Back in the Saddle

If you are someone who reads this blog, you can probably tell that over the last 5 months, our (Josh and mine) activity has been lacking relative to previous months. This has been partly intentional, partly circumstantial, and partly due to forgetfulness.

It was intentional in that I (Mike) was beginning to notice that posting on here subtly became a burden, and my resulting posts became increasingly sloppy and thoughtless. I came to realize that I had forgotten Josh's and I's original intention in starting this blog; to be a place where we could center our thoughts on the glorious gospel of God's unfathomable love for those who had gone astray. This blog was created to be a place of refreshment. It was meant to be a place where sinners could plunge deep into the depths of God's mercy and once again be reminded of the story in which they live; the story of our Heavenly Father unceasingly pursuing our adoption and redemption. When my posts lacked this foundational motivation, I decided that it would be good to take a break.

The lack of posts was also circumstantial. It is true that as you grow older, life gets busier. Josh is currently entering his 4th year of medical school at the University of Illinois. If  you don't know much about med school, just know that there are frequent periods where you are hostage to a very demanding schedule, sometimes 70-80 hours in a week. Thus, writing on behalf of Josh, I know he is busy. For me (Mike), there are a couple updates. First and foremost, I got married! On August 11th, I married the love of my life and best friend, Ally (now Berttucci......check out here blog HERE). All this to say, with a wedding comes a lot of planning and craziness. On top of the wedding, I'm still full time with Rebirth: East St. Louis, as well as taking part time classes at Covenant Seminary. I'm hoping now that Ally and I are finally getting settled in our new apartment and getting more into a routine, I will have more opportunities to write.

Over the past several weeks, I have realized how much I have missed writing on All of Grace. I realized that writing on here was not just about posting  something so that others could read. Rather, it is an opportunity for me to stop, to reflect, and to center myself upon the gospel. I realized that I needed it for my refreshment. Of course, life is busy, which means that circumstantially I may not be able to write as much. Yet, I know that it takes intentionality and discipline to consistently ground myself in the reality of the gospel. I also know that this is something I deeply desire and need. To that end, it is my hope to re-enter the blogging world by aiming to write at least a couple times a week on here. As always, I love when people comment, encourage, or interact with anything myself or Josh writes.

Looking forward to being back in the saddle. 

A Story of Rescue

Skip & Barbara Ryan Story of Rescue from PCPC Video on Vimeo.

Reclaiming a Pool Hall to Renew a Neighborhood

Beautiful story about what God is doing in Chicago. I love this guy and what he is doing. Truly inspirational. 

HT: By Faith

In a smoky pool hall in an undisclosed urban ghetto, Tom Cruise, playing a young billiards protégé in director Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film “The Color of Money,” bends over his cue and shoots impeccably, not only winning the admiration of his challengers but provoking their jealousy. Almost 20 years later, a young pastor takes a hammer to the walls of that same pool hall; blood, sweat, and prayers now at work transforming the once notorious pool hall at the corner of 64th and Cottage streets into a common ground — a haven for the downtrodden, the once-forgotten street kid, and the weary intellectual.

When Brad Beier Came to Town

On Sunday morning, July 15, 2012, the windows are flung open to let some breeze into a muggy library room at the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall. Ivy creeps along the building’s exterior and sneaks through the windows, as a roomful of congregants cluster for prayer during a church meeting. A group of young people — two African-American men, an African-American woman, and a Caucasian man — share prayer requests. One, an incoming chemistry graduate student, asks for prayer for her studies. Twenty-year-old Pierre Carr, wearing braids down his neck, tells the others he is going to school in the fall to become a chef, a future he couldn’t have imagined five years prior.

Growing up without a father in Woodlawn, one of South Side Chicago’s roughest neighborhoods, Carr didn’t have a lot of direction. His mother feared that her adolescent son was destined for a life of gang activity, jail, even premature death — paths that many of his friends would take in years to come.

Beginning in the 1950s, Woodlawn — like many urban American neighborhoods at the time — began to decline economically as the white middle class fled to the suburbs. With them went many businesses, although through the 1960s, Woodlawn’s 63rd Street was known for its jazz clubs, many just down the road from a certain well-frequented pool establishment. The deterioration continued through the ’70s,’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, with the average household income hovering at just over $23,000.

