A great friend and Word guy, Max Smith, sent me this email. I think it’s worth repeating.  Max wrote:

What would you call someone who…

went around afflicting people with cancer?

who went around killing infants in their cribs?

who went around causing accidents that killed teens?

flew planes into buildings to teach people a lesson?

would cause terrible storms that kill thousands of people?

went about giving husbands and fathers heart attacks so

their wife and kids could “learn from their suffering”?

What would you call them?

In religious America, we call him God.  And that is a lie.

It’s sad, but true.  You want to know God?  Read about him in

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Do you think he’s changed? 
Seriously.  Do you REALLY think he’s changed?  He hasn’t.

He is life.  He is the Redeemer.  He is a lover.  He is the healer.

Watch the work of Jesus in these four books and ask then ask

yourself, I mean seriously ask yourself, “do I REALLY think that

God is doing these horrible things?”  Where did this stuff come

from?  These all came from the father of lies, satan.  He has used

the religious American church to blame God for his (satan’s) own

evil work.  So, how do we change it?  Preach the gospel.  Give

people the WORD.  It is CLEAR.  It is TRUTH.  God is really,

really, really, GOOD.

One of my former Kentucky Christian University students is a brilliant pastor, insightful writer and challenging thinker.  When his blog included this phrase I chose to respond to him, personally via email, concerning one of my top 10 most hated phrases.  Here was my response.  Hope it helps you.

*******, I have enjoyed very much your blog since signing up a month ago.  I like how unfettered you are in attacking issues of taboo, both cultural as well as within the church context.  You are a smart#^* at heart which, in my estimation, makes you insightful, provocative and places you in a position to write pithy stuff from a unique perspective.  I make a habit to read blogs of mega-church pastors to see how they think.  Inevitably, I stay with them at the most, two weeks.  Yours is the longest blog I’ve ever read consistently and will continue to do so because it is real, humorous and self-effacing. 

Because I can see you care about how you think and how your thinking affects people (it’s evident in your discourse), allow me to challenge the parameters of one cognitive domain specifically.  I know what you mean when you write “non-Christian,” so don’t feel the need to explain yourself.  For ease of communication, we understand what that means. However, stuff like that, if you think about it for a minute, can also shape our world view, and thus, our perspective in a deceptive way as well.  Once adopted, we learn to think inside of a parameter that may not be accurate which leads us to false conclusions about important stuff.  On to my illustration…

In the blog to which I am responding, you note that most of the music on your iPod is “non-Christian.”  Is it?  I know it may not say Jesus every 5^th word, et.al. argument ad nauseum; however, music isn’t Christian or non-Christian, people are.  In some of my work with artists (one on one discipleship); with guys who have been in Black Crowes, Tom Petty, etc. I have discovered some incredible things.  You would never think of Tom Petty as Christian music but the dude has faith.  He really does.  So do many, many guys in the California scene of music.  I realize I operate from a different mindset but I have only met a couple people who are truly non-believers.  I’m not a universalist nor do I think people encounter God by thinking happy thoughts or uttering tribal grunts while rubbing ashes on your groin in some primordial cave.  I believe in Jesus and His ability to reveal Himself to people.  My part, as a Pastor and Teacher, is to discover them and assist them in understanding the Word of God so as to increase their faith (By hearing, thus, by the Word of God).  When we maintain only one parameter for separating people: “Christians” and “non-Christians,” we miss out on the largest, most realistic field white with harvest.  Who is that?  It is those who have been disenfranchised by the church, those who don’t understand the Bible and those who write songs about all kinds of stuff, aside from God, because they don’t yet know how to experience Him in a meaningful way.  In just one example that I know of personally, when Tom Petty came to understand that he can be a Christ-follower and still write songs that harpoon lawyers in the music business, he got free.  His belief moved from the margins to the center of who he is.  In the boxed set he released last year, there is a moment in Petty’s concert where he encounters the glory of God.  It is the most spectacular and personal thing I’ve seen in a (and I use this term reluctantly) “secular” concert.  When the glory of being a rock star is thrust at him by the audience, instead of absorbing it, like he had his entire career, he turns his back to the audience, looks to heaven and raises his hands.  It still makes me cry thinking about it a year later.  He, a “non-Christian” musician did something most “Christian” artists lack the spiritual maturity to do: he diverted glory and redirected it to its rightful place…toward God.  Tom does it because it is really all he knows, now.  All glory is God’s and he spent too much of his own life absorbing it.  You can read the brief post summarizing this story on my blog under the title “what if everything was OK” at www.louieweber.com  Tom is a Christian; fleshy and messy-yes, but he is a believer in Jesus Christ and His resurrection, which according to Romans 10:9, gives him eternity.  So, in just one example of hundreds of possibilities, your parameter for thinking can allow you to conclude something that marginalizes many people who would otherwise be unequivocally included in the Kingdom of God by our words as well as by the invitation of Jesus Himself.

An Elder at Oasis-Wauseon forwarded me this 9 minute clip on stress.  It is really worth watching, especially under this present stressful period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTrmEsjf0-g

Because the economy is flopping around like Pastor Sil Lee of Horsecreek Holiness Church, I’ve decided to look into other retirement possibilities.  Here is the result of my analysis.