The Internet Monk Archives

Saturdays at IM: A Retrospective (part 1)

The Saturday IM Monks Brunch: September 26, 2020
Saturdays at IM — A Retrospective (part 1)

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Saturday Ramblings

When Jeff and I began overseeing the Internet Monk blog in 2010, we toyed around with a number of possibilities to keep it interesting and meaningful after Michael Spencer’s death. Jeff came up with the idea of following the example of some other blogs, such as Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed, and devote Saturdays to presenting a digest of timely snippets that would be fun and thought-provoking — with our own unique IM twist, of course. He called it “Saturday Ramblings”. And so, on Saturday, April 17, 2010, we presented our first new Saturday post.

Jeff is a prodigiously talented writer, and we were all delighted to read his crisp, concise snippets that made us laugh, pointed us to a great, big, interesting world of human pathos and tomfoolery, and challenged us to think about our place in that world.

Here’s how Jeff introduced it…

Saturday Ramblings will be a regular feature here at Internet Monk, our attempt to clean the kitchen at the end of each week. Saturdays are a good day to clean up around the house and yard, putting away the stuff we dragged out throughout the week. We’ll try to present items of note that may not have a deserved a whole post, or that we didn’t have time to get to, or were just too darn busy to write about. Grab a second (or tenth) cup of coffee, put your feet up for a few minutes, and enjoy some Saturday Ramblings.

On that first Saturday, Jeff talked about the death of philosopher Anthony Flew, a new album by Jennifer Knapp that accompanied her coming out as gay, some discoveries about the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin, John Piper’s sabbatical, site news about changes at IM and a teaser about publishing opportunities. He ended with this quote from Eugene O’Neill: “Man is born broken. He spends his life mending. God’s grace is glue.”

For three and a half years, Jeff was our guide as we rambled together on Saturdays. In those posts, he marked each week’s birthdays, deaths, and special anniversary dates, introduced an Internet Monk outing to see the Cincinnati Reds play, kept us up to date on new music from some of his favorite artists, gave us his unique insights into the publishing industry, made observations about the ongoing craziness within the evangelical circus and in other branches of the faith, trumpeted the delights of In-N-Out Burgers, and gave us such gems as…

Did I mention it was a slow news week? Thankfully we have 38 year old Roberto Sol Cabrera Zavaleta who was arrested in the Mexico City airport smuggling 18 monkeys into the country. In his clothes. Yep, Roberto had a dozen and a half little titi monkeys stuffed under his clothes. Authorities noticed he looked “markedly nervous.” Uh, you think? And don’t you think Smuggling Monkeys would make a great name for a rock band?

and…

Well, we really know how to attract a crowd here at the iMonastery. All we have to do is list our five favorite anything and the commenters flock like hillbillies to a flea dip. My five favorite movies? (Harvey; Close Encounters Of The Third Kind; Joe Vs. The Volcano; Endless Summer; The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain.) Favorite hamburger joints? (1. In ‘N Out Â 2. Who cares? It’s not In ‘N Out.) Favorite episode of Gilligan’s Island? (I like the one where the castaways almost get off the island, but then Gilligan does something stupid and they stay stuck. What? Oh.) This week was a musical week as we told you our favorite albums, and we loved hearing about the music you like to listen to. We may try to put together an iMonk concert tour for next summer. In the meantime, put in your earbuds and crank up this week’s Saturday Ramblings.

and also…

Let’s start this week off with some good news. The United States now has an official site where Mary has said to have appeared. A Belgian immigrant, Adele Brise, is said to have seen Mary three times at this spot in 1859. Now, hundreds flock to the site each day to visit and to pray. Where is the blessed place? Just outside of Champion, Wisconsin. Let’s see, the Green Bay Packers and the Wisconsin Badgers are both undefeated, and the Milwaukee Brewers made the playoffs this year. I think I’m beginning to see why …

and he always kept us up to speed on happenings in wacky places like “Ham-land”…

Oh boy. Answers In Genesis’s special project division is edging closer to bringing a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark into being. And in Kentucky, of all places. Well, the location is close to the Ohio River, which has been known to spill its banks from time to time. AIG is hoping your bank will overflow into their coffers to help us all realize how incomplete our lives are right now without a Noah’s Ark theme park to travel to.

Jeff was very serious (wink) about Saturday’s posts…

First of all, the stories and comments shared here are all very serious. We don’t joke at the iMonastery; we don’t even allow ourselves to smile except on Opening Day for Major League baseball. Next, when I end a rambling with the word “discuss,” I expect you all to discuss what I just said. Drop everything else and discuss what you just read. It’s an order. And we are watching you. Finally, assembling Ramblings each week is back-breaking work. I spend at least 23 hours out of every day searching high and low for stories for you. I expect you to read every single one of them at least twice, watch the bonus video five times before midnight, and send handwritten birthday cards to everyone on our celebrity birthday list. Don’t disappoint me.

Each week, Jeff found something to pass on that was so transcendent, so riveting, so wonder-provoking, that he just had to share it…

People in Michigan really need something to do with their time. A woman in that state up north recreated Leonardo’s The Last Supper completely from lint pulled from her dryer. Oh, I only wish I were making this up.

Jeff continued his weekly digest until January 4, 2014, when he announced…

Finally, this will be my last Saturday Ramblings column. I have shared with you how that I have struggled with depression. I’ve decided that I need to marshal my energy to fight this best as I can this year. So I am stepping down as publisher of Internet Monk as of today. I have had a great time visiting with you for the last four years. I remain humbled beyond belief that Michael and Denise Spencer counted me worthy of carrying on the tradition they started with this site. But to be honest, each of the writers we now have—Chaplain Mike, Lisa Dye, Martha of Ireland, Mike Bell, Damaris Zehner, and Adam Palmer, are all much better than I. I want you to encourage them and continue to share great comments with one another. If you don’t, well, don’t make me turn this Rambler around.

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Jeff always ended his Saturday Ramblings with a video, usually a music video, including this one from his favorite group of all time…

Jeff, thanks, and we miss you here around the iMonastery.

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Note from CM: Jeff let me know this week that his doctor has recommended hospice care for him. To qualify for hospice, a person must have a terminal diagnosis that, if it proceeds according to its normal course, will likely take a person’s life within six months. Please keep him, Kathy, and the family in your prayers.

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Saturday Ramblings 2.0…

After losing our Saturday mentor and muse, I began the Saturday duties with my good friend and the able Pastor Dan — Daniel Jepsen — and Saturday Ramblings 2.0 was born.

Hello, iMonk friends. This is Chaplain Mike and I have asked my good friend Daniel Jepsen to lead us in our weekly clean-up of the monastery. Dan used to be the youth pastor in the church where I served, so I am fully persuaded in his ability to both make and clean up messes. Now he’s senior pastor there. Thus, I know he’s in shape because over at the church he’s been setting up tables, clearing jams from the copier, shoveling snow off the sidewalk, and doing dishes after coffee hour, i.e. the things I used to do. Just the training we require for this shindig we call Saturday Ramblings.

Over to you, Dan…

More about Dan’s Saturday Ramblings 2.0 next week.

Christians in Politics

I was working on my next post in the Reconsider Jesus book series, but I didn’t feel it was ready for prime time.

So, instead I wanted to ask you a question or series of questions about what you think about Christians in Politics.

It is something that I have been thinking about a lot today, and must admit my thinking is rather muddled.

