A Prayer for Repenting of My Critical Spirit and Selective Compassion

By Scotty Smith:

  

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Rom. 2:1-4 (NIV)

Dear heavenly Father, I feel “busted” and beloved at the same time this morning. The call to love others as Jesus loves me keeps driving me to you for more grace and for more power of the gospel. Meditating on this passage has convicted me about being way too selective in my love. I hoard the riches of your grace and withhold them from people desperate for your kindness. I’m not an equal opportunity dispenser of your mercy and compassion.

Father, I am quick to shower the riches of your kindness, tolerance, and patience on people whose brokenness, struggles, and issues are similar to mine. But I can be condescending and judgmental toward people whose weaknesses inconvenience, annoy, or offend me. Forgive and free me, Father. This attitude blatantly contradicts the gospel.

Father, it’s your kindness that leads me to repent today. I own my political-persuasion, theological-family, life-choice orientation, and personality-profile arrogance. I’m a mess, Lord, in need of a bigger, freer heart.

Jesus, you took the judgment I deserve on the cross—the fullness of God’s righteous wrath toward my sin; and now you love me with the fullness of compassion, acceptance, and delight. The greatest non sequitur in life happens when I withhold the same from others—whoever they are.  Deepen my repentance and deepen my compassion for fellow broken image-bearers of God. So very Amen I pray, in your righteous and loving name. 

http://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/scottysmith/2015/08/16/a-prayer-for-repenting-of-my-critical-spirit-and-selective-compassion/

Jesus lives; here’s a toaster.

This is an excerpt from Rob Bell's book called Velvet Elvis.   Some might criticize this quote as being being only about a social gospel and not about spreading the message of Jesus.  I disagree.  Jesus said: "for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.'"  It was Jesus who emphasized that a Christian would love others through action and by those works the world would know that we are his.

"Imagine an average street in an average country. Let's imagine person X lives in a house on this street. Next door is a Hindu and on the other side is a Muslim. Across the street is an atheist, next door to them an agnostic, and next door on the other side, someone from Ohio.

Imagine person X becomes a Christian. Let's say she starts living out Jesus' teachings so that she can become a compelling force for good in the world. She is becoming more generous, more compassionate, more forgiving, more loving. Is she becoming a better or worse neighbor? If we are her neighbors, we're thrilled about her new faith. We find ourselves more and more grateful for a neighbor like this. We wish more people would be like this.

Let's make some observations about this street. The good news of Jesus is good news for Person X. It's good news for Person x's neighbors. It's good news for the whole street. It's good news for people who don't believe in Jesus. We have to be really clear about this. The good news for Person X is good news for the whole street. And if it's good news for the whole street, then it's good news for the world.

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.

And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody.  We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism" (James 2:1-13). So we don't either.

Oftentimes the Christian community has sent the message that we love people and build relationships in order to convert them to the Christian faith. So there is an agenda. And when there is an agenda, it isn't really love, is it? It's something else. We have to rediscover love, period. Love that loves because it is what Jesus teaches us to do. We have to surrender our agendas. Because some people aren't going to become Christians like us no matter how hard we push. They just aren't. And at some point we have to commit them to God, trusting that God loves them more than we ever could. I obviously love to talk to people about Jesus and my faith. I'll take every opportunity I can get. But I have learned that when I toss out my agenda and simply love as Jesus teaches me to, I often end up learning more about God than I could have imagined.

I am learning that the church is at its best when it is underground, subversive, and countercultural. It is the quiet, humble, stealth acts that change things. I was just talking to a woman named Michelle who decided to move into the roughest neighborhood in our city to try to help people get out of the cycle of poverty and despair. She was telling me about the kids she is tutoring and the families they come from and how great the needs are. Some other women in our church heard about Michelle and asked her for lists of what exactly the families in her neighborhood need. They then circulated the lists until the found people who could meet every one of the needs. It's like an underground mom-mafia network. Michelle told me at last count they had helped 430 families, and they are making plans to expand their network.

'Jesus lives; here's a toaster.'

These are the kinds of people who change the world. They improvise and adapt and innovate and explore new ways to get things done. They don't make a lot of noise and they don't draw a lot of attention to themselves."

A grace within reach of the poorest, lowliest believer.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35

“Let us note that our Lord does not name gifts or miracles or intellectual attainments as the evidence of discipleship, but love, the simple grace of love, a grace within reach of the poorest, lowliest believer, as the evidence of disciples
hip. If we have no love, we have no grace, no regeneration, no true Christianity! . . .

