How To Be A Christian Without Being A Jerk

Faith in real life

Our Purpose: Loving God and Neighbor

August 3rd, 2012

What is the central focus of our lives as we are following Jesus?

God and neighbor.

Loving God and loving our neighbor becomes the key. We are created with love of God and neighbor as our purpose. When we think of the deep questions of human life, this is how we are designed.

What is the meaning of life?
What is my purpose?

Loving God and loving your neighbor.

The bestselling classic book The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren, needed only one paragraph to answer the purpose question. The purpose of every single human being is identical. “Love God and neighbor.” The differences all revolve around the question, “How?”

The life of radical goodness is to give and forgive. Give of yourself for the sake of the other, seek forgiveness when you mess up, and forgive when you are wronged. If we are always giving and forgiving doesn’t that mean our lives become all about losing and sacrifice? In the “God and neighbor” centered-life it is just the opposite. As we reach out, we are enhanced and expanded. Jesus said it this way,

Luke 6:37-38 (NLT)
“Stop judging others, and you will not be judged. Stop criticizing others, or it will all come back on you. If you forgive others, you will be forgiven. [38] If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use in giving—large or small—it will be used to measure what is given back to you.”

The path of self-denial is possible because God designed us this way. We are perfectly safe to let God worry about our desires and needs. We don’t have to try to enhance our own lives by always looking out for #1, because God is always looking out for us. We are free to give everything we have and everything we are to God and neighbor. Our very soul is given back to us and we become truly human for the very first time. This is just what God has in mind all along.

What does loving God look like to you?

Raining out

July 20th, 2012

Going up

July 20th, 2012

Living With Unhealthy Relationships

July 19th, 2012

As we experience mind ruin and the emotional ruin that goes along with it, our interaction with other people is never really authentically beneficial. I liken it to a dance where we try to move each other around the dance floor. If both partners are trying to lead at the same time, it doesn’t work.

Social life ruin is seen in the lack of depth of our friendships. It is seen in the struggles of marriage. It is a key source of the dissatisfaction so many have for their jobs. If I am trying to remain in charge of my life, when things don’t go my way, I will usually respond in one of two ways: Neurosis or Character Disorder.

Author M. Scott Peck considers these two responses in his classic work, The Road Less Traveled.

When I am struggling in life, I place the blame on myself or others in an exaggerated way. When I am always wrong, it is neurosis. When someone else is always wrong it is character disorder. Here is how it works.

For a neurotic person, I try to remain in control by putting huge demands of perfection upon myself, coupled with low expectations. In this way when someone fails me, I can always blame it on me. I stay in control because life is happening just like I predicted. Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh, is an example of this neurotic response.

For a character disorder person, I try to remain in control by placing the blame for anything that goes wrong in my life squarely where it belongs. On you. Or anyone else. On the government. On multi-national corporations. On society in general. On the “man.” Never, in any waking moment, would my problems be owned up to as “my problems.” In character disorder, I am always the victim. After all, if I am the center of my own universe, how can any conflict, failure or disappointment be my doing?

In our relationships, then, we may operate out of character disorder or neurosis, but the results are the same. A life turned from God.

Do you function more with neurosis or character disorder? (Actually, if it is character disorder, you probably disagree with what is being said in the first place!)

What happens if you choose to ignore God?

July 9th, 2012

Living With a Ruined Heart

“Acting on belief that is based on evidence” is a good definition of faith. When an atheist claims there is no God, the belief is not based on a solid body of evidence. There is so much evidence to the contrary, it may be the atheist has more “blind faith” than faith.

Romans 1:20 (NLT)
From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.

Today, we are able to see way more of “earth and sky and all that God made.” The evidence for design in the universe- and the big bang evidence for space, time, energy and matter being created simultaneously- all point to to a likely conclusion that there is a causative, extra-dimensional agency. This doesn’t specifically warrant this being the God of the Bible, but there is other evidence for that being the case. Let’s just consider a “god” in general.

Why do a small minority of people not trust there is a god? Why do so many more people act as if there is no god? The challenge is, if God exists then God must somehow be in charge. If God is in charge then guess what? We’re not.

