I Have a Reputation to Protect

                In one week I saw the whole spectrum.

                In one corner of the ring we have an earthquake in Japan where thousands of people are dying, lives are being upturned, and God is blamed for doing it all.

                In another corner we have Mardi Gras on the streets of New Orleans where sex and drunkenness run rampant while God is blamed for trying to take away everyone’s fun and freedom.

                Then there are the people with megaphones and picket signs who feel compelled to stand on said streets of New Orleans and scream to the people walking by that God hates them and can’t stand to look on their filth.

                I met a homosexual man who told me God made him that way and was now sending him to Hell for it.

                The consensus seems to be in; God must hate the people of earth.

                He topples innocent cities, robs people of any hint of pleasure they may have and then sends them all to eternal judgment.

                It seems safe to say that God has been terribly misrepresented. Who do we blame for that?

                

                Everybody and their momma has a Facebook page these days. These pages are supposed to represent who we are as people and for the most part, you could look at somebody’s profile and get a good grasp of who they really are. What if we are God’s Facebook page? What if God left it up to us to show the world who He really is, what He likes, and the kind of people He is friends with?

                It is a startling thought that the only image of God the world will ever see is the one painted by Christians. In this painting we have brush strokes from the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, blown up abortion clinics, ministerial scandals and everything else the Church is not proud of doing in our history. If the world has these bad ideas about the God we serve, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

                When a company wants to sell a product they need a face. They want to find someone whose very image embodies everything they want their consumer to want. They want the most attractive, most talented, most awe inspiring person they can find to appear on their commercial and tell everyone how great their product is.

                It is why NIKE wanted Michael Jordan to be their face because they wanted people to associate shoes with being an unstoppable legend. Ballpark Franks wanted him because they wanted people to eat their hot dogs and feel like they were a successful family man grilling like a champion. HANES boxers wanted Michael Jordan because… well, never mind.               

I think we as Christians forget that we were chosen by God to be on His commercials. We forget that we are, whether we like it or not, walking billboards despite how qualified or unqualified we are.

We are nobodies who were chosen from the crowd to embody all that the Creator of the universe is. God needed a face to reach His people and He chose you. How do we return the favor? We usually just put a plastic fish on the back of our car, vote republican and live quiet boring lives. I want more. I want to embody the Facebook page of the living God.

The God I serve loves beyond comprehension. He steps in when people need Him and isn’t anywhere near as concerned with temporary things as He is with the eternal. He easily sees past what people see and knows their hearts and the life they are capable of living. The God I know is dangerous.

It is about time I start painting a better picture of God to the world. What are people going to think of my God when I complain about everything or am cynical about everybody? What are they going to think when my life is predictable and safe? Wouldn’t that mean God wasn’t doing anything worth mentioning? What are people going to think about the love of God when I see thousands of people dying in Japan everyday and do absolutely nothing tangible to help?  What are people going to think about God when all I do is complain that helping Libya is costing us money when I should be on my face praying for the innocent citizens being massacred or better yet, for Muammar Qaddafi- a man whose quest for power is killing himself and his people? Didn’t Jesus die for him too?

I started writing this awhile ago and have had to stop several times. I couldn’t write something that I wasn’t living. I am caught in the chasm between good beliefs and good actions. This blog is my safe place, I can write anything and feel good about myself but it is in the real world where everything counts. Who cares if I can make people laugh or cry with the typing of my fingers if I let countless amounts of people go by me everyday who need to see a truer picture of the God who created them? I want to live my life with the full revelation that God loves the strangers I see at a gas station, tyrannical dictators, and homeless Japanese children. It has to be more than good intentions; the reputation of the King of Kings depends on it. I have to actually do something.

How well does your life represent God’s reputation?

W.W. J.G.T.

           Over a hundred years ago a man named Charles Sheldon wrote a book called In His Steps that asked for the first time What Would Jesus Do? In the nineties all the cool hipster Christians started wearing bracelets with W.W.J.D written on them. I had one that I wore for about six years until it disintegrated into dust.

            Despite the cheesiness of our propaganda, Christians today are still asking the same question. Don’t you just wish we could all have our own personal Jesus we could carry around and have walk us through the right decisions to problems we face in our “modern” world?

            We could take Him driving with us and see what He does when somebody cuts Him off and gives Him the finger. We could take him to the movie theater and see which movies He really would rather us not see. We could take Him to our school or workplace and have Him pick out who we should start a relationship with.

