How To Be A Christian Without Being A Jerk

Faith in real life

bigger than Michael Jackson- a message for today

July 4th, 2009
Sermon 28 June 2009 by Pastor Dana Hanson  
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I contrast my dinner with Michael Jackson years ago, with the dinner of Jesus at the home of Simon the Leper. With all the drama and attention surrounding the death of Michael Jackson- let's consider the real King of Pop- and Rock- and Country- and RAP- and Alternative- and Classical- the real King of the Universe and all of Existence, Jesus.

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www.danahanson.org for blog and online podcast
download podcasts at "Christcast" on iTunes

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Something my parents never told me…

July 1st, 2009

My friend David sent me a picture of a guy shopping at Costco in New York. He is looking at BBQ grills. Now, I could use a new grill and I do shop at Costco, though not in New York.

So, what am I doing in that picture? The guy looks like me! A little older, perhaps, but he could be my twin.

I wonder what my mom and dad never told me. Can't be adopted; too genetically similar to the folks. So, did they give my "brother" up for adoption? I'm just saying…

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my dinner with Michael Jackson

June 29th, 2009

Under a variety of circumstances, I ended up at a dinner party with about a dozen people at the private home of a friend of Michael Jackson’s. I was an acquaintance of his friend, and was invited to have dinner and take a private cpr course. A strange world indeed…

This was in the mid 80′s right at the peak of Michael’s breakthrough fame, He arrived wearing one of those sequined jackets, and yes, he did wear a white glove! All those stories you hear of the man/child were bore out that night. He was awkwardly shy, and though I tried, quite difficult to get involved in a conversation. The image of Michael kneeling downing and shaking the cpr dummy comes to mind now. If you have taken cpr, you know the dummy is often named, “Annie.”

There is Michael Jackson shaking the dummy saying, “Annie, Annie, are you OK?” in that falsetto voice. Only later with the release of the “Bad” album, you can imagine my shock when I heard “Smooth Criminal” for the first time! Exactly…

Annie Are You OK?
So, Annie Are You OK
Are You OK, Annie

At the end of the evening, the strangest thing of all happened. Michael Jackson lived just down the street in Encino from the home we were at, so when it was time for him to leave, he went in the back of a Jeep Cherokee (?) and I watched the host cover him with blankets. He was going to drop Michael off at his house and there were fans outside the gate 24/7 at the time. It was probably about 11 p.m. or so, but they didn’t want to take any chances of the car being mobbed. So, off they went-

the “King of Pop” hiding under Pendleton….

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another Summer Solstice has come and gone…

June 22nd, 2009

Well,
another Summer Solstice has come and gone. I didn’t have to clean up
the mess from the party last night. I didn’t even get one card. Not one
phone call. My mom and dad didn’t send any packages. Actually my kids
gave me a gift, but alas, it was for Father’s Day! I didn’t even get to
stay up all night watching Scooby Doo Druid episodes.
 
Yet,
June 21st has been an important day for millenia for many religions.
The Summer Solstice, the longest amount of daylight of the year, was a
day to really celebrate and hold elaborate religious ceremonies. Some
even have ceremonies in the present day, in places like Stonehenge.
“Neopagan” is the technical term for these religions. Must be
Christians who thought that term up. Actually, university professors,
but be that as it may, what gives? Why no Solstice dinners, not even a
“Thinking of you at Summer Solstice Time” Hallmark card??
 
Jesus
is real. He hung out with real people and they wrote about it. He was
executed by the Roman authorities and he raised from the dead and hung
out again with real people and they wrote about it. Then people started
doing what he had told them to do in his teachings and they started
becoming real popular with some people and real unpopular with other
people. The people who didn’t get along with his followers, in fact
those who wanted to stop them, at times even kill them, well I wonder
why they didn’t write stuff about Jesus being a fraud? Probably because
the people he hung out with were still alive and could call them out on
their lies. They hadn’t learned Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, yet.
 
The
people who liked Jesus’ followers liked him because his followers had
power they had never seen before and they got healed and cared for and
encouraged and freed from everything that weighed them down in their
lives. There must be something to this “God” stuff because nothing else
ever worked like that. The same power is still present today, and so, I
guess, Christmas and Easter, and most Sundays, a few billion people
will still confidently worship Jesus, and others will still be
intrigued enough to seek to learn more about him.
Sorry, about the Summer Solstice thing not going as big as planned, but check Jesus out…
 www.lifehouse.la
www.danahanson.org for blog and online podcast
download podcasts at “Christcast” on iTunes

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How I completely shamed myself by skipping the Vegan festival and going for the meat…

June 21st, 2009

So, the whole family is going to our favorite BBQ restaurant, Grandpa Fred’s, and there is a Vegan festival at Pierce College half a mile away.  We do a drive-by (this is LA, after all) and skipping the flora we go directly to the fauna. We arrive and Oscar greets us. Oscar, the owner, who also is an amazing karaoke singer (yes, that Grandpa Fred’s where my alternative Roy Orbison comes out on occasion on a Friday night), tells us about the Father’s Day special.

“When is the last time you saw someone on TV after winning the game go, ‘Hi, dad, I love you. So, we are here to honor dads. You can order anything you want from the menu, sides, dessert, and your beverage. Everything is free.”

“I can order the one pound filet?”

“No, I wouldn’t get that, I would order the combination dinner where you can have the filet and another meat.”

(I’m thinking Oscar is sponsored by Merck and this some kind of front for an underground Zocor lounge, but I continue…) “What would you recommend?”

“I don’t really like to do that,” Oscar says, “Everything is so good. But the lamb is extra special.”

So, one pound filet and lamb, it is. Along with corn bread, BBQ beans with sausage, a slice of lemon cheescake pie…and a diet root beer. Can’t have those calories ruining my Father’s Day…

Our friends TC and Heidi and their children are also with us and TC is looking at me like, “This guy is nuts.” But, he quickly orders before Oscar realizes he is insane and he has a short rib, a pound of prime rib, corn bread, sweet potato pie, and, also conscientiously, a diet root. The food comes quickly and we are agog.

A filet the size of a softball mitt and 10 lamb chops come with the sides and the diet root beer. The lamb is the best I have ever eaten. TC wasn’t disappointed with the short rib because it actually looked like it came off of Fred Flintstone’s car, along with his hub cap-sized prime rib. O, and they brought an extra one pound prime rib that they made by mistake so we took its matching hub cap home.

There is so much more to say, but there are leftovers calling my name in the refrigerator. Happy Father’s Day everyone, and Vegans, I love you and tofu, but I come from Viking genetics and and I gave in to my meataholic tendencies. Sorry…

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another flight of fantasy in Time Magazine that is completely separated from reality…

June 19th, 2009

The concept of “progressive revelation” is a standard biblical study principle. God works within real human history with a primitive people who are chosen to be blessing to the nations. They begin to follow a way of life completely different from their neighbors. God reveals more and more of his nature as the people of God live as his people. While there is violent language in some specific circumstances with specific enemies of God’s people early in the writings, progressive revelation brings a far different picture later. The Hebrew people learn to live with the “foreigner” in their midst very early on, and even are called to treat him as one would treat a fellow Israelite.

By the time Jesus appears on the scene, the Prince of Peace brings a radical transformation of the world’s ways reflected in such teachings as “love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other check” and such, culminating in the Son of God dying a violent death for the sake of all people, believer and unbeliever alike. The model of Jesus, his teachings, and the scripture that records this, along with the model and teachings that follow from his apostles and the Church they develop, are radically open to the unbeliever, who is served with compassion and grace so strongly that historians tell us this is one of the strongest influences for an astonishingly large number of people coming to faith in Jesus.

Islam also has study principles for the Quran. “Abrogation” is a concept in Islam that says if one text in the Quran appears to contradict another, the latter text supersedes the former. While early texts in the Quran have wide boundaries for Islamic relationships with non-believers, in particular Jews and Christians,  the violent texts in Islam condoning violence against the unbeliever, including the Jews and Christians, are all latter texts. Fortunately, the vast majority of Muslims are not strict “abrogationists.”

I explain these principles because an article in Time Magazine entitled, Decoding God’s Changing Mood, shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of any of this. Astonishingly, the author Robert Wright tries to make the case of equivalence between the Old Testament’s view of God, violence, and unbelievers with the Quran’s view of Allah, violence, and unbelievers, also saying nothing about the model of Mohammad on this topic.  Then to my complete astonishment, he is completely silent on Jesus’ view of unbelievers and violence recorded in the Gospels, as well as the rest of the New Testament. Christianity is not even addressed.

Either, Wright is the most naive author imaginable on such topics, or he is extremely disingenuous. I don’t know. What I do know is once again, if you aren’t actually familiar with the Bible or the Quran, and you have no idea of the factual radical nature of the teachings of Jesus concerning ‘loving your enemy’ and such, then this article is intriguing, instead of rightfully seen as a figment of the author’s imagination, void of reality.

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How To Be A Christian Without Being A Jerk

Faith in real life