In 2003 Brad Beier, a skinny, young, white pastor from Louisiana, showed up in Woodlawn with a basketball and words that offered hope to a few floundering teenage boys.

“At first, I thought he was a cop,” admits Tee Nimely, one of Carr’s close friends. But something about Beier eventually secured the boys’ trust. Maybe it was because he called them throughout the week to see how they were doing. Or because he didn’t give up on them. Or because he was the father figure they didn’t know they needed.

Louisiana-born Beier attended Louisiana Tech with the intention of becoming a doctor. But early in his college experience, he began serving as a youth minister at his college church, and by the time he graduated he was headed to Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Miss.) to prepare to go abroad as a missionary. His wife, Shannon, on the other hand, had a passion for working with the poor a bit closer to home.

“We put our heads together,” Brad recalled, “and eventually God gave us this unified desire to stay in a city in America and [to] make sure we were in a very big city where there was lots of diversity and lots of opportunities to reach unreached people.”

After an apprenticeship with an urban church in Baltimore, the Beiers moved to Bethel Christian Church (PCA), a multiethnic church in Chicago, with the mandate to plant a church among students at nearby University of Chicago. Not the type to plant a church by the book, Beier also began working part time as the chaplain at a county jail and facilitating an aftercare ministry to men being released from prison. While developing relationships with undergraduate and Ph.D. students in Hyde Park, Brad was also getting to know the families of the men he had met in county jail; many lived in Woodlawn, just five blocks south of the university.

In the world of academia, he found skeptics, atheists, and some genuine believers. Some of each began trickling into the Sunday morning worship at the new church — dubbed Living Hope Church — that met in a university library room. In the culture of gangs and poverty, he met fatherless children, confused young men, and single moms just trying to make it. Some of them came, too.

Crossing 61st Street

It took Carr and Nimely a year or two before they came to church, but in the meantime they were hearing the gospel as part of a basketball ministry — a team that Beier had put together as a way to meet youth in the neighborhood. Here was a white guy from a privileged background who willingly moved his wife and four young daughters to a majority African-American area that most middle-class folks had fled long ago.

“In my life, he’s an example of what a man looks like — not just a man, a godly man who knows how to take care of his family,” says Nimely.

As the young men went through high school, some of their friends from the basketball team started falling off, joining gangs, using guns. One ended up in jail. Another ended up dead.

“When I lost one of my friends, that’s when my whole view changed,” Nimely reveals. “Everybody’s thinking that when you die you just go to heaven and everything’s OK.”

But Nimely wasn’t so sure. This uncertainty led him to accept Christ and to start hanging around the Living Hope community more often. At first, he was skeptical that he would have anything in common with Ph.D. students, but he soon got over that.

“You come to church with people who have degrees and resources. … [And you think] ‘OK, I don’t got that stuff; I don’t got that background. Will they think of me as just some street kid?’ But at Living Hope it don’t seem like that. You see people trying to build their relationship with Christ. You see their love for other people.”

Ph.D. biochemistry student Kathryn Scherpelz likes Nimely. She likes the hard questions he asks about faith. Before coming to Living Hope, the only place Scherpelz could have imagined meeting someone like him would have been at the hospital where she worked during medical school.

“In medical school, you come to regard Woodlawn as patients, like they’re an ‘other,’ and you treat them, and they get sick and get in gun fights,” she explains. Now they’ve become people and not just patients.

Both Kathryn and her husband, Peter, a graduate student in physics, have felt challenged and changed by the perspective they’ve discovered at Living Hope. Peter recently overheard someone at the university tell a newcomer never to go south of 61st Street — the line that separates Hyde Park from Woodlawn. He felt compelled to intervene. “I told [the man] it wasn’t that dangerous,” Scherpelz said. “There are a lot of worthwhile things and worthwhile people to get to know.”

And for that matter, the Scherpelzes have discovered there are just as many needs — albeit of a different sort — in the university culture. Spiritual apathy is primary among them. With dozens of traditional church buildings scattered across the historic campus, faith would appear to be booming. But, as Kathryn explains, many of these buildings house a smorgasbord of spiritual offerings — New Age religion and Christianity sprinkled together. “At its best [the university] is very open [to all spiritual things]. At its worst, it considers traditional Christianity as passé,” says Kathryn.

But every year a few atheists and agnostics join the Living Hope community, soon finding life truth and new life.

