R U Crazy?

I was just talking recently with someone who said, 'People in the church are crazy!' I believe it was being said because there are times when the worst of our humanity is on display within the family of faith. Yes, churches like all other families, bring the fun back into dysfunctionality!

The Apostle Paul got it right! Followers of Christ are crazy. It is foolishness! It is foolish to think that if I want to get closer to Jesus I might want to put my Bible down and serve a crazy street person. It is foolish to imagine that we become more holy by allowing our humanity to be exposed to others, warts and all. It is foolish to believe that by acknowledging our sinfulness we become more saintly. It is foolish to submit to God trusting that this is the way to freedom. It is foolish to believe that by dying we will begin living. It is foolishness... and yet it is at the heart of the gospel.

Church people are crazy. Sometimes, when we least expect it, its a Good Crazy. Like a home bound person making a phone call to 'care' for those old people who cannot get out anymore. Like a kid who gives up playing on his baseball team because he made a commitment to his church youth group. Like a widow who has little and yet chose to turns over to her church the stock certificates she has been sleeping on for years that are literally worth a small fortune. If we in the church aren't willing to admit to our brand of crazy, how can we hope to be in conversation with a crazy world?

Yes church people are crazy, because we live in a crazy world. Fortunately, God doesn't hold it against us, but instead chooses to use our craziness for the sake of the world. Now that is ONE CRAZY IDEA!

Living a 'Thin' life

The past couple of weeks I have been privileged to attend a couple of conferences. What hit me hardest was our contemporary willingness to live a 'thin' life.

Now I am not talking about our yearly attempt to get thin after eating too much and exercising too little over the holidays (although I would like to lose about 8 lbs before the end of March).

I am talking about our tendency to a) define ourselves oh so very narrowly in terms of who we are and what we stand for; b) our willingness to allow ourselves to be satisfied with symbols and not substance. Allow me to explain....

All across America we hear a cry for an end to the bickering and posturing, and yet the reality is that we are defining ourselves by a narrower and narrower bandwidth. If you cannot agree with me about everything we cannot agree about anything seems to be the motto for today. The follow up is that if we cannot agree then we just write one another off.

I attended a conference called, 'Big Tent Christianity' which attempted to get folks from the various tribes of Christianity talking to and hopefully listening as well to one another. It is a marvelous attempt, but what I noticed was that it was mostly represented by only one portion of the tent. While attempts were made to bridge the divide, let's be honest, religious people like to hang onto their cherished religious beliefs and as a result we are better at building walls than bridges.

The other conference was a symposium lead by Andrew Root as he helped us understand a culture that is rich in symbols and poor in substance. Through scientific evidence and anecdotal experience he showed us how these two-dimensional symbols have become the new reality, because it is easier that way. Of course, this means that we are getting 'thin' in our concept of reality which in turn impacts how we are willing to engage in discourse with other world views.

What does this all mean? Well for one, I believe that the speed in which we live life is not just detrimental to our sense of the Spirit, but it is now impacting our sense of reality. If we live a spritiually deprived and physically constricted lifesytle, can you imagine what that means for our humanity? This last week the best at Jeopardy were beaten by Watson, the IBM computer. Maybe this is a portent of what awaits us as we become 'thinner' in our humanity.