The Internet Monk Archives

Does the Bible Have the Answers for Our Money Problems?

“The Bible is literally filled with advice on how to get out of debt, how to stay out of debt, how to prosper, how to have financial stability, and how to save and spend.” (Rick Warren)

• • •

These days, Warren is just one of the more prominent pastors leading his congregation to think about faith and financial issues during the economic downturn. An article in the Christian Post discusses how, in the midst of an eleven percent unemployment rate and all the other money troubles folks are having these days, churches across the country are trying to find ways to help people manage their finances, get out of debt, and be good stewards of their resources.

I doubt that anyone would deny that part of following Christ involves being faithful with our money and material possessions. Those who live in Christian communities also can and should show love for one another and their neighbors by helping people in the realm of finances. One need go no further than the descriptions of the early church in Acts to see practical love in action with regard to possessions and money.

In doing this, however,

Is it necessary for the church to assert that what is needed is: “lessons on financial stewardship based on biblical principles,” or that “the Bible is the best place to go for financial advice”?
Is Warren making a critical and important point when he says, “The Bible is literally filled with advice on how to get out of debt, how to stay out of debt, how to prosper, how to have financial stability, and how to save and spend”?
What is being taught when a church says they are instructing “its members to manage money from a biblical perspective“?
When Christian leaders step forward and proclaim the old cliché, “Jesus talked about money more than any other topic,” does this statement have any real relevance to the idea of teaching people how to manage money?

In other words, is this really a “Biblical” topic? What contribution does the Bible make in this discussion?

And what does the fact that pastors everywhere are claiming Biblical authority for what they are teaching about money say about our theology and the way followers of Jesus should think and act in such daily-life matters and concerns?

Finding Ourselves in Jesus

Finding Ourselves in Jesus
Why We Observe the Christian Year

• • •

During this Advent season, I will be using Walter Wangerin Jr.’s book, Preparing for Jesus, for daily readings to prepare my heart for the celebration of Jesus’ birth.

As I was looking at it the other day, I was taken immediately by Wangerin’s testimony of what keeping the Christian Year has meant in his own life. He grew up in the church and has experienced walking through the church calendar every year of his life.

Before we look at that, let me say a word about the Christian Year itself, which begins this Sunday, Nov. 27.

For those of you who might be new to Internet Monk, I assert that the practice of keeping the Christian Year within a church community may be the single most helpful habit you can develop in order to experience what our founder Michael Spencer called a “Jesus-shaped” life.

Why? Because the Christian Year (also called the Church Year or the liturgical calendar) is an annual, Christian way of keeping time and remembering the story of Jesus.

The Christian Year…

Begins in Advent, the season of preparing for Christ’s coming at Christmas,
Commemorates Christmastide, the season of celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus,
Marks Epiphany, the season of recognizing how God’s glory was made manifest in the life and ministry of Jesus,
Keeps Lent, the season of remembering Jesus’ journey to the Cross and his call for us to take up our cross and follow him,
Walks us through Holy Week and the events of Jesus’ Passion,
Commemorates Eastertide, the season of celebrating Jesus’ Resurrection and the new creation he has inaugurated,
Recalls Pentecost, when the Risen Lord poured out the Holy Spirit and gave birth to the Church,
Leads us through the Season after Pentecost (or, Ordinary Time) when we learn to walk in the Spirit day by day as God’s people.

Here’s Walter Wangerin’s testimony about what observing this calendar annually has done for him:

Throughout my life it has been my good fortune to experience the story of Jesus with every turning of every year. The number of the years of my unfolding age is also the number of times I’ve traveled with my Lord from his birth to his death to his triumphant rising again.

And because the story has been more than told to me; because it has surrounded me like a weather; because it comprehends me as a house does its inhabitants or a mother does her child, the life of Christ has shaped mine. My very being has been molded in him.

And because my response to this story has been more than an act of mind, more than study and scrutiny; because the story invites my entering in and personal participation; because I have experienced the life of Christ with deeper intensity than I have my own daily affairs, the Gospel story now interprets for me the world’s story. It is through the Gospel narrative, as through a window or a template, that I see all things, that I relate to them and come to know them.