The Future of an Old Pool Hall

Several years ago, Beier began to feel the drain of not having a permanent building for the growing church. A tutoring and discipleship program Living Hope had built for children in Woodlawn was at the mercy of whatever local church would rent it space. A few times, they even got locked out of the library before church on Sunday mornings.

So Beier began poking around, looking for a place that Living Hope could call its own. He first noticed the empty storefront at 64th and Cottage in 2010. A big “Cash Loans” sign was painted along the side of the building, which had stood empty for several years. Beier didn’t know why the property was selling for $570,000. It seemed steep for a place that had once been “Chicago’s Finest Billiards,” a notorious local hangout that offered gambling on the first floor and prostitutes on the second. Maybe it was because “The Color of Money” had given it a reputation. Beier didn’t know. He just knew that it was the spot he wanted.

Through a providential turn of real estate fortune, the price plummeted, and in February 2011, Living Hope was able to purchase the property for just under $100,000.

During the past year, volunteers from churches and RUF campus ministries have poured in from across the country, donating time and effort to transform the pool hall into a church with a sanctuary, office space, plenty of room to run the children’s ministry, and four second-floor apartments that Living Hope plans to rent out for additional income.

Just nine years into Living Hope’s story, Beier is hopeful. He likes that when he looks out at his small congregation every Sunday, he sees black and white, young and old, seekers and growers. He sometimes grows weary of the transience that comes with college-student and low-income populations, but he’s seen a few folks stick around for the long haul and hopes more will follow suit.

Sometimes people advise him to find an easier calling in a safer neighborhood with a less transitory group. But for Beier, you don’t argue with a calling.

“We don’t disparage anybody who says they’d rather be a part of a more homogenous group, ’cause that’s fine. We do try to challenge people and say this is really the vision of God’s kingdom. … We’re all gonna be one family in heaven, so let’s get a taste of it!”

Losing Our Religion: The Growth of the 'Nones'

Here is a recent article from NPR about the increasing number of people who no longer affiliate themselves with any religion. There have been several articles written about this Pew Research study regarding the increasing 'none' population, and thought I would finally post one here.

I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts regarding the article and this steady trend in America.

Check it out: Losing Our Religion: The Growth of 'Nones'

Personally, I do not think this is a bad thing. For one, I think this trend allows for a deeper distinction between mere 'religion' and authentic Christianity. As the article points out, I believe one of the main reasons for this trend away from religion is that people (especially younger) are tired of the cold, irrelevant 'religion' pushed by older generations. It is a rebellion of sorts. For many, it is a rebellion against a religion that stifles humans by imposing moral agendas and political platforms. In this sense, those rebelling often see organized religion as nothing more than a man-made obstacle to progress. I would agree with some aspects of this rebellion, specifically, that it is not a good thing when Christianity primarily becomes a moral movement or a political platform. Sadly, many people see Christianity as nothing more than moral conservatives, and for that reason, many people do not want to associate with Christianity.

The problem here is that what most people think Christianity is (mostly through the media), is not authentic Christianity. I don't think this rebellion is that bad because it really does open up a door to show people, in word and deed, what the Gospel actually is. It is so much more than a moral system. It is so much more than organized religion. Rather, it is the story of all humanity that addresses our deepest problem; namely our human condition. It takes the reality of our brokenness, pain, insatiable lives, and it puts it into the only context of life that makes sense. It confronts the fact that life is not what it is supposed to be. It confronts this fact, not with a political agenda, or a technique for improving our behavior. No. God confronts this fact by getting to the heart of the problem. He sent his Son to give us completely new life. He came to give us life as it was originally intended. He came that we could fulfill our innate human purpose; to know Him and be known by Him for eternity.

All I have for now are those random thoughts, but I'd love to hear what other people think about the article, or other ones like it. 

Why Does God Allow Suffering

What is the purpose of suffering? If God is a good God, why do bad things happen to good people? For an honest man, these are fair and common questions. I've been reading through the book of Job recently (part of a chronological Bible reading plan for the new year), and was struck by Elihu's (one of Job's friends) response to Job's suffering and subsequent questioning of God's justice in it all. Elihu is realistic about the pain, brokenness and suffering that is present in all of our lives. Yet, he offers us a hopeful response as to why a sovereign God allows such brokenness and pain. Please read:

"Man is also rebuked with pain on his bed and with continual strife in his bones, 

so that his life loathes bread, and his appetite the choicest food. 