Full disclosure: For the last few weeks I have been part of Canadian Facebook group which was created to help support Christian political leaders. I can’t say that I ever felt really comfortable in that group, and I stepped aside today.

Here are some of my thoughts for which I would like your response along with your own questions and thoughts.

1. Should we overtly support Christians running for political office because they are Christian?

2. Am I able to trust the agenda of someone who is Christian any more than someone who is not?

3. Should I support whomever aligns best with me on a wide range of issues, regardless of their personal religious beliefs?

4. Are there pet agendas of Christians that I would be uncomfortable with? (For example in our area their was a move at the local school board level to elect Christian trustees who would throw out a curriculum that I thought was quite fine.)

5. I think I am missing a question or two that I should be asking. Maybe some of your responses will help me with other questions of my own.

Let me know if you have had thoughts in this area. I am interested in a variety of opinions here. I would also be interested in passing on some of your comments to the leader of the Facebook Group.

War on COVID Has Become ‘We vs. Them’

War on COVID Has Become ‘We vs. Them’

Public health experts warn of a possible fall surge in COVID cases while the President continues to downplay the pandemic. Trump is quoted:

“I think we’ve done an amazing job … in my opinion we’re rounding the turn,” the President said in an interview with a local Fox station in Detroit in which he continued to minimize the danger. On Monday, he had claimed the virus “affects virtually nobody” while doubling down on previous claims that young people are “virtually immune” — a staggering comment on the eve of such a tragic milestone.

In this article Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is greatly concerned about this division. Fauci is quoted as saying:

What’s happened,” he continued, “is that public health issues and public health recommendations have taken on a ‘we versus them’ approach. Getting back to the point where getting people to wear a mask”—which the two had discussed earlier—”it was like a statement not to wear a mask. People, as you know, it’s public knowledge now, have been threatening me as a public health person, literally threatening me and my family because I’m saying we should be doing public health things like wearing a mask. Physical distancing”—it’s as if “I’m doing something that is harmful to them, they interpreted as the public health measure is hurting them.”

“No,” he said, “the virus is hurting us, not the public health measures.

I do not know how Fauci could put it any plainer. It continues to amaze and dismay me that people think that simple, reasonable, practical public health measures, especially wearing a mask and avoiding large crowds, could become so controversial that people are interpreting the public health measures as harming them when, in fact, as Fauci puts it: “the virus is hurting us, not the public health measures.”

Fauci made it plain he is not interested in shutting down the country but rather:

“I’m talking about trying to open the economy, but doing it in a measured, careful way. According to the guidelines that we carefully put forth. If we did that, I’m almost certain, we would not have seen those surges of cases that brought us up to 70,000 a day and have now plateaued down at 30 to 4,000 a day. I believe if we do that, we’re going to see things turning around. And I know because if you look at that big map of a beautiful country, there are certain areas of the country that are doing really well. We need to make those be the models.”

As several commentators here at IM have noted; evangelical support of stupid COVID misinformation is similar to the rationales that continue to support Young Earth Creationism. My purpose in contributing to this blog is to help evangelical Christians to accept science and avoid un-scientific mischaracterizations such as YEC and, now, COVID conspiracy nonsense.

Friday last I began having a runny nose and a dry cough. Any other time I would have thought I had a cold and just rested and drank plenty of fluids. But Friday night, as I was fatigued and couldn’t sleep I had an anxiety attack. Is this it? Am I going to die? Totally irrational – but there it was.

I went ahead and got tested Wednesday, September 23^rd, and the symptoms have subsided. My point is that family members, who had been influenced by those playing down the pandemic, quickly changed their tune when one of their own was affected. Those who have been affected by this virus and their families and loved ones are our neighbors.

Please dear friends, listen to Dr. Fauci, ignore unscientific conspiracy mongers, even if they supposedly share your faith. It shouldn’t be ‘We versus Them’ or liberals vs. conservatives, or non-believers vs. the faith communities. It should be all of us versus the virus.

September odds ‘n ends from IM over the years

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If you have a co-worker who is gay, what are you supposed to do? You have options, but acting as if his life is your business isn’t one of them. This is one reason Christians are hated: we are busybodies. We do act as if other persons’ moral convictions or lifestyle choices are our business. We get caught saying “I don’t want a gay in this neighborhood” or “in this workplace” or “around my kids” as if there are no heterosexuals we ought to be wary of.

Maybe I’m an idealist, and there is no possible friendship between gays and Christians who affirm traditional morality, but it seems to me that Jesus did it, and I need to pray that I can do the same. (Michael Spencer, from Sept, 2006)

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Two years ago, I was in the hospital with my dying mom, and I needed a pastor. At the time, I didn’t have one. I guess I could have called any number of the ministers that I know. Actually, having been the minister in the hospital before, I was fairly certain of what would happen, and while I wouldn’t have been ungrateful, it wasn’t that important to me.

Walter happened to be in the hospital that day, visiting members of his congregation and the wider community, as was his habit. He found me, my wife and my dying mom in the ER.

Walter stayed with me all day. He found a doctor who would let my mother stay in our hospital and pass there, instead of flying her to Lexington. He helped me talk to the doctors about the course of treatment mom and I had agreed on. He prayed for me. He was a pastor to me. He was Christ to me.

Never once did Walter attempt a theological justification of the ways of God. He never got out the Bible. (Nothing wrong if he’d chosen to, of course.) He was the Bible for me that day. He put flesh and blood on God and hung out with me. He thought for me when I couldn’t think clearly. He knew my heart and he helped me listen to my heart at a very confusing moment. He treated me with love and dignity that brought joy into one of the worst days of my life.

Walter showed me that day that if you are going to measure life by how it’s lived, and not by how people talk about what they believe, he knows a lot more about God than I do. (Michael Spencer, from Sept, 2007)

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The real prosperity gospel isn’t the overt appeal to wealth. It is the more subtle appeal to God guaranteeing that we are going to be happy, and the accompanying pressure to be happy in ways that are acceptable and recognizable to the community of Christians we belong to. (Michael Spencer, from Sept, 2008)

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The assurance of pardon speaks the word that the Gospel speaks to the people of God. With so many sour, legalistic, moralistic churches in evangelicalism, what a wonderful thing it is to confess corporately, and then silently, but to hear the announcement of God’s forgiveness, personally applied, followed by joyful celebration in song. (Michael Spencer, from Sept, 2009)

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I never have been what one might call a wild-eyed, hard-edged fundamentalist separatist. I was just a kid who was found by Jesus and thought that meant the rest of my life should be different somehow — lived in a separate category from the ordinary course of human life. Now I know that becoming a Christian doesn’t put a person one step above the rest of the human race, or mean that one should separate from sharing common life experiences with one’s neighbors.

I’m still blown away by the grace and mercy of Jesus.

I still think the church is special, the amazing family of God in all times and places.

I just don’t want this whole “Christian thing” to keep me from being human.

…No longer does “the world grow strangely dim” when I look at Jesus. For some reason, when I’m most focused on him, the world takes on a strange, inviting beauty. And I’m ready every day to move more deeply into it with his kindness and love. (Chaplain Mike, from Sept. 2010)

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Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self (Mark 8:35, The Message).

