LAYING LAW ~ 1/6/12

A scream issued suddenly from the dining room, where two of my three boys sat eating their lunch.

“Why is there screaming?” I screamed back from the living room. No answer. More screaming. Irritated beyond words, I set my laptop aside and groaned my way up to my feet, stumbling into the kitchen in time to see the two older siblings flailing arms, butter knives and forks in each other’s faces. They were also still screaming.

“Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!” I yelled. “No more touching—no TOUCHING—! Hands to yourselves, boys!” They seemed subdued for the moment, so I retreated back to my computer. A moment later, the screams ensued once more.

“Hey, hey, HEY!!!” They looked up at me with less terror than I would have preferred as I rounded the corner. This time, they weren’t actually touching each other—the older boy was now throwing objects (like napkins and salt shakers) at his brother, and therefore not technically breaking my former dictum. I was livid.

“Okay, guys, seriously—? No throwing. NO THROWING! If I see you throwing anything at each other again, there will be consequences!” Sullen looks from unconvinced eyes. I sighed, daring to believe there would now be peace. I hadn’t walked more than two steps into the next room before the screams began once more. I wheeled around and just sat there, disbelieving what my eyes beheld. No touching. No throwing. But now, the older boy was tormenting my younger son to the point of shrieks by pre…tend…ing to throw dangerous objects at his head. I was about to completely lose it and issue yet another demandment-commandment when it occurred to me that, given the hyper-literalism children seem to be born with, this scenario had the potential to continue repeating itself for quite some time. Unless… unless I cut to the chase and spelled out the bigger picture.

“Look, boys,” I said calmly (I was proud of my calm), “The idea is that I don’t want you guys to do anything to each other that hurts the other person. Got it? Anything.” They stared at me for a moment before nodding solemnly, as if for the first time comprehending the very purpose of life itself, or perhaps just stunned into silence by the devastating limits of my new guidelines. And I nodded too, thinking of God’s 10 commandments and the hundreds of other rules, of every additional ‘do’ or ‘do not’ found in the Bible that can really just be summed up in one sentence for us hyper-legalistic children of God in a short variety of ways—‘Don’t do anything to each other that hurts the other person. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love one another.’

"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:12)

P.S. I’m not saying my boys listened.

Surrounded by Grace,

Josh

NEW YEAR'S PUMPKIN ~ 1/1/12

“It’s destroyed! It’s DESTROOOYED!” wailed the 7yr-old as he sprinted past me and down the hallway to his room, slamming the door when he got there.

“Highly doubtful,” I thought to myself, assuming he was talking about his special pumpkin. It was, after all, a second chance pumpkin. As it turned out, he was actually upset about a tray of art supplies that had accidentally spilled from the dining room buffet and onto the floor. But still, the pumpkin has a story worth telling. Allow me to explain.

In October of this past year we did what all proper, loving, tradition-bound American parents do— we took our kids to the ‘local’ pumpkin patch. There, we spent money we didn’t really have on silly little train rides to nowhere, petting zoos populated by exotic creatures like goats, geese and chickens, corn mazes we actually got lost in and pumpkins bred to be obscenely heavy. I know this last bit to be fact because I picked ridiculously small pumpkins for the miserly sake of my wallet and still ended up broke; it’s a scam I tell you. But, I’ve got to admit, it’s a family-friendly scam; the kids love it every year.

So we came home with our pumpkins and fully intended on carving them into moderately haunted faces for Halloween night. That was the intent. What really happened was that, for the first time since the kids were born, we got too busy to carve those excessively heavy pumpkins.

The night for scaring came and went and a week later, just when my wife and I thought we’d managed to get off the hook for the forgotten pumpkins, the 7yr-old remembered. Much crying ensued. Misery ran rampant. The kids weren’t happy either. Finally, I managed to convince the oldest boy that we could just make them into “Thanksgiving pumpkins” by carving designs of acorns, pilgrim hats and turkeys tails into the bright orange skins. This idea seemed to mollify his indignation and he agreed to the plan. Only… we got too busy and forgot. Again.

