Moody Thinking

In the last post, I discussed that money and possessions, by themselves, are morally neutral. Items become idols when we associate a value to them that is greater than God. Since biblical times, the pursuit of wealth has caused many to reject God. Consumerism/Materialism is not a modern problem, but one that has existed for all time.

Jesus gives some insight to how possessions can lead us away from God in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:19-24):

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”"

The point of this passage, as usual with Jesus, is the heart. Hence, he says “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” When we take the focus off of Jesus and put it onto anything, then we have put our hearts on the wrong things.

Because it is addressed specifically here and in other places in scripture, I think money holds considerable potential to become an idol. We focus on earthly wealth because it is right in front of us. It does not take a ton of faith in our culture to be considered successful. We set goals and we seek to attain them, for that is the American Dream.

However, Jesus shows us that our goals are too small. We spend all of our energy to build castles of sand, to store up treasure that will ultimately be destroyed or stolen. We could learn much from one of the wealthiest kings of all time, Solomon, whose book Ecclesiastes shows that the pursuit of these earthly joys is vanity.

Note that there is no middle ground between the pursuit of Jesus and the pursuit of money. His words are clear: “You cannot serve to masters.” For too long, we have blended the two, recklessly pursuing money and expecting God to bless us, provided we keep up outer appearances. We think that our church attendance, and maybe even our giving, can cover up our greed.

God is not after your money; he is after your heart. Generally, we can see where our heart is by where we are putting our money. The problem is not money itself but what we make of it. Money, like anything else, makes a terrible God; and we will destroy ourselves by pursuing it above God.

I have a 2 week old daughter at home, so you can imagine that we are operating in that realm of “We cannot really say how, but we are dealing with it.” My wife has been a complete champ during this time in taking care of both kids when I went back to work and getting up with the baby. That said, I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in 2 weeks. Whenever this happens in life, my brain hits this sort of hazy realm where I struggle to remember things and complete thoughts. However, I almost think I can think a little deeper about a lot of things and, for some reason, see things on a different level.

The authors I am reading at this time have helped. I have grown to appreciate writers who look beyond the surface to the underlying statements behind the activities. Or, to put it more simply, I like profound writers. Here are a couple of recent reads:

Chuck Klosterman: He writes on entertainment, sports, and many more subjects. Klosterman asks those questions that are in all of our heads though we lack the ability to bring them to the forefront. He deconstructs commonly held beliefs and then reconstructs a reality based on the evidence provided by his subjects, but not always from what they say. After hearing him interviewed several times on Bill Simmons’s “The B.S. Report,” I have learned that you cannot make statements and hope to pass them by Klosterman. He makes you earn your conclusions.

Speaking of Bill Simmons, he is one of my favorite writers in sports. He has actively chosen not to interview and get to know most players to avoid falling into the trap of beat reporters, where they become so enamored with a talented athlete giving them a moment that they excuse disappointing play. As a result, he can write scathing pieces about his beloved Boston teams that resonate with most fans because he does not have to worry about losing his “in” with the athletes. He is biased but admits it and his bias actually leads to pessimism instead of optimism about his teams. Also, he makes numerous pop culture references and includes his “buddies” in all of his work. Really, wouldn’t we all if we could?

Malcolm Gladwell is fairly new to me. (Sorry I’m late to the party, but I just got out of grad school). However, I appreciate his tendency to tell the non-headline stories. He also observes people and builds solid cases from his observations. Again, like Klosterman, he does simply bow to the cultural norms, but pushes the envelope of understanding.

Cormac McCarthy can condense four pages worth of plot and character into four brilliant lines of dialogue. The service station scene from “No Country for Old Men” makes my heart beat faster in both the book and the movie. His characters are deep without being insufferable and things are never as they seem.

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I am also rereading many classical works in preparation for the GRE Subject Test in English, so I am being reintroduced to some of the classics at the same time. I will post more on these classics later in the week, but, in the meantime (whatever that is), let me know what you are reading now and why you like it.

I have been on a bit of a writing hiatus lately, somewhat self-imposed, but mostly because I cannot seem to get the thoughts from my head to my fingers to write. Every writer goes through times like these, even those who get paid to write (not me, obviously).

In the nebulous cloud of my mind, different thoughts and observations have been collecting over the past several months. Mainly, I have felt a growing discomfort with my American religion. As you probably know (or can read on the sidebar), I am a Christian. But Christianity, at least in my area, often lacks a powerful voice in modern society. Rather, we seem to be travelling along the same path.

We just went through the primaries for this years election. I get extremely bothered by most political ads, most of which merely through word bombs at each other. “So and So is a liberal/conservative, trial lawyer/politician, doesn’t believe the Bible/Christian.” All of these are buzz words, and most people have the filter through all the dregs of name calling to find any real political position.