Let us note what a heavy condemnation this verse pronounces on sectarianism, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, party-spirit, strife, bitterness, needless controversy between Christian and Christian.

Let us note how far from satisfactory is the state of those who are content with sound doctrinal opinions and orthodox correct views of the Gospel, while in their daily life they give way to ill temper, ill nature, malice, envy, quarreling, squabbling, bickering, surliness, passion, snappish language, and crossness of word and manner. Such persons, whether they know it or not, are daily proclaiming that they are not Christ’s disciples. It is nonsense to talk about justification, and regeneration, and election, and conversion, and the uselessness of works, unless people can see in us practical Christian love.”
        ---J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

An intelligent fourth-grader.

To pray for your enemies, to worry about the poor when you have worries enough of your own, to start becoming yourself fully by giving of yourself prodigally to whoever needs you, to love your neighbors when an intelligent fourth-grader could tell you that the way to get ahead in the world is to beat your neighbors to the draw every chance you get-that was what this God asked, Paul wrote. 

That was who this God was. That was who Jesus was. Paul is passionate in his assertion, of course, that in the long run it is such worldly wisdom as the intelligent fourth-grader's that is foolish and the sublime foolishness of God that is ultimately wise.

- Frederick Buechner

Sheep or Goat

Rob Bell in his book, "What We Talk About When We Talk About God"

“Jesus told a story about a king who was making decisions about his subjects, separating people "as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." The sheep, we learn, are the ones who brought the king food when he was hungry and water when he was thirsty and clothes when he was naked and looked after him when he was sick and visited him when he was in prison.

The sheep are confused when they learn of their good standing with the king.

"Uhhhhhhh, king?" they protest. "When were you hungry or thirsty or naked or lonely or sick? We've never seen that!" They ask because of course they understand the king to be quite wealthy, not lacking in basic necessities like food, clothing, and friends.

He responds, "Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

The king here makes the astounding claim that he is somehow present with and standing in solidarity with all of them, and that love and care and compassion shown to others is love for him.

Jesus tells stories like this one often, stories that speak to the divine presence in every single one of our interactions—a unity, power, and love present in all things, hidden right here in plain sight.

This story Jesus told raises the haunting question: What are we missing? Is there an entire world, right here within this one, as close as our breath, but we aren't seeing it because we're moving too fast, we're separated from the source, cut off from the depths, our eyes not as open as they could be?

Jesus comes to help us see things as they truly are, moving forward, with greater and greater connectivity, higher and higher levels of hierarchy leading to holism beyond even us as all matter is permeated by the redeeming energy and power of God.

The first Christians had a way of talking about this massive movement, bigger than any one of us, that's sweeping across human history: they wrote that God is in the process of moving everything forward so that God will be over all and through all and in all, and in another passage in the Bible it's written that God does what God does so that God may be all in all.

Be Incredibly Inefficient at Love

About once a month, I read an article by Bob Goff that he wrote for Relevant Magazine last year. It can all be read here. Over the next few weeks, I will post a few of my favorites from his list of  "10 Ways to Live an Extraordinary Life." Bob's bio is below.


#3 Be Incredibly Inefficient at Love

“Don’t do an efficient brand of love,” Goff says.

Then he does what he does best—launches into a story without missing a beat.

“The woman who lives across the street from us has cancer. She called me up and told me the bad news, and I told her, ‘I’m not going to call you ever again.’ She’s like, ‘What?’

“I went to Radio Shack and got us two walkie-talkies, and it was terrific. For the last year, we’ve been talking on walkie-talkies every night. It’s like we’re both 14-year-olds and we’re both in tree forts.

“She took a turn for the worse about four days ago, so this morning, I woke up about 5, and I went to the hospital. I sent the nurse in with a walkie-talkie, and I sat in the next room and called her up. I heard her just start crying—because there’s something inefficient and beautiful about it. We were sitting in a hospital, separated by a room, talking on walkie-talkies.”

Here he breaks off and seems choked up for a moment.

Then he continues. “Be inefficient with your love. The more in-efficient, the better. It would have been a lot more efficient for God to not send Jesus to die for us. That was very inefficient love. But so sweet and so tender.”

