Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. -[2 Corinthians 4:1-6, ESV]

Every year I read about half a dozen megachurches offering expensive Apple products or even cars as incentive for showing up or bringing people to church. I’ve been told that people will accept an invitation to church on Easter 85% more often than other Sundays. Easter and Christmas- people show up if you ask them. Good. Great! Ask people to your heart’s content.

But what exactly are we giving away? How you get people to show up is how you’ll keep them around. If you give them an iPad this year, you better offer something bigger next time, and the next time, and the next time. If you’re resorting to cheap gimmicks to get them to show up, they’ll probably keep coming for the handouts, regardless of the message. Their incentive to show up isn’t to worship God or learn more about Jesus; you’re all but paying them to show up, raffling off prizes in hope they’ll get a little Jesus in the bag with that sweet iPad 2. Moreover, the underlying thought is that maybe if they win that iPad, maybe they’ll feel obligated to keep coming. Even put a little money in the bucket.

And if you only d it once or twice a year- does that make any difference? Are these people sticking?  If the surpassing grace that comes through Jesus’ blood isn’t enough, then what is? Do you really think the chance to win a car somehow makes a person more attuned to the Gospel?

What are you giving away? The Gospel you preach produces the churches you get. You can promote a false gospel through gimmickry; sucking people in by promising material things as if that’s what Jesus did… as if the Gospel of Jesus himself isn’t enough…

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. … For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. -[2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 21, ESV]

If that isn’t enough… if the life, death, and resurrection of  Jesus isn’t enough…

then nothing ever will be.

*The following article is reproduced in its entirety with permission.

God is changing the Church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global proportions. They say, in effect: “Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it.” A growing number of them are surprisingly hearing God say the very same things. There is a collective new awareness of age-old revelations, a corporate spiritual echo. In the following “15 Theses” I will summarize a part of this, and I am convinced that it reflects a part of what the Spirit of God is saying to the Church today. For some, it might be the proverbial fist-sized cloud on Elijah’s sky. Others already feel the pouring rain.

Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been called “The Way”. One of the reasons was, that they have literally found “the way to live.” The nature of Church is not reflected in a constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.

In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th century AD adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of “church” remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.

In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone, Luther started to reform the Church through a reformation of theology. In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching the wineskins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of structure.

Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as “a house of God”. At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people of God. The Church, therefore, was and is at home where people are at home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God: -Share their lives in the power of the Holy Spirit, -Have “meatings,” that is, they eat when they meet, -They often do not even hesitate to sell private property and share material and spiritual blessings, -Teach each other in real-life situations how to obey God’s word, dialogue – and not professor-style, -Pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, `lose their face’ and their ego by confessing their sins, -Regaining a new corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.

Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real fellowship. They have too often become “fellowships without fellowship.” The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups, typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied “sidewards”, like organic cells, once these groups reached around 15-20 people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into citywide celebrations, as with Solomon’s Temple court in Jerusalem. The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically speaking, neither big nor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missing the dynamics of both.

The local church is not led by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder, a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating “from house to house,” whereby there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor (shepherd) is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of “equipping the saints for the ministry,” and has to be complemented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.

In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has happened to large parts of the Christian world: we have all the right pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear, tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As water is found in three forms, ice, water and steam, the five ministries mentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and “independent” churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new, and at the same time age-old, forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual “ministers” can find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason why we need to return back to the Maker’s original and blueprint for the Church.

No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional “holy man” doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalisation of the church since Constantine has now been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), “there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way. To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely. Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no. There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God, who, like in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.

The “Body of Christ” is a vivid description of an organic, not an organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network, where the way the pieces are functioning together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can trust. Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism is necessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.

The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a bit euphemistically, as holy people coming regularly to a holy place at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee. Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called “worship service” requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour “worship service” is very resource-hungry but actually produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives. Economically speaking, it might be a “high input and low output” structure. Traditionally, the desire to “worship in the right way” has led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This not only ignores that Christians are called to “worship in truth and in spirit,” not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as “the Way of Life.” Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start “acting powerfully?”

The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being again a Go-structure. As one result, the Church needs to stop trying to bring people “into the church,” and start bringing the Church to the people. The mission of the Church will never be accomplished just by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself into areas of the population of the world, where Christ is not yet known.

Church tradition has managed to “celebrate the Lord’s Supper” in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the “Lord’s Supper” was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is restoring eating back into our meeting.

Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of the Church of the city or region. Authenticity in the neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporate identity will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the City-Church.

They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his followers are often more into titles, medals and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all. “Blessed are you when you are persecuted”, says Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong centre of the universe. That is why Christians will and must feel the “repressive tolerance” of a world which has lost any absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologisation, privatization and spiritualisation of politics and economics, Christians will, sooner than most think, have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more persecution-proof structure.

Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an office? And what is the most difficult, and therefore most meaningful, place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life. As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots, back to where it came from. It literally comes home, completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.

As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God’s Spirit is saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and make your own contribution. Maybe your home, too, will become a house that changes the world.

She’s written several books, but the one highlighted in the news was her latest release, Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?: (‘Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV). It’s all about people- some people who sniffed money and got addicted and some people who realized that loving others was more important than stuff. Karen’s got two things going for her (actually, she’s got more than two, but these are pretty important).

First, she’s a superstar storyteller. Every chapter in Double-Wide kept my attention, but her description of the jubilee in Mobile Bay is the best I’ve ever read. The book is worth a buy simply for that one little old chapter. Dead serious.

Second, she doesn’t hold back when she sees something wrong. She’s got bite, and in her latest book Karen eviscerates the prosperity gospel and boldly rebukes those who proclaim it in the name of wealth. For real, folks. She did it with humor that good old Southern charm, but there was no mistake in the end. There’s no place in God’s Kingdom for those health, wealth, and prosperity guys. It’s just not what Jesus was about.

So that brings us to this week. You might have read about “Bishop” Eddie Long in the news. Some guys claimed Long sexually assaulted them. Long denies it. It turns out “The Bishop” is one of those prosperity gospel preacher-types, complete with the custom suit, bling on his fingers and around his neck, and those expensive cars. Karen wrote a blog post about it:

Whatever the courts decide about the sex abuse charges, Long has a troubling history of abusing his position to coerce people into serving him. In a flagrant abuse of scriptures, Long has preached a false gospel – the Prosperity Gospel. Tragically, it’s one that Americans have been groomed for since Oral Roberts arrived in shining white polyester promising that God loves Capitalists best.

It’s a message that allows pastors like Long to exact obscene amounts of monies from the manipulated masses in the name of the bloodied Christ.

Long’s abuses have been well-documented. According to an investigation conducted by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, between 1997 and 2000, Long received at least $3.07 million in salary, benefits and the use of property from the nonprofit tax-exempt, now defunct, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries, one of 20 charities Long established to reportedly help the needy.

Apparently that referred to Mr. Long.

Tax records revealed that the $3.07 million channeled to Long was as much as the charity gave to all other recipients during the same time period. Long’s compensation included a $1.4. million six-bedroom, nine-bath home on 20 acres in Lithonia, Georgia, use of a $350,000 Bentley and more than a million in salary. …

“I’m not going to apologize for anything,” Long told an Atlanta-Journal reporter. “We are not just a church, we’re an international corporation. We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multi-million dollar congregation.”

You’d think that a pastor of a multi-million dollar congregation would have better things to do, but he doesn’t. That post got Karen in an awful lot of trouble with The Bishop, because he banned his church from reading Double-Wide this week. No kidding. Is this a big deal? Probably not. I sincerely doubt many of those 25,000 church members were ever going to pick up Karen’s book.

But you know what? You should pick it up. You should go to your bookstore of choice and grab a copy. Download it on your Kindle, or Nook, or whatever e-reader you use. Buy one for your friends. You could even mail a copy to The Bishop (c/o Bishop Eddie Long, 6400 Woodrow Road, Lithonia, GA 30038). God knows they might get a kick out of it (and if they don’t, I know of a pastor down in Florida who seems to get a kick out of burning books).

I don’t get a kickback from any of this. Karen’s local, so maybe we’ll bump into each other sometime when she’s not touring the country selling books. But that’s about it. I’m a fan, and I believe in her message. I think you should, too.

If there is one essential to Christianity, it is that at its core we have the Gospel- literally, the Good News. The Gospel we preach produces the churches we get. Over the last ten years I’ve spent a lot of time on determining what the Gospel is. What comprises the Gospel? What makes it good news? Why is it good news? In all my theological education, I don’t remember ever having one class session where we sat down and attempted to answer that question, and it’s disappointing.

Nearly four years ago I asked my readers “What is the Gospel?” and responses varied. One friend cut and pasted the entire book of Romans into my comments. While it demonstrated my point, it wasn’t particularly constructive to the discussion. If you asked fifty people, you’d probably get forty different answers. “What is the Gospel?” is a loaded question. It has a lot of answers. One might say, “good news.” Another might proclaim it’s the books of “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” Others delineate between different gospels, referring to the gospels of prosperity and salvation or the social gospel. What I want to know is simply, what is the Gospel of the Bible? What is the good news, and why is it good news?

But first, a couple ground rules:
1. Try to keep your comments as clear and concise as possible (don’t post an entire book of the Bible).
2. Remember that other people are watching (Hi Mom!). I shouldn’t have to say this for a post about the Gospel, but play nice.

Okay. Your turn.