I find nothing in Scripture that tells us we are on our own to improve our lives. Nowhere do I read that it is our responsibility to become better, more moral, people. Instead I see Jesus going to the losers and sinners and dying and saying, “Because of your lostness, your lastness, your death, you will live.” Thus I agree with how Eugene Peterson interprets this verse: “Self-help is of no help at all.” (Jeff Dunn, from Sept. 2011)

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I have served in the ministry for almost 20 years now, both as a youth pastor and senior pastor. I’ve never skimmed from the offering plate, gotten drunk or had an affair. But my constant temptation is to have a self-identity focused on my actions for God rather than his actions for me. After all, I am a pastor. Doing things for God is my job and identify. Even on my days off, I am still a pastor. People call me pastor as if it were my name, and my spouse is often introduced as “the Pastor’s wife”. This is not bad, but it doesn’t help me to remember that I am a beggar, not a builder.

I need a season where I build nothing, produce nothing, but simply remember, worship, and pray. I need a season of fallowness, a time where I do nothing but receive the refreshing rain of God’s goodness.

In short, I will be listening to the silence, and, by doing nothing, seek to do the one thing needed. (from Daniel Jepsen, Sept. 2012)

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Whatever this “Christian” thing is about, it is about earth. It is about life on earth. It is about life with God on earth. It is about life that begins now here on this earth and extends into the age to come on a renewed earth.

And it is about you and I starting to live that life now. (from Chaplain Mike, Sept 2013)

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When it comes to evangelicalism it is a little easier to see our own bias. We have stood within it, and we have also seen it from an outsider’s perspective…. I attend an evangelical church and have done so for my entire life. I don’t want evangelical expressions of Christianity to fail. If anything I am biased towards evangelical expressions of faith. More than anything though, I want to be a follower of Jesus. I know evangelicalism best, and when there are things within evangelicalism that detract or distract me, or even more importantly others, from following Jesus, then those things are going to come under criticism. To quote Jesus (badly and out of context): “Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen.”

This is what I do. I speak of what I know. Sometimes it isn’t pretty. When I hold up a mirror in the morning it encourages me to shave and brush my hair. Perhaps some of my writing at Internet Monk will encourage some change as well. (from Mike Bell, Sept. 2014)

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There is always an impulse in Christianity (and other religions) to think those who “give up” more and “devote” themselves to the Lord for some kind of ordained service are better Christians, higher in spirituality and more impactful on the world for God. This is a mirage, and one day we will see the magnificent harvest that will spring from seeds planted by “ordinary” Christians doing ordinary things in everyday life. (from Chaplain Mike, Sept. 2015)

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From the Pic & Poem of the Week (Sept., 2016)

Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt

On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.

Years passed, three leagues of organized ball,
no few lives. I could homer
into the left-field lot of Carmichael Motors,
and still you stressed the same technique,
the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing
just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch
about basics never changing,
and I never learned what you were laying down.

Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap,
let this be the sign
I’m getting a grip on the sacrifice.

By David Bottoms

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Finally, it aggravates me to no end that evangelical Christians regard climate change as a hoax. It’s the same anti-science incredulity that causes them not to accept the age of the earth. At the same time they pay big money to go see a display of a supposed Noah’s ark with the proposition that all the species on the planet were on one boat, and when they got off they hopped, crawled or whatever to the ecological niche they are in now. All the kangaroos and other marsupials traveled all the way to Australia from the Middle East and didn’t leave any trace. Why did they all go to Australia? The climate of the Middle East was just as hospitable. Why didn’t they stay there? Or new world sloths that move at 1 mile an hour. How did they cross the ocean, even being good swimmers? But no, climate change, that’s the thing to be incredulous about.

This is why I blog on science and faith. If we are going to present the reality of Jesus Christ to the world then we darn-well better be able to grasp reality—period. (from Mike the Geologist, Sept. 2017)

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A large part of escaping the wilderness for me was realizing that what I was chasing was just a mirage. If you find a fresh source of water, put up a decent shelter, find a good source of food, and keep warm and dry, all of a sudden the wilderness doesn’t seem so much like wilderness anymore.

And that’s what I am trying to do with Church. It may not be perfect, but if I start making myself at home, then maybe it will start to feel like home. (from Mike Bell, Sept. 2018)

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Two people stand in the front of a sanctuary at the altar in front of a minister. The minister asks them questions that have become familiar to us, so familiar that we don’t really grasp how radical and demanding they are.

Joe, will you have Mary to be your wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live? If so, please answer, “I will.”

Joe answers, “I will!!”

And in a few moments, Joe makes the following vows to his bride:

In the Name of God, I, Joe, take you, Mary, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.

Through the exchanging of these lifelong promises, in that moment, two lives are completely changed. The past is past. They find themselves in a new reality. It’s as though they’ve walked through a door and entered a completely new country. A new family in this world has been created. The two people at the center of the ceremony are now in a whole new relationship, and because of that, all other relationships in their lives have changed.

…The old has passed away, all has become new, and who knows what the future will hold? Who knows what changes it will bring? Who knows where it will lead?

…What these two people are saying on their wedding day is this: We want to make a life together. Today it begins. From now on, there is no turning back. Our former experiences have brought us to this new adventure, and now it is time to embrace it fully. No matter where this path may lead us, we’re in it together for the long haul.

…Jesus’ invitation to us isn’t just about forgiveness, as wonderful as that is.

It is about entering a whole new life with him. A life that changes everything. (from Chaplain Mike, Sept. 2019)

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Another Look: The End of the Anthropocene, by Damaris Zehner

The End of the Anthropocene
By Damaris Zehner

Picture a car, speeding along a highway in the morning.
A voice on the radio is gabbling about some crisis.
The driver’s cell phone is on, lying on the console next to her;
She’s shouting at someone. In her hand is fast food,
Wrapped in greasy yellow paper.
A coffee cup in its holder develops waves
As the car swings onto a street slick with tar –
A tunnel through skyscrapers, smog,
Car horns, wires, and metal signs.

Picture behind the car, miles away, then closer, then closer still,
A wall of water surging faster than a car can drive.
Trying to change lanes, swearing at the traffic,
The driver looks in the mirror.
Like Pharaoh on the Red Sea floor, like Noah’s neighbors,
She sees the future become her present.
A rush of water through the city canyons,
A jumble of cars stirred into foam –
The wall moves on.

Picture: on the surface of a silent sea, oil spreads its peacock tail.
Cars, a couch, bottles, bags, one purple Croc, a paper diaper
Bob, briefly.
Like snags in a river, like compound fractures,
Office buildings, phone poles, and billboards break the surface.
The car sinks, releasing one last gasp of air;
The couch subsides. The garbage drifts on.
Slowly the snags tip, then crumble,
Splashing briefly as they succumb.
Unbroken surface;
Unbroken silence.

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Photo by Neil Cummings at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Reconsider Jesus – The Response (Mark 1:14-15)

Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark
A devotional commentary by Michael Spencer
Compiled and Edited by: Michael Bell
Table of Contents

The Response

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Mark 1:14-15 – RSV

We return to this important summary of the overall message of Jesus to look at the conditions for entering the Kingdom. We must prepare to grapple with the essence of what Jesus is telling every person who will listen. We cannot pretend to understand Christianity if these words do not have life-anchoring significance for us.

“Repent and believe the good news!”

The first condition is repentance. In Christian theology, repentance has two aspects. First, we must abandon our loyalty to whatever holds authority other than God. Second, we must turn and move in the direction of obedience to God.

Some misunderstand repentance as a perfect abandonment and an absolute obedience. In our fallen state, such is not possible for us. Therefore, the Bible tells us that repentance is also a continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian.⁵⁹ The call to repent continues in the life of every person who follows Jesus. We are to be serious and lifelong repenters as the Holy Spirit reveals more and more of those things that hold our hearts more than the love of God. This call is not simply to believe some short form outline of “How to get saved,” but is a reorienting and rebirth of life at fundamental levels.