Bob Goff is the New York Times Best-Selling Author of Love Does, as well as an attorney who founded Restore International, a nonprofit human rights organization operating in Uganda and India. Bob often appears at various leadership and university events, inspiring current and future influencers to get to the ”do” part of life.  Restore International has pursued justice for the needy. Restore worked with Uganda’s judiciary in bringing to trial over 200 cases, including cases involving children who were languishing in jail without trial. In India, Restore investigated and intervened to relieve minor girls from a life of forced prostitution, leading to the identification and arrest of over 80 perpetrators. Restore now has a school in Northern Uganda called the Restore Leadership Academy.  Bob’s inspiration has been fueled by the friendships he has developed with others around the world who desire to pursue strategic ways to help people in need. As an attorney, Bob shares leadership in a Washington law firm, Goff & DeWalt. Additionally, he serves as the Hon. Consul for the Republic of Uganda to the United States. He is also an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Law School where he teaches Nonprofit Law, and Point Loma Nazarene University, where he teaches Business Law.

Grace, just Grace

By Frederick Buechner:

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing YOU have to do. There's nothing you HAVE to do. There's nothing you have to DO.

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

Hope. Help.

This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good. 

For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ 

as caring for their neighbors.

           ----St. John Chrysostom

My Neighbor Needs Help

From All of Grace Blog

Recently, I've started reading Wayne Gordon's, "Who is My Neighbor". First of all, if you don't know who Wayne Gordon is, read a biography of him right here. The guy is an inspiration to me and certainly someone I am trying to learn from. Reflecting on his years of  ministry in North Lawndale, Wayne's book takes a look at the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) and asks the question: Who is my neighbor?

The book is organized into short (2-3 pages) chapters meant to be read daily, in which Gordon points out different aspects of "Who is my neighbor?" and "What does it look like to love my neighbor?" The second days title was, "My Neighbor Needs Help". Here's what Gordon writes:

"A second obvious characteristic of a neighbor is somebody who needs help....The parables of the Good Samaritan revolves around a person who needs help-who has been left naked and half dead and is unable to help himself.

On the surface, helping others seems like a very simple concept. It's not. Of course, if all we mean by helping is opening the door for someone whose hands are full, that's one thing. But it's another thing if helping means that we have to get involved in another person's life, as the Good Samaritan did. 

These days, people don't want to get involved. Perhaps they are afraid to get involved. After all, helping others can be a risky proposition."

I love this excerpt from Gordon because I think it points out the very nature of what it means to love someone. Actually helping someone, or as I would say, loving someone, is never convenient or efficient (as quoted by Nick Theobald). It means putting aside your own ambitions and laying yourself down in the service of another. I think as people, and as Christians, we love to conveniently help people. We love being nice. We love walking around with a smile on our face while we do some really nice things (like opening the door for someone). I'm not saying these are bad. But I am saying, this is not truly loving your neighbor. That is soothing your religious conscious. Big difference. Actually helping, or loving, means getting involved with a person. It means entering into their brokenness and messiness. It means giving up your perfect schedule, emotional energy, and comfortability for the sake of another. I think Wayne Gordon touches on an important truth: that helping others (or loving) is not a simple concept. Loving your neighbor is to risk yourself for you neighbor. This doesn't always play out in the extreme example of risking your own life. But it is risking your time, energy, money, stability, comfort, cleanliness, etc...

How did Jesus love us? He risked all of those things. He risked them to the max. He put everything on the line for us. He did it so he could save us from our brokenness and give us new life. And now, for those who have this new life, he asks us to prodigally do the same.

You are an enemy and I'm not a Sinner

Luke 6:27-29  “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them."

“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. 

But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion — without transposing the enemy from the sphere of the monstrous… into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that the torturer will not eternally triumph over  the victim, one is free to rediscover that person’s humanity and imitate God’s love for him. And when one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that God’s love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of God’s justice and so rediscover one’s own sinfulness.”
     ― Miroslav Volf

Up and Out

"The gospel causes us to look up to Christ and what he did, out to our neighbor and what they need, not in to ourselves and how we’re doing. There’s nothing about the gospel that fixes my eyes on me. Any version of Christianity, therefore, that encourages you to think mostly about you is detrimental to the faith – whether it’s your failures or your successes; your good works or your bad works; your strengths or your weaknesses; your obedience or your disobedience."

- Tullian Tchividjian

Because None of Those Kids Know You

This is by Karen Spears Zacharias from her blog.  I am not sure what to make about some of the terminology in the last few paragraphs but the general idea of what loving our neighbor means is right on.