In every sense of the phrase: I find myself in Jesus.

As I enter his story, I enter him. As his life embraces mine, he embraces me, and I am his.

• Preparing for Jesus, Walter Wangerin, Jr.

If you would like to read more details about this path of following Jesus, check out the books we recommend on the iMonk Bulletin Board in the blog’s right hand column, and check out our series of posts from last November called, “Church Year Spirituality.” You can find those in the Archives, Nov. 2010.

Final Pre-Black Friday Specials! Hurry! Act Now! Operators Standing By!

Wow. I haven’t heard that much hype since the last Dallas Cowboys promo I watched—which was about fifteen minutes ago.

Here we are in the home stretch of iMonk’s Black Friday specials, hoping to keep you home from the madness that begins in just a few hours. (By the way, yes, I will be a part of the madness starting at midnight at my Target. If you come to see me, stay in line. Don’t make my use my cattle prod … )

I thought we would conclude with some items you really ought to give strong consideration to buying for you or someone you want to give a nice, well-thought-out, meaningful gift to. (And if you need my address, just let me know! By the way, when shopping for clothes for me, I wear size mammoth-petite.)

Let’s start with …

Continue reading “Final Pre-Black Friday Specials! Hurry! Act Now! Operators Standing By!”

The Best Christmas Music

How are you doing, iMonks? Is it time for seconds yet? By the way, you need to eat the green beans, not just the crunchy onion-like things on the top. We are continuing our pre-Black Friday specials in honor of the real “reason for the season”: Buy Buy Buy. And all from the comfort of your own chair without having to brave the crowds. Right now we want to share the three best Christmas music albums you need to have and play continually from now through Christmas.

We’ll start with an honorable mention. O Holy Night by Sara Groves is a sparse, simple presentation of songs you already know. What you don’t know is how refreshing they sound as sung by one of my favorite artists. Sara Groves sings as if she is sitting in your living room having a pleasant conversation with you, her friend. Get this and listen with a cup of hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course).

Now to the three you must must must have.

Continue reading “The Best Christmas Music”

Tom Waits And Theology

Today is Thanksgiving, which means tomorrow is the greatest of all consumeristic holidays, Black Friday. It’s such a great day to some that they can’t wait to celebrate. Your neighbors and friends will be out in force starting at midnight to get great deals on stuff they really don’t need, like toaster ovens, foot massagers and Hot Wheels sets. Well, ok, maybe they really do need the Hot Wheels. But most of the stuff they will shove and cuss and fight over to save a few bucks are things they wouldn’t give a second glance to in, say, April. We here at the iMonastery want to help save you time, frustration and just possibly a black eye or two with some gift suggestions you can buy from the comfort of your own Barcalounger. We’ll be sharing ideas throughout the day as you fade in and out of your tryptophan coma, so check back often. As always, if you click on the links provided, iMonk will receive a percentage of what you purchase. Now, as the doors open, file in quietly and in order like good iMonks.

The Gospel Singer You Would Never Let Into Your Church

This is the first year in a long time I won’t be making my traditional Thanksgiving dish—cranberry and orange relish. It really is very good, but very few people like it. And that’s fine with me, because there is more left for me. Most would rather go for that gloppy stuff that comes out of a can (and still resembles the can) than a relish of fresh cranberries, naval oranges and a bit of sugar. The real stuff is too much for them.

Tom Waits is the real thing. And he is definitely not for everyone. Most prefer their music out of a can, gloppy and sugary. This goes for pop, country, “smooth” jazz or, yes, even Christian music. So when they encounter someone like Tom Waits, the reality is so jarring it makes most run back to, I don’t know, Rascal Flatts or Fleetwood Mac or Mercy Me. Something that really doesn’t make the listener face real life. Something that tastes almost, but not quite, totally unlike real cranberries.

