Sermon audio (11-9-08): The Blind Man Finally Sees The ongoing furor over Proposition 8 -- the successful California initiative banning same-sex marriage -- heats up the question of how churches should relate to society in general and governments in particular. The intensified hostility against evangelicals, pointedly expressed on picket lines and in court rooms, is focusing believers' minds up and down the state.

In our church, we have just finished studying the man born blind in John 9, the beggar who stood alone against the rulers. What are the potential applications of his example in today's California? Will Christians face persecution because of their stand on marriage? More broadly, how does the New Testament portray the relationship between 1st century Christians and the societies in which they lived?

Some not entirely random observations, starting with the broadest issue:

1. The culture portrayed in the New Testament was diverse, and idolatry and sexual immorality were mainstream, institutionalized fixtures.

Roman society had many gods, with cultic practices that varied from city to city. The idolatry permeated civic and social interactions, and no Christian could escape direct contact with it (1 Corinthians 8-10). Places such as Corinth and Ephesus were notorious, but not unusual, for their public sexuality. In 1 Corinthians, Paul dealt with the impact of this immorality on the church, issues like which sexual relationships were legal and illegal, and the common use of temple prostitutes (1 Corinthians 5:1-2; 6:12-20).

The New Testament commands Christians to look after their own purity in sex and worship. It nowhere commands them to legislate Jesus Christ as the official God of their cities, or to pass laws that reflect biblical standards. Cultural and economic upheaval is anticipated as more people follow Christ, but only as a secondary consequence of Christ's power, not as a result of direct agitation by Christians (Acts 19:21-41).

2. Christianity in the New Testament was an urban phenomenon. The apostles went from city to city, and the gospel thrived in the hustle of commerce and the competition among new ideas. Indeed, the fact that ethnic and religious identities were softened by so much cultural interaction was a major opening for the news that a Jew had died for the whole world.

3. We are living in the decaying civilization called Christendom, an accumulation of habits, institutions, and modes of thought rooted in Athens and Jerusalem. This era of decay is a monumental time in Western civilization, at the end of which a new collection of cultures will emerge with ethics, religions, and polities that are not entirely foreseeable now. In the sweep of human history, this process is normal. The Bible records many such shifts.

California is not at the leading edge of this transition. Europe is.

4. The end of Christendom is not something to celebrate.

The decay of old habits and institutions is destabilizing and even corrupting. The cynicism and decadence that we find everywhere now are signs of selfish and purposeless living, not signs of intellectual vitality. When a simple virtue like gratitude for our cultural inheritance is held up to scorn, we can be assured that other personal disciplines like courage, integrity, and fidelity have long since passed.

Declining to throw a party over the end of Christendom is not a sign of cultural arrogance. It is simple realism. All cultural decay, at all times, and in all places leads to moral confusion.

5. The fight to preserve Christendom is misguided.

Same-sex marriage is not the tipping point in the demise of Christendom. That point was passed long, long ago. (World War I might be a good candidate.) As much as we may mourn at the grave of our heritage, it is not a sign of health to try and dig up the corpse.

Again, Christians who mourn the loss of what was good in our inheritance are not wrong. But, as they mourn, they need to do the day's work. The end of governments founded on broadly Christian notions is an opportunity to change what Christendom built in error -- specifically, we can now detach the spiritual from the political.

6. Christianity can thrive in California.

Our context is more like the first century than the nineteenth, more like the societies in which Christian faith exploded than those in which it was dying. The predictions of the death of the faith in California are foolish. There is nothing happening now that hasn't constituted an opportunity for believers in the past. The faith may indeed die out here, but if it does, it will not be the result of unstoppable external forces. It will die because Christians stop believing.

7. Christians can now thrive if they will think of themselves more like the beggar in John 9 than the rulers.

Evangelicals project a sense of ownership in American society, ownership that is at best debatable and probably specious. Their populist calls to arms are all based on the planted axiom that the rightful authorities have been usurped. This is the wrong posture. We face a confident and established culture of secular priorities. The unbelievers rule. Let's be the beggars.

The beggar's individual integrity is more powerful than collective activism. His first-hand testimony about Jesus Christ is more potent than arguments about the shape of social institutions. And the beggar's suffering is for one cause and one only: the name of Jesus Christ.

I'll put it differently. When each Christian in California has the simplicity and tenacity for Christ that the man born blind had, we won't worry any longer about the death of our traditions. We will be at the beginning of a Christian counterculture.