It is not the gospel if we preach repentance without Jesus; it is not the gospel if we preach Jesus without repentance. Jesus was a preacher of repentance, much like the Old Testament prophets. To call to repent is to confront the deadly fact of sin and the absolute necessity of abandoning our loyalty to sin in all its aspects if we are true disciples. The message of repentance is not comfortable. It is only good news to the person who is affected by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit and sees the truth about his/her spiritual condition.⁶⁰ Jesus doesn’t say to the racist, to the greedy person, to the abuser, or to the addict: “Keep going the way you are going and be saved.” Instead his call is to repent, turn from your sin, and go in a new and different direction. You are not saved by repentance, but you are never saved without it. Faith and repentance are joined together as one thing. Belief without repentance is not true, saving faith.

The importance of repentance is taught throughout the New Testament. In Jesus’ most famous parable, “The Prodigal Son”, repentance is a major theme.⁶¹ Jesus also condemned whole cities for not repenting.⁶² Peter’s first instruction on the day of Pentecost was “Repent!”⁶³ Paul states that God’s kindness to undeserving sinners is what should lead us to a desire to repent.⁶⁴

Some churches, in seeking to avoid being heavy-handed about requiring repentance, have discarded the requirement entirely. The surgical removal of this aspect of the Gospel message is serious! I would go as far as to say that any Gospel that does not clearly proclaim repentance is a false gospel worthy of condemnation.

So let me be very clear about this: One of the most spiritual destructive mindsets among Christians is that grace is so free and unconditional to sinners that repentance is not necessary. Christianity has been cursed and millions of Christians’ lives have been rendered empty and powerless because they have never been told in no uncertain terms that it is time to stop and go in a different direction. We have seen this distortion of Christianity preached by person after person on the national stage. Cheap grace. Cheap forgiveness without repentance. It is shameful, and Jesus wouldn’t recognize it. Jesus wouldn’t recognize a person that said my response to my sin is simply to blow it off and go do whatever I want. God is not calling us to sackcloth and ashes, though I’ll tell you what, in many of our lives a little sackcloth and ashes wouldn’t hurt us from time to time.

You can’t take hold of the salvation that Christ offers unless you let go of the wrong direction you are going. So Jesus echoes the message of John. John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus calls us to recognize we are sinners at war with a holy God. We must stop, lay down our arms, throw up the white flag, and say I am through with that direction, and I am ready for a new one.

The second condition for entering the Kingdom is to believe the Good News. We discussed the Good News quite a bit in the previous chapter, but I think it is important to reiterate just what we are to believe. Notice the parallel between verse 1 and verse 14. Mark has told us that his entire book will be good news about Jesus the Son of God. Jesus is preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God. Is there a difference between the good news about Jesus and the good news of Jesus? I do believe many Christians excuse themselves from dealing with the message Jesus preached because they think believing in Jesus is sufficient. Mark would not understand such a distortion. For him, there is no separation between the message of Jesus and the person of the Savior. In the mind of the inspired author they are the same. Now that the Messiah has arrived, the Good News becomes the announcement of not just what God is doing but through whom all is being done.

The Good News is the message of Jesus and the message about Jesus. It includes the arrival of the Kingdom, but also contains the cross of Christ, his empty tomb, his current reign and his future return. This is not Good News to those who live as God’s enemies, but it is the greatest news to those who are ready to lay down the weapons of rebellion and surrender to the one, true and only King.

So what does Mark mean by belief? The New Testament uses a word for belief that cannot be reduced to the sort of belief so common today. Modern vocabulary has given belief the connotation of a personal opinion that one adheres to for reasons entirely of your own. Have you ever heard someone say “You mean all I have to do is believe in Jesus in order to go to heaven?” Such a question shows the modern definition of belief as a sort of optional, minimal assent to a proposition that may have nothing whatsoever to do with truth. We “believe” in politicians, sports teams and UFOs.

I want to assure you that this is absolutely not what Jesus means. New Testament belief has more in common with the sort of belief we associate with life commitment. Marriage is the best example. The persons giving their lives to one another “believe in” the other person with a totality of their being, their future and their possessions. This is the sort of belief expressed by the person who chooses to jump out of a plane with only a parachute between himself and death. Jesus is asking, in short, for a life-altering, life-anchoring bet on the truth of who he is.

Understanding this as simply “a point in time action with continuing effects into the future” is probably misconstruing the meaning of belief. Belief in Jesus that does not continue is not true belief. Perseverance is one of the characteristics of true faith.⁶⁵ Faith may be a long and winding journey with many peaks, valleys and seasons of more and less fruitfulness, but genuine faith continues to believe in Jesus and to seek to follow him. The Bible offers no comfort to the person who once believed but does so no longer.

Does this belief differ from that expressed in John 3:16? Not really. The “Eternal life” that is spoken of in John is the life of God that is available beginning in the present. As such, it is John’s version of saying “The Kingdom of God is upon you.” In passages like this, where Jesus seems to be inviting decision, he is in reality inviting a reordering of life based on recognition of the Kingdom of God and recognizing the Messiah as God with us. N.T. Wright has rightly pointed out that this is a proclamation telling us about a whole new world.⁶⁶ Our response to it truly amounts to either entering, or refusing to enter, a “new creation”. For the person who accepts the Bible as authoritative, this is why we need both John and the Synoptics. In their quite different approaches to Jesus, they present the whole picture, which will not allow any separation between belief in Jesus and following the message of the Kingdom.

Repentance and belief must go hand in hand. So, when someone asks me what they must do to go to heaven, I give an honest answer: Admit your sin, repent and surrender all you know of yourself to all you know of Jesus.

Oops. The following paragraph was accidentally copied from the previous post.

Understand Jesus Christ in the fullness of the Gospel presentation: mediator, kingdom-bringer, reconciler, teacher, Lord, discipler… and you will have understood all the “good news.”

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Footnotes:

[59] See for example 2 Timothy 2:25

[60] Luke 5:32; 2 Cor. 7:9-10

[61] Luke 15:11-32

[62] Matthew 11:20

[63] Acts 2:38

[64] Romans 2:4

[65] Matthew 10:22; 24:13

[66] N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, HarperCollins, 2008.

Notes from Mike Bell:
1. What questions or thoughts come from your mind from what you have just read? What stood out to you?
2. Would you be interested in a paper or Kindle version of the book when it is available? Please email us at michaelspencersnewbook@gmail.com so that we can let you know when it is ready.
3. Find any grammar or spelling errors, phrases that are awkward or difficult to understand? Also send these type of comments to the email address above.

The Daughters and Dad

Adapted from a photo by Jeff Robinson at Flickr. Creative Commons License

The Daughters and Dad

I participated in services this weekend for a family that I have known almost ten years now.

Our relationship began when I served as hospice chaplain for a woman who lived at home with her second husband. For some reason, we made a strong connection, and I visited often. I recall spending an entire overnight there with our nurse, tending to her symptoms and trying to help the family come to terms with her dying.

It was during and after that time that I met her four daughters. A couple of them lived in town and the other two flew in from their homes elsewhere. Four women, their mother and their step-father — it was a lively, talkative crew that welcomed us into their home at a significant moment in their life.

Mom died, and I officiated the funeral. In the course of helping them through all that and in their season of grief afterward, I heard about their troubled lives.

