Coming up in the next edition of Neozine:

Christian teachers specifically targeted

It’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in most education systems today, but it’s not published or openly discussed. Teachers across the nation are confused and often afraid of losing their jobs if they mention their Christian faith.

More interesting, only Christian teachers are getting censored and losing their jobs, not atheists or any other faith. Yet the U.S. Constitution prohibits any such censorship or restriction of religious freedoms. Darlene McCallum provides a thought-provoking article on the biblical Christian response.

The sexual revolution didnt know about the new scientific research

In the next NeoZine:

We all knew God created a wild-and-crazy way to have fun, called “Sex”. We also know it creates an incredibly-intimate and emotional bind between people.

What we didn’t know until recently is the scientific research that explains why our sexuality so profoundly influences our ability to love, as Joel Hughes explains.

That’s not what Jesus brought us; what he started was a riot! Actually, it was a Revolution of Joy!

It's actually a living, breathing, moving Revolution!

Ready or not, it’s moving, big-time, the Lord says:

He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention…that is, the summing-up of all things. Ephesians 1:9

We call it “Church” with a big yawn. God calls it “the mystery of His will” because it’s such a marvelous plan, nobody can imitate it or figure it out–unless He explains it, of course. And He did–Jesus laid out Blueprints for Revolution.

There’s a big difference between our opinion and God’s about the Blueprints. We get terribly preoccupied with our own blueprints. Who longs for Revolution?

That’s because Church is so institutionalized, sterilized and trivialized, there’s no “mystery of His will” to be found: it’s pre-planned in committees and boardrooms, like the rest of Corporate America.

And what about discovering “His kind intention” in Church? Don’t most people find this in Church:

• Rules, restrictions, and polite-stiffness?
• Where nobody knows how crazy I really am? (And who dares tell the truth?)
• The place for guilt, maybe depression, but mostly boredom?

Visit...and you'll find something like this...

Perhaps it isn’t always that way, but let’s agree on this: Church isn’t the best place to bring your friends. If 98% of all Christians attending Church never bring a non-Christian, as research says, then people aren’t bragging much about Church. There’s not much to brag about.

Riverfront Festivals

'Make Love, Not War' came straight from God's book...why not show it off?

It only means God looks at something altogether different than Church. In fact, God doesn’t even call it “Church” — the word doesn’t even make sense!

He calls it “the Assembly” in the Bible, like when people gather in a town square on summer evenings to talk, eat, applaud some speeches, and say, “Hear! Hear!” Towns used to come out and hear some cool speeches, like during the Lincoln-Douglass debates…(now we just watch it on TV, which ain’t so great, so people don’t gather informally anymore).

But we can see the same idea at Riverfront Festivals in some places today: informal, easy, friendly, cool, often entertaining.  Townspeople always did this in history, and the early Christians merely borrowed a common word that everyone used for a “Town Gathering” — ekklesia, the Romans and Greeks called it.  Certainly nobody ever once called it “Church” — never. Until the Dark Ages.

And that’s where Church comes from: the Dark Ages. Literally. And nobody dares change it or they get labeled as a “cult” or something worse. If Christians start enjoying their time together, “There’s something wrong with that group,” people whisper.

Fortunately God’s not so uptight about it. He loves “the Assembly” because it’s alive, unlike fat, Corporate America.  When Google and Microsoft put bean-bags in bright-colored rooms, their buildings are still cold icebergs compared to God’s ekklesia.

God’s got a marvelous plan. The Ekklesia is where:

• the “summing-up of all things” is underway.
• He pours out “the surpassing greatness of His power toward us” (Eph. 1:19).
• Jesus is “head over all things for the benefit of the ekklesia” (Eph. 1:23).

Beat that, Google!

In our blockbuster summer issue, the NeoZine will surveys the gap between our idea of Church and the mysterious Ekklesia of God.

It’s sure to generate some heat this summer!

Church-Memories

No, it’s not the Matrix reloaded — it’s a brief video about our recent visit to The Meeting House.

