Category: Just Thinking

Halloween and the Great Commission: Why My Kids Dress Up for Candy, but Don’t Pretend in Santa

On By pastorjonathanIn Family, Just Thinking, parentingLeave a comment

Just so you know, I don’t think holidays are evil.  But some Christians do have a hard time navigating the holidays.  They are troubled by Jack-o-lanterns, Santa Claus,  and the Easter bunny.  I guess we could add a few more holidays to the list, but we will keep it down to the big 3 just for the sake of time.

Why its a big deal: No doubt somewhere somebody once told you that all the “Christian” holiday’s  like Christmas and Easter are really just “pagan holidays.”  Christmas wasn’t really on December the 25th and that the Easter bunny is all about fertility, being twitter-pated, new life and stuff.  I know, I know, its disappointing to have your whole Christian holiday stuff upset by some great big “pagan conspiracy.”  Why did they have to go pick the “Christian” holidays, why couldn’t they have hijacked some other holiday like Grandparents Day? No, the pagans had to come and take our Christmas and Easter. Or did they?…

How it might of actually started:  I think it’s the Pagans that should be upset that we are talking so much about Jesus around their holidays.  I guess that’s how it really started.  Some pagan got up to say, “through these winter months we look with joy to the new life of spring,”  and a Christian in the room stood up and said, “let me tell you about how God loves us and when the world was dark and cold, God came in the flesh and dwelt among us.”  And later in the spring when they were sitting around talking about how new life springs out of dead things a Christian got up and said, “They killed Jesus, but he rose from the dead three days later!” All of the sudden these pagan holidays centered around pagan ideas were hijacked by Christians telling their wonderful stories about the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus.  Yes, my friends, it is the pagans who have had their holidays hijacked… not the Christians.  Truth be told, I don’t know why we have a Christmas tree (nor do I care), but I do know why we have a manger.

The Real Danger: The real danger with “Christian” holidays is that we only think about the incarnation (birth of Jesus) and resurrection on holidays.  SEC football is a bigger threat to my kids than Santa Claus because I’m an Auburn fan.  The real danger is that I might look more excited about football for 4 months out of the year than I am about what Christ has done in my life.  The question isn’t, “do I make Christmas about Jesus or Santa?” The real question is, “do I make all of my life about Jesus?”  The real evil would be to tell my kids Santa isn’t real, tell the truth about Jesus, but forget about Jesus the other 11 months out of the year.

A Way Forward: I say we hijack all the holidays for the sake of the gospel… starting with Halloween.  I know it’s scary; kids all dressed up like witches and demons and stuff.  But think about it, when was the last time you were invited and expected to knock on every door in your neighborhood? (and rewarded with candy I might add!) It’s how we met most of our neighbors beyond just a few doors down.

You see there aren’t any front porches in my neighborhood, or side walks, or parks, most people park the car in the garage,  all of our backyards have 6 foot privacy fences, and most of our houses have TVs and computers so we never have to see each other.  But once a year, Halloween changes that and kids come to our house and we take our kids through the neighborhood. Halloween has become an avenue for relationships which is the avenue for the gospel.

I know, I know, your scared that the secret origins of Halloween now have a dark hold over my kids… Can I just say, “It’s not so.”  We serve a risen Savior who beat death, and destroys demons.  We dabbled more in the spirit world when we obeyed God, packed our bags and moved our family to Pensacola (trust me, my daughter had more nightmares and we wrestled through more demonic stuff in our obedience than we ever have with her dressed as a Strawberry).  It’s time that we worry more about the mission than the top-secret pagan origins of a holiday.

Where to draw the line:  I think the line on holidays looks different for each family.  We draw the line at deception or dishonesty to our kids.  We teach our kids that Santa  and the Easter bunny are not real.  We also teach that Satan and his demons are real.  Most importantly we teach that Jesus Christ has conquered death and is stronger than any demon will ever be.  One of our core values is the ability to discern truth from error.   We still teach a healthy amount of pretend and play.  Because we aim for this balance of truth and pretend we are a little weird.  The things we draw the line on are probably different than you family and that’s okay (you can be weird too!)

Finally A Way Forward in Authentically Expressing the Gospel Through Social Action

On By pastorjonathanIn books, Just Thinking, student ministryLeave a comment

In order to keep this post brief I am using a few theological words to express my understanding of the root issue.  Much like doctors conversing over a particular condition of a patient would use medical terms in discussing the issue with one another.  To get a more sensible break out of my thought process without the theological back story (like a doctor talking to a patient) skip to the second gray block quote below… 

Encounter God in the City: Onramps to Personal And Community Transformation by Randy White is the book I have been looking to read for over a year now.  I didn’t know that this was the book I needed, but I am very grateful now that I have found it.  Randy does an excellent job of carrying the balance of how to express the gospel through social action.

