!!!

Beautiful vs Sexy

Just read an article about whether or not it is appropriate for young girls to have dolls that are 'sexy'.  Is this a legitimate question?  Are there dolls out there now for little girls that are not sexy?  Did anybody else refuse to buy Bratz dolls because they had lips bigger than their heads and skirts up to their, umm, navals?  Did you know that if Barbie were a real woman, she would be 6' 0", weigh 100 lbs. and her measurements would be 39"/21"/33", which are not humanly obtainable.

Men, as you raise your daughters, you must teach them, and your wives, that there is a difference between beautiful and sexy.  A woman that dresses to be beautiful is just that, beautiful. She can have a conversation with any man and he will certainly notice and appreciate her beauty, but he will respect her and talk to her appropriately.  On the other hand, a woman who dresses sexy gets a totally different reception from men.  She is immediately noticed as being sexy so all of her conversation and interaction with men is colored by this sexy background, so she is treated differently.  She does receive a lot of attention and looks from men, but this attention is focused on her body and the perverse imaginations of men rather than being focused on her face, which represents her personality and her being as a person.  She is objectified at this point and men are too distracted by her sexy body to pay attention to her as a person.  Overstatement, you say?  Not really.

I was in a public place the other day and a young lady came in who was dressed very sexy.  She was young and perhaps naive about it, but her sexy look colored her every interaction with men in that place, from men her own age to men the age of her father.  It made her uncomfortable I could tell, but it was unavoidable because she presented herself as sexy, not simply beautiful.  In another instance, I heard of a young lady who was dressed sexy rather than beautiful in an interview setting with a panel of people, both male and female.  After the interview, most of the talk centered around her 'sexiness' rather than her answers or her qualifications, as that presentation colored the entire conversation.

So let's push back on a culture that scoffs at the purity of beauty and only values what is sexy, even with our preteen daughters.  It is chauvinistic and it objectifies women as sex objects rather than honoring them as simply beautiful.

Bin Laden is Dead - How SHOULD we respond?

Alright, everybody is asking the question, "How should followers of Jesus respond to Bin Laden's death?"  I have been waiting patiently for a real intellectual heavyweight like Tim Keller to weigh in on this subject, but since he has thus far remained silent, I will pen a few thoughts from an intellectual midget. 

First of all, I lived overseas for 3 years and spent 2 of those years loving and serving Muslims, so I do have a little bit of perspective on my nationalistic pride and I realize how it can affect me.  So I called one of my friends who is a STUD in every sense of the word.  He has lived overseas for more than a decade loving and serving Muslims in hopes of leading them to eternal life through Jesus.  He is also an incredible thinker with a high IQ.  All of that plus he is a very proud American citizen with a brother who has served 20+ years in the military.  So he has some part of his brain or his heart on every conceivable side of this fence.  When I asked how he responded to the news, he gave me a one word answer, "conflicted".  I love honesty. 

We should be conflicted in our response.  On the one hand, Osama successfully ran from and thus negated justice for over a decade, so when justice was finally served (he admitted to murdering thousands of innocents) and he paid for his murders with his life, there was this great sense of joy and excitement because the justice that had been delayed so long was finally accomplished.  The human heart is made in the image of God and His moral code is written on it from birth.  We all understand basic concepts of justice and we all long for justice to be served, so when we have to tolerate injustice for a decade and then justice is served in a quick 30 minute raid, our heart leaps because justice is beautiful when it overcomes injustice.  That is part of what you saw when you witnessed people going into the streets and celebrating.  People were celebrating the justice of that moment because they had waited on it so long.  Now there was another, darker side to that celebration.  That was the nationalism and pride that was also a part of those celebrations.  

Think about it this way.  We don't throw parties when an inmate is executed for murder here.  If you witness the families of the victims, they are often somber and crying.  It is a very conflicted moment for them when it happens, as death is always a somber thing and it gets weird when it is totally merged with justice.

On the other hand, many believers are tweeting and blogging that we have no room or right to celebrate this killing of Osama in any form or fashion, after all, "'Vengeance is mine', says the Lord."  I get their point as well, and thus I am conflicted, as is every believer I would imagine.  But here is how I parse it out in my mind.  I am satisfied and perhaps even joyful about the justice of that moment when Osama's life was taken by our government because he murdered 3,000+ of our innocent citizens.  That just feels right and just to me.  It is like when I see an older brother take up for his little brother who is being picked on, and the older brother beats up the bully.  My heart is drawn to justice and loves to see it.  Maybe I am wrong on that, I am just telling you what I feel. 

But I distinguish between feeling great satisfaction in the justice of the moment and feeling great joy about people being killed that day.  Intellectually, I know these two things are two sides of the same coin, but I think I can still rejoice in justice served, but not rejoice in the actual killing.  The killing is a necessary evil in this world where justice is put into place to stem the tide of evil, but I am not rejoicing in the deaths, only in the justice. 

And it is here that I can interject the Gospel.  Billions of people across the world today are still rejoicing at Bin Laden's death and saying 'he got what he deserved', which is true.  But the Gospel of Jesus is greater than justice because the Gospel brings mercy instead of justice, and as beautiful as justice is, mercy is even more so.  For example, what if instead of justice, Bin Laden received God's mercy and responded to that mercy.  That is, what if instead of being justly killed by SEALS, Bin Laden had truly repented of his evil, murderous actions and went on Al Jazeera and renounced all of his murders and begged for mercy?  What would have happened then?  I can tell you one thing, that would sent a lot more reverberations throughout our world than his just death.  That would have sent a reverberation of confession and repentance and mercy throughout our world that would have changed us for the better.