Waits’ voice was described by music critic Daniel Durchholz as “sounding like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” I’ve described him as sounding like he swallowed an angry cat that is now clawing its way out of Waits’ throat. Tony Bennent he ain’t. But that’s what makes him so real. He records songs exactly the way he wants to. He makes instruments from things he finds in junkyards and records on old tape recorders that really should be in junkyards. On his latest album he sings a duet with Keith Richards. Waits’ voice is so raw he actually makes Keef sound good.

Oh, but he is real.

Continue reading “Tom Waits And Theology”

Five Days of Thanksgiving (4)

For thyself, best Gift Divine,
to the world so freely given,
for that great, great love of thine,
peace on earth, and joy in heaven:
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

– For the Beauty of the Earth, Pierpoint

. . .

ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

– Book of Common Prayer, 1662

I’m Dreaming of a Fight This Christmas…

The rumble you hear in the distance is the sound of heavy artillery.

The Christmas Wars have begun.

The advertisement accompanying today’s post is from the American Humanist Association. These will run on buses, billboards and in newspapers. This is AHA’s third consecutive holiday public awareness campaign to bring attention to discrimination against nonbelievers in America. This year’s ads show Santa Claus drafting his naughty list against those who would assault nonbelievers’ civil liberties.

And on the other side…

Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, said that the AHA campaign was a crass attempt at restricting the religious freedom of Christians passionate about Christmas. As the birth date of Christianity, he said no other holiday deserved more public worship.

“Christmas is a moment of reflection upon Christ’s birth and the salvation it brings for us,” Staver said. “It’s important to remember our origins and reason for being. We try to make sure the real reason for the season is not censored.”

Staver said his organization fights censorship of the holiday’s Christian traditions with its “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” now in its ninth year. This campaign publishes its own “Naughty or Nice” list, identifying businesses who in their view don’t adequately acknowledge Christmas and praising those who do.

Frankly, I think both sides are nutty as fruitcakes.

I mean, can we get real for a minute?

“Christmas” has more than one meaning in American culture, and it has for a long, long time. Of course, at its heart, there is a religious celebration of Christ’s birth. But there is a much broader set of traditions and practices that have nothing whatsoever to do with that holy event. This is true in every culture, not just in America. It truly is “the holiday season,” for people everywhere, for all kinds of reasons, are celebrating many different things.

Neither Christians nor atheists, nor any other group for that matter, should seek to force others to define the season according to their narrow conception. I mean, who in the world really cares if the teenage clerk at American Eagle says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”? If you are a person who is honoring the birth of Christ at Christmas, don’t you get that all the shopping and buying presents and all the other stuff that we do really has nothing to do with Jesus? And if you are an atheist, are you really going to get upset if someone calls this time “Christmas,” using a term that has been a part of our culture forever, just because that identifies the season with a religious term?

As for me, I’m going to be celebrating BOTH a religious observance AND a cultural holiday in December.

My religious observance starts Sunday, when Advent begins. I’ll start marking Advent with readings and prayers, listening to carols, attending special services, participating in charity efforts, and focusing my heart’s attention on Christ and the Incarnation. We’ll put up our creche and maybe do an Advent Wreath or calendar. We will participate in special church programs to sing and tell the Good News that Christ is born. On Christmas morning, we’ll read the Christmas story and have prayer as a family. This year, since Christmas is on a Sunday, we’ll go to worship.

Why? Because Christmas is a holy day to us as Christians.

My cultural holiday usually commences about the same time. My Amazon Wish List starts filling up (as do the lists of my family members), and we’ll all begin shopping. We decorate the house, bake cookies, and attend parties and community programs. Items like a Christmas tree, Santas, nutcrackers, lights on the house, candles in the windows, and wreaths on the doors will appear. I’ll put on Bing Crosby once in awhile, or Ella, or Nat King Cole. We’ll dream of a white Christmas and a miniature sleigh with tiny reindeer, and we’ll watch It’s A Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Story, and Christmas Vacation.

Why? Because “Christmas” time is a holiday season to us as Americans.

So, no matter who you are, can we just agree that the season involves more than just one emphasis, and not try to force what is most meaningful to us on everyone else?

Let me take this early opportunity, then, neighbor, to wish you a Merry Christmas.

And Happy Holidays.