For far too long I’ve been reading authors who have heavily influenced by peculiar reading of the Sermon on the Mount.  Not that such a reading is without warrant or precedent in Christian history, however many of the authors who are proposing a “Sermon on the Mount” hermeneutic are living in a reactionary state against a type of rigid premillennial fundamentalism that has taught that the world is getting worse, causing followers to withdraw influence from the market place and create a separatist movement complete with its own knock-off “Christian” music sub culture.  In essence they claim that rather than engaging the world with the gospel, many churches have effectually created fortresses to protect the Christian sub-culture from the world.  The allegation is that our churches have become islands in the community rather than a shaping force… I understand the problem and often agree with their assessment of where we are (or at least where we were headed). When we focus so exclusively on gospel content that we forget to express the gospel, there is a problem.

But where many of these authors and my friends who follow them go wrong is that they throw stones at the institution and forge a reactionary trail that is full of expression, but not always “gospel” expression.

In general its a juvenile reaction to finding out that you were taught a different position or way of thinking.  Rather than cautiously moving forward assessing the new information in light of your current beliefs, you abandon your previously held beliefs and focus on the “new truth” with a nearly exclusive focus.  Think of the young man who comes back from college a Calvinist.  Suddenly Calvinism is all he knows and without guidance he is likely to become a hyper-Calvinist and forget evangelism because of his angst against a pastor or teacher who didn’t cover Romans 9 in Bible study.  The same thing is now happening with the social aspect of the gospel.  There is a social aspect to sharing the gospel.  But we haven’t been teaching about it in many mainline churches and now the reaction is to jettison the doctrinal aspects of the gospel in favor of pure social action… Its a juvenile over-reaction to a faltering world view…

Are you a Forward or Backward Thinker? More on this issue Here.

With “mission” emerging (no pun intended) as one of the predominant way to proclaim this new sense of expressing the gospel through social action this leads to the questions… What makes “mission” Christian? Essentially, at what point does social concern translate into gospel message?

Many have used words like “mission” and “incarnational” unfairly to mean work amongst the poor or less fortunate.  Lets be clear the mission is to make disciples (Matthew 18).  The incarnation was about God becoming man and walking among “sinners” many of whom were poor, many of whom were not.  The ultimate goal is the glory of God (Philippians 2).

We miss the mark when we replace the word “poor” for “sin.” (Though poverty is an issue in its own right, it is not the central issue, but rather the expression of the root issue of sin.)  I know that many times and in most places people are bound in poverty by oppression (the sins of others).   I know the world groans under the curse and oppressive poverty can be understood as the mark of sin on the world, but the issue remains… removing poverty does not remove sin.  Feeding a man or teaching a man to feed himself are worthwhile goals (and even maybe gospel oriented goals), but they are not the end.  To be called mission or missional we must be reconciling men to God by pointing to the work of Jesus on the cross otherwise the faith we are trying so hard to evidence by our deeds is no faith at all (Matthew 7:22-23… and that’s in the Sermon on the Mount).

Randy White expresses an awesome way forward in reaching our cities with the gospel.  He understands that incarnational isn’t just about getting your hands dirty, but sitting with sinners for the sake of demonstrating and authentically sharing the gospel.  I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in urban ministry.  The retail price is $15.00 (Paperback), I got my copy for $10.20 at  Amazon.com.  I gave it five stars.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Teaching Our Kids to Take Risk

On By pastorjonathanIn Family, Just Thinking, parentingLeave a comment

There are 2 kinds of danger when it comes to being a dad.  There is the danger that fills our world and we must make provision to protect our children.  We protect and provide for our kids by plugging up electrical sockets with those clear plastic things and placing cleaning chemicals beyond reach.  We train our children to hold our hand, to be suspicious of strangers and to stay away from stray neighborhood pets that “might” secretly hate children.  We scare away the nightmares and wipe away the tears.  We teach our kids to wash their hands.  We tell them if they are lost to find a police officer or a woman (women are slightly less likely to be child predators than men… I know its profiling and I really don’t care when it comes to the safety of my child).  We teach them to be safe.

Then there is the other kind of danger.  Its the danger of being too safe.  Its the danger of teaching our kids to  stay close to home and not take risk.  There will be times when my children will need to take risks. I’m failing as a dad if I do not push my kids out of the nest at some point and say, “You have to ride the bike with out the training wheels.”  Other wise I end up with a 30 year-old kid stuck living at my house who cries at the injustice of running out of cheerios for breakfast.