Think about it.  If people were dancing in the streets because they saw justice, what would they have done if they had witnessed God's mercy in the life of an admitted mass murderer?  That would have definitely put me out dancing in the streets!  And don't be confused . . . if Bin Laden had been converted and awakened to his sin and confessed it to all the world, that would not have excused him from justice.  In fact, true conversion would have required him to turn himself over to those he had murdered and receive from them their determinations of justice.  But what if he would have done this peacefully and with a heart of remorse?  That would have been something more beautiful and compelling for our world than justice served.

So my conclusion is that life is complex and we want to answer complex questions in 149 character tweets, which makes us foolish dweebs.  We can't easily answer difficult questions, but we do know that our hearts long for justice and this longing can only be explained by the fact that we are made in the image of a just God who wrote his ideas of justice on our hearts.  In case you haven't noticed, monkeys don't set up courts to mete out justice, they just all fight to see who is going to rule the tribe.  So I am not feeling guilty about my sense of satisfaction in the justice of this moment, but neither am I dancing in the streets because this man took a bullet to the head.  Death is always a very sobering thing because it is appointed to all men to die once and after this to stand and be judged by God.  That judgement is an indescribable terror for the mass murderer who has to stand there alone and doesn't have Jesus there as his friend and the one who forgives his sins. 

By the way, that judgment is also an absolute terror for the 'really good guy' from South Carolina who never murdered anyone, but is secretly full of envy and selfishness and apathy towards his neighbor.  I am all too aware that if God ever decided He was going to remove all mercy from me and give me absolute justice for every evil and vile thing I had ever done or thought of in my life, a bullet to the head would be my fate as well.  So when justice overcomes injustice, it is a beautiful thing, but MERCY is drop dead gorgeous!!!

The Gospel and Time Share Salesmen

Alright, there are two great events this week.  Easter is the first one and this Sunday preachers across the world will be explaining the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ and calling for men, women and children to leave their current way of life to follow Jesus, as they should.  The other great event was that I went to Myrtle Beach on a time share weekend where you get the great deal in exchange for a 90 minute presentation, which actually lasts 150 minutes, but who's counting?  So as I sat through this presenation, I was struck by how similar their sales methodology is to our invitation/altar call methadology, which really made me nervous.

In the time share presentation, they start off with some food to loosten up the atmosphere, then they have some small talk about your family, etc. to build some rapport.  Following this, they take a large chunk of time to explain just how much you will spend on vacations in the next 20 years and use this number throughout the presentation as your baseline loss number.  Then, they take you to a luxury condo and show you all around what could be yours and show you how great it could be.  Finally, after their 90 minute window has long past, they pull out a sheet to show you how much this is actually going to cost.  This cost aspect is strategically placed at the end, after you have been enticed for 2 hours already without any talk of the cost.  So now a very quick presentation of the actual cost is made and you see it is only going to cost you $1,200/month for 5 years.  But wait, just for you we will cut it in half.  No, still don't want to buy, we can do a smaller unit for even less.  Still no, well, I am going to make you sit here for at least 10 minutes in awkward silence with me while we 'wait on a manager' to come and close you out and see if the tension will get to you.  Ten minutes later 'said' manager comes in and he has an even better deal, but it is only for today.  You can go every other year for only $200/month, but you will never see this price again.  We take a pass and yet another manager has to come and check us out so we wait even more and on our way out he offers us a chance to come back to this condo and do this all again for 5 days/4 nights for only $450, half payable right now.  So much for this being a one time offer. 

The other distraction was that there were obvious lies told throughout, like our salesman saying he owned a unit with this company, but later admits he has only been working there for 6 weeks . . . they rang a bell saying someone had bought in the middle of everyone's presenation and I have a sneaking suspicion this happens in every presentation to show you that others are already buying so it must be ok, you need to buy now.

So do you see any similarities to much of what we do in modern altar call scenarios?  A little food to loosten up the atmosphere, then a 30 minute presentation on everything God has done for you and all He wants to do for you in the future.  This is followed by a quick, downplayed presentation of the cost of following Jesus and then you are given an invitation to respond and choose to follow Jesus for only a fraction of the real cost.  If you don't respond immediately, you are left there for a longer time to let the tension build and you are repeatedly beckoned to come forward and respond.  You are told this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and you must do it today.  If you take a pass, you are chastised severely for doing so and begrudginly allowed out of the auditorium.  There are obvious similarities.

So how do we conclude the matter?  Be careful how you present the Gospel and call for decision.  Don't resort to the cheap tricks of time share salesmen.  Be honest about the costs and the benefits of following Jesus . . . I think he spent more time talking about the cost than he did the benefits in His own Gospel presentations.  Also, when the Gospel is presented the Holy Spirit does bring pressure to respond and that is healthy, Jesus' Gospel calls for a decision, but don't strive to create artificial pressure outside of the Holy Spirit.  That just produces 'decisions', not disciples.  Finally, don't 'grease the wheels' by being deceptive.  Don't secretly ask your counselors to walk down the aisles as 'mock' converts to loosten up the crowd and have the appearance that lots of peope are going forward for salvation.  This is deception, plain and simple, but many still employ it because it is effective in getting folks to walk aisles (and buy time shares).  However, we can't call people to truth by using deception as one of our methods - that is insane.  If you have folks come forward as counselors, be honest about it and tell folks what is going on.

So as you preach the Gospel this Sunday, do so with great conviction and call for a public response without apology - that is the New Testament model.  But please, for the sake of our collective integrity, don't use cheap sales techniques and deception as your methadology to get more people to respond just so you can boastfully tweet out your 'response number' at 12:05 pm on Sunday.  If you want to boast in a number, please boast in the number of those who responded to the Gospel at last year's Easter service and have proven that decision to be genuine by actively following Jesus a year later . . . that is a number we can all rejoice in together!

Does France have the right to outlaw the Burqa?