M. Walker triggers alarms crossing the border--was it the shirt?

It was a memorable trip, by all accounts: The Meeting House in Toronto is one of the few Christian movements in North America where revolutionary Christians can feel at-home. (Even teenage revolutionaries!) Ten representatives of The Crossroads Project (the CBS) piled into two vans and crossed international borders (where a certain M. Walker showed up as a wanted man on Homeland Security computers–but a different M. Walker, and “you wouldn’t want to be that guy,” the guard said).

The CBS invaded the third meeting at 12 noon Sunday, entering a world of loud techno-music and waves of people coming and going. CBS visitors quickly swarmed the store to buy revolutionary paraphernalia, like T-shirts and books.

The flagship of Christian Revolution at the Meeting House was Bruxy Cavey’s book, The End of Religion. The book was first discussed in Andy Doman’s 2007 NeoZine article about the Meeting House before its publication, and some were dismayed with its close ties to Emergent Village evangelists like Brian McLaren. The Canadians were befuddled over the controversy, since Canadian Christians were backwoods-outsiders to the spiritual currents running in America, they said (quoting loosely).¹  But the Christian Canooks we met were actually far-advanced over their Christian American cousins as innovators of Christian Revolution.

For example, regarding “Sacred Space”, Cavey writes:

[The Early Church] believed that the Spirit of God dwelled within this relational temple, the sanctuary-as-community, and their entire lives were alters upon which to offer sacrificial love to God and others…There is no holier ground than the space between you and me as we connect in honest, vulnerable, forgiving relationships. p.139

A great book for the Ecclessiology Seminar book review--click to read more.

So much of his book is a delightful reinforcement of The Revolution we describe at RevolutionaryJoy.org. He discusses “subversive symbols” and he calls “family values” simply “tribalism” (as we would!) because God never created the family to be as isolated as Christians sometimes make them.  He devotes a chapter to “Breaking the Rules,” because Jesus by nature is “the scandal” who threw the Jerusalem Temple into chaos. Jesus was striking at the “temple mentality” that says we have to go to God, rather than having God come to us.

Loving Revolutionaries

We met with both Tim Day, the Senior Pastor, and Bruxy Cavey, the prominent teacher at the Meeting House, and both men impressed us with their loving kindness. Bruxy, for example, allowed 10 CBS rowdies to invade a quiet luncheon with his family, parents, and guests from Messiah College (the college of their denomination). He was exhausted after preaching three times, but he left half of his steak meal unfinished in order to talk with us and answer questions! Tim was equally hard-pressed to run the Meeting House, but still took the time to sit down and talk with us.

A good brother

But kindness doesn’t negate their hard-driving revolutionary edge (unlike the rather soft “revolution of dance” from the Emergent Village). These people are driven to penetrate Canada’s dark, spiritual desert with a Revolution, and they’re winning! Although less than 5% of Canadians attend Christian groups, the Meeting House is flourishing with almost 6,000 weekly attendees, and 40% of which is convert-growth, according to their latest research. If true, this places The Meeting House far-ahead of any other church in North America for convert-growth, according to Columbus, Xenos research.²

Their balance as tough-but-loving revolutionaries is due to their close devotion to Jesus Christ, Bruxy said. The Meeting House is part of the Brethren In Christ denomination, which came from the River Brethren denomination, which came from the Mennonites, which came from the Anabaptists who rebelled against the tyranny of Calvin’s Reformed movement back in the 1600s. So their long history is aversive towards Church Institutions, and they promote Christianity as a community of believers, much like Xenos. This alone makes The Meeting House a delightful and refreshing alternative to Church Institutions like “The City Within the City” champioined at Mars Hill.

But even more appealing is the way Bruxy & Co. employ sophisticated revolutionary tactics instead of the crude warfare popular among U.S. Christians. Much like someone spreading revolution through persuasion, Bruxy kindly smiles while dismantling the folly of the opposition: “Listen friend, I love you, and by the way, you’re wrong,” is Bruxy’s approach.

1. Canadians often view themselves as passive, rather fun-loving observers, according to this Web site.
2. According to Columbus research, the 25% convert-growth at Willow Creek is one of the highest found so far, outside of Xenos. Columbus is seeing about 60% convert-growth, and NeoXenos is seeing almost 80% convert-growth.