The reality is that most things worth doing in life involve taking calculated risk and being dangerous.  To ask my wife out on our first date I had to risk rejection.  To keep a few people with me safe from harm I had to risk my life or bodily injury (thankfully I won the gamble on that one).  To share the gospel with people in one of our inner cities I had to risk exposure to an area with a high crime rate (I grew up in rural America).  To follow God’s call on my life I had to risk selling our house in a down market and move an hour away to another city.

Sometimes risk is good.  Sometimes we fall on our faces even after taking well thought through and calculated risk.  I guess the line  between risk and safety comes when “right” or “reward” enters the equasion.  I asked my wife out because of the possible reward of finding a wonderful marriage partner (by the way I am glad I did). I stood between a man recently released from jail and two young ladies he was threatening because it was the right thing to do.  I would rather my kids do the right thing than the safe thing, I would rather them risk in pursuit of worthy goals than never have them attempt anything worthwhile.

Perhaps the hardest part of parenthood is giving our kids the right to fail and the freedom to take risk.

How do you teach your kids to interact with a dangerous world?

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3 Annoying things I’m Glad My Parents did when I was a Teenager

3 Things I’d Tell My Teenage Daughter After Watching New Moon

An Open Letter to All My Legalist Friends

On By pastorjonathanIn Devotional, Just Thinking, Kingdom of God3 Comments

Recently I have been bombarded by all sorts of people with legalistic agendas.  To be fair most of what I have seen or heard in recent days hasn’t been aimed at me directly.  However, some of you are making it difficult for me to share Jesus with my other friends because they think that you represent Him.  They don’t know that your legalism is a vice and a sickness that actually keeps you from Him.   I’m intentionally avoiding the particulars and get to the heart of the issue which is demanding more of others than God does.

1. Its not about YOU (or ME), its about US.

Sometimes you ask me to do things or put away things that aren’t prohibited in Scripture.  Some of these things are great ways to connect with others and are really morally neutral.  Many of these things Jesus did himself.  But you get this idea in your head that if I do things differently than you that I must not know Jesus (or at least that I am not right with Him).  However, on many of these issues, your the one who is changing His Word to make it say what it doesn’t say.

2. I’ll Gladly sacrifice ME for the sake of US, but please don’t ask me to do it for YOU.

What I mean is this.  I don’t want to be a stumbling block to you.  I don’t want to cause you to do anything against your conscience.  I will gladly not do some things that might offend you so that we can hang out.  But when you go around saying that everyone must think the same way that you do on an issue (and your thoughts don’t exactly line up with scripture), then you are asking me to be conformed to your image, not Christ’s.  Again I love you and will lay down my freedom for you, but I will not subscribe to your extra biblical ideas.

3. Don’t forget that HE loves THEM

Somehow I think that in the process you have forgotten that God loves people.  Don’t get me wrong on this.  Doctrine is important.  But perhaps the biggest truth we can know about God is that He loves people.  Some of you are good at communicating your cultural rules as a standard of holiness but you have forgotten to mention that God loves people.  Please let me remind you.  He says it plainly in His Word.  Just read it.

John 3:16-17, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:4-9, Ephesians 5:1-2, 1st John 4:10-16

I really am hoping the best for you.  Truth be told, I fight legalism too.  Its easy for us to come up with extra rules (especially if we don’t struggle with the new rules).  We can feel confident that we haven’t broken the rules we’ve added.  The problem is that our rules aren’t always God’s rules and we need to know the difference.

Why We Hunt Easter Eggs, but Don’t Do Santa

3 Things You Should Know Before You Judge Your Friends

4 Basic Guidelines for Facebook Etiquette

On By pastorjonathanIn Just Thinking7 Comments

I am a follower of Jesus Christ (some people call us Christians) and I also like to use the internet to chat with friends, find cool things, and write out my thoughts.  So to a lot of people I am a representation of what it looks like to follow Jesus.  However, I have several friends and acquaintances that also say they rep. Jesus, but they do some crazy things with their facebook profiles that make us wonder whats really going on.

To be fair, none of us are perfect.  Following Jesus isn’t about being perfect, its about following, and sometimes we all can get a little “off track.”  Thankfully God has provided the way for us to be forgiven and come back into a right relationship with Him.  Still we should guard our online presence in the same way we are to guard our actually words.  It amazes me that sometimes we post things on facebook that we wouldn’t say to people face to face.  So here are 4 basic guidelines for facebook etiquette.

1. Don’t rat someone out of your facebook status

So you have a disagreement with someone about something.  Don’t post, “Some people make me really angry!”  You may feel that since you didn’t mention their name that it isn’t gossip or slander.  Inevitably someone comments, “what happened?” and you are either inclined to say what happened or ignore them making the interest pique all the more.  Better to not post than to drag a disagreement in the public forum or worse cause all your friends to guess at who you could possibly make you so mad.