Today a law goes into effect in France that makes it illegal for Muslim women to wear their traditional veils, called the burqa and the niqab.  The Burqa is the full body/face covering often seen in afghanistan and the niqab is the face covering that has a small slit for the eyes to see out (pictured here).  The government of France has now made it illegal to wear these articles of clothing in public.  Violation of the law is punishable by a $150 fine.  Fathers who are convicted of forcing their wives/daughters to wear the traditional veils can be fined up to $50,000.  An article about the law can be seen here.

So does government have a right to ban religious dress?  I don't think so.  This is a really bad move for France.  If they wanted to get rid of Islamic veils, all they had to do was teach the values of equal rights to the next generation of immigrants and as they reached adulthood, they would have gotten rid of the veils themselves.  Unfortunately, many young ladies would have been beaten and perhaps even killed during this shift, but at the end of the day if a parent chooses to kill their own child there is very little government can do to prevent it.  Government can and should punish these deplorable acts that with the harshest of punishments (the death penalty seems appropriate here to me), but prevention is almost impossible.  We have seen this recently in the USA where an Islamic father took his daughters out and ran over them repeatedly with his car to kill them because of the shame they had caused him by accepting western dress.

So now France has to police this new law and many will obey it, though this obedience will not come from belief in the value of women's rights, but rather because they don't want the $150 fine.  I also expect that many young Islamic girls will simply not be allowed to return to school since they can't dress "appropriately" to leave the house.  I think it would have been much better to try and persuade this new generation of French immigrants that women really are equal to men and they should be allowed to choose their own dress code.  This sets a bad precedent because at the end of the day, I don't want my government determining how I should dress (except for issues of indecency, which government has to define and police so that my young girls don't have to view naked perverts in public places).

I suppose the real irony of this whole scenario is that France is also home to Cap d'Agde, also known as the 'Naked City', where complete nudity is legal throughout the entire city.  So I have to conclude that the message from the French government is, "Women, don't cover your faces in Paris and don't cover anything in Cap d'Agde."  That's as clear as mud.

Why should only men propose?

I read an article on cnn.com asking why only men should propose.  It is sort of comical that this is such a foundational part of our culture that we don't even question it.  And that unquestioned allegiance to this concept begs the question . . . Why don't we question this age old tradition?  We question everything else in society, why not this?  I am feeling brave enough to tell you why and I will probably take an web-based MMA beating for it, but what the heck, sometimes it is fun to stir the pot. 

Women don't buy a ring and ask a man to marry them because it is a man's responsibility to initiate and lead in a marital relationship.  This is modeled very precisely by a man having to initiate the marriage itself through proposing to a lady.  If a lady proposed to man and asked for his hand in marriage, it would be really hard for him to accept because the very act would make him feel effiminate.  If he did accept, he would in effect be taking a passive role from the beginning and agreeing to 'give himself away' to this lady.  She would be taking the lead in this relationship and thus the responsibility for it.  I am sure it has happened out there somewhere, but it not anything a guy or a girl would brag about simply because it is awkward. 

A guy asking another man for his daughter's hand in marriage, a guy down on one knee humbly asking a lady to be his bride forever, these are beautiful pictures that we all esteem.  But picture a lady asking a father (or mother?) for his/her son's hand in marriage and you immediately feel shame for the father because he raised a boy, not a man.  If you are a guy and you think about this scenario, you already know that this man is not really vested in this relationship.  Rather, he is just along for the ride . . . as long as the ride is still fun for him, that is.  I mean picture a lady down on a knee asking a man to marry her and you feel sorry for her, don't you?  "That poor lady", we say, "begging that passive dude to marry her."  Where does that emotion come from?   Why does that just look and feel awkward?  Are we all just male chauvinists or trapped in Victorian era traditions?  Or is there something deeper here?  Is there something deeper than culture and traditional social constructs?  

I think it is something deeper and I am not alone.  C.S. Lewis noted in his great work, Mere Christianity, that male and female are truly equal in God's eyes, yet they have very distinct roles to play and these roles cannot be reversed in a healthy relationship.  I am paraphrasing here, but Lewis wrote that if you went up to a mom in a nuclear family and tried to complement her by telling her what a fine job she was doing leading her husband and children, she would instinctively deflect that complement and try to convince you that she was not really leading her husband, as she would be embarrassed by such a notion.  If her husband heard this statement, he would feel ashamed as well.  Why would they feel this way about a simple statement that was meant to be complementary?  Because this statement is innately awkward to her and she is trying to save face for both herself and her husband.  She knows he is supposed to be the leader of the home and if he is indeed following her and not leading, he feels like less of a man and she is in an awkward role (which happens often, by the way, because we are plagued by passive males, but the results are not very good).  She even feels embarrassed by the fact that she has a husband who is so weak that he has to be led by her! 

On the flip side, if a neighbor comes up to a man and tells him, in front of his wife, that he is doing an excellent job leading his wife and children, his chest will bow out and he will take that as one of the greatest complements he could ever receive.  In like manner, his wife will also take a lot of pride in that statement and not be offended by it.  She is very proud of her husband when he is strong and courageous enough to shoulder the responsibility for leading his family well.  These are the roles that we have and when we try to reverse or ignore them, we do so to our own detriment.  If two people are going to dance the waltz, there has to be a leader and a follower, though they look like one seamless unit when they dance, and so it is in marriage.

I have three daughters and they dream of a bold, strong prince charming coming into their life and pursuing them with confidence and ultimately bringing them into his house for love, romance, protection, provision and procreation.  They don't dream of chasing down a passive male and asking if he might show them the courtesy of marrying them.  That is a nightmare, not a dream, but it is happening more and more, albeit with not so happy endings.  Listen ladies, if a guy enters into a marriage as a passive consumer, he will probably always play that role.