In contrast, it is our responsibility as Christ-followers to be positive change agents- bent solely on the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer to the Father: “YOUR KINGDOM COME, YOUR WILL BE DONE, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.” We cannot do this alone, thus our desperate need for Christian community and cooperation. Thus, the Church.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. [2 Corinthians 4:1-6, ESV]

May I wake up tomorrow with the desire and ability to be a good servant of Jesus Christ to the world. To you.

A note from Joe: BA Stewart is a friend of mine from seminary in New Orleans. He’s one of the most intelligent and thoughtful guys I’ve ever known, and I’m grateful for our many conversations that elevated my knowledge and comprehension of philosophy (and photography). Please enjoy his guest post.

C.S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity is among one of his more popular non-fiction works. Lewis’ objective in his book is to discover what it means to be merely Christian–that is a Christian without the perceived trappings of Christianity. He does so by starting with general revelation and concluding Jesus through a series of arguments from emotion and joy and avoiding Christian jargon and divisive theological issues so that the reader is not distracted by such things. Lewis has found many friends among Christians who share his sentiment that Christianity in and of itself is a beautiful, but is often tarnished, duly or unduly, by the perception that Christians are divided, bigoted, old fashion, hypocritical, or one of a million other indictments that keep people away from the faith. Interestingly enough, even some of these attempts to recover the basic teachings of Christianity are now used to as fodder against Christians. Take for instance Christian fundamentalism. This movement was bread out of a series of pamphlets released at the turn of 20th century entitled, “The Fundamentals”, which attempted recapture the basic doctrines of Christianity. This among other movements to one degree or another have all in one shape form or fashion attempted to discover mere Christianity.

Reclaiming the essential doctrines of Christianity is a tough gambit, as inevitably one will include a doctrine that some consider extraneous, or one will exclude a doctrine another considers essential. I have my theological convictions of which I will not relinquish, but there are other doctrines I hold more loosely. To me, however, the more important question to Christianity is, what does it mean to be merely Christian, practically speaking? I ask this not to diminish doctrine. I personally believe that doctrine is more important that praxis because theology undergirds praxis–without the doctrine the praxis  is meaningless. I ask this because as Christians, we have a theological conviction that we have a highly doctrinal message that the world needs to hear and believe. Interestingly, Jesus cared a lot about praxis too. The bulk of his teachings are practical theology as opposed to philosophical theology. But with this said, Jesus did not give a huge list of do’s and don’ts or a how-to guide for delivering the message. Rather, he summarized his commands into two commands and spoke largely in the form akin to wisdom literature. Paul was not a whole lot more specific. We do get somewhat synoptic view of his ministry in Acts and autobiographical glimpses in his letters, but this raises the question, are such things prescriptive or descriptive? At the end of the day, I am not sure, but taking in to account the message of  Romans, perhaps the most systematic theological work in the Bible spends 12 chapters talking about one particular doctrine, (namely the gospel) and reduces the implications of the gospel to a matter of conscience in Chapter 14, so if I was to err, I would err on the descriptive side. But nevertheless I do understand that everything they did was for the purpose of spreading the the gospel.

As a person interested in such things, I have run the gauntlet about how I’ve approached praxis. I was raised in a rather fundamental environment. While I don’t think that there is anything inherently evil about my upbringing much of what I was told as to what Christians do as a child was a product not so much of biblical teachings but of rather traditional forms of Christian behaviors. I however did not become a Christian until I was 18. After becoming a Christian, I rather embraced the more fundamentalist precepts I already knew because to me, such things were what Christians did. But then I changed. I went a trip to another land and came back and did a pendulum swing the other way. I became highly critical of Christian practices in America and rejected many of them on my own accord. It took some time to center myself again, although Joe probably still thinks I’m a fundamentalist .  While I probably over-reacted to my experience, I think lesson burned in my brain is one of self-evaluation. I constantly ask myself a personalized form of the one I asked earlier: are the actions that I perform merely Christian? Relating back to my experience, I was amazed when I stepped off the plane in another land how the in-house “wars” American Christians fight diminished. These Christians weren’t debating young earth creationism against old earth creation against theistic evolution against intelligent design. There weren’t  arguments over traditional and contemporary forms of music. There weren’t “emergents” critiquing the “seeker sensitive”/relevance movement critiquing church growth movement critiquing whatever came before that. There weren’t debates over which translation was the best and which ones were from the devil — in fact, most were happy to have a translation, period. There wasn’t much discussion at all, really, other than discussion over what the Bible say, talks about whom they shared with this week, who they would share with next week, prayer, and where they would meet next week as to not draw too much attention to themselves.  In personal reflection when I ask myself the aforementioned question, I am amazed how much of my quote “Christian” practices melt away. This is not an indictment of American Christianity, but a self-evaluation, and one that I think needs to be asked. This helps me stay focused on the task that God commissioned his disciples to do.