And put that rifle down before you shoot your eye out.

Five Days of Thanksgiving (3)

NOTE: We have not had a lot of comments on these posts, nevertheless I hope they are encouraging to you and helping you give voice to your own expressions of thanks. Please feel welcome to share some of those expressions in the comments if you are moved to do so.

• • •

A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks is the real test of the extent to which we love and trust God at that moment.

• True Spirituality, Francis Schaeffer

• • •

Today, we continue our five days of thanksgiving by asking God to quiet our hearts and enable us to give thanks for creation and the world God has given us.

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
   In wisdom you have made them all;
   the earth is full of your creatures.
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
   creeping things innumerable are there,
   living things both small and great.
There go the ships,
   and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

These all look to you
   to give them their food in due season;
when you give to them, they gather it up;
   when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
   when you take away their breath, they die
   and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
   and you renew the face of the ground.

May the glory of the Lord endure for ever;
   may the Lord rejoice in his works—
who looks on the earth and it trembles,
   who touches the mountains and they smoke.
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
   I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
   for I rejoice in the Lord.

• Psalm 104:24-34, NRSV

I don’t know about you, but I usually take the stage on which I live my life for granted. I don’t take enough time to enjoy this wonderful world God has given us. Sure, I have the occasional “aha!” moment when I see something in nature that is particularly spectacular. At times (nowhere nearly often enough) I even make an intentional effort to go to natural surroundings that testify clearly of God’s glory, beauty, and creativity so that I can bask in the wonder of nature. However, most of the time, creation is simply the backdrop for this stage play of life, and most of my attention is given to what’s happening with myself and the actors or on ideas that are being prompted by our words and actions.

It is obvious that humans in the 21st century are nowhere near as connected to nature as in past times. Technology has enabled us to harbor ourselves from much of its ordinary harshness and take shelter in cocoons of our own making where we seek comfort, convenience, and consistency. The wildness, messiness, unpredictability, freedom, and fear of the world is routinely absent from our lives. Oh sure, natural disasters still overwhelm us and bring out what little awe is left in our spirits. Apart from that, however, we prefer to get most of our “nature” on some kind of screen in the comfort of our homes.

Various conservation and environmental movements have played a role in keeping us cognizant of our surroundings and helping us pay attention to behaving responsibly and respectfully toward them. Sadly, even some of these have been politicized to the point where we get turned off by the subject of our stewardship of creation.

Today, we pause to thank our Creator God…

for creating the heavens and earth; all that is,
for making a good world and filling it with goodness,
for skies and seas and land, and the creatures that fill them,
for our own part in creation as creatures made in God’s image, blessed and called to be his representatives,
that all creation testifies to God’s glory, beauty, creativity, and concern for his creatures,
for fresh air and clean water, and the ability of nature to renew itself
for fertile soil and the earth’s abundant yield,
for creatures that delight us, amaze us, and help us in our human lives,
for stars and galaxies, for space that expands our minds and hearts, and lifts our eyes to the heavens,
for complex worlds too small to see or comprehend,
for mountains that send our spirits soaring, and flatlands that stretch our hopes beyond the horizons,
for cycles of seasons that form our expectations and heighten our anticipations,
for those who study the natural world and give us some small sense of its wonders and blessings.

Lord, we echo the psalmist: “How manifold your works!” We could never name them all, much less understand and describe them. And yet we thank you for giving us the curiosity and hunger to grasp the magnificence of your creation and how we may live within it more fully.

If this creation is so vast and wonderful, what then will new creation be?

Missed: A Perfect Opportunity

This is not personal. I do not know the pastor involved and I don’t want to cast any aspersions on him as a minister. Everyone has bad days, and perhaps this was one of his. All I know is that, IMHO, he completely missed something as he preached on Sunday that was as obvious as the nose on your face.

He ruined a perfectly good passage of Scripture. The words he spoke for forty minutes had absolutely nothing to do with the text, even though he was purportedly “expounding” it. His sermon was not consistent with the tone of the passage or the purpose of the Apostle Paul’s words. Nor did it fit with the theme of the season or the service, even though the occasion and other elements in the service complemented the text perfectly. His opening illustration would have been perfect had he applied it to the text, but instead he turned it in another direction.

