A "Cutting-Edge" Church Trend?

A couple of months ago, I had to do a bit of traveling. As I was driving through several small towns, I stopped from time to time to take pictures of things that caught my interest. This picture was especially arresting. It seems that there is a church whose pastor is trying something radical, and who in doing so is breaking away from the rest of the pack.

This pastor is preaching a sermon series, yet his sources are not taken from the usual suspects. No series on books like Wild at Heart, The Shack, The Purpose-Driven Life, The Power of a Man, or Joyce Meyer's Never Give Up. Instead, this guy has chosen to preach on a relatively obscure book titled, The Gospel of Mark. Who ever heard of doing something like that?!

I've come to expect that when I visit a modern garden-variety evangelical church, I'll have to sit through cheesy music from a pop-music “praise band,” followed by a sappy, emotive sermon full of cute “heartwarming” stories centering on sports or lost pets. I wonder if that's what this guy did. I sort of doubt it – having gotten my hands on a copy of the Gospel of Mark, I have concluded that it doesn't really lend itself to that kind of sermonizing. Anyway, I guess I'll never know how this guy's sermon series went, as I had miles to go to reach my destination, and I couldn't stop. Maybe this “Gospel of Mark” thing will catch on in evangelical churches. There seem to be a lot of good books where the Gospel of Mark came from – books with titles like Matthew, Genesis, Luke, Isaiah, and so on.

Splintery Eyes

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but don't consider the beam that is in your own eye? Or how will you tell your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye;' and behold, the beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.

Matthew 7:3-5, World English Bible (a public domain translation.)

This passage came to my mind out of the blue recently. I had been thinking about how dismally Religious Right figures like James Dobson had failed to evangelize or even influence the culture around them, and this passage came up. It talks about how a Christian should approach correcting another Christian, but I think it also applies to how a Christian should approach witnessing to the world. Our problem in America has been that we've been running around trying to do eye surgery on others without checking our own vision first.

What rafters, beams, timbers and other large wooden objects might we have to remove from our own eyes? Many of our “splinters” can be characterized by a love of money, a greedy materialism, and the dishonesty that tries to twist Scripture in order to justify our greed. The world sees through this, and often cites this greed as a reason for not believing the message of Christianity. This is seen especially in those who view the Christian witness as simply another tool of American empire-building. Getting rid of our splinters might mean facing the real reasons for our “prosperity,” as well as renouncing the supposed right to excessive consumption. It might mean the divorce of Christianity from patriotism in this country. Then we would see clearly to remove the specks from the eyes of others, and they might actually begin to trust us.

Ah, but for every time I point a finger at the Religious Right, there are three fingers pointing back at me. For I have also been reading the Gospel of Luke recently. A few weeks ago I was reading Luke 3, where John the Baptist is calling his audience the offspring of vipers and telling them to “bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” When they asked him what they should do to demonstrate their repentance, he gave them an answer that focused mainly on how they treated money and possessions. One big point was that those who have any surplus should share with those who have none. I have a few things – not a huge stash, but there are a few surplus items. Yet I find that I myself don't always share well.

Anger Management On Two Wheels

A fellow blogger recently described having to battle personal anger earlier this year. This blogger was brutally honest about the battle, and about how their initial angry outburst did not help the cause they were championing, but hurt instead. The blogger also honestly described the process of working through the roots of the anger in order to formulate better responses to it in the future.

Now one thing I've discovered over the years is that when people reveal a bit of themselves in public, their audience often contains quiet people listening with expressionless faces that seem to say, “Your problem is very interesting. But as you can see, I haven't confessed to any such problem; therefore, you must be an unusual case!” If the confessors could only see into the lives of many of their silent hearers, they would know instantly that they are neither unusual or alone.

Anyway, here's my bit of confession for the week. I am an evangelical Christian who believes that many in the American evangelical camp no longer represent Christ, because they are no longer willing to model His otherworldliness, kindness, charity, and freedom from materialism. In my blogging, I've been trying to paint a different portrait of the Faith than that normally seen from the Religious Right. I realize that the work of painting such a portrait extends far beyond blogging, and encompasses all of daily life.