The path of ruin begins with the heart. Choices are made as if there is no God. These choices affect all the other parts of our lives. We wish to be in charge and if God exists we can’t logically hold to that viewpoint. So we begin to deceive ourselves in one of two ways. We either choose to believe there is no God, or we act as if there is no God. Either way we lose. This is why unhealthy behavior by atheists and by people who identify as Christian can look very similar. One ignores the consequences of there being a God, and the other acts as if God doesn’t care. If we keep choosing to ignore God, we keep ignoring the blessings God has in store for us. When our hearts are turned in another direction, we cannot be our best, true selves.

Look for evidence of God today.

Soda Wars

June 20th, 2012

Enough of this soda thing. Another news story coming out of my own neighborhood. Why can’t the Coca-Cola lobby just make it all go away!

What I already know:

1. We are a settled-in-front of a screen society, and there is an issue with obesity in America.

2. I know that psychologically, if you limit the amount of beverage you can get at one time (16 oz. max rather than 44 oz. gigantic gulp or whatever it is) this will ultimately cut down on how much you consume. It just works that way.

3. I also know that fruit juice is filled with sugar, too. Why the pass?

4. I know that city parks and libraries need to provide more drinking fountains with colder water so City Councilman’s daughters can just have a go at the bubbler (Note I used two slang terms for a water releasing public drinking apparatus, because I don’t know where you are from), rather than deciding to buy from a beverage machine and then having her dad end up proposing another ban. Though I do like her dad.

Everything is really a spiritual matter anyway. If you want to be healthy, you will work at being healthy and learn to say, “No,” to that which you want, but may be harmful for you down the road. It isn’t in our human nature to say, “No,” but it is in God’s nature to make us into the kind of people who can say, “No.” if we allow Him to. By saying, “No,” to other things.

No amount of government intervention is ultimately going to save us from getting what we think we absolutely must have. It starts on the inside and a change from within.

And government officials? Let’s keep our eye on the economic ball for a while, shall we?

Let’s Face It…

June 15th, 2012

It’s always hilarious when you see a news account of people who look like their dogs. There is research¹done on this topic that reveals it is not that dogs and their owners (sorry, “caregivers” in LA, guardians in SF) resemble each other over time. It is more likely that the dog owner consciously or unconsciously chooses a pet with similar characteristics. We have a lab/ German shepherd mix named, “Nala.” She is a sweetheart of a dog, like my sweetheart, but when she snarls, she resembles the boy’s and me, on occasion.

I do think we take on the appearance of someone over time. Ourselves. Who we are on the inside begins to reflect more and more on the outside. I remember the story The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Dorian is able to live a wild and crazy immoral life without physically affecting him. Booze, sex, destroying the lives of others- you name it, Dorian did it. Didn’t seem to age him a bit. Stayed the same young, good-looking guy. His secret?

He had a portrait of himself that would take in all his sin. It got uglier and more sinister looking. I won’t give away the ending in case you haven’t read it, but let’s just say Dorian found out the truth.

You begin to notice that about people. Those of us who have been around a while show who we are on the inside by what we look like on the outside. Our faces take on smile lines or frown lines. Anger, like a twisted plastic surgeon, etches pain felt and pain dished out. Botox is no antidote for bile.

So, what do you do? Changing the inside changes the outside. You have a choice in life. There is a God who forgives what’s on the inside so you can be transformed into the kind of person who will shine with his glory on the outside. You are more than just your physical body.

Look closely at your own face. Especially around your eyes and the corners of your mouth. What do you see?

To Begin Again

June 13th, 2012

First in a series on transformation from the inside out. This is a book based on the teachings of Dallas Willard, in particular from Renovation of the Heart. Start here, be open to the Holy Spirit, and get ready to go!

We are designed to be in relationship with Jesus. The Christian life is not a set of rules and regulations. The Bible is not a rulebook, but a description of this way of life. We do not have a list of laws that we follow to become worthy of attention from God. To grow in faith, we live the life we are designed to live, and we are transformed from the inside out.

This is the key. Inside out. Not a flurry of activities that make us acceptable to receive God’s love. God already loves us and we are open to being changed from the inside out.

We don’t do good things to please God. We become the kind of persons who can do good things naturally because we are being transformed. It is out of the “becoming” that the “doing” follows.

(Note: Each day you will have the chance to think deeply or do something. Why not?)

What is the most important class you have ever taken? Why was it so key?