So men, man up and show some courage by taking all the risks in relationships upon your own shoulders rather than dumping them on the ladies.  And women, find your confidence in Jesus and not in any man's affections.  If you are in a relationship with a man and he will not pony up the the courage/leadership necessary to propose to you, kindly tell him that you are not interested in eternally dating a passive male and put him on the street.  The amount of frustration you feel towards him now will be exponentially increased in just a few years if you keep pulling him along.  Do away with him and then pray and wait for a man that is strong enough to lead you in a kind and humble manner.  If you drag a man into marriage, you better be ready to drag him for the next 50 years, and that gets old before you wedding cake gets stale.

The Dummy Challenge - The Key to 1 Corinthians

This week we will be reading 1 Corinthians in the challenge.  One of the keys to understanding 1 Corinthians is realizing that this is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in ancient Corinth in response to a list of questions they had sent to him.  You see this in 1 Corinthians 7:1 where Paul says, "Now about the questions you asked in your letter", and then he goes on to answer those questions.  So he was having a written dialogue with this church and this is but one of the letters of that dialogue. 

As for the subjects covered it this letter, they are very diverse because they are based on the needs of this particular church at this particular time in their history.  Paul rebukes them for their divisions and rivalries in the church and pleads for unity, something that is always an issue in the church.  Then he goes on to discuss marriage, celibacy, lawsuits, eating meat that had been sacrificed to other gods, speaking in other languages in the church, the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and spiritual gifts.  As I said, it is a book that covers a lot of ground because Paul is trying to help this church get back on its feet and overcome its current issues. 

Things I note out of this book are the fact that God actually killed some of the believers in the church because they were so arrogant they actually came to the Lord's supper service and got drunk (1 Cor 11:30, sleep is a euphamism for death when speaking of believers, as we don't die).  God is not afraid to discipline those who are His!  We also see that sex is always an issue.  They had a guy who had taken his father's wife for himself (not his mother, mind you).  As usual, no one had the guts to confront this as wrong and call him out on it so Paul had to do it from afar, and he did.  He said to put the guy out of the congregation and refuse to associate with him until he was willing to let go of this ungodly, adulterous relationship.  He did this for two reasons - one, to protect the reputation of the church, as it is bride of Christ, and two, to try and get enough pressure on this guy so that he would give up this destructive lifestyle.  The guy eventually did give up his adulterous affair, as we read in 2 Corinthians 2:5-8.  In chapter 7, Paul discusses singleness and marriage and pleads with them to remain single just as he is, but says it is not a sin to marry (of which I am very glad!).  This passage is often confusing but it is just Paul, a studly, single missionary throwing out a challenge to them to come on and give up marriage for the sake of Christ to serve him wholeheartedly.  There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not a command of God, it is a challenge from Paul to the Corinthians.  He goes even further and calls singleness a spiritual gift, not something all are supposed to muster up.  

Finally, some of the most controversial verses in the Bible are in 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul discusses spiritual gifts, specifically the gift of speaking in other languages, in the assembly.  Hundreds of books have been written on this one chapter so I won't try to solve all of these issues on my blog.  If you ask me what I believe about this issue, I would probably say I am somewhat undecided.  Here are the things I do know.  The word tongue means language so everywhere you see tongue in your bible insert the word language.  That will help you some.  Also, the phenomenon of followers of Jesus speaking languages they had never heard or studied so that they could declare the glories of God to people who didn't speak their own language definitely happened several times in the book of Acts as a sign of the very first coming of the Holy Spirit.  However, I think this was an unusual miracle that God provided proving the Holy Spirit had come, as the number of healings and jail breaks and other signs were far more than anything we have seen since then.  Furthermore, there is no record of it ever happening again in the church from about 90 AD until 1900 AD, other than one strange leader in the 3rd century.  As you can imagine, the church covered a lot of ground in these 1800 years and moved the Kingdom of God throughout the earth.  Therefore, to say (as many do today) that one can't really know Jesus or his power without having an experience where you speak in other languages miraculously reduces 1800 years of believers, many of whom were faithful unto death in the Roman coliseums and the African jungles, to B team Christians who never really knew Jesus or his power.  No one is man enough to make that statement directly, but many do make it indirectly when they say you have never been baptized by the Holy Spirit if you have never spoken in tongues (i.e. languages). 

On the flip side, I know several people that I really respect and people that definitely know Jesus and they are people that claim to have the gift of tongues and claim to speak in other languages.  I say claim because I can't verify this in any manner, it is a personal thing for them and I have never even heard them do it, so there is no way for me to verify it.  But many of them have character and integrity and faith that I can verify and it is real, so I just leave this divisive issue alone, as it is really not that big for me anymore, and I suggest you do the same.  Billy Graham had a fantastic ministry and never needed to speak in tongues, and Jerry Rankin had a fantastic ministry while maintaining a private prayer language based on 1 Corinthians 14, though he never claimed to speak publicly in a language he had never learned, as it happened in Acts.  As a career missionary, he had to learn languages the way I did, the old fashioned way of blood, sweat and YEARS.  My advice is there is no reason to seek out this particular gift and there is no reason to deny this gift, but don't get sidetracked on the main thing which is to love God and love your neighbor.

The Dummy Challenge - Where is Romans?

Hey guys, sorry I left Romans off the Dummy Challenge reading.  It was an honest mistake.  What we will do is just add Romans to the end and read it the week of April 17.  More news for you tomorrow along with a discussion of 1 Corinthians.

Here is the layout of the challenge including the addition of Romans for the final week:

The Dummy Challenge . . .

Read the ‘NT’ by the BIG E (Easter)!

Just read 3 chapters a day, 5 days out of every week and you will complete the challenge.