Their mother’s first husband, their biological father, had left her after a dozen years or so of marriage, with four little girls. She did her best to take care of them, but it was too much for her. She essentially abandoned them on the front steps of their grandmother, who tried but soon became overwhelmed also. So four young daughters were shipped out into various homes and forms of foster care. They grew up separately, in different places, not knowing one another or sharing life as had once been planned. There was still much unspoken about those years, but I could sense that it had not been an easy journey.

And yet, here they were. Somehow, over the years they had renewed acquaintances with each other and their parents, and had now come together to be with their mom at the end of her life. If they hadn’t opened up to me, I would never have imagined their life had been so painful and malfunctional. They seemed to handle caring for their dying loved one with all the usual ups and downs. We gradually lost touch but I knew they kept tabs on their stepfather and were supportive of him.

About five years later, one of the daughters contacted me. Her husband had died. Could I help them with his funeral? I did. And then, after a couple more years, their stepdad came on to our hospice service and I walked with them through his death and memorial.

Out of the blue last week I received a phone message from one of the girls again. I hadn’t thought of them for a long time, but as soon as I heard her voice, images of our past experiences together came rushing back in. Now, she was saying on the voicemail that their biological father had died.

I called her right back and said of course I’d be happy to help them again.

Only the two local daughters were able to participate. The others, because of extenuating circumstances, had to settle for sending flowers from afar. Oh yes, they told me they had found out that they had a step-brother too. Over the past I’m not sure how long, they had been reunited with their father and and helped care for him at the end of his life. They talked about sitting with him, caring for him, and partnering with his VA and Legion buddies to get him to his doctor appointments and out and about. They were with him when he died.

The daughter who had called me had put an extraordinary amount of effort into organizing the events this weekend. When she read her eulogy for her father at the service, she focused on his life, some of his remarkable gifts, his heroic military service, his interests and loves.

The other spoke too, and she said that her feelings were more mixed. Her dad had not been there for his daughters. She saw pictures of them together when she was a little girl, and was grateful for those pictures, but when she looked at them closely, she realized she didn’t really know who that man was. They really didn’t have a relationship. He hadn’t ever been tender or affectionate. They grew up without him. He had left them. He was absent.

Then she told of an experience she had while caring for him. He asked her to help him sit up on the side of the bed. In his weakness, as she raised him up, he fell forward and reached out his arms. She caught him and found herself in his embrace. He wouldn’t let go. She laid her head on his back and stayed in his arms for several minutes.

She didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know if it meant anything. Was he saying, “I need you”? Was he saying, “I love you”? Was he saying, “I’m sorry”? Was he saying, “Forgive me”? Whatever it meant, if anything at all, she was there and they had touched.

And now here she was, speaking of her dad and honoring him with the rest of the family.

I pulled both daughters aside and said how proud I was of them. Even with all they had been through, even with the complicated relationship they had with their father, here they were, honoring him like the commandment says. He may not have always been honorable, but they still chose to give him honor as their father.

One of them looked at me and said, “Well, he’s a human being and no one deserves to die alone or not have a service. And he gave us life, didn’t he?”

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: September 19, 2020

**400 years ago:** On September 16, 1620, the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists—half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs—had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the “Pilgrims” reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.

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Some of us can relate…

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RIP RBG…

From NPR:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas.

The court, in a statement, said Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, D.C., surrounded by family. She was 87.

“Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”

Architect of the legal fight for women’s rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg subsequently served 27 years on the nation’s highest court, becoming its most prominent member. Her death will inevitably set in motion what promises to be a nasty and tumultuous political battle over who will succeed her, and it thrusts the Supreme Court vacancy into the spotlight of the presidential campaign.

Just days before her death, as her strength waned, Ginsburg dictated this statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

According to CNN:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed on Friday that whomever President Donald Trump nominates to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will get a vote on the Senate floor, signaling a historic fight in Congress over one of the most polarizing issues in American politics.

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement Friday evening that sets GOP lawmakers on a collision path with Democrats, though the exact timing of such a fight was not immediately clear.

GOP aides are skeptical that there is enough time to confirm a nominee before November 3, given that Supreme Court nominees typically take two to three months to process, according to a review of recent confirmation proceedings.

But that process could be sped up if McConnell, who controls the majority of the chamber, has the votes to confirm a replacement, and there is enough time to confirm someone in a lame-duck session of Congress after the November elections.
That calculation is further complicated if Republicans lose control of the Senate and the White House after the election — and whether enough GOP senators would break ranks and oppose any nominee by a President who had just lost his election and a GOP Senate that just lost its majority.

Senate Republicans, who hold the majority in the upper chamber, only need 51 votes to confirm a new justice once one is formally nominated. Currently, there are 53 GOP senators — meaning they can only lose three Republicans. In the event of a 50-50 split, Vice President Mike Pence could cast a tie-breaking vote.

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Evacuation report from Michael Newnham (The Phoenix Preacher)…

What I saw as I was evacuating…six blocks from my house. Photo from KDRV.

SEPT 16, 2020. It strikes you as some sort of cosmic error that will surely be fixed before there is significant damage to what has always been.

We had to leave quickly…the angry clouds of black smoke looked as if they would soon overtake us and the sound of propane tanks exploding made it sound like war.

We fled north… I needed to get my mom and her cat to shelter…a friends house would be safe.

Except it wasn’t.

A wall of fire on the mountain was descending on that home…we had to go elsewhere.

My aunts house was safe, I left them there.

I would stay with my godson and his family…they were far enough away from the fires.

They evacuated that night.

I stayed at their home…an old man can only run so far for so long.

They are home now, as am I…I’m waiting until we have potable water to bring mom home.

Last night was the first night I slept without the scanner app playing on my phone .

The roads into Phoenix proper are blockaded down the street from my house…those who live (or lived) in that area are allowed to walk in briefly and walk out with whatever possessions they can carry.

At times it looks like those videos you see of refugees fleeing some Third World country… last night I saw a mom walking out hauling a garbage bag containing what remains of her world with her little boy trailing behind pulling a red wagon with a giant scorched teddy bear riding in it.

The streets are lined with cars all over the county as if folks were attending a giant wedding at someones house or a huge yard sale…in reality they are sleeping in their cars, often with their pets.

The initial estimate was that 600 homes burned…now that number is 2400.

They didn’t count the mobile homes at first…a subtle way of saying that folks who live in trailer parks don’t really count.

Jesus wept, then Jesus got busy.

I left my house with my meds and an oil stock…a small cylinder of oil used to anoint people for prayer.

I ran out of oil the first day…I was refueled by a retired Catholic priest.

We are caring for each other, protecting each other, supporting each other.

The Spirit hovers over the chaos restoring life one person, one moment, at a time.

Society has been reordered here…firefighters, law enforcement, and first responders are heroes again.

The Gospel is not a doctrine right now… it’s a spoken prayer, a shift as a volunteer, an unmasked hug, a can of cat or dog food, an ice chest full of water and Red Bull for those standing watch.

It’s people “paying forward” seven deep at the coffee stand and restaurant owners picking up tickets for newly homeless customers.

It’s people having visions of what will be rebuilt even before we know what has been lost.

It’s buckets of sunflowers placed on the on the road that is the only entrance to the town to remind us that the light will shine again.

Truly, it will….it is right behind the smoke.

It always is.

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Update from Jeff Dunn:

Jeff’s wife Kathy is home after her hospitalization with Covid-19. Jeff says both she and he are going to try and get some much needed rest. Jeff also says, “Thank you for your prayers, support, and encouragement. We could not have made it without you!