Last week Hugh Hollowell was on stage with Shane Claiborne and Johnathan Wilson-Hartgrove at Big Tent Christianity.  The following is the talk Hugh gave and now you know why I adore me some Hugh Hollowell:

According to Jesus, loving your neighbor is half of the greatest commandment. Pretty much everyone agrees that, if taken seriously, it’s a radical idea that could change the world. And yet it seems nearly impossible for American Christians, liberal or conservative, to agree on what it looks like.

Let me make a modest proposal.

Loving your neighbor begins by being in a relationship with your neighbor.

I love Johnny Cash. I have the entire Cash Discography – all the way back to the 1950′s. Love me some Johny Cash.

Or do I?

Because I also love my wife, and I am here to tell you that while I feel consistently good toward Johny Cash, how I feel toward my wife depends on what day it is, how our finances are doing, if I have indigestion, whether I had a good day at work… But I always feel ecstatic toward Johnny Cash.

Because I don’t really know Johnny Cash. I love my impression of Johnny Cash. It is fair to say I am a fan, or that I very much like his music, or that I love the idea of Johnny Cash. I submit there can be no love outside of relationship.

By that standard, most Christians don’t really love their neighbor. They love the idea of their neighbor. We vote for this candidate or that candidate, whoever promises to provide the sort of help we think people need. We outsource our compassion to the soup kitchens, to the clothing closets, to the homeless shelters. On Thanksgiving day, we load the youth group up in the van, to go feed the “less fortunate”, so the kids can be “exposed” to poverty, while never giving thought to wonder what they do for food the other 364 days of the year. And if that thought come up, we quickly suppress that thought and write a check. We outsource it.

Loving your neighbor presupposes a relationship. It means knowing your neighbor is going through a divorce, that the lady who cleans your office has a mother that is dying, that the man at the end of the street holding a cardboard sign has been outside for three years now, and his name is Brian. In the story we call the Good Samaritan, it meant getting in the ditch to bind the man’s wounds yourself.

When the average person in the pews can tell you the names of all the Judges on American Idol, or can name all the Glee cast members, but does not know a soul that makes 1/4th their income, I think it is fair to say we have lost our sense of mission as co-creators of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus told us the poor would always be with us – but we don’t really want the poor among us – we want someone else to handle that.

Last year in the US, some 17 million kids went to bed hungry. 17 million. In a nation where we throw away 40% of all the food we buy, where 1 in three of us is obese, and yet children are laying in bed, hungry. How can this happen?

Because none of those kids know you.

Because if you knew a kid who was hungry, you would move heaven and hell to get that kid some food. But because those 17 million kids don’t know you, they laid in bed last night, hungry.

Here in Wake County, the official statistics say there are approximately 1200 homeless people. And many hundreds of Christian congregations. You cannot tell me that out of the many thousands of Christian homes represented by those churches, there are not 1200 empty beds somewhere. Of course there are. But we save those beds for people we actually know.

The justice of Jesus is brought about by sacrifice, love and suffering. And to the extent that we do not exercise sacrificial love, suffering and proclaim the Reign of God, we are far from the way of Jesus.

Jesus calls us to serve, not lead. The way is not about political solutions – in fact, Jesus said political power would be used against us as we sought to bring about God’s justice. The way does not involve courting those in power – the Apostle Paul told us Jesus made a spectacle of the powers of this world.

There are any number of passages in both the Hebrew scriptures as well as the New Testament that speak of God’s love for the victims of injustice and our responsibility to work to bring that justice into fruition. The one I am thinking about right now, however, is Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter that …”I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it”.

I am not the first person to note that Jesus refers to the gates as a defense measure. Those gates are there to keep us out. Just what does Jesus expect of us?

Jesus expects us to storm down those gates and invade Hell itself. Jesus is telling us to go to Hell to be with the drug addict and the alcoholic. Go to Hell to be with the victims of abuse, and with the abusers. Go to hell and liberate the adulterer, the homeless man, the pornographer. In hell is where we will find the single mother and the embezzler, the pimps and the pimped, the hungry, the broken, the forgotten. We, you and I together, should be wading into hell itself and proclaiming that there is a new way to live and a new way to love, and that new way is bringing about the justice of God.

The justice of Jesus is a personal justice. It involves sacrificial, relational love. It involves dying to ourselves, our ambitions, our preconceived notions of how things work. The way of Jesus invites us to be the means by which God’s justice comes into being. It invites us to go to Hell, for the sake of those imprisoned there.

Today, in this Big Tent, my most fervent prayer for the church is simply this: I pray I will see you in hell. They need us there.