Jan 2^nd              John 1 – 15

Jan 9^th            John 16 – Luke 9

Jan 16^th           Luke 10 – 24

Jan 23^rd           Acts 1 – 14

Jan 30^th           Acts 15 – 28

Feb 6^th               1 Corinthians

Feb 13^th           2 Corinthians

Feb 20^th           Gal, Eph & Phil

Feb 27^th           Col, 1 & 2 Thess

Mar 6^th             1 & 2 Tim, Titus & Phil

Mar 13^th           Hebrews

Mar 20^th           James, 1 & 2 Peter

Mar 27^th           1, 2 & 3 John, Jude

Apr 3^rd             Revelation 1 – 11

Apr 10^th           Revelation 12 – 22

Apr 17^th           Romans 1-16 and DONE

Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them.  1 Tim 4:13 (NLT)

Bible for Dummies - Is Acts 4 Real?

Alright gang, if you are keeping up with the pace you are reading Acts 1-14 this week.  Reading 15 chapters a week is probably a little more demanding than you thought, but keep up the pace and finish this challenge.  It will help you so much as you see the big picture of what God did in those first few decades of the church and how He planned to impact the entire world through these few followers.

In Acts you will read about a lot of crazy things - people casting lots, God killing rulers for being arrogant and killing others for lying in church, people speaking in many different languages without ever studying them, angels jailbreaking some of the apostles, Jews eating pork and paralyzed people jumping up and running.  This is a record of how it all happened in the early days just after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended back into heaven. 

As people read through this book, they always ask the question, "Why isn't this happening today?"  They want to see these same things on the streets of Lexington, Liberia, Las Vegas or wherever they live.  Well, I do to!  But the reality of it is that I have not seen any of these things firsthand in my 20 years of following Jesus and having lived on 4 different continents and served in 15 countries.  When I was laboriously learning to speak Russian I longed for the gift of tongues, but God had me do it the old fashioned way.  So why is it that real miracles like these are so scarce today and they were seemingly daily during this time period?  Is it simply that neither I nor none of my acquaintances over these past 20 years has had the faith necessary to believe for and generate this kind of Holy Spirit activity?  That could be the case, but if that is true then no group of believers for the past 1,900 years has had such faith either, as we have no documented evidence of believers outside of the early church experiencing such a fantastic number of miracles at one time and one place.  The Protestant Reformers, who had the faith and courage to be killed, mutilated, drowned and burned at the stake for Jesus didn't see miracles like this.  The Protestant missionaries of the 19th century who had the faith to go to Africa knowing they would die within 2 years of their arrival didn't see it either.  So I am led to believe that God chose to do great and mighty things by the hundreds in this one geographic area and for this one season for his own purposes, one of which was to establish the leaders of the Church as the recipients of His power and blessing. 

Many of you would argue with me about this and I am fine with that, we can be brothers/sisters and disagree.  But even those who disagree most vehemently about this have never seen anything even approximating what happened in Acts.  They may have seen a miracle or two, but they have never seen God kill a man for lying and in the same week heal hundreds from disease because the shadow of a man of God fell on them.  God does His own thing in His own time and just because it isn't happening doesn't mean we have no faith.  It could mean that, but it often means it is not God's plan or will to do it so He doesn't, period.  So remember that the book of Acts is a written record of what actually happened, not necessarily a standard operating procedure of how we ought to do it today . . . otherwise total 'communalism' (like the Amish and the Mennonites) would be in order in every church and we would need to meet together every day (Acts 2:44-46 All the believers were together and had everything in common.  Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts). 

So happy reading this week . . . and don't be afraid to submit your questions, always glad to get them.

'16 and Pregnant' or '35 and Celibate'

Just read this story about a Memphis high school that has had 86 students get pregnant in the last year alone.  It reminded me of the MTV show 16 and Pregnant, which documents the real lives of girls who find themselves in this situation.  The interesting thing about the MTV show is that it is very real and doesn't seek to glorify teen pregnancy and teen parenthood in any way.  In fact, of the several episodes I have seen there are no happy endings.  One young couple struggled through the immense pain of giving their child up for adoption and the others spent a lot of time fighting as they tried to do the simple, basic stuff of adult life, like paying the bills and taking care of their child, something none of them accomplished.  Several split up within months and the teen mom was left to care for the child alone. 

The irony of the entire situation is that MTV is a station that was born and bred in my generation to push one thing - a lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock n roll (or rap or hip hop depending on the decade, etc.).  They have been very successful with that model and therefore that is what they push with their programming 20+ hours a day.  But recently, out of nowhere, they have begun to air reality TV programs that clearly display the obvious repercussions of the lifestyles they are glorifying the other 20 hours out of the day, and it is not pretty.  So will the millions of teens who follow MTV be able to connect the dots and avoid becoming 16 and pregnant?

And even if they can connect these dots to 16 and Pregnant and avoid teen pregnancy, will they see pregnancy as the only danger of casual teenage sex?  Probably, and therefore I would like to suggest a similar reality series for MTV to run next season.  It should be entitled 35 and Celibate.  What would be the substance of this show, you ask?  It would focus on the vast majority of Americans who bought into the deception that said the only danger of having sex outside of marriage is the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy.  Thus, if you simply use birth control or resort to abortion after the fact there can't be any real harm in casual, sexual hook-ups.  In order to debunk this myth, all they would need to do is go into any of the tens of millions of American homes that have marriages that are basically celibate (i.e. sex every couple of months whether you need it or not).   They could talk honestly about the sexual pain and dysfunction that exists in these marriages today, much of which was born in youthful sexual experiences that were casual and unhinged from commitment, honor and trust.  It is a tragedy that is even more epic than that of teenage pregnancy, as it often leads to 'casual' extra-marital affairs and thus the disintegration of these families.  The subsequent divorces leave the children without both parents in their home. 