His flesh is so wasted away that is cannot be seen, and his bones that were not seen stick out. 

His soul draws near the pit, and his life to those who bring death. 

If there be for him an angel, a mediator, one of the thousand, to declare to man what is right for him,

and he is merciful to him, and says,

'Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom;

let his flesh become flesh with youth; let him return to the days of his youthful vigor'

then man prays to God, and he accepts him; he sees his face with a shout of joy,

and he restores to man his righteousness.

He sings before men and says:

'I sinned and perverted what was right, and it was not repaid to me. 

He has redeemed my soul from going down into the pit,

and my life shall look upon light.'"

Job 33:19-28

A couple things stick out to me as I read this. 

• First, God allows brokenness, pain, and suffering to happen, even to those pursuing Him, because it allows us to experience his salvation. As this passage points out, we can't experience redemption from the pit, unless we ourselves are in the pit. We can't experience the joy of a ransom, unless we are first held captive. In other words, we can not rightly taste and experience the salvation of the Lord, unless we first know, understand, and experience the plight of sin in the world. Healing is sweet when we know we are broken. 
• Second, God allows brokenness, pain, and suffering to happen because it serves as a testimony to the Lord. Notice in this passage, the man who is restored and ransomed from the pit "sings before men and says.....He has redeemed my soul from going down into the pit."God's redemptive grace  amidst our brokenness and pain serves to glorify God and point to his Sovereign goodness. 
• Lastly, reading this passage, it is clear that all of these things are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is the one who redeemed our lives when we were in the pit. He is our ransom. He is the merciful one. Let us turn to, and accept this God. 

The Whole Sweep of Scripture

With many people having new year resolutions to read more Scripture, here is some great wisdom from N.T. Wright. In it, he gives wonderful perspective on what the Bible is all about, and how we are to go about reading it.

The Whole Sweep Of Scripture from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

God With Us

Advent: God With Us from The Village Church on Vimeo.

I Like Adoption

A beautiful video. This is one of the clearest pictures of the gospel I have ever seen. Wow!

New Film Premiere - I Like Adoption. from ILikeGiving.com on Vimeo.

Advent: The Rescue Plan

Great post from Ally Jaggard on her blog Stones & Mortar, Seeds & Water:

During Advent we celebrate the incarnation, the birth of Jesus. We celebrate and remember that Christ came down and entered into the darkness of our world so that he may actually rescue us from ourselves and from the slavery of sin. This has been God’s plan throughout history and we see it all over Scripture.

“Jesus said, ‘God so loved the people of the world so much that he gave his only Son. So that anyone who believes in him will have eternal life and never really die. He did not send his Son into the world to punish people. He sent him to rescue them.” (John 3:16-17 paraphrase from the Jesus Storybook Bible)

This Advent season I stumbled across an Advent Calendar that walks through God’s rescue plan throughout Scripture and is based on readings from the Jesus Storybook Bible. This is, admittedly, a children’s Bible. But let me tell you, it is for young and old. Whether you are 5, 16, 25, 45 or 70, you will be blessed by its telling of God’s great rescue plan that is woven throughout the many stories of the Scriptures. If you ever struggle to remember the story of Scripture and God’s great love for you and his people, you will be blessed by the simple words and images of this book.

I’ve included an excerpt below to whet your appetite:

“No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne–everything– to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this Story is– it’s true. There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every Story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in a puzzle–the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

And this is no ordinary baby. This is the Child upon whom everything would depend. This is the Child who would one day–but wait. Our Story starts where all good stories start. Right at the very beginning…” (p17, Jesus Storybook Bible)

The Story of God

An incredible spoken word piece by Matt Papa. He does an excellent job of capturing the storyline of all human history and connecting it to this present moment. As he says, "it's a story like no other, it's a movement you can't undo."

Santa Claus=Bad News, Gospel=Good News

The declaration of Santa Claus goes a little something like this: Get your act together because whether you are naughty or nice determines the gift you receive, whether that be a good gift or a lump of coal.