FRONTLINE Report

Internet Cafes are everywhere

They’re apparently far-ahead of the American digital lifestyle. This report explains the effects on kids growing up in the digital age. Some interesting facts:

• South Korea has over 20,000 Internet cafes called “PC Bangs”.
• Roughly 50 percent of South Koreans play games regularly, and 75 percent of gamers prefer online games.
• 43 percent of Koreans maintain a blog.
• 20 million people belong to Cyworld, an online “parallel universe”

See the FRONTLINE Report.

A FRONTLINE Report from PBS.ORG

Jesus is an ass - a pagan portrayal of the crucifixion

A useful resource for studying the background of Christianity: although they only use liberal theologians, there is some scholarship intermixed with the speculation and hand-waving generalizations. It’s a worthy study from a secular perspective.

See the beginning of Christian persecution - a video about Pliny the Younger.

A Map of the Communities
which Paul founded in the Mediterranean basin.

Women In Ancient Christianity: The New Discoveries
Scholar Karen King examines the evidence concerning women’s important place in early Christianity. She draws a surprising new portrait of Mary Magdalene and outlines the stories of previously unknown early Christian women.

Jewish Scriptures
In his teaching, Jesus often quoted the Jewish Scriptures; after his death, his followers turned to them for clues to the meaning of his life and message. Biblical scholar Mark Hamilton discusses the history of these ancient texts and their significance for early Christians and their Jewish contemporaries.

Audio Excerpt from the Documentary
On the archaeological findings at the ruins of Corinth and what they reveal about who the early Christians were, and how they worshipped.

Constantine saw a cross

Let’s do something simpler: Revolution.

Revolution is what JC invented.

But we’re stuck in Culture Shock.

Revolution is scary --Life Magazine 1969

Revolution impacts more people more quickly more profoundly than any other social change. That’s why Revolution scares people.

But the Jesus Revolution isn’t scary. His Revolution strikes like lightening and sweeps across continents because people love it!

Wonder if Christianity could sweep across America and transform millions of lives and take center-stage and capture the attention and hearts of people everywhere?

Wonder if all this could change in five or six years?

Wonder if Christianity became so popular, your friends kept asking to hear more about it when they discover you’re a Christian?

Wonder if Christianity became so hot that when people convert, all their friends and family join because they too wanted to become Christians?

Wonder if you were at a bar with a few friends and your conversation sounded like this:

You: “I became a Christian last night,”

Friend: “I was just thinking about that myself…”

Another Friend: “What’s it like? I’ve always wondered about it…”

It used to be that way, once. Christians were:

…praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. Acts 2:47 (NASB)

…all the people had high regard for them. Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women. Acts 5:13-14 (NLT)

One of the great themes in Acts is the Revolutionary Joy of the early Christians, because victory creates joy.¹ In China they see this today —when 100 million Chinese abandon atheism, defy the government and turn to Christianity, it can only happen if people are having tremendously-exciting conversations about Christianity.

Christian Revolution is not scary: it’s contagious. Christians should be the proud owners of the world’s first, most-successful and longest-lasting Revolution.

Revolution never begins so contagiously, this is true. Until something clicks, it doesn’t lickety-split, and it’s a struggle. Just because it starts slow doesn’t make it a pipe-dream. The most unlikely people start Revolutions in the most unlikely places because Revolution is so very likely in the Kosmos: vast populations of utterly-bored, restless people feel enslaved and resent living like machines. They would love to fight for a cause.

It Happened 100 Yards Away!

Killed 100 yards away from Bowman Hall, our meeting place.

Revolution changed the face of America in less than a decade not long ago.

Today is the anniversary of the student killings at Kent State. It happened at “the Grassy Knoll”, about 100 yards from where NeoXenos meets for Bible Study. Buildings were in flames because students were outraged that nobody would listen. The Ohio National Guard tried to crush student unrest with firepower, so they fired on a crowd of students.

When the smoke cleared, everything changed. Four students were dead, another eight seriously wounded, and the “massacre” as some called it became a pivotal turning-point in modern American history. The killings galvanized students across the country, and riots spread everywhere: a revolution was launched, and the incident became a symbol of tyranny that radicals rallied around.

“When it gets down to it, soldiers are cutting us down!” they sang: “It should’ve been done long ago!” The Revolutionaries were defiant and sassy.

