Recently in Jesus Category

Twice in the last 48 hours God has winked at me. They were wry little winks - ones of the sort that I might normally miss.

This evening a friend who I haven't heard from in months and months texted me and said I'd been on his heart and that "Our Papa" put me there. This afternoon I thought of my friend and two nights ago he was in a dream I had - first one I ever remember him guest starring in - and last night I picked up The Shack, the little book that is making referring to God as "Papa" all the rage.

This evening, another conversation with another friend was deeply encouraging to me. She referenced a particular book that proved to be very helpful in helping me develop a book project I'm considering.

Little things. Tiny things. Things certainly explainable by chance or quarks or quacks. But things too that have the distinct feel of winks from God. It is all a matter a choice really. Do I choose to believe that God winks? Or do I choose to believe everything is a matter of science and that's that. I choose winks no matter how naive or how much of a simpleton that might make me.

Several months ago - around the time I stopped blogging with any regularity - someone accused me of being the devil. And if it wasn't the devil, then it was certainly one of his minions. It is hard to shake off that sort of thing - especially when it centers around your writing and comes from a friend.

The accusation was that I had exploited some of the children in my writing about Uganda. My friend said that I was using their plight as a way of getting more people to read my blog - that my selfishness knew no ends, not even the exploitation of sick Ugandan children.

This friend is occasionally manic and has leveled somewhat outrageous charges against me and Kim at various points in our lives. Nevertheless, a charge like the one being leveled against me was both serious and sobering. It shut down my writing. Suffice it to say that exploiting the children I'd seen in Uganda had been the furthest thing from my heart or mind when I was writing about that experience. Indeed my hope was that the plight of these children would stir others to action - sponsoring a child through Compassion International, for instance.

All that said, however, I've had to - and continue to - reflect on the accusations, reflect on my own heart in writing those posts, other posts and everything else that I've written. I can't say that I've had any particular profound insights. I suppose my heart and my motivations on any given topic will always be a murky mixture of good, bad, and unclear. I suppose that is just the nature of life. I hope that my stuttering walk with Jesus makes that mixture ever clearer, ever purer, and ever more alive. But that is the kind of thing I can only see moment by moment, word by word. And to do that means I've got to write... I will.

How different are they? Really? James Dobson and Barack Obama?

On the face of it there is little, save their shared humanity, that seems to unite the two men. From their skin color to their positions on abortion, gay marriage, poverty, the role of government, from their views on the separation of church and state to their positions on the Iraq War, the men are about as far apart as men can get.

But appearances are deceiving. The men are actually very, very similar. (And this goes beyond their common love of basketball).

Both men see their religious faith as one of their primary political weapons. They take that faith and move in opposite directions, but their philosophy, their spirituality is very similar.

Dr. Dobson attacked Sen. Obama for having a flawed view - a deliberately skewed view - of Biblical theology "deliberately distorting the Bible," "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," "willfully trying to confuse people," and having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution." Obama responded by saying Dobson either hadn't read his speech (at a Sojourners event on poverty) or was just trying to score political points.

That back and forth, however, is simply the exchange of men who long ago decided that their faith was a tool for material ends.

It is a common mistake, a common temptation - the temptation to take the very hard work of the spiritual life - living humbly, loving your enemies, putting others first, forgiving always - and replace it with the easy work of politics - the promise that this policy or plan will bring about a sort of spiritual nirvana.

That is what unites Obama and Dobson. That they take those politics in different directions is incidental.

There is a great exchange in Christianity Today about the so-called "red letter Christians" and their political and cultural positioning.

Writer Stan Guthrie argues:

...while Christians should not be beholden to any political party, our politics must be informed by our faith. Unfortunately, the platform of Red-Letter Christians always seems to come out of the wash blue, just as some other "nonpartisan" Christian groups consistently align with the Republicans.

If you believe ending poverty requires more government spending and a higher minimum wage; if you believe in a manmade global warming crisis; if you oppose school vouchers; if homosexual marriage is no big deal (and in fact a civil right); and if you are tired of talking about the 50 million unborn human beings lost to abortion since 1973, then you know which lever to pull.

How we vote as Christians may differ, and that's okay. But let's not insist that we are somehow above the political fray. That is just the kind of sophistry the Lord warned against.

In response, Tony Campolo writes:

You got us RLCs right again when you suggested we were anti-war, pro-environment, and deeply committed to ending poverty primarily because we believe Jesus is anti-war, pro-environment, and deeply committed to ending poverty. The only mistake you made was to imply that thinking this way—or trying to influence our government according to these values—makes us the Religious Left:

That you think asking questions such as, "Do the candidates' budget and tax policies reward the rich or show compassion for poor families?," or "Do the candidates' policies protect the creation or serve corporate interests that damage it?," is partisan saddens us. We believe these are the questions that every Christian should be asking, no matter which political party or candidate has the better answers at a given time in history.

This is a hint of a much larger debate that will be occurring during the next year between the so-called religious right and the so-called religious left. It will be a debate about theology, about politics, about culture, and about the nature of Jesus. It is a good debate to be having. I just hope it is a debate defined in no small part by its humility.

I believe that pastors have gotten way too involved in politics. The evidence is growing that political involvement is increasingly an impediment to people discovering who Jesus really was.

But what I struggle with are questions like these:

If you were a Christian pastor in Burma, would you march against the oppressive dictorship ruling the country?

If you were a Christian pastor in the 50's and 60's and Martin Luther King called you up and said, "Will you march with us?" would you have said yes or no?

It is hard to say that I wouldn't march in either circumstance so passionately do I believe in human and civil rights.

But, for the sake of my thinking, I'm asking myself these questions.

Thoughts?