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“I will show you these Stooges…”

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The wit of Abraham Lincoln…

President Lincoln used stories to make military and political points with simple economy. When, at the height of the American Civil War, Brigadier-General John Pope telegraphed Washington that he had captured 4,500 enemy troops, was marching on the Confederates, and would soon have the rebels in his power, the cabinet asked the president for his opinion. “That reminds me,” he replied, of an “old woman in Sangamon Co who was ill.”

The doctor, he went on, came and prescribed some medicine for her constipation. Returning the next morning, he found her “fresh & well, getting breakfast”. Asked if the medicine had worked, she confirmed that it had. “How many [bowel] movements?” he inquired. “142,” she replied. “Madame, I am serious,” the physician replied. “I know you are joking. How many?” “142.” “Madame, I must know,” he insisted. “You couldn’t have had 142.” “I tell you 142,” she said, “140 of them wind.”

Lincoln closed the discussion by adding simply: “I am afraid Pope’s captures are [most] of them wind.”

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Viva la English language…

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That gesture looks so familiar…

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Before they both got demoted to the minors at Weehawken, and history was made…

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Venus has gas…

…which may prove the presence of life!

From NPR:

Scientists say they’ve detected a gas in the clouds of Venus that, on Earth, is produced by microbial life.

The researchers have racked their brains trying to understand why this toxic gas, phosphine, is there in such quantities, but they can’t think of any geologic or chemical explanation.

The mystery raises the astonishing possibility that Venus, the planet that comes closest to Earth as it whizzes around the sun, might have some kind of life flourishing more than 30 miles up in its yellow, hazy clouds.

Definitely on the cargo list for the next Venus mission

Nothing could live on what passes for land on Venus; its smooth volcanic plains are a scorching hellscape hot enough to melt lead, where the temperatures exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit. High in the clouds, however, the pressures and temperatures and acidity levels would be less intense — though still vile.

The clouds are far more acidic than any environments where microbes make their home on Earth. And instead of water, the clouds on Venus contain droplets of concentrated sulfuric acid; the atmosphere is so bereft of water that it’s many times drier than the driest desert on Earth.

All in all, it seems like an unlikely place for life. Nonetheless, the new report in the journal Nature Astronomy has astrobiologists and planetary scientists talking. Two different telescopes, at two different times, looked at Venus and saw the chemical signature that is unique to phosphine. If this gas is really there, Venus has either got some kind of geologic or chemical activity going on that no one understands, or alien life might be living right next door.

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I’m hoping it’s a comedy in the end…

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In my hour of darkness…

On this day in 1973, 26-year-old pioneering country-rock singer Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose in a California motel room. In honor of a drunken pact Parsons had made with his road manager, two friends stashed his body in a borrowed hearse and drove it into the middle of the Joshua Tree National Park, where they doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.

In the early 1970s, Parsons recruited an unknown female singer named Emmylou Harris, who joined him on his first solo album and a tour in 1973. She recorded more songs with him on Grievous Angel, which was released in 1974 after he died. Here’s a poignant song from that album, which features not only Harris, but also Linda Ronstadt.

Another young man safely, strummed his silver stringed guitar
And He played to people everywhere some say he was a star
But he was just a country boy, his simple songs confess
And the music he had in him so very few possess

In my hour of darkness, in my time of need
Oh Lord, grant me vision oh, Lord grant me speed

Reconsider Jesus – The Message of the Kingdom (Mark 1:14-15)

Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark
A devotional commentary by Michael Spencer
Compiled and Edited by: Michael Bell
Table of Contents

The Message of the Kingdom

14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Mark 1:14-15 – NIV

What is the gospel? What is the “good news”? I think it’s telling that the two most prolific evangelism programs in evangelicalism both approach their audience with questions that Jesus never used.

“Do you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”

“If you were to die tonight, and God was to ask you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would be your answer?”

Jesus, on the other hand, did not approach his world with a question at all, but with a proclamation of the arrival of the reign of God. Evangelicalism is a religion of decisions and transactions, and although there are decisions to be made, reducing the gospel to a decision to accept “God’s plan for my life” or giving the right answer to the question of how to go to heaven seems to have moved well past what Jesus was doing in his earthly ministry.

You see, when Jesus speaks of the gospel, he is proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God. At the heart of this are two things that are fairly challenging to all of us in the materialistic, prosperous west. The statements recorded here are the first statements that Jesus makes in the Gospel of Mark, and as such it sets the tone and direction for the entire book. You could even say that they summarize Jesus’ entire mission and message.

1. “The time has come – The kingdom of God has come near.”

2. “Repent and believe the good news!”

In this chapter we will look at the first of these two statements: The announcement that a climactic time has arrived, and the present age has come to its fulfillment point.

The good news is about God and what God is doing. It is not about me. It is not about some idea of success or happiness as the world might define it. You have probably noticed that in our culture God is judged by how much he fills out our shopping lists of needs and wants. This is not good news. This good news is an announcement that things are going to be different.

Check out what Jesus has to say in his first sermon, a further proclamation of the good news:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”…. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Mark 4:18 – ESV

When you read the Gospels, Jesus is including the excluded, healing the hopeless, remaking Israel, reaching out to the pagan, overturning the religious professionals, redefining all the predictable terms, shocking those who know all the answers, and in general, making it unmistakably clear that the Kingdom isn’t just about forgiveness and “heaven,” but about the life we are living, and will live, both in the Kingdom here and now, as well as in the future. As Jesus walked through this world the Kingdom of God was like a big ship cutting through the waves. Every place he goes, the work and the fruit of the Kingdom flow out from him. Blind people see, hungry people are fed, deaf people hear, those with leprosy are cured, outcasts are included, people who are left out are brought in and beloved. The guilty are forgiven, the dead are raised. If you don’t know who Jesus is, you miss it.

If God is here now, and his Kingdom is present now, then your life is going to be deeply transformed. God himself is going to give your life an entirely different definition and direction. Big questions get asked and answered: What is your God like? Who is your neighbor? How does the Kingdom look when you live in it? Will you follow Jesus to the cross? Everything Jesus says and does is dominated by this Kingdom he is announcing, and his actions and words make it very clear what kinds of changes must take place. The disciples are blown away by it all, and that’s our cue to get our helmets on as well.

Most studies of the early chapters of the Synoptic Gospels ignore what Jesus is doing. Instead, they leave the impression that Jesus wandered around Galilee proving that he was the Son of God, so that when he died we would get the whole, “God’s Son died for your sins” thing. Approaching the Gospels this way means missing the purpose of Jesus’ ministry. It’s not the warm-up act for the cross, it’s the Kingdom. It’s what Jesus came to bring, and to give to us. It’s a Kingdom with a crucified and risen Messiah, but it’s always a Kingdom where believing and belonging mean revolution.

Jesus taught the Kingdom arrived in beginning form with his ministry, and was really present, though not in the same way it would be after his death or at his return. Nonetheless, the presence, reality, power and authority of the Kingdom are present with Jesus.⁴⁵ The keys to the Kingdom are given to his church. The authority of the Kingdom belongs to believers. The law of the Kingdom is in force now. Christ reigns now as King of Kings. We invite persons into the Kingdom that is an absolute reality. I am troubled by the notion taught by some that the Kingdom has been postponed.⁴⁶ The parables of Jesus teach that the Kingdom is a present and actively growing reality.⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ Though we await a final consummation of the Kingdom, we are not waiting for the Kingdom to arrive.