Students who were merely onlookers were “born again” into agitators, speakers, financiers, writers, pamphlet-peddlers, and organizers migrating from one college campus to another. They lived in communes and were dedicated to “the cause” – not merely to end the VietNam War, but to redefine American culture. Morality was too black-and-white, they said, schools were too compliant, sex was too restricted, and Christianity was the reason; even worse, it was their parent’s religion.

In less than a decade, America was a different place.

Smashing Failures

Meanwhile, Church Institutions waged a war instead of leading a Revolution. Formidable Christian leaders, led by Francis Schaeffer in the 1970s, advocated political action as a way to turn America back to Christianity.² The Moral Majority, CBN and countless other organizations believed America should be Christianized through political action. They wielded formidable political power and are largely credited for establishing the Reagan era in the 1980s. Their intentions and causes are noble and worthy, but they soon became synonyms for “Christianity”, and this is where they turned away from Christianity: because Christianity is the Body of Christ, not a political machine.

Jesus never launched a spiritual war; he launched Revolution.³

Wars achieve only primitive and deceptive victories. An invading army can seize power overnight, like the Germans did with Blitzkrieg in WWII, but seizing power does not win the hearts of people. “Victorious” Nazis were stuck with the headache of managing a system of slavery in their conquered territories while millions of slaves grew disgruntled, restless and eager to undermine the Nazis. With each victory, the Nazis grew weaker because their resources were stretched more thin while resentful slaves kept increasing.

This is war: brute strength smashing all opposition. War destroys. It has been a smashing failure tor Christianity.

Christian “Culture Wars” are fought with the brute-strength tactics of war.  National rallies gathered Christian armies, billions of dollars, launched big ad campaigns and built political machinery. Lobbyists moved to Washington, leading a vast army of Church Institutions swearing to “take back the country!”

But Church Institutions were never close to “winning” America.

While Christians waged a war for political control, they grew more unpopular. The Christian agenda dominated the political landscape, but too many people never wanted to pray in schools or act like Christians.

Satan will never allow Christians to “take over” his systems, and more important, God is not interested in taking over the Kosmos. For a little while it seemed Christians were going to win, but only because they were better-organized and better-financed than their opponents, at first.

But the victories were deceptive: Culture Wars never created Christians. A spiritual desert was beginning to grow.

Trench Warfare

Christians are tough people with exactly the right character to make the best revolutionaries: sacrificial, able to suffer, bribery-resistant, charismatic and warm, sharp thinkers, and very committed. Saturated throughout is Revolutionary Joy.

But when Christians stopped spreading The Revolution and started digging trenches to save  Church Institutions, they marginalized themselves.

A generation of Christians was badly shaken by the  Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, and Christians got scared for good reason. Today it’s difficult to appreciate how terrifying the “counter culture” was for Christians long-accustomed to their Church Institutions back then.

Bear with me, and consider this fact: the Cultural Revolution struck with lightening speed and transpired within 5 or 6 years, leaving an indelible mark on Church Institutions today.  Known as the “counterculture”, it erupted in 1967 in San Francisco in the famous “Summer of Love”.

New year’s eve, San Francisco. Country Joe and the Fish play the final set at the Avalon Ballroom, ushering in 1967. That same night, Big Brother and the Holding Company, fronted by Janis Joplin, perform nearby in Golden Gate Park. Two weeks later, 20,000 people pack the park for the first Human Be-In - a foretaste of the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury. Timothy Leary, in a phrase of his own invention, tells the assembled tribe to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”‘ The Age of Aquarius is dawning in 1967…The year brought important breakthroughs in what historian Theodore Roszak later described as “the making of a counter culture.” – Rolling Stone Magazine.

Don’t ask me what a “Be-In” is. My older brothers were all about it though; I remember Bruce wearing a burlap potato-sack as a shirt (yes, it would itch!), so I never could relate with the more fruity aspects of the counterculture. (I must confess I loved “The Age of Aquarius” song even if it was fruity.)

The Rolling Stone historian gives a good picture of this time:

We should remember 1967 not as the time the nation turned on and tuned in but as the moment the United States began hurtling toward a nervous breakdown, driven by conflict that would change the country and the world forever. It was the beginning of an era of intense polarization - one in which, arguably, we are still living. – Rolling Stone

Then it all went to hell: riots erupted everywhere, led by “freaks and hairies, dikes and fairies” advocating free sex, gay sex, group sex and a complete rejection of morality. (What is morality if not just someone’s imagination?)