As a result, this minister missed a perfect opportunity to give a powerful, affirming message of thanksgiving to his congregation. Instead, he essentially called them on the carpet and scolded them, even though the text of Scripture he used had not a word of instruction, challenge, exhortation, warning, or teaching in it.

I blame the common evangelical notion that a pastor must “preach for response.”

This homiletical approach says that the congregation should always be challenged to change, to do something, to be transformed in some way. It is part and parcel of the revivalistic heritage of evangelicalism — Prepare the people. Preach to the people. Persuade the people to respond.

What happens, however, when the text one is teaching in an expository fashion does not call for response (as we define it)?

Well, speaking from personal experience (oh, how many times I did this!) as well as observation — you find a way to make it call for the response you’re looking for. In the process, you usually ignore the passage in its context, and find pieces of it that you can use as springboards to challenge your listeners.

Which is exactly what this pastor did. It was painful to watch (and hear).

I can’t tell you how discouraged I was when I left that service.

Continue reading “Missed: A Perfect Opportunity”

Five Days of Thanksgiving (2)

A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks is the real test of the extent to which we love and trust God at that moment.

• True Spirituality, Francis Schaeffer

• • •

Today, we continue our five days of thanksgiving by asking God to quiet our hearts and enable us to give thanks for our family relationships.

This is hard for many people. There is a reason movies often use Thanksgiving as a setting for their stories. This is when families are together, providing an opportunity for filmmakers to explore the conflicts between family members, generations, etc. Nor does the Bible shy away from telling us the truth about our families. The first book in the Bible, which traces the development of the chosen family of Abraham, is filled with the stuff of drama and conflict. A lot of it is not pretty. And that’s just the beginning of the story. Family “stuff” keeps getting more complicated and convoluted the more you read through the Scriptures.

So, “giving thanks” may not come easy as we think about those closest to us.

Nevertheless, despite what the world, the flesh, and the devil have done to the family (with the full and willing cooperation of each one of us), it is nevertheless clear that God had a pretty good idea when he created man and woman, brought them together, blessed them and said, “May you be fruitful and multiply.” Amid the mess, there is one of life’s greatest treasures.

And so, we thank the Lord…

for our family heritage, and those who passed on not only their genes, but also their stories and wisdom to us,
for our elders who are still present to provide perspective for our lives,
for our parents, out of whose love we gained life,
for our brothers and sisters, with whom we learned to live life,
for our extended family members, some of whom we know well and others who may still be strangers to us — and yet we bear a common name and heritage,
for our children, who bear our image, for whom we dream and long and pray that their lives may be blessed and established in God’s love and truth,
for our grandchildren, the gifts of our older years,
for adopted children, and the families that have welcomed them,
for family members who have had challenging and sometimes sad journeys through life, and the opportunities you have given us to serve them,
for family members who have gone before us into God’s presence, who we miss and continually commit to God’s care,
for the way God has been our Shepherd and our Refuge in every generation and will remain faithful until we all are gathered home at last.

In the midst of our thanks, Lord, we would remember those for whom the word “family” brings pain. We pray for those who dwell in unhappy homes, whose marriages have broken, who have suffered various forms of abuse, for children who have been neglected and unloved, for couples who long for children to nurture and yet cannot conceive, for those who must deal with physical, psychological, or social brokenness every day, for young people who cannot find their way, for adults tempted to go astray and abandon their family duties, for the widows and orphans, for those whose cupboards are bare and prospects dim, for those who homes know little of love, joy, and peace, but only anger and conflict.

We, who are members of your forever family ask that you would show us how to minister to the hurting in these precious households.

Father, from whom every household in heaven and on earth derives its name, we lift our thanks and prayers to you. Amen.

Let all that I am praise the Lord;
      with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.
Let all that I am praise the Lord;
      may I never forget the good things he does for me.
…The Lord is like a father to his children,
      tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
      he remembers we are only dust.

– from Psalm 103, NLT