The declaration of Jesus Christ goes a little something like this: You all alike have been naughty, and the reward you justly deserve is far worse than a lump of coal, it is death. On top of that, you can't possibly fix yourself or reverse your outcome. BUT, I lived the life you should have lived, and earned the reward or gift that you failed to obtain so that all who turn from their own act can receive me, and receive the ultimate gift, life in God. Whereas you deserve punishment for your track record, you can receive mercy, forgiveness, grace, and life in Jesus Christ.

My fear is that most of us functionally believe a Christianity that is more comparable to the Santa Claus declaration. If our good outweighs our bad, then we get a reward. This is not reality. This is not the gospel. This is, as John Piper puts it, actually very bad news. If you are banking on your own moral track record as your assurance, you can never be sure. You will constantly be wondering if you did enough, or if you are good enough. Simply put, you will never be good enough, and you will never do enough. All of us are sinners who are broken and distorted. But, there is one who did everything you couldn't do, and now freely offers himself to you. That is the good news of Jesus. Receive and rest in Jesus.

A little video from one of my favorite preachers of all time, John Piper:

Wealth and the Gospel

 A certain ruler asked him (Jesus), “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 

You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”  

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. 

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Luke 18:18-25

For anyone who reads the Bible with an open heart, these are extremely hard words to swallow, especially for those living in the present Western World which is considered by many to be the wealthiest context in all human history. What does Jesus mean in this passage? Does he mean that if you are rich, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God unless you literally sell everything you own? 

As I've been going through the Gospel accounts, I am amazed at how frequently and directly Jesus approaches the topic of wealth and possessions. Jesus gets right at the heart and holds no punches back. At first glance, most of us (myself included) will mistakenly read this text in either a moralistic or relativistic way. What I mean is this: In a moralistic reading, we take Jesus' command to "go sell everything and give it to the poor" as a universal rule that must be literally followed by anyone who truly considers themselves to be a Christian. The story is then a direct moral imperative to be followed literally and universally. The other end of the spectrum many of us will fall on (especially if we have great deal of wealth), is a relativistic reading. We read Jesus command and instantly think that there is no way this applies to me or actually demands a change from me. Jesus didn't really mean what he said. In this reading, we relativize the text in such a way as to protect our self from being faced with our own sinfulness. I think it is important that we examine our hearts and be honest with ourselves in regards to where we fall on the spectrum. Like I said, for those who hold on tightly to their wealth, and are consumed with building their own little kingdoms of comfort, you are probably going to fall on the side of relativism. On the other hand, for those who are often discontented with the status quo of 'safe, individualized, lifeless, consumeristic Christianity', you might find yourself imposing pharisee like rules on people. For the person who struggles deeply with self-righteousness (like me!), you might read the text in a moralistic way as a way to justify yourself. 

At the end of the day, both of these ways (relativism and moralism) are incorrect ways to understand what Jesus is really getting at. The proper way of understanding this text is a third way, lets call it a 'gospel' reading of the text. When we read this text in light of the whole gospel story, it is evident that Jesus is getting at something much deeper than a simple moralistic formula for how to deal with wealth and possessions. Rather, Jesus is getting at the radical way in which the gospel completely reorientates everything in our lives. In other words, Jesus is saying "the gospel changes everything." Being in the Kingdom of God is a complete reordering of everything in our lives. 

The story of the Rich Young Ruler is piercing because along with the heart of the young man in the story, our hearts are also revealed. In the story, the young ruler goes away sad because he realizes that the cost of following Jesus is too high; he is not willing to sell all that he has to follow Christ. The problem here wasn't so much that the man had possessions or power, but that he loved and trusted his wealth above God. His hearts orientation was out of whack. His life was out of order. The purpose for this story isn't ultimately that we might all sell our possessions, but that we may see the way we, like the young ruler, trust and love things (like wealth) more than God. We put other things (in this case, wealth) at the top of the pecking order. When Jesus says that you can't enter the Kingdom of God if you are rich, this means that only way you can enter the Kingdom of God is if you are living under the loving and righteous reign of the King. For a disciple, or a person living under God's reign, all other compartments of life fall under this ultimate allegiance. Money, possessions, relationships, work, family, time, energy, food, religion, they all must be orientated under God. They all must be submitted. We can see by the rich young ruler's response that this is a hard pill to swallow. Here was a man who kept all the rules and who zealously tried to live for God, but there was just one area of his life that he trusted and loved more than God.