The faithful pumpkin sentinels continued to stand watch unmolested at our front door until mid-December, when my wife’s guilt got the best of her and she went online in search of ways not to waste forgotten pumpkins. The solution she stumbled on was truly brilliant. Apparently there are other parents as dysfunctional as us who’d realized that, by stacking three pumpkins on top of each other and painting them white, they had the makings of a near perfect pumpkin snowman. We pitched the idea with cautious optimism. The 7yr-old looked back at us thoughtfully for a moment before inexplicably  shaking his head, ‘no.’ He suggested instead we paint the remaining firm pumpkins green, stack them on top of each other as planned and thereby create a sort of lumpy pumpkin Christmas ‘tree.’ The ornaments and ribbon could be painted on later, he explained. We weren’t in a position to argue.

That very day the veteran pumpkins became a rich, forest green. It was an unnervingly crisp looking green, and we all studied the unnatural hue over meals for the next two weeks as they sat on the newspaper-topped dinner table where they’d been painted, but never stacked or ‘decorated.’ Yesterday, over cereal, the 7yr-old addressed the elephant in the room.

“We forgot the pumpkins again.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What should we do?”

‘Throw them away,’ I said in my head, ‘Hide them. Burn them. Shoot them. Smash them.’

“I really have no clue,” I said out loud.

Quiet thinking for a  moment, then—

“I’ve got an idea,” he said.

Behold, the amazing New Year’s pumpkin, complete with glitter-enhanced firework motifs to welcome in another journey around the sun. Admit it— you know you want one. Or, at the least, admit you want as many second chances as those crazy pumpkins got. I know I do.

May your new year be as full of grace-filled second chances as it is with holidays. May you find that God has as many ways to heal and restore as there are ways to recycle an ugly old pumpkin for seasonal decor. After all, Valentines Day is coming. And Easter…

Just think of the possibilities.

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh

HOPE YOU STICK AROUND ~ 12/28/11

Hey Everyone ~


Just wanted to let anyone who checks this blog know that even though I've been "offline" a few weeks and will continue to take a short break from regular blogging for personal reasons, my blog will be back soon. The name will change, and probably some of the content, but I'll most likely be back up and posting sometime in January, so-- check in, watch the changes, and... I hope you stick around. 


Surrounded By Grace,
Josh

BEEF JERKY FOR THE SOUL ~ Guest Blogger (My Dad)

My Dad is a general surgeon who has served as a missionary doctor in the wilds of Gabon, equatorial Africa for over 34 years. Recently, he began writing regular letters to my siblings and I-- small, blog-sized chunks of wisdom he has entitled "Beef Jerky For The Soul." Today, I've decided to share his latest letter with you.

C.S. Lewis wrote, "We don't have a soul. We are a soul, and we have a body."

Most people in America, as reported by those who do polls about these issues, believe that everyone who lives on the earth--except for really evil people--have a soul that will end up in some kind of heaven after dying. Most secular intellectuals, depending on how you define them, don't believe in either the soul or the afterlife. According to them, we are nothing more than complicated organic machines. All our consciousness, self-awareness, creativity, personality, awareness of God, and emotions are simply the complex physiologic workings of our brains.  

If the secularists are right we won't even be aware of it when we die. If C.S. Lewis is right and the real "we" is our soul and not our body, then our souls won't die when our bodies give out and the implications become huge.  Who created our soul?  How did he do it?  What is he like?  How will he react if I live my life as I please and ignore him?  What if he wants me to stop doing things I want to do and do things I don't want to do? Where can I find out about him?

There is an exponentially growing body of evidence in our world, in the stars, and in our own bodies that the Creator is quite real, very much alive, and fully aware of His creation. There is compelling historical evidence that God has been communicating with people since they appeared on the earth. And there is Jesus, a real historical figure who came to earth supernaturally, healed thousands of people supernaturally in front of eventually tens of thousands of witnesses, and answered all of these questions in considerable detail.  Not until all the witnesses to his life, miracles, death and resurrection had died did skeptics succeed in challenging what his followers had written about him.  Thousands of those witnesses died violently, preferring torture and death to renouncing what they had seen, heard, and experienced.

And what evidence do the secularists have that there is no soul and no afterlife?  Well…none. Seriously. They're simply gambling everything and hoping that it works out for them. Why would anyone be willing to take that kind of risk?  Could it be they have…proof? I think not.  