Everyone hated the WWII generation, and the old folks reacted in-kind. Communists already infiltrated the government, they said, but now “Reds” were leading the student organizations that burned ROTC buildings and American flags.  The institutions of “higher learning” became hotbeds of Communist revolution, they said, and liberal professors like Timothy Leary were teaching the kids to renounce all morals. The WWII generation resented being ostracized when they should have been honored for preserving American freedoms.

Then drugs suddenly poured into the streets (from Communists, they supposed), and suddenly their children were sucked into a seamy underworld of crime and drug trafficking. My older brother Dennis was busted growing a field of marijuana, and it made top-headlines in Columbus, Ohio in 1968: “Hippies Have Invaded Columbus!”

Then the music went bonkers! The doo-whop-bee-bop happy groups and church choirs were drowned out by treasonous music, like “Sympathy for the Devil”. The musicians ridiculed Jesus Christ, and John Lenin claimed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus (read: “greater-than-Jesus”). Subliminal messages were planted in the music (play “Revolution” backwards, and something’s there). Heroes of the counterculture like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and others were dying like flies from drug overdose, but the kids still worshipped drug songs like “Purple Haze” and “Sister Morphine.”

It was also the heyday of Liberal Protestantism which swallowed whole denominations across America, creating great rifts among Church Institutions and seminaries.

But the idealistic part of the counterculture was fading away when I entered High School in 1970, so it was mostly about the drugs and music and anti-war protests.  Be-Ins were replaced by “Smoke-Ins” (which made more sense to me). The Midwest wasn’t inundated with the drugs until I entered high school, and by 1975 the VietNam ware was gone and the entire revolution was quickly fading away. Fortunately, I was only affected by the counterculture during the most vulnerable and formative years of my life.

One thing we do know about Church Institutions: they create traditions. And history proves Church traditions change with great difficulty, if ever. A tradition of antagonism and alienation between Church Institutions and the counterculture (i.e., Post-Christian America) was firmly established.

Make Love, Not War!

The point to this history lesson is to explain why Church Institutions are so alienated from the culture. Their monopoly on cultural norms was decisively severed by 1975, and America entered the Post-Christian era.⁴ Church Institutions are still entrenched and perpetually warring against non-Christian behaviors: handicapped by the shock of Culture Shock.

The “war effort” simply doesn’t work under God’s authority. Christians only lost more ground when they escalated things with gobs of money and banded together to “take back” American politics.

Here’s a radical idea: let’s reach more people for Jesus Christ and see if that helps. Let’s get so excited about The Revolution that we start throwing everything at it, like the students did with the counterculture, and revolution changed everything in less than a decade. Why be reserved about the Risen Christ? Is there any reason to think he didn’t give us The Revolution?

Let’s abandon Trench Warfare and get past our Culture Shock.  Americans won’t respond to threats or political ploys from Church Institutions any more. It’s impossible to hide from the Post-Christian culture: it follows us into our living rooms. The most effective way to deal with it is through Revolution.

But Americans love Revolution!

Christians grew timid about their Revolutionary heritage because Christians are the good people who don’t cause problems. Revolutionaries are those bad people like Communists, Hippies and Yippies.

Why let The Revolution get hijacked and redefined by other groups? Christians once had the initiative in the arena of Revolution.

Won’t you join us? Help spread the word about The Revolution. That’s all it takes.

When counterculture revolutionaries attacked Church Institutions it made sense: they saw Church Institutions as another industry like GM or Ford, and they hated “The System” in all its greedy forms, especially Church. The image continues still today: polls show that most people are suspicious of Christianity because it’s all about the money, it seems.

Christianity shares far more in-common with the revolutionaries of the 60s than with Capitalists of Wall Street. It’s time to quit building Church Institutions and build The Revolution instead. When this happens, eyes light up and people get interested again. Christianity doesn’t seem so passe.

They once said, “Make love, not war!” It’s a good slogan (for a number of reasons), and Christians should use it, because that’s what The Revolution is all about: revolutionaries who really care about the plight of non-Christians.