So, the take away isn't so much a moralistic rule to follow, but a paradigm shift. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings us into a completely new worldview. Wealth is no longer something that needs to grip our hearts affections, but is something to be freely given to our God. This story is a way to ask ourselves, "what is it that I trust and love in more than God," "what do I look to in order to gain significance," or "what compels or controls me?". For this man, it was his wealth and power. That was the barrier between him following Jesus. Is this true of us? How we respond to Jesus' challenge, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it," (Luke 9:23-24) reveals where are hearts are at. 

To close, there is good news in all of this. Just thinking about this now, I realize all the ways I fail to orientate my life completely under Christ's Lordship. It seems impossible. The crowd following Jesus thought the same thing. Read how the story finishes:

"Those who heard this asked, 'Who then can be saved?'

Jesus replied, 'What is impossible with man is possible with God'"

Luke 18:26-27

The good news is that Christ died in our place, and resurrected, that we, along with him could be resurrected to new life. Jesus lived, died, and rose that in him, we might receive a new heart, one that is orientated toward God. In our own strength and religious zeal, this is impossible. With God's supreme power and unfailing love, this is possible. 

Jesus, The Emobodiment of the Law

Last post, I talked a little about Jesus being the fulfillment of the Law.  Jesus is the completion of the Law in that he did what the Law itself could never do. That is, give new life. Not only was Jesus the fulfillment of the Law, but he was also the embodiment. In other words, the actions of Jesus were perfectly integrated with what he taught. As Frank Thielman puts it,

*all scripture references are to Matthew

"Not only did he urge his disciples to be merciful (5:7), but he showed mercy to others (9:7, 15:22, 20:30). Not only did he bless those who were persecuted for righteousness' sake (5:10), but he himself died unjustly, despite his innocence (27:23). Not only did he tell others to turn the other cheek (5:39), but he refused to strike back at those who arrested him (26:52-53). He urged his followers to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him (16:24), and he took up the cross to suffer death for the forgiveness of others' sins (26:28, 39, 42; 27:26). Not merely Jesus' teaching, therefore, but Jesus himself is the expression-in deed as well as word-of God's will. Because of this Jesus replaces the Mosaic law."


Frank Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2005), 90. 

One Chance To Speak With The Leader Of Hamas

An amazing 3 minute audio clip in which world renowned intellectual and Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias retells his encounter with the leader of Hamas. 

The Reality of Resurrection

Be a realist. 

Poverty and the Gospel-Part 4: Life as Intended (continued)

My apologies on being a week since I last posted on this topic. Life has been a bit busy :). Continuing on our topic of what is really at the heart of poverty, and how it applies to the gospel, we have first established that at the heart of Jesus mission was to reclaim or restore life. He came proclaiming the good news of God's Kingdom, whereby everything that was lost in the fall would be restored. Since God came to restore us to our image bearing as God intended,  last week we asked what all does it entail to bear God's image. I broke it down into 4 relationships. In order to fully live as God's image bearers, we were created to be in a vertical relationship with our God, an internal relationship with our selves, a horizontal relationship with others, and also a relationship with creation.

So what did these 4 relationships look like before the Fall? What were they intended to look like? To see this, we will look at Genesis 1 and 2.

Let's start by looking at our vertical relationship. First, as image bearers, human beings were made to worship. This is innate inside of every human. We all worship something. In the beginning, before sin entered the world, God, our Heavenly Father and Creator was the sole object of our worship. In fact, God was so much the sole object of our worship that there wasn't even a need for a separate time for worship (like church on Sunday's) because Adam's entire life was worship. All of his days and in everything he did, Adam was worshipping God. It must have been awesome to be able to worship God in all activities in an unhindered fashion.

Something else that defined Adam's vertical relationship with his Creator was intimacy. Notice that in Genesis 1 and 2, Adam talked openly with God. There was no separation or barriers. Adam was able to stand and communicate with God with complete transparency, openness and confidence. There was complete harmony. God walked with Adam in the garden. Adam lived completely in God's presence.

Lastly, as it was intended, there was a proper Creator/creature distinction. The main reason why life was perfect before the entrance of Sin was the way in which Adam rightly lived under God's loving and righteous eternal rule. The only way life can be in order or harmony, is if we are living under our Creator's intentions. Now, at first this may seem like God is a bit like an overbearing task master who demands that we stay in line with him. To this, we must realize that God's intends for us to live under his loving and righteous rule because it is 100% good for us. He doesn't demand that we live under him because he's mad, or wants us to suffer. Rather, we suffer when we choose to be our own God. We suffer when we lose this Creator/creature distinction. When we look at the effects of the Fall, we will see this more clearly. But, it is safe to say that life as intended includes humans, as God's image bearers, living an unhindered life of worship before their Creator with constant relational intimacy between us and our God. 