Sermon audio (11-2-08): Simple and Stubborn On Sunday evenings at our church, I lead a Q & A session about the morning's sermon. Last Sunday, with Barack Obama haunting the auditorium, we discussed the man born blind in John 9, and the challenge of bearing witness to Christ now. A key point in the sermon (audio above) had been that the beggar was a great model: when under pressure, just repeat what you have directly seen Christ do in your life.

One question responded to that point, and got close to the heart of why I did this series on individuality in Christ.

Bob the logger noted his charismatic upbringing, from which he learned not to take people's testimonies about Jesus seriously. He said that, because of the sensationalism he saw among pentecostals, he has not talked much about his personal relationship with Christ, using objective arguments that apply beyond subjective experiences instead.

Was I saying that he should reverse course? Should he talk about his personal experiences without worrying about universals, logic, or principles? Isn't that a surrender to postmodern thinking? (Our loggers are well-read, in case you're wondering.)

Three observations:

1. The death of reason has been greatly exaggerated. Reasoning has merely changed focus.

Many fear that the postmodern person uses experience as a substitute for logic, that the only thing she respects is emotion. I haven't found this to be the case. Rather, I find that the postmodern person is rightly suspicious of extravagant claims, having once believed too many scientific studies that were biased, too many news reports that served an agenda, and too many experts who were paid to bluff the uninitiated.

Postmodern people will listen carefully to any argument that splices together from many points of view a picture in 3-D. They know that reality is complex, and that we are too easily faked out by our narrow perceptions. And they are right to raise the bar on claims to objectivity.

2. Younger Christians' apologetical shift from propositional arguments to personal experience reflects postmodern suspicion. But their reflection is inarticulate and potentially dangerous.

It's one thing to accept the postmodern challenge to show the truth of Christ from many points of view. This acceptance deals with our culture as it actually is, without compromising the Bible's radical claims. But it's quite another thing to abandon the truth of Christ, saying instead that all points of view are equally valid. While this approach certainly deals with our culture as it is, the approach does so only through capitulation.

I believe Christians can shift the focus of their reasoning without compromise, but only with careful thought about what they are doing and why. To wit . . .

3. In John's Gospel, the argument for the truth of Christ is not being made by believers but by the Lord.

The logic of the Gospel of John is founded on the testimony of individual witnesses, and the book is written with the density of a legal narrative. Each witness gives distinct and specific testimony, establishing distinct and specific facts. No single witness proves the entire case, but all of them taken together do prove it. The person who deploys all the witnesses to make his argument is Christ himself.

For example, John the Baptist comes as a witness to the light (1.6-8). His testimony is that he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus at his baptism, just as God had told him (1.31-34). "And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God." Jesus later cites John the Baptist's testimony (5.31-35). "You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth." John the Baptist was part of Jesus' larger argument. John delivered one authentic point of view.

The beggar in chapter 9 is another example. Jesus says (9.3) that the man was born blind "that the works of God might be displayed in him." The healing of the man's sight was only the warm-up for that display; the main event consisted of the beggar telling the same story about Jesus repeatedly, and insisting (9.25), "One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." From his unique point of view, the beggar was able to conclude, "If this man [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing."

With the ascendancy of Obama and the diverse, postmodern culture he represents, many Christians will look more frantically for killer arguments. They will want to prove the morality of the Bible and the claims of Christ within the terms of philosophy, science, and especially social science. But they will fail to find these arguments -- fail in the sense that they will not persuade the unbeliever, no matter how incisive their arguments may be.

What you can do now is just what Bob the logger suggested with his question. Reverse course. Instead of using a lingo of proof that rightly arouses people's suspicions, you can speak from within your own point of view, describing what Christ has done for you. You can put your testimony in the context of what God says in the Bible. And you can do this without fear of compromising the truth.

God will make his own case, deploying your testimony just as he deployed the beggar's. We are God's witnesses, giving testimony under pressure, as the Holy Spirit persuades the world of the Gospel (15.26-16.11).

In other words, in the culture we now face, it has never been more important for you to reflect the light of Jesus Christ as an individual.

Sermon audio (10-19-08): Opposition to Christ in You Yeah, I know: it ain't over til the fat lady sings. Obama isn't elected yet. McCain could still pull an upset.