A show like this would be another connecting dot in this matrix of cause and effect in the sexual realm.  It would prove how sex inside of marriage only happens in an environment of safety, trust, respect, honor and love, while sex outside of marriage doesn't require any of the above and therefore erodes them from the heart.  This erosion process makes these qualities even harder to recover within marriage and thus brings the sexual train wreck.  As was once famously stated by someone I don't remember, "There are no condoms for the heart or mind and thus they can't be protected from the harmful effects of casual sexual experiences."

So MTV, what do you think of my idea?  I will sell you the intellectual property for a song if you will only produce the shows and help the next generation see clearly the real costs associated with a teenage life filled with casual sex.  Then we can even do a follow up called The Cure for the Hook-Up Hangover where we show how Jesus is alive and is the ONE who can empower us to break through these painful issues and restore us to a place of forgiveness and sexual health.  I know millions who have the resume to audition for that show!

Some thoughts on John 16 - Luke 9

Hi folks, and thanks for joining me (Brian Kirkland, one of our elders at Radius) over the next week as we finish up the Gospel of John and roll into Luke. Below are a few passages/questions that piqued my interest after reading this week’s assignments. Remember, if you have other questions, just post them as a comment on this blog post and Todd or I will answer them as quickly as possible.

John 16:23-24: When Jesus says ‘whatever’, does he really mean ‘whatever’?   My hunch is that we’ve all asked ourselves this question about prayer, especially after the fact when that thing we were praying for didn’t come to fruition. Perhaps it was in reference to your favorite college football team finally winning a championship (I plead guilty), or acquiring those solid surface countertops that would make your kitchen really stand out.  Or maybe it was something substantially more serious than either of those, like asking God to heal a sick family member or friend.  While the occasion may vary, this question remains a valid one and is worth addressing here.     

 There’s a few other similar passages earlier in John, as well as one in 1 John (the same John wrote that too), so it’s helpful to briefly unpack these for insights. Note…I’m grateful to the work of another John (John Piper) in helping me understand these verses better.

John 14:13–14: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

John 15:7–8, 16: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples . . . . You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

1 John 5:14-15: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

John 16:23–24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”

Let’s start with John 14.  In this passage, we’ve got some qualifiers to the ‘whatever’.  The first is that we must ask “in my (Jesus’) name”.  Because our identity and righteousness is found in Him, He serves as our mediator with God the Father both when it comes to salvation and in our prayers.

Note what comes next:  The purpose and result of prayer is that “the Father may be glorified in the Son”.  Our ‘me-first’ (or even ‘people-first’) mentality gets imported into our prayer lives pretty subtly and easily, so this qualifier is a much-needed check that reminds us that the ultimate point of our prayers is that much is to be made of God (not us). A worthwhile question for all of us to ask: What’s the basis of our prayers… our own sakes or God’s?

Now let’s look at John 15 and 1 John 5 together.  When looking at the John 15 passage, the qualifying statement of an answered prayer is  ”if you abide in me, and my words abide in you”, and in 1 John 5 it states that “if we ask anything according to his will he hears us”.   The key point here is that as we abide in Him, we will make requests according to His will (although none of us are going to do this perfectly, and we’ll have times in our lives where we do this better/worse than others).  

John 15:8 continues to help tie all this together.  In John 14 we established that the purpose of prayer is the glory of God, and now in 15:8 we are told what gives God glory:  that we “bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples”.  As Christians, God’s given us a mission to make disciples and to bear the fruit of the Spirit in the world (love, joy, peace, etc – see Gal 5:22-23), and our prayers ought to tie to this task in some capacity.

Finally, to our passage at hand (John 16).  As in John 14, the qualifier here is that we pray in Jesus’ name. But John 16 provides additional info:  “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full”.  If you were wondering how the God-centeredness of God (as seen in John 14 and 15) relates to our best interests, this verse provides insight.   As we abide in Him, pray in His name, according to His will and His mission for us, our prayers are increasingly answered and our joy is made complete!  

One closing note… While I am trying to stay faithful to the texts at hand, I’m not trying to put together a magic formula or mantra here. For that matter, I’ve certainly experienced occasions in my own life where it seemed like my prayers and life were in lock step with God and yet the resulting outcome was not what I prayed or expected.  What to do if/when this happens is important to discuss too, and well worth another entry on a later occasion.   

Luke 1:3            Who was Theophilus?

We’re not sure.  He’s mentioned in both the beginning of the Gospel of Luke and in Acts (Luke wrote both, and Acts is his sequel to the Gospel of Luke), and our only description of him is “most excellent”.  A couple of options:  1)  The name means “friend of God” in Greek, so some believe Luke is using this term generically for the followers of Jesus that would receive the letters; 2) He may also be a wealthy potential or recent convert, (likely a Roman official) that sponsored the writing and copying of the Gospel of Luke and Acts.  I think the second option is more plausible, but nothing major hinges on one interpretation over the other.

Luke 3:23-38             What’s the point of this genealogy?

The Gospels contain two genealogies of Jesus, the first one in Matthew 1, and this one here in Luke 3.  Because Matthew’s reading audience had a largely Jewish component, he emphasizes throughout his Gospel how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament messianic prophecy.  As such, his genealogy starts with Abraham, continues up to David, and leads through David’s royal descendants to Jesus in order to show that Jesus is the rightful heir to David’s throne and the messianic king expected by the Jews. 

Luke, however, is writing to a primarily Gentile (anything other than Jewish) audience, so he takes a different approach.  Instead of working forward, he works backward, keeps on going past Abraham, and connects Jesus’ lineage to Adam. By doing this, Luke emphasizes the humanity of Jesus rather than His Jewishness. This is good news indeed for Gentiles, since it underscores the idea that a specific ethnicity is not the distinguishing factor for being a part of the family of God (or to put it as Todd often says, the church is a raceless and classless society).  Luke continues back even further, finally ending the genealogy of Jesus with God Himself, highlighting that Jesus is not only human, he is also divine.   