In the South, being a leader is all about how “Christian” you can be (or how “unChristian” your opponent is). During this process, I finally realized why these ads bother me so much. They throw around the name of God as though it were a title given to gain more popularity. “Christian/Jesus/God/Bible” have become our political currency. Whoever has more, in the eyes of the public, wins the race. God has been reduced to a means to an end.

Our society at large reflects this change. Lest I simply accuse politicians of my own sins, I fight a battle constantly in my mind against our consumer driven culture. Look at the Christian Living section of the local bookstore. “10 Ways to Live your Life and Succeed” or something like it is the title of most of that section. Oh wait, we have to put God in the title to make it Christian: “God’s 10 Ways to Live your Life and Succeed.” The result of this thinking is that we treat God like a “vending machine” (credit to Derek Webb for the illustration). We put in our good works/methods, God gives us blessing. If we lack the resources, we do not get the blessing.

So, as long as we feel we do enough, then we are covered in our relationship with God. If we go to church… If we tithe… If we pray enough, read enough, give enough… then God will certainly be pleased.

I think we have to ask the questions: “Why do I believe in God? Why do I go to Church?” I believe we will be shocked at the answers. Most of us probably answer “Because I’m supposed to. It’s what we do.” Why? We go on living a normal American life and as long as we go to church, then we have covered our bases. We ignore the poor and needy and insulate ourselves with people that look and talk just like we do. We refuse to let the Gospel infiltrate our lives and change us.

Why do you think that so many “Born-Again Christians” participated in the atrocious racism of our nation’s history? Why do you think it still happens today, even if the laws say everything is the same? Why are we blind to the suffering in our own back yard and across the world? Because we do not truly follow God. We are looking to simply “do the minimum” in order to gain his approval.

The message of the Gospel is radically different. Your good works have done nothing but make you even filthier. The only method is not through working harder, but through surrender to Jesus Christ. His death paid the penalty for our sins and his resurrection promises us new life in him, eternal life that we can experience in part on this side of heaven.

I struggle often with anxiety… over whether or not I have done enough. In these times, I fall into the same trap that our culture has fallen into. I cannot earn God’s favor… It was given on the cross.

Together, let’s move away from measuring our lives by our actions and move toward measuring our lives by our love of God and desire to follow him. Then, I think the Christians will have a powerful message… telling the world that life is not found in the accumulation of wealth, or of good works, or in church attendance. Life is found in surrender to Jesus, and we have the tremendous promise that he will make us more like him, doing his father’s will, caring for the poor, orphans, widows, downcast, and desperate.

I realize I am little late on this movie review, but with a 2 year old, a thesis, and a full-time job, my only option for movie watching is usually long flights. So I watched “The Invention of Lying” on the very small in-flight movie screen for the first time last week.

First, we should establish the known facts. 1. Ricky Gervais is an atheist. 2. I am a Christian. So we fundamentally disagree on major issues, but I think the movie makes some good points and raises some interesting questions while at the same time presenting Gervais’ somewhat short-sided view of religion in general and Christianity specifically.

Ricky Gervais is very funny and pulls off subtle humor brilliantly, especially in an age when a lot of modern comedies rehash the  over the top “let’s drink and make jokes like 10 year olds” bit that sells more straight to DVD movies these days. Ricky Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a working stiff in a world where everyone tells the truth… always. He writes screen plays for televised readings about previous decades and loses his job because he could not find a way to make the Black Plague entertaining enough.

When facing an eviction, he becomes the first person capable of lying in order to get more money than he has out of the bank. He then carves a whole new life for himself by being the first person to be able to bend the truth, albeit without necessarily malicious intent. He takes in significant winnings in Vegas and reinvents the Dark Ages into the greatest historical event ever.

I found myself laughing out loud several times, especially when at the big moment of the movie where he is making his impassioned speech to his love interest, his friend continually interrupts him with side comments questioning what he is doing. Again, subtle humor at its finest.

That said, one of the major themes of the movie is the “creation” of religion at Mark’s mother’s bedside. She is facing death and is terrified of what is, or is not, to come. In order to comfort her, Mark lies and tells her that she will go to a place where she will be with everyone she loves and that everyone gets a mansion and will live in happiness forever. With these comforting words, believable because supposedly no one can lie, she dies happy.

The world is subsequently turned on its ear. Everyone crowds around Mark’s house, asking about the “Man in the Sky” and what happens when everyone dies. Mark then constructs a religion and writes down the “10 Commandments” on two pizza boxes. Later, when battling depression, Mark makes an appearance in sandals and a while sheet with long hair and a beard, a parody of Jesus.

The point here is not hard to miss. Religion was created in the minds of those unable to cope with the unknowns of death, namely that our lives simply end. Because humanity is incapable of critical thinking, they accept what Mark is saying, albeit while asking particular questions about the details that he cannot answer. The movie does not seem to hold the creators of religion as evil but as people trying to make the best of a bad situation, telling a white lie that snowballs out of control and becomes a cultural phenomenon.