Leave us a comment!

1. One of the subthemes of Acts is joy, because a victorious church is a joyful one. This is seen in verses 46-47 and numerous other times (5:41; 8:8, 39; 11:23; 12:14; 13:48, 52; 14:17; 15:3, 31; 16:34; 21:17). In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty.
2. It could be argued that Rev. Martin Luther King actually started the trend, but Rev. King did not try to “Christianize” America.
3. Although Jesus used military language like “I came with a sword to divide…” he was also clear it was an metaphorical “sword of division” among family members. This happens when a family member becomes a revolutionary: it happened during the counterculture revolution in my own family, between the parents and first three boys.
4. It’s highly debatable Christian Institutions ever monopolized anything in America; the institutions themselves are too diverse and disunified. Catholics and Liberal Protestants traditionally supported Democrats, while Conservative Protestants typically supported Republicans. But there was a “Christian concensus”, which is best defined broadly as an agreement that Christian principles were good and nobel; the Christian concensus was much-despised by the counterculture movement.

When Brian left the old man’s office, he remembered only two words: “Laid off…”

Long nights studying, meals skipped, evenings stolen: they owned him! He even moved his young family across the country. They promised him the “Fast Track.”

“…Clear your cubical…” the old man said somewhere in the conversation.

What happened just now?

He glided into his cubical and plopped-down: he was more alone than he ever knew before. He hoped nobody would try to talk with him.

Oh fool, his mind whispered, fool…The company would take care of them, he promised his wife.

How could he tell her?

It's confusing at first, but it's quite simple: you're a number on someone's spreadsheet.

The Life-Trap

How would you feel if someone stole $80,000 from you–and it was all borrowed money? It happened to Brian. It’s happening now, today, to hundreds of thousands across America. It will keep happening too: it’s set up that way.

The abuse of students by financial institutions is so widespread, Congress had to pass the Student Loan Sunshine Act to curtail it:

The controversy centers on the cozy relationships between private lenders and school officials, whereby colleges steer new students to preferred lenders who then reward the compliant staff with gifts and other compensation. For example, in 2005 JP Morgan apparently paid $70,000 for a harbor cruise in New York City for over 200 financial aid officers. R.P. Murphey

Didn't expect 30-years in prison.

But the Sunshine Act is far from informing students of what awaits them in college. It is a cold, well-oiled machine. It’s called the Education System, and it is a system without a heart. It is designed by nameless education engineers tucked away in some building in Washington. They mean well, but ask Brian and countless thousands–millions?–of kids who charged into deep college loans and see what they say.

Brian was railroaded like many high school students are today. They said he was “gifted” and flattered him with visions of monumental success, if only he would sign a lifelong contract for massive school loans. He followed all the rules. He earned his degree, he did what he was told.

But they said little about the cold and heartless money machine that grinds people’s hopes into bankruptcy. Capitalism doesn’t care about people. Capitalism cares about business systems, not the people working in the system.

When money gets tight, a spreadsheet somewhere triggers business systems to start spitting people out on the street. Apologies are useless and often nobody bothers.

Radio Shack laid off 5,000 workers by email. The instructions told them to clean out their desks by the end of the day:

“The work force reduction notification is currently in progress,” the notice stated. “Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.” [format type=cite]NY Times[/format]

Who do you talk to when it’s just bulk email? Who looks you in the eye while your livelihood is terminated? More businesses would follow Radio Shack’s lead if they could get away with it. When the news went public, Radio Shack shares increased!

At any price the business system must survive, but people are disposable. It works that way.

Nobody told Brian about this beast called “The System”. Maybe he heard rumors, but a young kid in high school doesn’t know what to think about such rumors. Mostly Brian just trusted his teachers, and they all pushed him into it.

Broken promises

In 2005 Congress passed a bill making it impossible for students to declare bankruptcy and find relief from crushing student loans. The loans are so easy to get, young kids easily amass $100,000 or more in debts before graduation, and the colleges eat it up. Promises are made by nameless bureaucrats, and the kids don’t realize the bureaucrat was a nobody. They don’t realize the college needs the money, and they need recruits, and promises are meaningless.

That’s the education system.