There is another reason they're willing to gamble, and it's because each person can write his own moral rules for living. Each person can live for himself, and nobody can tell him it's wrong and that he's going to pay for it later, as long as he doesn't break the law. Meanwhile the person who believes that we are a soul that will continue to exist in the afterlife has to worry about pleasing God and when being good isn't maybe good enough. 

I'll take my chances with Jesus, the miracle worker, the God-man who's miraculous arrival on earth, message, suffering, death, burial and resurrection were all predicted in detail in the oldest book in the world, several hundred years before it happened.  To receive my soul as his own and give me a beautiful new body that will live forever, He doesn't want me to follow a list of rules. He only requires my open love and my trust.

I am an eternal soul, I have a body, and when it wears out and I die, God will give me a new one.  Now that's something worth living and serving Him for!  

Love,

Dad

SHOCK VALUE ~ 11/22/11

I was reading today about how so much of the original power and shock value has been lost in our understanding of the Biblical parables. The author compared it to a joke that loses its humor when you have to explain why it’s funny.  We're just so distant from the cultures and contexts of so much in the Bible that without a lot of hand-holding, we simply don't get the joke. Or at least, not at the gut-wrenching level that was intended.
To make his case, the author then retold a very well known parable with modern points of reference. Read the Biblical set-up, followed by the re-telling, and then see how you feel; if you finish the story with a knot in your stomach, you've proved his point!

THE GOOD SAMARITAN (retold)

'And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' 

He said to him, 'What is written in the Law? How do you read it?'

And he answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.' 

And he said to him, 'You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.'

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'

Jesus replied,” (Luke 10:25-30a)

"A family of disheveled, unkempt individuals was stranded by the side of a major road on a Sunday morning. They were in obvious distress. The mother was sitting on a tattered suitcase, hair uncombed, clothes in disarray, with a glazed look to her eyes, holding a smelly, poorly clad, crying baby. The father was unshaved, dressed in coveralls, a look of despair on his face as he tried to corral two other youngsters. Beside them was a run-down old car that had obviously just given up the ghost.

Down the road came a car driven by the local bishop; he was on his way to church. And though the father of the family waved frantically, the bishop could not hold up his parishioners, so he acted as though he didn't see them. 

Soon came another car, and again the father waved furiously. But the car was driven by the president of the Kiwanis Club, and he was late for a statewide meeting of Kiwanis presidents in a nearby city. He, too, acted as though he did not see them and kept his eyes straight on the road ahead of him.

The next car that came by was driven by an outspoken atheist, who had never been to church in his life. When he saw the family's distress, he took them into his own car. After inquiring as to their need, he took them to a local motel, where he paid for a week's lodging while the father found work. He also paid for the father to rent a car so he could look for work and gave the mother cash for food and new clothes."

-- Gordon Fee & Douglas Stewart

'Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor...?'

OUCH, Jesus; play nice.

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh

HIJACKING HALLOWEEN; A Seasonal Re-post ~ 10/18/11

This is a touchy time of year for many Christians.  And because it’s a touchy time for Christians, it’s automatically a touchy time for Churches.  How should Christians act on a holiday I’ve heard referred to as “Satan’s Birthday?”  Should we let our kids go “trick-or-treating?”  Should we let them dress up in costumes? Should we let them out of the house at all on October 31^st? How much cooperation with this holiday does it take before we have compromised our status as “called apart ones?”

Ultimately, how your family chooses to treat this day is your own decision, and should be decided according to Scripture, but also conscience.  There were things mentioned by Paul in the New Testament that were okay for a Christian to do, but he pointed out there would always be Christians for whom certain things would continue to feel uncomfortable – their conscience did not allow them some freedoms. If that is you in regards to Halloween, please don’t go against those feelings-- only you can decide if that applies to you (and, to be fair... you're not allowed to decide if that applies to anyone else). What follows below, however, is a brief history of the origins of Halloween, and the reasons why The Outpost office will be open on Halloween night, handing out invitations to a Thanksgiving meal along with lots of high quality candy from a tastefully decorated space by a group of loving people. What follows below are the reasons we want to make sure Jesus makes an appearance on Main Street when the kids come calling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a super condensed summary. “Halloween” is the name of the night before an official Church celebration called “All Saints Day” (Celebrated Nov. 1st).  All Saint’s Day was a celebration which began about 300 years after the life of Christ, to honor the many Christian martyrs, known and unknown, throughout the years.  It later came to include honoring ‘all saints,’ or all believers that the Church viewed as exceptional Christian examples. This celebration was also called ‘All-hallows’ or ‘All-hallowmas’ -- from Middle English ‘Alholowmesse’ meaning “All Saints' Day”.  Just like Christmas Eve has become an important night before the actual Christmas day, so the night before “All Hallows Day” became important – and was called ‘All-hallows Eve,’ eventually, ‘Halloween.’ 