But there is (at least!) one area in which I fall down on the job, and that's as a bicycle commuter. Anyone who reads my other blog, The Well Run Dry, knows what I think about Peak Oil and global warming, and how these are the main reasons why I commute by bike as much as possible. What people may not know (unless they also commute by bike) is how much of a life-threatening struggle it can be at times, because of impatient drivers. The driving culture in America has become ever more “driven” over the years, due to TV ads for ever larger, faster and more powerful cars, SUV's and trucks, as well as ever more lax enforcement of traffic laws. Drivers who get stuck in traffic on main arterials are increasingly barreling through adjacent residential neighborhoods, endangering kids, pedestrians and bicyclists. Residents in these neighborhoods are buying more and more cautionary signs saying things like, “SLOW – KIDS PLAYING,” or are spray-painting words like “SLOW – CHILDREN” on the asphalt of their streets. All these things are a plea to motorists to give up their murderous hurrying impatience, because people don't want a motorist to kill them or their children.

As for me, my response has been somewhat stronger, especially lately. I'm tired of being buzzed by people who can't abide a delay of even a few seconds, and in fact, I've allowed myself to be provoked to real anger. Sometimes I've expressed this anger in a way that I thought humorous (although I'm not sure the drivers I targeted saw the humor) – for instance, when I've been buzzed or threatened by a motorist in passing and have managed to catch up to that motorist at a light, I've been known to sing, “TEN DOLLARS A GALLON! TEN DOLLARS A GALLON! ONE DAY, YOU'LL HAVE TO PAY – TEN DOLLARS A GALLON!” at the top of my lungs.

Other times, the response hasn't been so humorous. I've allowed myself to react with words I haven't used since I was in the Army. I've fantasized about settling a few disputes by physical means. The thing that got me to stop and look at this whole process of anger was an incident that happened last week. That Monday I had passed an accident scene where it seems that a car had cut in front of a bicyclist going downhill, causing the bike to crash into the car and sending the rider onto the pavement. The ambulance and several police cars were there by the time I passed. That provoked a sullen, smouldering anger that stayed with me the whole day, just under the surface.

The next day as I was riding home from work, I got to a two-lane street in a business district. The part I was on was rather narrow, but there was a stop sign about fifty yards ahead, with a much wider stretch of road on the other side of the sign. As I was riding, an SUV turned onto the street and started closing in behind me. I sped up to about 15 miles per hour in order to get quickly to the wider stretch of road beyond the stop sign. But the lady driving the SUV was in a bit of a hurry, and sped up to pass me on the left – just as I got to the stop sign!

We both had to stop, as there was moving traffic on the cross street. This gave me time to shout, “So! A delay of three seconds is enough to make you kill someone?! You selfish, impatient car driver!”

The lady – a middle-aged woman – responded by blowing me a kiss. At that I got even angrier, and as we both rolled through the stop sign I followed her to a shop, where she got out of her car. I stopped and shouted the same complaint to her, and she responded by saying that she had given me plenty of room when she passed. In her response she was not nearly as loud as I was. In fact, she was a model of reasonableness. She explained the kiss as a means of wishing me well and that she was not trying to be hostile.

Truly, “a soft answer turns away wrath,” as the Good Book says. I sort of wilted. “All right,” I said. “You're being reasonable, so I will be reasonable.” But I did give her a (very) condensed version of the story of Peak Oil and climate change, and told her that stupid idealists like me were riding our bikes as a way of reducing our exposure on one hand and our culpability on the other hand. In return, all we were asking was to be allowed to stay alive. She received that statement sympathetically, although she told me that she had different beliefs about climate change. Then she stuck her hand out and wished me a good evening. I sheepishly shook her hand and rode off.

I still think the lady could have waited until we were both on the wider part of the street before she passed. But it occurs to me that I can't be a very good expression of Christ if I get a reputation for yelling at motorists. Those of you who are of the Faith, please pray for me.