            More likely than not, we really would rather have Jesus stay where He was as some rabbi who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago than have Him actually influence our daily decisions because for the most part, we already know exactly what Jesus would do.

            Let me throw out a new question that is not as likely to catch on and might not be as trendy as the last one but I think is just as relevant.

            W.W.J.G.T.?

            What Would Jesus Go Through?

            Christians are really bad about wanting to be like Jesus but forgetting all that Jesus went through.

            Jesus was made fun of, He was lonely, He was betrayed, He was ignored, and He was killed.

            We pray that God would help us be more like His Son- all filled with wisdom and friendliness- but we forget that Jesus once sweat drops of blood because of the agony He was feeling. We forget that Jesus once wondered if God had forsaken Him completely on the cross.

            We are most like Christ when the world is falling down on top of us. We are on common ground with Jesus when nothing makes sense. We are just like Jesus when we have run out of money.

            Have you ever considered what it costs to travel like Jesus? I have; it’s a lot. All four of the gospels show Jesus going from place to place His entire ministry and never settling down to earn an income. Here is the cool part- he never traveled alone. We all know about the Big Twelve that followed Him around, but what about the list of women who went with him everywhere?₁ At one point, Jesus happened to have 72 people He called disciples just standing there waiting to be sent out into the world.₂  So Jesus has this mob following Him everywhere He went that needed food and shelter every day. Everybody would have looked at Jesus, their fearless leader, and said “hey Jesus, any word on when we will be eating… you said we don’t live on bread alone but you have to admit it is at least important…”

            Jesus chose to live a life of unemployment with lots of hungry mouths that were His responsibility to feed. When He said to God “give us today, our daily bread₃” it was because He might not have known exactly where tomorrow’s meal would come from. In everything, Jesus chose not to be in control.

            Two of Jesus’ best friends died. One came back but the other one had his head served on a platter. The friends He had left ran away as soon as He needed them. But everybody wants to be like Jesus…

            I don’t understand how we think that suffering ruins our perfect life. Suffering makes our ruined lives perfect. Jesus wouldn’t be all that He was if everything he went through was easy. That is how the disciples were able to rejoice in suffering. They knew that being like Jesus in the wisdom He spoke or the miracles He performed was a task that would take a lifetime, but to suffer- to put themselves in the lowest point possible- that was something they could do now. They could share in the most important thing Jesus did.

            We live in a country that seems to be all about making life easier. Every info-mercial to ever air has promised to make some part of your life more convenient than it already is. Why use all those annoying paper towels to clean up a mess one Sham-Wow could fix? Why go through the hassle of deciding whether or not you need a blanket or a backwards robe when you can just wear a Snuggie and thus eliminate all your lounging needs?

            What if “easier” isn’t supposed to be the point? What if the most convenient and safe life possible isn’t actually the best choice. We all know it isn’t in the long run but we still persist. Instead of waking up and praying for a good day, I want to pray that I might be a little bit more like Jesus. I don’t want an easy life. I want to ask of everything “What Would Jesus Go Through?”

            Would Jesus make all his decisions based on His comfort level? What would He be willing to go through to do what needed to be done?

The reason we try and be like Jesus is because we want what is on the other side. Paul said that we “share in His suffering so that we might share in His glory₄.” Read the book of Revelations and you will see the kind of glory Paul is talking about. A few years of heartache here seem like a fair trade for an eternity of glory.

It all begs the question, how can you claim to be Christ-like if everything in your life is perfect? In what way are you like Jesus when you are in control of everything within your reach?

You can’t ask what Jesus would do unless you are willing to go where He went. W.W.J.G.T

_{1- Luke 8:1-4, 2- Luke 10, 3- Mathew 6:11, 4-Romans 8:17}

More than Meatloaf- some thoughts on Dreams and Dreamers

            Dreams can be a funny thing. You never really know when they start or where they come from but you always wake up slightly confused.

            I once had a dream that I was breaking into the Weather Channel TV station for some reason and Al Roker from the Today show happened to be there so I felt it necessary to hold him up at gun point. I pointed the gun at him but before I could do anything I seemed to come to my senses and realized that I was dreaming. I then said to Al Roker, “What the heck?” to which he replied, “I don’t know, it’s your dream.” Then I woke up thoroughly confused.