When we hear Peter on the Day of Pentecost⁴⁹ or Paul in his letters⁵⁰ both declaring that the last days have arrived, they are simply following their belief in the original message of Jesus. When we proclaim Christ as Lord, call people to repentance, pray against the evil strongholds of this world, or set free the oppressed, we are seeing the “Kingdom Now” as Jesus announced it.

So what is this kingdom of which Jesus spoke? And what did his audience understand by this?

Jesus meant the reign of God. God is a ruling King who is sovereign over all he has created. This theme is continually repeated in the Psalms, Isaiah, and the book of Revelation. God rules now.

Yet this world is in a state of rebellion against the reign of God. Human beings have rebelled. Satan poses as a pretend ruler. The rulers and kings of the earth pretend they are the ultimate power.

Psalm 2 says God laughs at such a pretense. But God is doing more than laughing, he is establishing his Kingdom on the earth. The entire Bible is the story of the prediction, rehearsal, arrival and consummation of the Kingdom of God. In this story, Jesus is the one who actually brings the Kingdom of God in himself. His words announce and proclaim the Kingdom. His miracles show the power of the Kingdom over the kingdoms of sin and oppression. His death and resurrection bring the fullness of the Kingdom into the world and his ascension proclaims God’s victory. The Kingdom continues in human history by his authority and power. The Kingdom of God is the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth where God’s righteousness lives and salvation is experienced. Jesus invited all persons to come into this Kingdom, to live in its new realities and to work for its inevitable triumph.

Christians now are simply awaiting the unveiling of this Kingdom as Jesus destroys all his enemies. This is the Kingdom Jesus is preaching – the rule and reign of God in those who will acknowledge his Lordship.

Those who heard Jesus preach, however, were more inclined to a political view of the Kingdom. The Old Testament is full of longing for the Kingdom of God to arrive, and the Jews believed that ”God’s time” would become evident when the “Day of the Lord” suddenly appeared. They were living in a tremendous sense of expectation where something needed to happen. They hadn’t had independence for 100 years, there was corruption at the top of the political ladder, and there was turmoil up and down the social ladder. When John preached the Kingdom of God is coming, people interpreted it all types of ways. They were looking for fireworks, and for another David or Solomon to overthrow the Romans and establish Israel as God’s Kingdom on earth. This longing for a military and political Kingdom was the realpolitik of Jesus’ day and he encountered it again and again.

Jesus’ entire ministry reinterpreted the idea of the Kingdom, yet most missed his message, preferring, as do people today, to believe that God’s Kingdom must be a version of the ideal political state – complete with all the benefits they want! We live in a time when there continues to be a strong attraction to the idea that the Kingdom of God is a manifestation of an earthly political Kingdom, whether it is liberationists in Central America overthrowing governments with a clergyman in tow, or left-leaning liberal politicians seeking to translate their interpretation of scripture into government programs or right-leaning political activists trying to save America through the election of a president – we are still dealing with a fundamental mistake about what Jesus proclaims. The Kingdom of God is not an earthly Kingdom in any sense of the word. No church, no state and no movement equals the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is a reality in the hearts of people and is manifested through the actions of the righteous. Only when Christ returns will we be able to point at an earthly reality and know it is the Kingdom. In the meantime, Jesus will teach us how to recognize the Kingdom, enter the Kingdom and sow the Kingdom in this world.

In America we decided a long time ago we didn’t want a king. We want to run our own affairs, vote on everything and elect our own leaders. When the Bible says that God is the sovereign king of the universe, Americans would feel a lot better if we elected him to that job and had him do what we wanted.

But look at what Jesus was saying: God is the sovereign ruler of everything. His kingdom encompasses everything you see, everything you don’t see, and everyone of us. Your place in this world is determined by your relationship with the king of everything: You are either a loyal obedient servant of the king of the universe; or you are a rebel at war, determined to be your own authority and run your own life.

You may say that you don’t really need the gospel, and you don’t really need Christ because you are a pretty good person. You may have never killed anyone, or done anything really terrible. But if you get down to the core of those ideas, what is the attitude toward God? Is it an attitude of submission, of worship, of recognition, and of obedience? Or is it an attitude of “I’m sufficient without you, I’ll do as I want, I’ll thank you as I please, I’ll call on you when I need you”?

Not every group of Christians is equally committed to the reality of the Kingdom. I believe we must confess that the Kingdom of God is the absolute and fundamental reality of Christianity as it is lived out. Jesus wants his followers to organize their entire experience around this concept. This would include the ideas that:

The Kingdom of heaven is here now.
Christ is King, and no one else.
Jesus’ followers are subjects in the Kingdom.
The law of the King is their rule for every situation.
Their families live in the Kingdom.
Their finances come from the generosity of the King.
Their resources are dedicated to Kingdom purposes.
The Kingdom is in conflict with other kingdoms, yet is victorious.
The expansion of the Kingdom requires sacrifice.
In the Kingdom, values are often upside down, because the King is transforming all things.
The power of the Kingdom is manifested now in miraculous signs and wonders.
In the last days, only our response to the Kingdom and our obedience to it will matter.
The constant prayer of the Jesus-follower should be Jesus’ prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”⁵¹

These are just a few suggestions of how much the Kingdom should organize the entire Christian experience. Any Christian or church that ignores such a dominant theme surely cannot understand Jesus or his significance. We need to take this very seriously and seek to find followers of Jesus that do as well.

Having said that, I would make two specific warnings:

First of all, beware of any group that overly emphasizes the Kingdom now. The Kingdom in its completed outward reality is not yet here. Triumphalism is a distortion of Christianity and Jesus isn’t asking us to “pretend it’s so” when it’s not. We live in present reality and future hope. People still get ill and die. Tragedy and evil are still realities. These things have not yet been wiped out of history.

In contrast to this, beware of those interpretations of the Kingdom that say the Kingdom is entirely future and the New Testament statements about it are not to be applied today. The Kingdom has arrived in Jesus and, in expanding seed form, is real now. We are to pray for the sick and be supernatural in orientation. I am not contradicting myself, just suggesting that we live in the “already and the not-yet” form of the Kingdom.

Where is heaven in this? Certainly it is not absent, but even more certainly it is not central or prominent. Jesus invites sinners to believe they are forgiven. He invites all persons into a Kingdom of grace and to participate in God’s mission to restore and heal creation. The Kingdom of God will eventually overturn all the fallen, pretentious kingdoms of men. “Heaven” is the reign of God seen from the Godward side, and we pray that it will come on earth as God answers the prayer that his will is done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Inviting people to reserve a place in heaven is shortchanging the Gospel, and creates the problem of justifying the demands of the Kingdom of God in the interim. In the Great Commission, Jesus calls us to evangelism that invites persons to become disciples, obeying all that he commanded. This is not a second level of “fine print.” It is the Kingdom of Heaven and Jesus the Messiah as they are to be presented to the world.

The most important question for many of us is how to place the cross of Jesus in the context of the entire offer of the Kingdom while keeping the Kingdom message of Jesus in its prominent place.