But nothing changes the fact that our country is headed for an acrimonious reckoning. The name Obama itself reflects the depth of the nation's divisions. About half the country is convinced he'll redeem America, and about half thinks he'll turn us into France. Americans are in the habit of getting pretty worked up over presidential candidates, but this year is special.

Consider a few flash-points.

Many Republicans are angry over the media's investigations of Joe the plumber. At National Review Online on Monday, Byron York reported from a McCain rally where the spectators were holding up signs like "Phil the Bricklayer" and "Rose the Teacher." The encounters between such people and reporters quickly escalated. One man said to reporters, "I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys." Many see themselves as persecuted.

On his Monday radio show, Sean Hannity interviewed a girl who was called a racist for wearing a McCain T-shirt to school. Her parents complained that the teachers and administrators had done nothing. More persecution.

Sarah Palin continues to divide not only the country in general but conservatives in particular. George Will, David Brooks, and Peggy Noonan have earned the ire of the grassroots right for their rejection of her populism. The ire is expressed along class lines, that these are fake conservatives because they are intellectuals, members of the media elite who look down their noses at common folk. Persecution from turncoats.

In California, the portents of an Obama victory combined with a victory for gay marriage against Proposition 8 are giving many evangelicals nightmares about totalitarian judges taking away their religious freedom. Persecution from government bureaucrats.

This election is defined less along the lines of economics, philosophy, or even race than those of class and culture. From the grassroots conservative point of view, it's Walmart against Wall Street, blue collar against white, Western Pennsylvania against San Francisco. It's Obama against Palin.

Evangelicals have spent decades confusing political causes with the cause of Christ. I have written at length about their populism and resentment, characteristics that mix a particular American identity -- predominantly rural and suburban, middle class, and conservative -- with godliness and truth. This year, many evangelicals fervently hope that populist anger will carry McCain to victory.

I think evangelicals are at a watershed.

If they invest their passion into being Sam's Club Republicans, into retaining the consumer culture that "made America great," and if they continue to link their faith in Christ and their political views, then they will be deluded about this year's reckoning.

They will interpret a McCain victory as some divine approval of their way of life, and will ignore the role their own immorality has played in the nation's decline. Conversely, they will interpret an Obama victory as the beginning of the persecution of the common American, stoking the fires of their resentment even hotter.

Neither response will advance the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but merely intensify the acrimony.

But if evangelicals invest their passion into being Jesus' followers, into showing his grace and truth in their relationships, then they will see this year's election for what it is -- an opportunity. This is our chance to demonstrate that we care more about displaying Christ's glory than about displaying America's.

Many of the evangelicals I know are determined to make Christ the issue in their lives. They are taking steps to glorify him in their marriages, in the nurturing of their children, in their personal devotion to the scriptures and prayer, and in simple integrity. These believers understand how the sins of God's people are more significant causes of America's spiritual death than the sins of non-Christians. They also understand that their process of repentance will be full of suffering.

But they voice their sense of peace that Christ will turn them into unique expressions of his love, and that their individuality in him will become a clear, strong message of the gospel. They know that any opposition they get for displaying Christ is not opposition to their social status, or their political views, or their economic aspirations, but is the same opposition that Christ himself got when he was on earth. And they know that Christ can overcome that opposition.

To advance Christ's Kingdom, evangelicals must take one course or the other, the political or the spiritual. And the political course has demonstrably failed.

I am convinced that devotion to Jesus will help us avoid putting hope in a McCain administration, and that such devotion is the only way to face our more likely future, the age of Obama, without acrimony.

Sermon audio (10-12-08): Your Experience Matches Jesus I believe there are two problems in American spirituality today.

First, each person now has permission to be selfish. Our society encourages people to think, "Nothing is significant unless it matters to me." This selfishness has shrunk relationships, ethics, and even the worship of God to matters of convenience and preference, rather than leaving them as matters of right and wrong.

Second, our culture of conformity has suffocated individuality. A person seems to have no place in our society unless he lines himself up with a demographic profile. We are forced as never before to think in terms of self-presentation, whether on our Facebook page, in our professional attire, or in our speech patterns. How I appear is who I am -- no eccentricity allowed. This has meant the decline of personal uniqueness, a measure of how much we value the image of God.