FYI…before anybody out there gets too ambitious and tries to figure up the age of mankind based on the Luke 3 genealogy (some folks have), please note that the idea of ‘son’ in Jewish genealogic lineage can and often did mean ‘grandson’ or ‘descendant’, so it won’t work.

Week 2 Questions and Answers for the Dummy Challenge

OK, let me clear up the confusion out there.  This week, the week of January 9th, we will read John 16 - 21 and then begin in Luke, which is located behind John (thus the confusion).  We will read Luke 1-9.  I think this is the only week that has this type of confusion.  Again, we are not reading two of the Gospels, Matthew and Mark.  The reason we are not reading them is that they cover much of the exact same material as Luke so it gets really repetitive.  That is why I chose for us to only read the Gospels of John and Luke, as they are not really repititive in the parts of Jesus' life that they cover. 

This week I asked one of our elders, Brian Kirkland, to preemptively anticipate your questions from John 16-21 and Luke 1-9 and lay out some explanations.  He will do that in a post that will hit my blog tomorow night.  Then, any other questions you have from your reading during the week you can simply post them as a comment on that blog post and I will reply to that question with a follow up comment on the same blog post.  So if you post a question, come back to that blog post in 24-48 hours and look in the comments section and you will see an answer posted there by 'radius', which is the web admin title, which is usually me, although I will solicit some help in answering the questions if the number of them picks up.

Keep on pressing forward and it is not too late to enlist others, they could simply skip the Gospel of John and pick up with us at Luke 1 and go from there . . . .

The 'ethics' of War?

I recently read the awesome book by Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell.  It is called Lone Survivor and it is the story of operation Redwing, a special ops operation in Afghanistan in 2005.  If you are a dude, I highly recommend the book.  It is a sure fire way to boost your testosterone levels without using black market HGH!  The training and the missions of the Navy Seals are awesome and in this book you get a a firsthand walk through them both. 

The meat of the book, though, is about the actual operation in the hills of Afghanistan that went terribly wrong and cost 3 SEALS their lives.  They were chasing a warlord through the mountains to 'elminate' him and were ambushed by hundreds of insurgents.  3 of the 4 SEALS were killed in the battle and only Marcus lived to tell about it.  Subsequently, 16 other soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down as they were trying to extract the SEAL team.

The only reason Marcus survived was that a simple Afghan boy chose to take him into his home village and protect him as one of their own.  (This was done because of "Lokhay Warkawa", a Pashtun belief that any stranger in need of shelter must be given it.)  This custom is a matter of honor for these villagers and they will fight to the death for it.  Luckily for Marcus, these villagers chose to take him into their village and under their protection, so they protected him with their very own lives for days on end until he was ultimately rescued by other special ops forces, who had been alerted to his whereabouts by the long, sacrificial journey of the village chief to the closest American base (20 miles away over the mountains).

Anyway, here is the ethics part of the whole thing.  The SEAL team of 4 was initially discovered by 3 simple goat herders, young boys.  Protocol would tell them to murder these innocents on the spot so that they would not have any opportunity to tell the local militias that American soldiers were in the area.  This SEAL team, however, took a vote and chose not to commit cold blooded murder in that way.  Thus, they allowed the three young shepherd boys to walk.  Unfortunately, the boys did alert the local militia, probably out of fear of being killed by the militias themselves if they were found to have had such information and not shared it.  Nevertheless, once the special ops team was discovered, the fight was on, which ended with 3 of 4 SEALS killed in action.  Looking back, Marcus seems convinced that the best thing they could have done was to simply murder the three innocent shepherd boys and call it the collateral damage of war, which would have probably saved the lives of his 19 buddies (3 on his SEAL team and the 16 killed when the rescue copter was shot down).

So how do you make those kinds of decisions biblically?  My biggest disappointment with the book was that Marcus never took on the most obvious question of all.  He simply concludes that murdering the three local Afghan boys so they couldn't alert the local militia was what they should have done, but then his very own life is saved by 3 other Afghan boys just like the first three.  Afghan boys gave up his position and thus cost his buddies their lives, but other Afghan boys risked their lives and the lives of their entire village to save his life.  So if you just murder the first ones preemptively in order to protect your position, which type of boy are you murdering at that point?  One that will tell the militias of your presence, or perhaps one that would stand up to the militias and risk his own live to save your life when you are wounded and dying and about to be mercilessly beheaded?  That is the real ethical question that surrounds the entire story, and I am not sure I have the answer, but it is the obvious question.

I, obviously, have not been in such circumstances and can't say what I would or wouldn't do.  I can, however, ask the questions and think about right and wrong in such circumstances.  It seems to me an ultimate Catch 22.  I know that Marcus and a million others live with deep wounds and regrets about the 'what if's' of war and how they might have done things differently to prevent their buddies from becoming casualties.  I can't imagine that kind of inner turmoil.  On the other hand, just knowing human nature, I would assume that if they would have simply murdered those three Afghan shepherd boys preemptively so they wouldn't give up their position to the warlords, Marcus would probably be at home writing another book about another kind of turmoil in his soul, the turmoil of knowing they murdered these innocent boys 'just in case' they might give up their position?  It is the classic position of being damned (literally, condemned) if you do, damned if you don't.  War provides way too many scenarios like that.

So what was the ethical thing to do in Marcus's scenario?  What is your opinion?  As for me, if I dare state an opinion, I think they did the right thing.  They refused to kill these boys for simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time and I think they refused to do it because their conscience would not allow them to commit murder.  They were trained to kill enemies who were killing others, but they couldn't commit to preemptive murder of innocent shepherds.  In the end, it cost them dearly, but at the time they had to make that decision about the shepherd boys they didn't know what the cost would be for them personally so they made the best decision based on the information they had.  They chose to protect innocent human life even though it increased their own personal exposure to risk.  That is never an easy thing to do, but it is always an honorable thing to do.

