How To Be A Christian Without Being A Jerk

Faith in real life

Taking on Jesus As Your Partner

September 6th, 2012

In order to have lasting transformation, Jesus chooses to partner with us. Dallas says it this way:

Without Jesus I can do nothing, but if I do nothing, it will certainly be without Jesus.

The path of self-denial is a one of cooperation. Not everyone understands this. I come out of a faith tradition (Lutheran Christian) that so strongly emphasizes grace (God’s free gift of love) that any effort on our part will smack of “works righteousness.” We are trying to earn God’s love if we talk about doing the right things. The spiritual disciplines are not a focal point of life because they seem to be human effort to earn God’s favor.

As a result of this kind of thinking, after we become Christian, we are supposed to just sit back and be transformed through some kind of spiritual osmosis. That is not the reality of Kingdom life, however.

By fearing we would have a “heart attack” if we dare speak of doing something to grow in our faith, we become complacent in our non-response. Strangely, for some Christians, it becomes a badge of honor not to do anything.

Trouble is, transformation doesn’t happen this way. This is why the lives of most Christians don’t differ that much from anyone else. Without partnering with Jesus, we are on our own. He will not do our self-denial for us. Oh, we don’t doubt we will be with him in heaven someday, but Jesus actually wants to work with us in Kingdom living now.

There is another way. Our efforts fall into the category of VIM. “Vim” is defined as ”energy and enthusiasm,” from the Latin vis, meaning “strength.” Dallas uses it as an acronym for Vision, Intention, and Means. Through this three-step process, Jesus transforms us into the kind of people who can do the things he would do if he were us in any situation.

“We don’t do good things so that God loves us. God loves us, and our response of thanksgiving is to do good things.” Explain

We are in this together

August 7th, 2012

How do you move from a life of radical ruin to a life of radical goodness? You have to get off the throne of your life, where you are the ruler and god, and allow Jesus to take his rightful place on the throne. You need to be transformed in all five parts of heart, mind, body, social life, and soul.

That should be easy, right? Just get a little more focused? Just try harder? Actually, you can’t change using the direct approach at all. Either you won’t think you are capable of changing, or your instinct will be you don’t need to change. Self-worship is a powerful force. Everything that makes you, “you,” will scream out, “No!”

We need to take a different approach. Just like in athletics and the arts, we need to practice. We need to take a disciplined approach.

There are age old spiritual practices that have been effective for those who have become more like Jesus over the centuries. These “spiritual disciplines,” as they are called, take what is unnatural, self-denial, and make it natural. We address ourselves indirectly, because the direct way will fail. The devil and our own sinful selves’ gang up on us to convince us that there is no way this denial is possible; or it is not necessary.

Spiritual disciplines like silence and solitude, prayer, Bible reading, fasting, study, journaling, practicing simplicity, worship, and the like, make it possible to become more and more like Jesus. This indirect approach to transformation distracts our natural tendencies to rule in our own lives. Let me give you one example. You are experiencing one of the disciplines right now.

By reading this, you are practicing the discipline of study, and I trust it is helpful. Yet, I’ll let you in on a little secret. This is one of my key spiritual disciplines, as well. I study and think about what I am studying and pass that on to you in the form of this book. This is a good discipline for me and I share it with you, because whoever you are, if I can be any influence on your expanding as a disciple, I expand, as well.

Why is it so important that we encourage each other in transformation?

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?

Some things are black and white

August 2nd, 2012

The path to radical ruin is wide and easy. It is made possible by following our own desires.

It looks like this:

Make choices based on your interests.
Do what you think best.
Do whatever your gut instinct tells you to do.
Do whatever makes you feel good.
Don’t worry about how you affect someone else.
Don’t think about the consequences of anything.
Just do it.

This is the life of radical ruin. It looks strangely like the normal life of an animal. Yet, you are not an animal in relationship to the rest of creation, in that you have a choice. There is another path you can join. The path to radical goodness.

Created in the image of God, in part, means you can choose to be affected by God.

Here is the choice. Either you choose a life apart from God or a life set apart by God. This is the meaning of the word “holy.” “To be set apart.”

The way to holy living begins and ends with self-denial. This is the antidote to self-worship. Now, this doesn’t mean self-rejection. It is not designed to take away our dignity so we can become a doormat for the world; allowing everyone to step all over us.

Self-denial is dying to having to be the center of the universe and allowing Jesus to rule on the throne of our lives. Death to self brings life in Christ. The ultimate reference point in our lives becomes God. We live according to what he wants rather than what we want.

Living with Jesus on the throne of your life, where he lives for you and through you, brings about a restoration of your very soul. You can do what he wants rather than what you want. You can become the kind of person who lives in his Kingdom now as he desires you to live. As the words of the ancient psalm proclaim,

Psalm 23:3 (KJV)
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

The answer to the “What is the meaning of life?” question is…

What If You Don’t Want God?

August 1st, 2012

Self-worship affects every part of us. The final impact is on everything we are. The soul, that holds it all together, is in ruin. When we mistake ourselves for God, then God becomes meaningless or an enemy. We cannot want him. If we work against God in every part our being, we become the kind of people who cannot want God.

Jesus speaks about hell often. “Hell” is to be separated from the presence of God forever. When you have soul ruin, hell is the destination. It is not so much God sends people to hell. In many ways, hell becomes a choice. It is the logical destination for those who cannot want God. We are given the choice of being in relationship with God and if we choose to turn away, God honors that. He will never force himself on us.

Often people will speak of death-bed conversions where someone denies God all their life, and before they die, they repent and seek him. Is this authentic? That person may have been seeking all along and it just finally surfaced in the light of day, so, yes, I think it is possible.

Yet, probable? No, not likely. If life away from God is the life we are living, being with God is not an option that is within our realm of choice. God has an infinitely flexible will; we do not. No one “just misses out” of heaven. Life without God is a constant choice that keeps a person focused in a destructive direction. In the end, God is faithful to our choices.

To paraphrase a thought from C.S. Lewis, Instead of one who trusts saying, “Thy will be done,” God says to the person in soul ruin, “Thy will be done.”

“Spending so much emotional energy on those who don’t want God, results in less focus and energy reaching out to those who do.” Comment.

Living With Pleasure-Seeking Obsessions

July 31st, 2012

When we are turned from God, our bodies become the place where sin is lived out. The path of self-worship goes directly through what we look like and how we physically feel. We can see this obsession everywhere.

Look at any issue of a fitness magazine like Men’s Health or Shape. What do the models look like? Carved statues of the “ideal.” Abs and diet on every cover. People like myself who have a “one pack” are invited to know that life is transformed with a “six pack.” It’s never too early to start. Page through any issue of Seventeen and you may notice a slight obsession over looks?!

Then there is physical feeling. According to advertisers, I am invited to try any product with the understanding that I am going to be sexually satisfied as a result. Other than a touchy/ feely family love theme, every product out there is marketed on sex. God-given creativity and imagination seems to be stuck in the public arena on how many different ways I can make sex my god.

Pornography, alcohol, and drug abuse all are pure body ruin. We are bombarded with the message of feel good or don’t feel at all. Without a good spam blocker you will notice the two “V’s”, Viagra and Vicodin. They seem to be the solution to all my problems. Giving in to the search for pleasure is a direct result of heart and mind ruin. Social ruin follows because I don’t need you unless it means I can use you for pleasure. Even anger is not exempt from body ruin. Anger is lived out physically, as well. Getting a “rush” over rage.

So if heart, mind, body and social relationships are all on the path to ruin, what happens to me?

Notice sexual themes in all the media and advertising you come into contact with today.

Living With Unhealthy Relationships

July 26th, 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 respond in one of two ways.
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. In this way 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!)

Living With a Ruined Heart

July 17th, 2012

“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.

How do we deceive ourselves?

July 13th, 2012

Living With a Ruined Mind

When we choose not to deal with God, then our minds have to go to work. We need to find ways to convince ourselves that God doesn’t exist or God doesn’t matter.

We have worked on this in our country with some interesting mental gymnastics. In the public square, we attempt to follow a strict Darwinian evolution model, for example, and desperately hold on to natural selection and random mutation as the sole mechanisms for the development of life. However, this position is becoming more and more difficult to defend.

Origins of life research (“abiogenesis”) provides an impossible scenario for a strict view of Darwinian evolution to work. You see, in order for natural selection and random mutation to occur in the first place, you need something to select from; something to mutate. The apparent necessity of an outside agent of some kind getting the ball rolling is simply dismissed as something beyond the scope of discussion.

Those who do believe in God may also be tempted to follow viewpoints that may be more about themselves than about God’s desire, focusing on what they want, not what God wants.

One of the interesting attempts to cloud our thinking about God today is to is question the validity of God’s Word. When Bible scholars go out of their way to try to show the Bible doesn’t mean what it says it means, always look for a possible “conflict of interest,” from their lives.

The most common and controversial issue today where some contemporary Bible scholars attempt to undo a clear overall message from Scripture is supporting sexual fulfillment outside of a male/ female marriage. Whether the issue is same-sex sexuality or sexuality outside of marriage between men and women, they have taken a position contrary to traditional “sex between a man and woman within a marriage covenant.”

Scholars can choose to say the teachings of the Bible are out dated because the Bible falls strongly on the male/female marriage side, and indeed some scholars simply declare the Bible irrelevant to the matter in question. They say the Bible writers couldn’t comprehend an issue this complex.

The challenge of taking this position on the Bible in general is that it places a person outside of the scope of traditional Christianity. Christians claim God is the source of the Bible. God is certainly capable of knowing about situations we face in life today, having inspired Bible writers to address similar situations.

Once our choices turn us away from God, then our thinking goes to work. Deceiving ourselves in order to get what we want is not a difficult task. We are experts at it. Self-worship and deception are a great match.

What are some other issues upheld by traditional Christian morality that are being challenged today?

Self-Worship or Self-Denial: Our Choices

July 12th, 2012

Our heart is where our choices lie. We make good choices. We make disastrous choices. Why the difference? It really has to do with who we are and the paths we choose.

There are basically two paths. The first path is the one we start out on and most of us stay on. This is the “self-worship” path. Dallas calls this, “The path to radical ruin.”

Self-worship means we put ourselves and our desires on the throne of our lives. We are the center of the universe.

It is like when we are one year old and we can’t distinguish between ourselves and the world around us. In some ways, for most of us, this never changes. We grow older but we don’t grow up. Until Jesus is on the throne of our lives, radical ruin is the outcome waiting for us in any possible given situation. John Maxwell says it this way,

“Unless God is in control of your life; your life is out of control.”

Our human nature is to focus on ourselves and what we want. The mantra of a “normal” person is, “I want what I want when I want it.” Are there any alternatives? One.

The second path is that of “self-denial.” This doesn’t mean we deny who we are and the condition we are in, rather it means we choose not to give in to our normal desires, which are to seek pleasure and be in control. Self-denial or the “path to radical goodness,” is where we live for the sake of others.

This doesn’t demean us. This doesn’t turn us into doormats to be stepped on or taken advantage of. This enhances who we are and puts us on the path that God designs us for all along. When Jesus is on the throne of our lives, we are finally our best, true selves. How does this happen?

It has to do with the five parts of who we are again: Heart, mind, body, social life, and soul. We will look at the path to radical ruin and the path to radical goodness. We are invited to choose. This cannot be done for us, but under the influence of God’s grace, it is possible to choose goodness.

Think of times when you denied something that you wanted and it actually worked out better?