The Bible calls it the Kosmos, and it’s a dead and dying place. It’s the last place that deserves any Christian’s allegiance:

The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17

In this series we’ll investigate what the Bible says about living in such a place, and what Christians can do about it.

[youtube width="300" height="250"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhQcrr9T3Z4[/youtube]

But it isn’t an isolated message–God often declares He is loving and and kind throughout the Bible, and He campaigns against smothering religion which enslaves so many people. Listen to the teaching podcast

Backtrack to Colossians 1, where God declares a Revolution:

“He rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son.”

Now watch God’s genius unfold in a blueprint for raising more revolutionaries:

We have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience;  Colossians 1:9-11 (NASB)

What a breathtaking picture of spiritual power Paul describes! What a marvelous transformation from prisoner to inheritor, from a dark kingdom to one bathed in God’s light. Despite the broad scope of Revolutionary Change, the blueprint in Colossians 1 is so simple and practical, anyone can start a Revolution anywhere–without a budget!

Modern Copies

Revolution is a modern phenomena for the Kosmos, only about 150 years old. People may not realize it began with the American Revolution, and this is why Lincoln in the Gettysburg address said America was an experiment watched by the rest of the world. Then came the French Revolution, the Communist revolutions and many others, all massive, social upheavals, all very bloody and destructive.

Satan’s kingdom works this way: since it is a system, everyone must bow to the new boss, together. Did you know both Nazis and Communists won their revolutions as small majorities? People were never given a chance to decide.

When systems fall, it’s violent, and here is the weakness of the Kosmos: it’s a cold place where people don’t matter, where only systems matter, so Kosmos-revolutions merely replace one system with another. The Who sang about it decades ago: “Out with the old boss, and in with the new!”

This is why revolution in the Kosmos really isn’t revolution at all: changes occur, but the elite still dominate a vast population of slaves. The elite, in turn, are dominated by a greater evil, and it’s this pervasive, evil power that robs people of any purpose or dignity in their existence. “All we are is dust in the wind,” one song said, and it’s true in the Kosmos. Why would anyone profess allegiance to this realm brutality? The 1917 Communist Revolution depicts this chain-reaction of brutality. The Mensheveks were betrayed by the Bolsheveks, Trotsky was betray by Lenin, and everyone who came close to Stalin was betrayed. Amazingly, each new betrayal was a “surprise” to the victim.

The Critical Mass of Revolution

Jesus did  it different. He was truly the first to launch the concept of Revolution which others tried to copy, and it’s an ingenious approach. War is conquest by overwhelming power, but Revolution is the quest for liberty. That’s why it spreads so fast, without bullets. Before Jesus, nobody ever tried Revolution. Conquerors and Emporers cared little for what the general populace wanted, and kingdoms always expanded through sheer power.¹

Jesus was not interested in conquering the sick and dysfunctional Kosmos; he turned down the offer to have “all the kingdoms of the earth”, and he fled every attempt to put a crown on his head because he wasn’t interested in becoming “the new boss”.² Jesus came to set people free, not dominate.

The Jesus Revolution really begins on the inside, in the heart, where the Holy Spirit enters with new, spiritual life. The Revolution works its way outward, upheaval erupting into upheaval, leaping from one person to another. Systems aren’t changed; they’re discarded. People touched by The Revolution grow bored with the Kosmos and its mundane rewards.

Fermi's crazy neuclear reactor--without a shield.

It is something like the Manhattan Project in Chicago during WWII, when scientists built the first atomic reactor right under a gym on the campus of Chicago University. The famous nuclear scientist Enrico Fermi laid a layer of carbon on top of a layer of uranium, layer upon layer, and with each layer the Geiger counter clicking nearby kept growing with annoying intensity.

Then came the great day when they laid the last layers of carbon-uranium: Fermi slowly removed the dampening rods, and a gallery of scientists and politicians held their breath, watching. Steadily the Geiger counter clicks intensified, then they roared! Those witnesses saw the “fuel of the stars” unleashed on earth for the first time.

They called it critical mass. Their patient layering of carbon-uranium produced a self-sustaining chain-reaction of splitting atoms. Energy from one splitting atom split nearby atoms, and on it went. (Some scientists, including Fermi, were a little worried the chain-reaction might run out of control, right beneath a gymnasium of innocent victims, right in the center of Chicago University! Oh well, “let’s do it anyway,” they said.)