            Now as far as I know, I don’t have any secret desires to assassinate America’s favorite weatherman nor do I harbor any ill feelings toward him. I don’t think that in twenty years or so I will need to see a therapist to help me handle these hidden desires because I am pretty sure it was just a dream.

            It was just a dream; a really weird dream, mind you, but still just a dream. It meant nothing and changed nothing. It was just a dream.

            I think those five words are the most dangerous words in our vocabulary when they are arranged that way. It-was-just-a-dream.

            That thing your eight year old self always pretended to be- it was just a dream.

            That person you imagined you would be as your mind wandered away from the ramblings of your high school teacher- it was just a dream. You are older now and know better, you have things you are responsible for and can’t afford going after child-like fancies.

            One of my favorite passages in Scripture is in Acts chapter 2 where Peter gets up in front of 3,000 people and starts to explain why everyone from around the world is hearing their own languages being spoken and seeing strange things being done by the disciples of a man named Jesus who was just executed a month and a half before. Peter quotes the prophet Joel when he says:

            “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophecy; your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams”₁

                        Did you catch that? Old men will dream dreams. Old men who have lived their lives through heart ache and disappointment will dream dreams. Old men who have settled down after a full lifetime will dream dreams. Old men who had accepted the fact that their journey is almost done and that it is no more use asking “what if” will dream dreams.

            It doesn’t matter at what point you are in your life, God still has dreams for you. He still has passions and desires that He has placed inside of you that He still plans on bringing out to fruition. Your dreams wouldn’t be there unless they had been given to you by God and He would never have given them to you unless he wanted you to go after them. He would never want you to go after something He didn’t already have waiting for you.

            It was not just a dream.

            So many people are scared to dream because they tried dreaming before and it seemed to come to nothing. They went out to pursue their dream but got caught off guard by the magnitude of it all and enough people told them it was ridiculous that they started believing it. Some always had this dream at the back of their mind but somehow Life got in the way and now they have a job, a mortgage and a whole list of things they are responsible for but aren’t passionate about.

            I talked to a man in New Orleans who carried everything he owned on his back. His face was sun beaten and his hands coarse from years of hard  work. He used to play percussion for the Philharmonic Orchestra, now he gets paid to sweep the streets of the French Quarter. Somewhere down the line something happened and his dreams were abandoned. The odd thing was that he was OK with all this.  He had accepted his lot in life and had given up any hope of being what he wanted to be or ever seeing his family again. He couldn’t accept the fact that God still had dreams for him.

            So many times we blame our dreams on our naivety or ignorance. I blamed the meatloaf I had the night before for the dream I had about Al Roker. The dreams that come from God are more than meatloaf.

            The verse also says that young men will see visions. That part gets me excited.

            One of the biggest problems of my generation is that we have no vision. We have no deep purpose that we are pursuing or any idea of what we want to do with our life. This is probably because we have been raised by old men who refuse to dream. It is no wonder that we are so easily persuaded. When someone has no destination in mind they will go wherever the trail takes them.

            We all start out with dreams and visions but we give it up at the first valley we come to. In Isaiah chapter 22 the prophet talks about a certain valley that God on more than one occasion would reveal Himself to his people. He called it the Valley of Vision. The valley- that place farthest away from civilization and the protection of the city walls. It is the lowest place possible, the place of no hope- and that is where the visions start happening.

            Those seasons in our life that everybody gives up on their dreams are the seasons when our dreams are supposed to come alive. Sometimes God has to let everything in our world crash down on top of us so that remember we have a dream we are supposed to be pursuing anyway. Our biggest struggle is when God puts us on the track to fulfill our deepest desires when we want to be on the track that leads us to temporary comfort. I don’t get people sometimes.

            I don’t want to sound like some cheesy motivational speaker but I think it is time we start pursuing some dreams. There is more out of this world that we all want. I want to get rid of the idea that there is God’s will and there is what we want as people and our job as Christians to find a good balance of the two. I heard someone once say that God’s will is another way of saying “everything you would have chosen anyway if you knew all the details.” I really like that because God is all about making our dreams come true. Following Him means following our dreams, it means becoming who we always wanted to be anyway. Go after God and remember the dreams he gave you. Maybe it is time for some new dreams…

            What dreams have you given up on? Isn’t it about time to start praying for vision and some idea of what the heck to do with your life?

1-     1-  Acts 2:17