The Dummy Challenge is on - R U in???

I am pumped . . . as I have talked to folks the last 24 hours they are all excited and reading their Bibles.  People all over town are taking the Dummy Challenge and reading the New Testament before Easter.  If you weren't at Radius on Sunday, I challenged our church to this and gave them a reading plan, which is included below if you want to follow along as well. 

Here are a few notes.  As a part of the dummy challenge, the lead dummy, that is me, has agreed to post a blog answering any and all questions related to that weeks' reading.  Some questions are already coming in so I will get started on that right away.  If you have a question, just post your question as a comment on one of my blog posts and I will answer it in a new blog post within a few days.  Also, I say we are reading the New Testament, but that is not totally correct.  We are skipping the Gospel of Matthew and Mark because they are very similar to the Gospel of Luke, so we are just doing Luke and then moving on to other books.

I can't wait to see what God reveals to each and every one of you as you humble yourself in front of Him and ask Him to transform your life.  One final word of advice . . . each time before you read the Bible ask God to not let it be a dry exercise of discipline, but ask Him to use this time to change your heart, change your desires, change your motivations.  Remember, we are not doing this to get smarter, we are doing it to get better.  Now let's go get it fellow dummies.

The Dummy Challenge . . .

Read the ‘NT’ by the BIG E (Easter)!

Just read 3 chapters a day, 5 days out of every week and you will complete the challenge.

Jan 2^nd             John 1 – 15

Jan 9^th             John 16 – Luke 9

Jan 16^th              Luke 10 – 24

Jan 23^rd              Acts 1 – 14

Jan 30^th               Acts 15 – 28

Feb 6^th                  1 Corinthians

Feb 13^th               2 Corinthians

Feb 20^th             Gal, Eph & Phil

Feb 27^th             Col, 1 & 2 Thess

Mar 6^th             1 & 2 Tim, Titus & Phil

Mar 13^th             Hebrews

Mar 20^th             James, 1 & 2 Peter

Mar 27^th             1, 2 & 3 John, Jude

Apr 3^rd             Revelation 1 – 11

Apr 10^th             Revelation 12 – 22

Apr 17^th             Finished

Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them.  1 Tim 4:13 (NLT)

Take the DUMMY Challenge!

As we finish up our Bible for Dummies series at Radius, I am challenging each and every one of you to leave your apathy behind and intentionally read the New Testament before Easter (April 24).  I have laid out a system (seen below) that requires you to read 3 chapters of the New Testament 5 days out of every 7, giving you a couple of cushion days each week. 

How long does it take to read 3 chapters, you ask?  10 minutes or less - that is all.  So we are talking about 50 minutes a week for 16 weeks and you will finally read through the New Testament.  But the goal is not to simply do it and check this off your bucket list.  That is useless religion.  The goal is to ask God to transform your heart, your vision and your soul as you expose yourself to his living and active word. 

In order to help you accomplish this goal, I am going to commit to posting a weekly blog post that will answer any tough or confusing issues from the previous week's reading.  So if you hit a teaching of Jesus where he talks about making yourself a eunuch and you have no idea what a eunuch is, I will answer that question on that week's blog and help you understand.  Of course there are many things I don't understand as well, but where I can help I will take the time to post it.  Also, you will be able to ask any questions you have in the comments section of my blog and I will try to answer those as well.

So here it is folks . . . The Dummy Challenge

Week of Jan 2^nd John 1 – 15

Jan 9^th              John 16 – Luke 9

Jan 16^th            Luke 10 – 24

Jan 23^rd            Acts 1 – 14

Jan 30^th            Acts 15 – 28

Feb 6^th                1 Corinthians

Feb 13^th            2 Corinthians

Feb 20^th            Gal, Eph & Phil

Feb 27^th            Col, 1 & 2 Thess

Mar 6^th              1 & 2 Tim, Titus & Phil

Mar 13^th            Hebrews

Mar 20^th            James, 1 & 2 Peter

Mar 27^th            1, 2 & 3 John, Jude

Apr 3^rd              Revelation 1 – 11

Apr 10^th            Revelation 12 – 22

Apr 17^th             Finished

Until I get there, focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them.  1 Tim 4:13 (NLT)

Thanksgiving in December

As a pastor at Radius, I am in the know on a lot of things that many of you guys never get to see or hear about, and many of these things are really encouraging.  So I want to pass along a few to you while I am thinking about it.

• God gave us a building in 2010!  Our first service there will be on Easter, April 24th.
• God gave us a new staff member in 2010, Joe Pitts, along with two interns, Jesse Harman and Michael McKenzie.
• Dozens of people were baptized in 2010, from those in their teens to those in their 60's
• $100,000+ was given away in extravagant generosity to others
• 35 people went to Mexico on two different trips to work with our partners there
• Our Mother's Day Giveaway impacted hundreds of people around the world
• More babies than I can count were dedicated to Jesus and to His Kingdom

I can't wait to see what happens in 2011 . . . we are definitely going to take it up a notch, of that I am sure!

The Bible for Dummies @ Radius

Have you ever tried to read the Bible and just got lost in the details of animal sacrifice, long geneologies and old english words?  If so, our new series at Radius is just for you.  We will spend 3 Sundays just introducing this book, talking about ways you can read and understand it and exposing some of the culture of the time periods in which it was written so we can understand some of the mystery behind it.  Then, at the end of the day, we will drive home the point that the goal is not to know and understand the Bible, but rather to know God, the One who gave us the Bible.  That is where we often go wrong in our culture.  Hope to see you Sunday.