The two problems are paradoxical. How can we see the growth of selfishness and the death of individuality at the same time?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer, was the greatest spokesman for individualism in the 20th century. He survived a term in the Soviet Gulag, writing the experiences of his fellow inmates on scraps of paper that he buried in bottles for later retrieval. In 1974, he was exiled from the Soviet Union and he moved to America. He gave a speech at Harvard on June 8, 1978 in which he described Western culture in America from an outsider's point of view.

He sketched the selfishness of the consumer society. "The majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about. It has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leaving them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money, and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment."

Yet Solzhenitsyn found the happiness of the selfish consumer shallow and even degrading. He spoke of the cold war against communism: "The forces of Evil have begun their offensive; you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?"

American society, though it was wealthy, was not the model Solzhenitsyn prescribed for his own people. "After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music."

There was a difference between the experiences of East and West. In contrast to the conformity produced by Western ease, the East, under the continual burden of oppression and death, produced deep individuality. "Life's complexity and mortal weight," he said, "have produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting characters than those generally [produced] by standardized Western well-being."

He saw conformity in all areas of American life, even in the most prestigious places in academia, like Harvard. "Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people giving their contribution to public life."

So how did Solzhenitsyn account for this paradox, the simultaneous growth of selfishness and death of individuality?

He said that the "prevailing Western view of the world" is "humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists."

The reason human beings become selfish and conformist is because they refuse to serve God.

Individuality in Christ, such as we are studying in John 9 with the example of the man born blind, allows a person's uniqueness to flower without allowing his selfishness to inflate. As we saw on Sunday (audio at the top), the man's sufferings after his healing began to match the sufferings of his Healer. In that fellowship of "life's complexity and mortal weight" with Jesus, the beggar showed a deep dissent from the authority of the world, and a deep submission to the authority of Jesus at the same time.

If we want to solve today's two spiritual problems, we have to strike at their common root, as Solzhenitsyn did thirty years ago in his speech that defied the groupthink at Harvard. We have to subvert the perspective that refuses to rise above the human.

Sermon audio (October 5, 2008): Jesus Invades Your Experience The other day, I was riding with our old Dutch dairyman Pete in his massive red truck. Over the grinding of the diesel engine, we talked about today's young men, and Pete observed that they seem to take years to figure out who they are, and what they should be doing with their lives. "I see it over and over, even in good families. There's something missing in these guys."

His comment made me think of my three-year-old son Malcolm, a tough, thick-set package of nuclear energy. He knows what he wants and he lunges for it. He had wanted, for instance, a ride in Pete's red truck, thinking it was a fire engine, and he cried angry tears on my porch when we left. I wondered why our society dissipates boys' drive and potency, and what I need to do to ensure that Malcolm keeps a healthy sense of self and grows up strong.

The woes of boys are getting increasing comment these days, but the problem of the formless, unmotivated, needy self is everywhere. Many people seem to lack solid identities, to be unable to form healthy relationships, seem to drift from one thing to the next like so much channel-surfing through life.

In this context, a pastor's temptation is moralism. Every month or so, after surveying someone's personal wreckage, I think, "I really need to do a series on time management," or, "I've got to preach on financial priorities." I wonder whether I give enough "practical application," telling people what's what.

If moralism is a temptation as a pastor, it is doubly so as a father. It is enticing to think that I can build up my son's identity through his submission to my authority.

Moralistic preaching and parenting tries to rebuild crumbling boundaries using precepts. Thou shalt and Thou shalt not. If you allow entertainment to suck your time, then of course there won't be enough hours in the day for your responsibilities. Thou shalt turn off the T.V. If you blow your money on toys, restaurant food, and mortgage-backed securities, then of course you won't have a financial chair when the music stops. Thou shalt not go into debt.

But moralism has been the downfall of contemporary Christianity. The precepts of godly wisdom nurture life in those who already have life; but among the legions who do not, the Get a clue! method of preaching doesn't edify. The "practical applications" of moralism merely compound people's guilt.

Moralism has been the downfall of Christianity because it is not the gospel.

For the needy contemporary self, the only hope is God-focused individuality, the unique expression of God's glory in a reborn personality. As we are seeing in our series on the man born blind in John 9, Jesus himself has to invade a person's life, not merely to reset what a person does, but who a person is.

Consider an observation: Human beings cannot define themselves, but are only defined in relationship.

There are two common myths about the self. One is that you can be true to some wisdom or potential inside your personality, wisdom defined by you alone -- the Oprah storyline. The other is that you can improve yourself, work hard, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps -- the moralistic storyline. The two myths are equivalent in the sense that they both portray individuals having potential on their own.