Poverty and The Gospel: Part 3-Life as Intended

So far we've established that Jesus came to restore life. His mission was bigger than just forgiving sins. It was bigger than acts of love or giving hand outs to the homeless. The good news Jesus brought was a pronouncement that through him, God was reclaiming creation. God was reclaiming creation by the ministry of his Son. The reason we need this is because under our own self-autonomy, EVERYTHING is out of line. EVERYTHING is distorted. Jesus came to restore life. Now, we are asking the question, how is life distorted? What was life supposed to look like? What went so wrong that God had to send his own son to restore life? What does true life consist of? To see this, we need to go back to Creation, since everything after the Fall, humanity, or life, has been distorted.

"So God created man in his image. 

In the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them."

Genesis 1:27

The simplest answer to these questions about life are that humans were created to be God's image bearers. Life as God intended it to be consists primarily of bearing God's image. This is what makes us unique. This is what we were created for. This is what true life is. To give a simple definition, I'm going to say that life as God intended it to be, or true life, is living in a full expression of our image bearing.  But what does it mean to bear God's image?

I propose that in the Creation account, we find 4 relationships which humans, as God's image bearers, were created for. Together, these four relationships make up a full expression of image bearing, or according to our definition above, true life. Let's look at these relationships. (I am going to unpack each one in the days to come, this is more of a fly by)

First and foremost, the primary relationship which humans were created for was our vertical relationship with our Creator. I say this is the primary relationship because without the proper vertical relationship with our Creator, all of the other relationships with be out of whack. Our other relationships are completely contingent on our relationship to God. If we wrongly relate to our Creator, we can't possible properly relate to his creation. To have true life, to live in a full expression of our humanity, we must have an unbroken relationship with our Creator. 

The following three relationships are what I call "horizontal" relationships. They are the result of our primary relationship and have to do with God's creation. One of these relationships is our relationship with our self. As image bearers, we were meant to have a self-image based on our  vertical relationship with God. More on this relationship in the days to come. Next, in the creation account we see that as humans, we were meant to live in relationship to others. Humans were not created on an island. God never intended us to live in isolation. Therefore, part of what it means to live in a full expression of our humanity is to live in community. Lastly, as God's image bearers, we were given a particular relationship to the rest of creation. There is way to much to say here in this quick fly by, but the Genesis account is clear that humans were meant to live life with a harmonious relationship with creation. This consists of having dominion over God's creation. We'll talk more about that later. 

From this post (I know it was brief and I didn't say a whole lot), all I'm trying to establish is that to live in a full expression of what it means to be human, to have life as it was intended, we must have all 4 of these relationships. They must be unbroken and exist in harmony. Further, for them to do this, they must exist under a unhindered vertical relationship with our Creator. Once our vertical relationship is out of line, all of the other relationships follow suit.

Poverty and The Gospel: Part 2-Gospel of the Kingdom

Before we start digging into how the gospel relates to poverty, I want to start with a bigger question, "What did Jesus come to do?" What were the intentions of his ministry? Most of this will be based off of a post I wrote a little over a week ago, The Intention of Jesus, which lays this out a little more thoroughly. I'm going to try and be brief.

The reason many of us don't see poverty as a gospel issue is because our view of the gospel is too small. Either we (reformed folks) limit the gospel to justification by faith (which don't get me wrong, is absolutely central to the gospel. Yet, the gospel is bigger and effects more than just our individual standing with God) or, we forget this central tenant of the gospel (justification) and move on to the social issues that Jesus cared about. Last post we saw that both extremes are misconceptions.

To look at what Jesus came to do, I want to let him answer the question himself.

"Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.'" Mark 1:14-15

"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 sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Luke 4:18-19

I'm going to try and be brief here. A couple big picture takeaways.

First, Jesus came proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom. In other words, the good news is that God's kingdom is at hand. God is reclaiming his rule and reign. He gives the call to repent and believe, because in reclaiming God's Kingdom, he is calling us to turn from our own little kingdom of self-autonomy. Jesus came inviting us to be a part of God's rule and reign, wherein we live under the love and righteousness of our Creator.