The Christian version of critical mass was called The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church by Roland Allen almost 100 years ago, and the results are similar: the energy from one burst of Revolution triggers more bursts of Revolution in nearby areas. Today they call it a “Church Planting Movement”, but the principles are the same as what Paul described in Colossians: layer upon layer of God’s blueprint for Revolution creates a spontaneous, multiplying, cascading Revolution of Joy.

The progression in Col. 1

Radical Discipleship

Taken together, the progressive layers in Colossians 1 could be titled “Radical Discipleship” because they wrap around discipleship, as Jesus describes it in Matthew 28. These aren’t the only elements which come together in Revolution, nor do they exclude other vital aspects of the Ecclesia. But they are vital.

Church denominations argue and fight over so many mundane issues, and wars were fought over things like Communion and Baptism. But isn’t it cool how Paul missed all those things in his description of Revolution? Then consider this irony: very few of the layers Paul mentions receive the attention today they once received during the Apostolic era.

Filled with the knowledge of His will

This means learning God’s Word, which is “the sword of the spirit” (Eph. 6:11), and it makes a formidable weapon in the hands of prison escapees! Young Christians devour the Bible and memorize it gladly, if given some guidance. Even more amazing is the way young Christians will use the Bible when talking to their families and friends about their new spiritual life.

The most foundational need in any young Christian’s life is to be “Filled with a knowledge of His will,” and they need it before they become Christians too old to care anymore! This is the point where revolutionaries are hatched: after meeting Jesus, they’re trying to understand, “Hey, what happened to me?” They know Revolution is working in their hearts, but if they don’t understand it, they’ll never appreciate it or guard it carefully as they should.

What a responsibility it is to introduce someone to Jesus! It means undaunted love and concern, but it especially means teaching them “the knowledge of His will.” Without this, the young believer lacks the fiber of a revolutionary.

Spiritual wisdom and understanding

This describes Radical Discipleship, which is rarely if ever mentioned in all the reconsidering “the way we do church” today. The Bible comes alive under Radical Discipleship because the “spiritual wisdom and understanding” of older believers helps the younger ones apply this knowledge in real-life situations.

Bible-learning alone grows academic and dry. To see the wisdom and understanding of God at work in the real world is called Revolution.

Jesus set it up so young believers don’t have to play spiritual mind-games with their lives, since older believers are around. Discipleship is the most-contagious way to spread The Revolution, and Jesus figured that one out! (Matt. 28:18)

“Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord”

Living like a revolutionary means without boundaries. This is precisely how Jesus Christ lived: “the foxes have holes, the birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” he said (Matt. 8:20). That’s downright radical. It’s too radical. How many Christians will give up their nests and holes in America?

The Revolution gets messy, and nests get trampled, and foxholes get invaded by new Christians and fellow-revolutionaries. This runs against the American Dream, which builds pretty boxes in a world of make-believe safety called Suburbia.

The streets of Suburbia are lined with little boxes sealed against the outside world. Christians should never live trapped in cages like that!

All the Bible’s ethics  revolve around loving others, including the “stranger” and those outside our narrow circle of family and friends. The American Dream is the breeding-ground of Tribalism, and The Jesus Revolution is a direct threat to this aspect of Americana. But Tribalism clearly is not walking “in a manner worthy of the Lord.”

“To please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work”

This means to “fight the good fight,” as Paul calls it (1Ti 1:18; 6:12; 2Ti 4:7). Everywhere in the New Testament, “to please Him” is tightly-coupled with “bearing fruit”, and “in every good work” means “let’s do something!”

Fruit-bearing requires the will to fight because we live in such a dark world and our flesh is so ravenous. Every gain is a supernatural feat, and it’s exhausting sometimes–but fulfilling. All worthy gains in life require a strong will to fight, we know this is true. So the stereotype of a passive and gentle Christian is especially hideous, because it smothers the will to fight and chokes spiritual fruit.

Fruit-bearing is such an overwhelming theme in the New Testament, it could fill volumes, but consider these small examples:

1 Corinthians 3:9 (NASB) For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” