Musings: Notes From My Daybook

We usually think of sports heroes and Christian models in our culture as winners of World Series Championships and Super Bowls, but this well-written article suggests that we should look a little deeper into the world of sport.  Brett Favre the now retired quarterback of the Packers is the subject of the piece by Joseph Kip Kosek.  Read it here.

Reading in Phil Cousineau's The Art of Pilgrimage the counsel he offers out of Confucius and Zhang is wise--for pilgrimage and for life:

Practice the arts of attention and listening.

Practice renewing yourself everyday.

Practice meandering toward the center of every place.

Practice the ritual of reading sacred texts.

Practice gratitude and praise-singing.

Not a bad list for living! 

Gordon MacDonald has a thoughtful piece about Christian maturity posted here.  He quotes Martin Thornton:  "A walloping great congregation is fine and fun, but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre."

Indeed.

Yet most of the time we are more worried about bills, building and grounds, and the class party, than we are about discipleship.  Paul seemed to be quite interested in it. He says that the task to for "all of us to come to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (Eph 4.13).  But the question I ask is how?

How do I grow up?  (My wife has been asking that one for years!)

Maybe it has to do with diet and exercise?  Feeding and exercising the soul makes sense.  Of course, that might mean having to make some choices about how I spend my time and money and then I might have to make some sacrifices alonge the way.

Maturity, in part, is having lived and survived--arriving each day with a sense of hope and being a little light on our feet.  The old people I know that I believe to be most mature are people who can laugh and who can cry and who can encourage others.  They are people who have known suffering and have endured, allowing for some transformation to occur within.

Here is MacDonald's definition: "The marks of maturity? Self-sustaining in spiritual devotions. Wise in human relationships. Humble and serving. Comfortable and functional in the everyday world where people of faith can be in short supply. Substantial in conversation; prudent in acquisition; respectful in conflict; faithful in commitments."

Either way you slice it, maturity is less about being in church three times a week and more about being church seven days a week. 

So I guess I am asking myself what I am doing today that is shaping me to be more like Jesus?  And how am I engaging with the events that come my way today that reflects that I am being more like Jesus? 

To take another look at the way in which our language can limit our understanding of God’s activity and God’s call to discipleship, consider the way the word conversion is used.  Normally, we think of conversion as when a person gives up one set of beliefs or ideas for a new set of beliefs or ideas.  For example, “I used to believe that salmon was the best seafood ever, but ever since I tried mahi-mahi I converted.”  And when it comes to faith, it is not uncommon to think about a person having a conversion “experience.”  Some radical event has occurred that has brought about a change in what a person thinks.

So it often happens that persons connect “getting baptized” with the idea of conversion.  And not without reason, since baptism and conversion have a lot of connections.  But it is important for a healthy perspective about baptism to have a healthy perspective about conversion.  And to do that we might well begin with the practices of the early church.

A number of years ago, Michael Green wrote a wonderful book called Evangelism in the Early Church.   He notes three important dimensions to how the early church understand conversion—and why many pagan people would have been astonished at the really radical call that coming to be Christian actually is.

First, conversion requires belief—real belief.  That is to say, that a person believes so completely and thoroughly that she makes choices about her life based on the conviction that Jesus lives and that the Christian faith is actually the right way to live.  This was, for people of the ancient world, more than a little odd.  For first and second century pagans, you could worship any number of different gods and practice any number of rituals, but not really believe, much less act on the claims that those gods made.

Second, conversion requires a change in ethics.  Here again was a surprising move.  To become a Christian in the ancient world meant that your behavior changed.  You no longer sought after self-interests, but rather sought out the interests of others.  In today’s terms, to be in the Georgia Tech Booster’s Club does not require that you seek the well-being of the poor or extend hospitality to the stranger.  Nor do they ask whether you act with integrity in your business dealings.  However, becoming a Christian meant those things—and a whole lot more.

Third, and here comes the real rub, conversion requires accepting the exclusive claim that Jesus is Lord.  As Green writes: “Christians were expected to belong, body and soul, to Jesus, who was called their master. . . and was said to have redeemed them from alien ownership into his own.  Henceforward they were to acknowledge no other ‘Lord,’ be he emperor or pagan deity.  This all seemed very strange, for ancient religion was never exclusive.”   To belong exclusively, totally to one Lord and to the community of that one Lord made for a decidedly robust understanding of conversion.

Thus, with these three dimensions of conversion in front of us—belief that realigns life, an ethic that demands a new set of behaviors, and an exclusive belonging—we need to ask how conversion should be construed.  Is conversion something that can happen in a moment?  Or, is it possible, even in the many examples in the New Testament, that conversion is a process that engages a person’s intellect, emotion, experience, and very soul?

Genuine leather.  Those two words, stamped in gold, were on the inside lip of the wallet.  I found it to be an interesting juxtaposition.  Genuine and leather.  I guess the manufacturer wanted to leave no doubt that this was real leather.  However, it seems to me that leather is leather and vinyl is vinyl.  To have to say that it is genuine makes me think that there is something else going on.

I do understand the phrase “imitation leather” and I avoid it like the plague! (I think it has to do with a pair of shoes that bore such a label when I was in high school!) Of course, the term is used because sellers don’t want the buyer thinking “vinyl” or “plastic” or some other synthetic material.  Both buyer and seller want to sell or buy something that is the real thing.  And, if the real thing is not affordable or available, or if the seller does not have the real thing to sell, then the desire is to at least come close to the real thing!

Speaking of real things, I think we all want the real thing when it comes to faith.  We want to believe, to trust, and to act faithfully.  But sometimes the real thing is a little too costly to our way of thinking.  Or, sometimes, it can be a little too easy to slip into the mode of thinking that the way of faith can be reduced to a label.

Reductionism is not a viable option for the Christian life.  Francois Fenelon (d. 1715) said, “There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow, with a generous self-abandonment, everything which He requires.”  That is what (real) faith looks like.

Real or imitation, paper or plastic, window or aisle—we live with a lot of choices in our world.  But you and I know, down in our heart of hearts, that there is no substitute for a good leather shoe, or wallet, or purse.  And when it comes to the practice of faith, well, vinyl just does not wear well at all.