Second, as seen in Luke 4, under God's rule and reign (The Kingdom of God), all things are being set right. Look at all the comparatives he gives in Luke 4. The poor are receiving good news, the captive is set free, the blind see. At the heart of God's rule and reign is the restoration of humanity. Under his rule and reign, all things are being made right again. This is because under our own rule and reign (self-autonomy), we are really ruled and reigned by sin. Under the curse of sin, everything is distorted. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Therefore, if under our own self-autonomy, everything is jacked up, I propose that under God's rule and reign, EVERYTHING is being made right. In other words, Jesus came to restore life.

To get a glimpse of what God intends life to be like, we need to look at Scripture. The place we will look at primarily will be the Creation account, because this was the only time when life was unhindered by the Fall. Genesis 1 and 2 are the only times in human history where humanity itself wasn't distorted by our own self-autonomy.

Poverty and The Gospel: Part 1-Misconceptions

The other day I posted a simple statement, "Poverty is the lack of what it means to be truly human." 

In the coming days, I want to unpack this statement a little bit and look at how the gospel really gets at the heart of what poverty really is. To start, I think it is important that we ask ourselves, what is poverty? First and foremost, we must ask ourselves this question because it is evident throughout Scripture that this is something God is passionate about. In the Old Testament, God continually calls his people, Israel, to extend his rule and reign by being compassionate to the hurting, by welcoming the sojourner, defending the fatherless, and carrying for the widowed, orphaned, and poor. In the New Testament, not much changes. God's people (The Church, or the New Israel), are called to the same mission of social justice. In addition, in Jesus' ministry, it is glaringly apparent that he has a unique passion for the poor. We will certainly unpack this more in the coming posts, but just by doing a fly by glance at the whole Bible, it is safe to say that God's heart is for the poor.

Further, it is important we ask the question of, "what is poverty", because the way in which you define poverty greatly effects how you will determine its solution. Whatever we deem the problem to be determines what we deem the solution to be. For example, if poverty is simply the lack of financial resources, then the solution is to provide financial resources. I bring this up because we all bring preconceived notions of what poverty is. We all come to the table with past experiences that have shaped our worldview, and that consequently have a deep effect on how we define something like poverty. That being said, if we want to get at the heart of what poverty is and how the gospel relates, it is imperative that we approach the topic with humility, being willing to recognize our own misconceptions and the ways in which our limited worldview distorts God's biblical truth. 

I'll give a couple examples from within Christian circles. On one end, there are those who tend to focus on the simply spiritual  aspect of the gospel. The good news of Jesus primarily becomes a pronouncement of forgiveness of sins and justification by faith for the individual. In essence, this is the error and misconception that many conservative evangelicals bring to the table. The gospel is about individual forgiveness, and helping the poor is merely an extra curricular mandate for some. On the other other end of the spectrum are those who make the focus of the gospel God's restoration of social justice. God is about the poor, so the primary goal of the gospel becomes ministries of mercy. These individuals and churches tend to be passionate about actually caring for the poor in the forms of homeless shelters, soup kitchens, providing resources for the under privileged, and extending love to the socially marginalized (homosexuals, single moms, immigrants, etc) at the expense of God's message of repentance from and forgiveness of sins. 

I hope that as we unpack what is at the heart of the gospel that we will see that in themselves, both extremes are wrong. In this case, the gospel isn't an either/or, but is a both/and. One of my main goals in the coming days is to show that poverty is a gospel issue, and poverty alleviation is at the very heart of the gospel. As some see it (conservative evangelical Christians), it is not just an extra curricular biblical mandate. It is not something some people are called to be passionate about and others not so much. On the other end (liberal mainline churches), poverty is much deeper than just a social justice issue. The gospel is so much bigger and more beautiful than simply alleviating the material and physical elements of poverty in this life. In fact, you can't actually help those who are physically poor without the dynamic power of the gospel that is the message of salvation for all who believe. The poverty issue lies within the very fiber of the gospel. 

To see this, I want to redefine poverty within the context of the biblical narrative. I want us to retrace what poverty is according to God's story. But first, my next post will look at what Jesus actually came to do. What were the intentions of Jesus? 

Counterfeit Gods