When Paul says he knows nothing but the cross,⁵² he is not setting up a tension between cross and Kingdom. He is simply saying there is only one Messiah: the crucified one. As astonishing as it sounded to the ears of Jews, Greeks and Romans, God’s cornerstone of the Kingdom was the stone that was rejected, cursed and nailed to the cross.⁵³

So the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus demonstrate that this crucified Messiah is the victorious, vindicated King. He has brought the Kingdom to us through incarnation, suffering, death and resurrection. He is the “door,”⁵⁴ the “way, truth and life.”⁵⁵ He is the one who, having taken all our burdens upon himself, can now invite us into the Kingdom of Heaven, the new creation, and the new Jerusalem.⁵⁶

As a preacher, I need to preach Jesus, and not as a means to an end, but as the center of all that God offers to us. Christ is the Gospel. Jesus equals salvation in every sense. At any moment we encounter Christ in the Gospel we are experiencing both Kingdom and Cross, reconciliation and invitation to discipleship, acceptance and Great Commission, God’s mission as our purpose and as good news to each one of us.

All Christians of different kinds and varieties are subjects of the Kingdom. Jesus rules. Christians have no right to set up their own little kingdoms and exclude others from them based on worship style, skin color, or non-essential theology. Read the New Testament warning to divisive teachers and false prophets and get a sense of what a practical reality Christ wants the Kingdom to be: He calls us all to become sons and daughters of God under his authority. The only force that can bring real renewal to our culture is the Kingdom of God. Churches and para-churches are only “outposts” of the Kingdom. Pastors and preachers are “under-shepherds” of the Shepherd-King. Beware of those who do not see this reality; those who act as if “theirs is the Kingdom and power and the glory.”⁵⁷ I will continually pray for the Kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven.⁵⁸

Understand Jesus Christ in the fullness of the Gospel presentation: mediator, kingdom-bringer, reconciler, teacher, Lord, discipler… and you will have understood all the “good news.”

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Footnotes:

[45] Matthew 16:19

[46] Dispensationalism teaches that the history of God working with his people can be divided into several dispensations or periods of time. They believe that we are currently in the Church or Grace dispensation, and that the Kingdom dispensation is yet to come.

[47] Mark 4:10-33

[48] Luke 17:21

[49] Acts 2

[50] 2 Timothy 3:1 and following.

[51] Matthew 6:10 – KJV

[52] 1 Corinthians 2:2

[53] 1 Peter 2:7

[54] John 10:7

[55] John 14:6

[57] In Revelation 21:1-4 God is said to ultimately make his dwelling place on earth in the “new Jerusalem.”

[57] Contrast this with the section of the Lord’s prayer that states that “the kingdom and the power and the glory” belongs to God.

[58] From the Lord’s prayer – Matthew 6:10

Never Underestimate the Intelligence of Trees

Never Underestimate the Intelligence of Trees

Here is an article from Nautilus reprinted in Getpocket by Brandon Keim. Brandon Keim is a freelance nature and science journalist. He is the author of “The Eye of the Sandpiper: Stories from the Living World” and “Meet the Neighbors” from W.W. Norton & Company, about what it means to think of wild animals as fellow persons—and what that means for the future of nature.

Here in this article he considers the work of Suzanne Simard, a professor in the Department of Forest & Conservation at the University of British Columbia. Her specialty is mycorrhizae: the symbiotic unions of fungi and root long known to help plants absorb nutrients from soil. Beginning with landmark experiments describing how carbon flowed between paper birch and Douglas fir trees, Simard found that mycorrhizae didn’t just connect trees to the earth, but to each other as well. The article says:

Simard went on to show how mycorrhizae-linked trees form networks, with individuals she dubbed Mother Trees at the center of communities that are in turn linked to one another, exchanging nutrients and water in a literally pulsing web that includes not only trees but all of a forest’s life. These insights had profound implications for our understanding of forest ecology—but that was just the start. It’s not just nutrient flows that Simard describes. It’s communication. She—and other scientists studying roots, and also chemical signals and even the sounds plant make—have pushed the study of plants into the realm of intelligence. Rather than biological automata, they might be understood as creatures with capacities that in animals are readily regarded as learning, memory, decision-making, and even agency.

In the interview with Keim, Simard also made the following points:

Root systems and the mycorrhizal networks that link those systems are designed like neural networks, and behave like neural networks, and a neural network is the seeding of intelligence in our brains.
All networks have links and nodes. In the example of a forest, trees are nodes and fungal linkages are links. Scale-free means that there are a few large nodes and a lot of smaller ones.
Systems evolve toward those patterns because they’re efficient and resilient. In our brains, scale-free networks are an efficient way for us to transmit neurotransmitters.
Plants do have intelligence. They have all the structures. They have all the functions. They have the behaviors.
Indigenous people have long known that plants will communicate with each other. But even in western science we know it because you can smell the defense chemistry of a forest under attack. Something is being emitted that has a chemistry that all those other plants and animals perceive, and they change their behaviors accordingly.
Do plants have a self that is making those communications? The best evidence we have is kin recognition between trees and seedlings that are their own kin.
Memory is housed in the tree rings of all trees.

Tree Whisperer: “I think that we’re so utilitarian with plants and we abuse them to no end. I think that comes from us having our blinders on. We haven’t looked,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard (above). Photo credit: Jdoswim / Wikimedia.

Simard notes that she made these discoveries about these networks below ground, how trees can be connected by these fungal networks and communicate. But she points out that the indigenous people along the western coast of North America knew that already. It’s in the writings and in the oral history. They knew that the mother tree communicated with her kin, her seedlings. They used to call the trees the tree people. But Western science has always had a utilitarian ethic towards plants i.e. How can we use them to our benefit?

Keim asks her, “What other relationships are possible? What does it mean to be giving, to be empathic with the vegetal world?” Simard answers:

There’s two words that come straight to mind. One of them is responsibility. I think that modern society hasn’t felt a responsibility to the plant world. So being responsible stewards is one thing. And also regaining respect—a respectful interaction with those trees, those plants.

If you’ve ever read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, she talks about how she’ll go into the forest to harvest some plants for medicine or food. She asks the plants. It’s called respectful harvest. It’s not just, “Oh I’m going to ask the plant if I can harvest it, and if it says no, I won’t.” It’s looking and observing and being respectful of the condition of those plants. I think that’s the relationship of being responsible—not just for the plants, but for ourselves, and for the children and multiple generations before and after us.

Had I read this 15-20 years ago I would have dismissed it out of hand as (literally) tree-hugging nonsense and New Age (phony) mysticism. Now, as we teeter on the brink (or have we gone over the brink?) of anthropogenic climate-change disaster (the western U.S. is on fire- for God’s sake), I’m wondering if maybe this isn’t all nonsense? Simard notes:

But even in western science we know it because you can smell the defense chemistry of a forest under attack. Something is being emitted that has a chemistry that all those other plants and animals perceive, and they change their behaviors accordingly… let’s say you have a group of plants and stress one out, it will have a big response. Botanists can measure their serotonin responses. They have serotonin. They also have glutamate, which is one of our own neurotransmitters. There’s a ton of it in plants. They have these responses immediately. If we clip their leaves or put a bunch of bugs on them, all that neurochemistry changes. They start sending messages really fast to their neighbors.

That’s not hand-waving New Age mysticism; that’s measurable, quantifiable science. Here’s what I hear the trees are saying:

OH MY GOD, HUMANS, DO WE ALL HAVE TO LITERALLY BURN TO DEATH BEFORE YOU GET A HANDLE ON YOUR ABUSE OF NATURE!!! ARE ALL YOUR MINDS MADE OF METAL AND WHEELS AND DO ALL OF YOU NOT CARE FOR GROWING THINGS, EXCEPT AS FAR AS THEY SERVE YOU FOR THE MOMENT!!!

What are you hearing…