Sometimes I think we treat our theological differences like a boxing match. I can hear the announcer standing center ring proclaiming loudly, “IN THIS CORNER, THE DEFENDER OF THE DOCTRINES… THE GUARDIAN OF THE GOSPEL… THE SULTAN OF THE SCRIPTURES… SUUUUPER… THEEEOOO… LOOOOOGAAAAAN!!!”

What you rarely hear these days is, “And in this corner, Paul, a humble servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Maybe there’s a reason for that. Having an open relationship with others, regardless of religion, denomination, or theological bent, is what we are here for today. We don’t build those relationships for the sake of old school bloodsport. We build them for the sake of friendship, for love.

We are so busy protecting and defending God from humanity that we forget to be servants of Christ to humanity. We’re spending so much time protecting God and the Gospel from those who would deny it that we forget to lovingly live it out on a daily hourly basis. We don’t  build relationships with an agenda. We make friends because of love. Plain and simple. When we see others through the lens of an agenda other than love, we turn them into fixer-uper projects. Our job is not to fix people. That’s God’s job.

Christine Mallouhi, in her book Waging Peace on Islam, tells the story of St. Francis of Assisi, who during the height of the Crusades traveled to Egypt and visited the Sultan Kamil (the nephew of the great Islamic leader Saladin). Francis came in humility and peace, in contrast to the conquering Crusaders. His approach and attitude so impressed the Muslim Sultan that he invited Francis to send his Little Brothers throughout his territory. It is out of this experience that we have perhaps Francis’s wisest counsel: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” He saw the dignity of God in every Muslim person. Such grace toward Muslims was radical in his day, and still is in ours. [Paul-Gordon Chandler, Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road]

And it’s not just Muslims who deserve that humility and respect. It’s our Christian brothers and sisters. Our atheist and agnostic friends.We honor and love our Hindu friends. Love must have no bounds.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. [John 13:34-35, ESV]

“Thus there is such a thing as human absorption. It appears in all the forms of conversion wherever the superior power of one person is consciously or unconsciously misused to influence profoundly and draw into his spell an individual or a whole community. Here one soul operates directly upon another soul. The weak have been overcome by the strong, the resistance of the weak has been broken down under the influence of another person. He has been overpowered, but not won over by the thing itself. This becomes evident as soon as the demand is made that he throw himself into the cause itself, independently of the person to whom he is bound, or possibly in opposition to this person. Here is where the humanly converted person breaks down and thus makes it evident that his conversion was effected, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a man, and therefore has no stability.”

[Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pp. 32-33]

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

(John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

-John 1:1-18, ESV

Okay, so Mark Harmon didn’t make a cameo in my English class at Auburn in January 2000, but you can imagine my surprise when his lookalike did. He was laid back; he was cool. He wasn’t our professor- that would feed a power structure created by The Man. No, this guy was a part of the counterculture. He was our guide.

Twice at Auburn I had professors who thought they were my spiritual guide: both English and Literature professors. Another, an economics professor, was our political conscience. He taught us what it meant to be a libertarian, then he ran for governor of Alabama. I digress…

Mr. Shoop, as I shall call my hippie English teacher (I’ve long forgotten his actual name), stood before our class and professed that all literature was open to interpretation. Everything. If it has been written, it is open for interpretation. I challenged his assertion, “So if I write something about a tree and you interpret it as being about the mechanical workings of a modern factory, then that’s okay?” He said yes. “What if I tell you that it’s about a tree? That it’s not about a factory, but simply a tree?” Mr. Shoop explained that it didn’t matter. Everything was open for interpretation.

That’s an interesting take on truth. The good news is I got an A. I guess he could have interpreted my work as an F, but I would have challenged his interpretation. I always think my work deserves an A, even if it doesn’t.

Some years ago Voddie Baucham joked that if someone approached him with the premise that “there is no truth,” he would take the liberty to punch that person in the nose. I can think of more creative methods of making the same point, all of which would be endlessly entertaining. It comes down to this: there will always be one correct interpretation, one absolute truth. If I write a poem about a tree, and I tell you that it’s about a tree and nothing less, then my poem is not open to interpretation. You may wish that I had a secondary meaning. You may even project that wish upon my poem, proclaiming that I am actually writing about factories. But the truth remains the same regardless of your interpretation. My poem is about a tree.

Here’s the point, which I’m positive any thinking individual realizes. To say that no truth exists is to make a truth statement. It contradicts itself. Even anthropologists accept that truth does exist, regardless of cultural differences. It’s not always clear what that truth is, but it exists. The goal is to find it, no matter hard it is to find. And that’s okay.

Anyway, we all know this whole post is really about those fascist fluffy bunnies.