So that’s where the name comes from.  What about the costumes, the candy, the carved pumpkins? From all the sources I’ve looked at and studied, the prevailing consensus is that many of the external elements of our modern Halloween holiday have come to us through the Celts, later, the Irish.  Apparently they celebrated the end of their year on October 31^st (Nov. 1 was their New Years Day) by lighting huge bonfires during a festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-in).  On that night “it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth” (www.history.com) and that they caused trouble and damaged crops while there.  Some believe the Celtic priests and druids wore costumes made of dead animals and offered sacrifices during this festival, but there is disagreement on much of the details.

Those are clues about the “what” of Halloween, but what about the “how?”  How did these two celebrations get so mixed up together? Some have claimed the Church purposely changed its celebration date of All Saints Day (It did change the date, but for another reason) in order to take away the “devil’s monopoly” of that day. Whatever the reason, the facts show that having both major celebrations so close together started a slow-motion chain-reaction of syncretism, a 'Vulcan Mind-Meld' kind of blending between these two distinct entities.  This ‘merging’ of traditions started in Europe and was transplanted in colonial times in the Americas, but it reached critical mass during the large-scale immigrations of Irish to the U.S. in the second half of the nineteenth century. “These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally”(www.history.com).

'In what ways?,' you may wonder... Take, for instance, the origin of the “trick” in “trick-or treat.” Playing pranks and causing mischief on this night almost certainly comes from the Celtic belief of supernatural spirits roaming the earth on Oct. 31 and spreading trouble.  Interestingly however, the “treat” portion of the phrase seems to be repeatedly traced back, once again, to “All Saints Day,” when children and the poor would go “souling” from house to house, singing songs and praying for the dead.  At each home they would be given small round cakes called “souls.” “Each cake eaten would represent a soul being freed from Purgatory” (Wikepedia). Obviously not a doctrinally sound idea, but it’s still interesting to note this comes from a Church tradition. Incidentally, the first time these two words were put together as “trick or treat” in print was in 1927, during community-backed efforts to offer an alternative activity to the pranks which were becoming increasingly destructive in the United States. This alternative activity, at least in theory, now gave home-owners the opportunity to avoid a ‘trick’ by giving a ‘treat.’ All of which to say – “trick-or-treating” as it appears today is an American hybrid of mixed traditions.

There is nothing evil about a pumpkin, carved or otherwise (the Irish carved potatoes and turnips, not pumpkins… potatoes aren’t evil either).  Neither is there anything inherently evil about a date on a calendar, like Oct. 31^st. Pastor Bill has mentioned this in past sermons when he reminded us that what really matters is not the environment, but the invironment. So did Jesus.  In Mark chapter 7 Jesus defends his disciples from the legalistic Pharisees,  so externally oriented (works, actions, appearances) that they accuse Christ’s followers of sin because they aren’t performing the traditional ceremonial washing of their hands and utensils before they eat.  Listen to what Jesus says:

”Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean."

Every day we Christians are exposed to objects, ideas, people and activities that are part of a fallen world.  And the truth about us, throughout all ages, has remained the same – we have been called, just like Jesus, to be “in” the world (Jn. 17). We don’t have to be afraid  to hijack our cultural traditions as tools to reach lost people; Halloween, like anything else in this world, has only as much power over us as we choose to give it, by the grace of God.  We are children of the King – and “..the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world”(1Jn. 4:4). We are not defined by what we come in contact with externally,  but by Him who lives in our hearts. To me, Halloween is just another day, just another redemptive opportunity to take advantage of in order to advance the Kingdom of God.  But that's me; you decide.

 

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh (written 10/30/08)

A SHACK OR A FORTRESS? ~ 10/2/11

A message about the conditional promises of Psalm 91 I was privileged to give this past weekend at Neighborhood Church of Redding.