Malcolm is growing up in a society that preaches these myths, and that requires him to invent himself according to one or the other, and sometimes both.

The reality is, Malcolm doesn't have any sense of self autonomously. His definition of who he is comes from his relationships -- and it always will. He learns about himself through the process of relating to me, to his mom, to his grandparents, to other adults in the community like Pete. His self-awareness as an adult will grow in the context of interaction. He defines himself in relationship.

If I surrender to the temptation of moralism, then I will raise Malcolm using precepts. I will portray Jesus as the person with high standards, who is forgiving of Malcolm's faults, but who is all too frequently "disappointed." Malcolm's relationship to this Jesus will teach him a sense of self that is sickened by failure.

This is not the Jesus of John 9, who heals the blind.

Jesus is Malcolm's creator, and designed Malcolm to display the works of God. All of Malcolm's traits have the potential to make God's glory visible. Because Malcolm has this potential, Jesus is invading his experiences. Jesus is not waiting for an invitation. Having paid for sin, and bringing new life with him, Jesus is able to slather Malcolm's eyes with mud and give him spiritual sight. As Malcolm is defined more and more by his interactions with Jesus, even Malcolm's limitations and faults will become visible marks of divine love.

The gospel calls for a new individuality in Christ, a uniqueness forged by loving relationship. The gospel resets who people are. I don't know if the passive, disappointed Jesus who is just waiting for people to be interested in him is the sole cause of today's unformed, unmotivated, needy self. There may be more causes than Christian moralism.

But I do know that what's missing from people today is Jesus himself.

Audio (September 28, 2008): Limitations You Would Never Choose I love the visual energy of the iPod ads that feature young Dionysians wired for sound and abandoned to their music.

But I don't love the spiritual energy. The ads express the dominant American religion of Self. I need to throw off restraints. Inside of me is a unique vitality that I should unleash, and if I can live in my own sonic space (courtesy of Apple) my ecstatic power will burst out.

The individuality in Christ that we are studying in John 9 is the opposite of iPod religion.

When Jesus passes a beggar born blind, the disciples ask him why the beggar is so disabled, so limited. Who sinned, the man or his parents, to bring such a doom upon him?

A pretty revealing question. The disciples assume that the beggar's suffering was caused by unrighteousness, an assumption for which they offer no evidence because they regard the blindness as evidence enough.

But they also seem to view the beggar's limitations as destroying his potential. What might he have become if it weren't for his or his parents' sin? For the disciples, potential value is all about personal power. In relation to the beggar, they see themselves as righteous and free. They have their sight, their ability to move around unaided, their ability to work for a living. Their powers are what make them vital, valuable individuals.

To be sure, the disciples feel the beggar's condition is tragic, but only from a speculative point of view.

Jesus does not see the beggar's limitations the same way. He teaches the disciples that the man's blindness was permitted so that "the works of God might be displayed in him." The man's potential, for Jesus, is not in capabilities. It's in limitations. The man's blindness and low status will offer a glimpse of God's power that will be uniquely valuable to the world.

In saying this, Jesus does not minimize the severity of the beggar's suffering. In fact, by healing the man's blindness, Jesus rebukes the darkness of this world that creates pain and loss.

But Jesus does see limitations as divine opportunities.

Consider this: the limitations around the beggar do not disappear once he is healed. They just morph. The authenticity of the man's experience is questioned by his neighbors, and he becomes a political target of the Pharisees. The man's own parents, though they acknowledge him as their son, refuse to affirm his story out of selfish fear.

In releasing the man from one set of limitations, Jesus leaves him in another set. The man is even more alone now than when he was blind.

Yet it is the man's solitude that displays God's glory for a second time, in an even greater way than the healing. The beggar's stubborn adherence to Jesus when no one else will support him speaks to us. "Whether [Jesus] is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." God uses a poor, illiterate man to rivet our attention and bolster our courage even after two thousand years. He uses the man's limitations.

According to Jesus, the limitations on your life are full of potential for God's glory. Your individuality in Christ is not just your advantages over other people, but is your whole person -- especially your suffering.

The iPod religion of throwing off restraints, living in your inner world, and releasing your Self, is a heresy against life. Life is limited. Those who want to live do not dissipate their powers in fantasy.

Instead of the Dionysian madness of fake freedom, Jesus gives us the Christian madness of real joy.