This argument is not new and has been made by atheists for many years. The problem I have with this approach is that it basically assumes that humanity is largely stupid, willing to follow a delusion based on a white lie. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis argues that one of the factors in his decision to turn from atheism is that, as an atheist, he had to admit that the vast majority of the human race was completely wrong. I do not wish to argue from the masses (so to speak), but it is an interesting point that an overwhelming majority of people believe in a God of some kind. In this majority are some of the smartest, logical, and sincerest people the world has ever known.

Love is more than genetic matching.

In the end, Mark makes a plea for his love not to think simply about science (genetics is the most important part of seeking a potential mate) but to consider love and make a decision based on her feelings. She pleads: “Mark, tell me what the man in the sky wants,” but he refuses, for the second time, to lie to her because he wants her to choose him because it is her choice. While I very much appreciate the emphasis on inability of science to provide the right choice over an emotion like love, the subtle criticism of those waiting for an answer for God is not missed.

The atheist seems to think that seeking the will of God is an unwillingness to make a decision for ourselves. In that indecision, we turn to a higher power so that we do not have to deal with the issue and subsequently lay blame on God for the consequences of decision. While I agree that many will unfortunately treat God’s will as such, I will say that for committed Christians, waiting on the will of God is the most logical step a person can take.

If I believe that God exists and that he is all-powerful and all-knowing, it would be foolishness to look anywhere else for guidance. So I am not unwilling to make a decision, I am actually making the best decision possible by asking the source of all knowledge who controls all things for guidance. To do otherwise would be the height of stupidity.

I appreciate the movie’s perspective and its criticism as well as its comedy. I am by no means offended as the producers simply put an artistic expression on an age old argument. But, there is a coherent perspective from Christianity that challenges this view. Let me stand on a soap box for a moment: Christians should not be “afraid” to see this movie because the exchange of ideas allows us to interact with one another on this world. We Christians have a bad habit of insulating ourselves against any divergent view and as such our faith is weak from lack of testing. We prove this movie’s point by showing ourselves incapable of critical thinking if we cannot handle any view other than our own.

Thank you for taking the time to read this review. Feel free to comment with whatever perspective you have, whether or not it agrees with mine.

We watched a video at church the other night that profoundly affected me. It was the story of the Lord’s Resistance Army of Northern Uganda and their tyrannical ruler, Joseph Kony. This army attacks villages, massacring as they go, and forcing young boys into being soldiers.

I will not belabor the point and would rather you do your own research at www.invisiblechildren.com. On April 25, the men who started telling this story are organizing a global event where thousands will abduct themselves to raise awareness with media and political authorities.

Too often, we live in our too comfortable lives and miss the atrocities going on in the world around us. Watch the videos at the sight and find a way that you can be involved in the rescue of these child soldiers.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8.

We must remember the first two parts of these verses and work with the world to rescue these forgotten children and remove this man from power so that this war can end.

Enough from me. Watch the videos and they will impact you. 

See below for the information regarding the event on April 25, 2009 and why this is so important for you to see. 

Your Very Own Jesus

Notice the irony here: A Jesus action figure that is fully poseable. This Jesus is not one that requires anything of you, but rather molds to anything you want him to be. 

Catch it? 

Welcome to Consumer Christianity at its finest. For some time, I’ve struggled with our culture’s view of Jesus and how to present it in words. Now, my point is made brilliantly on the discount rack at your local megastore. 

I believe that our view of Jesus is far from the Biblical view. We have attempted to make him into whatever we want. Jesus is the banner of our political movements and the decorations in our homes. We throw Jesus into whatever we do in order to “sanctify” it. If we do something we know is wrong, it’s okay because Jesus loves us and he understands. 

You can go to any number of churches this weekand hear a sermon like: “12 Ways Jesus Helps Your Family” instead of “Jesus, God and Man.” We place Jesus in the rear of our lives, only calling on him in times of need and asking him for blessings.

Have we ever considered that a god that is submissive to our every whim is no god at all? What kind of god exists only for your fulfillment? Not the God. Not Jesus. To get a sense of this truth, read John Piper. His works on the supremacy of Christ are exceptional. If you would rather have a Jesus that only promises you blessings, read Joel Osteen. 

We are very adept at molding scripture to fit our needs. We love John 3:16, but we miss John 3:30 “He must become greater, I must become less.” 

We read the last part of John 16:33 “Take Heart, I have overcome the world,” but miss the first part: “In this world, you will have trouble.”

Jesus has become degraded to a consumer commodity. Use him for your family functions, your campaign promises, or your own conscience sake, but by all means don’t seek to find the real Jesus. Is it really reasonable to assume that a person that was tortured to death exists to only give you blessings and a happy life? No, he followed the will of his Father up that hill and bore our sins that we may have eternal life. He is the creator, the provider, the judge, and the savior. 

Let’s worship Jesus for who he is, not who we want him to be. 

For more thoughts on this subject (more eloquently stated than mine), check out The Internet Monk. http://www.internetmonk.com.