2. Comment on other people’s profiles like you would want other people to comment on yours

If you disagree with something I post, that is okay.  If you are really offended, tell me in private and we can seek reconciliation. Don’t comment on my post that I am a jerk, idiot, or whatever.  See Guidelines #3 and #4 for more details.  If you have a comment, but wouldn’t want someone posting the same comment on your profile, then don’t post it.  If the post can not go unanswered send a message.  It is much more private and will give you the opportunity to work things out.

3. Remember facebook is very public, not private

Ok so I post, “I like spaghetti” on my profile.  Then you remember a funny (yet embarrassing) story about me and spaghetti.  You think it will be funny to comment on my “I like spaghetti” status because we have 3 friends in common who will think of the incident and laugh.  What you failed to take into account was the fact that I have 758 other friends who have no clue who you are or know the full story behind the “spaghetti incident.” What you posted as an “inside joke” and was funny to a few people can makes you look like a jerk and damages your reputation with my other friends.

4. Befriend and de-friend for the right reasons

Don’t de-friend someone just because they made you mad.  You might eventually get over it.  Resist the urge for a few days and see if things workout.

However, sometimes people have facebook profiles and they don’t need to be your friend.  They may think they are entitled, but the are not.  You choose who your facebook friends are and are not.  A few basic guidelines that I like to follow are listed below…

  • Ex-girlfriends or boyfriends probably don’t need to be your friend on FaceBook (unless it was in the distant past).  If you just came off a bad break up, you are still going to be tempted to send harassing messages back and forth.  Cut the excess drama out of your life and cut the FB friendship.
  • People who are prone to excessive gossip and slander.  You may have been hurt by past rumors and accusations and even come to a place of forgiveness.  But just because they are forgiven doesn’t mean they deserve a spot among your facebook friends.  Why would you give them open ground and opportunity to hurt you further?
  • Toxic people.  While the two mentioned above could be considered toxic people, this guideline covers the rest.  These are the people who are out to cut you down.  We all have friends who have bad days and maybe there is a disagreement from time to time, but you do not have to invite people into your facebook world who go off on you every time they get upset.

Are you a Forward or Backward Thinker?

On By pastorjonathanIn Just Thinking, Ministry, student ministryLeave a comment

Have you ever stopped and wondered why you think the way you do on a particular issue?

In my line of work I come across lots of people who have strong opinions.  Many of them are passionate about their opinions.  Sometimes the opinions people are most passionate about are the one’s they have changed their mind on. For instance if you grew up in a republican or democrat household and change sides as an adult.  Maybe you went to church and learned about God, but when you were introduced to a college science class things changed.  Beliefs were challenged and you didn’t have a good answer to whoever was challenging your beliefs so slowly (or suddenly) you changed your opinion and grew passionate about proving people who held your former position as wrong.

Sometimes we are backed into believing something simply because we are confronted with an ideal that conflicts what we were taught growing up.  We don’t know how to answer the conflicting ideal and end up embracing it.  We didn’t search for a solution, we just embraced a competing truth claim that stood in opposition to ours because we could not defend our inherited claim.

Sometimes we move forward into a new position.  This takes place when we evaluate competing truth claims and examine the arguments that someone brings against our ideals and we scrutinize their competing claims with the same scrutiny they have shown ours.

For instance: Imagine growing up hearing and believing that all smurfs are blue.  You have never seen a smurf, but you know that they are blue.  Then someone shows you a purple smurf.  Your view of smurfs is forever changed.  However, you don’t examine the purple smurf (or asking questions like, How did the smurf become purple or are there smurfs of other colors as well?).  Instead, you reject the assumption that “all smurfs are blue” as a complete lie, you demonize the people who told you smurfs were blue, and you join a group that promotes the awareness of the purple smurf.  You have reacted to the assumed falsehood of “all smurfs are blue” and embraced a competing claim “all smurfs are purple.”  You have in effect backed into your position.  You didn’t go looking to see why you would have been told about blue smurfs, how this smurf became purple, or seek to know if there was a broader category.

Moving forward into your thinking requires examining competing truth claims and evaluating the validity of both claims. You may be actually viewing a blue smurf through rose-colored glasses. (The smurf is blue, but the red tint of your glasses causes the smurf to appear purple.)  Maybe when smurfs are sick they turn purple.  Maybe there are purple smurfs, but there are also blue smurfs.  This is searching for the truth.  This is moving forward into a position.

Now what about your thoughts on God?  Are you reacting to competing claims or are you intentionally looking for truth?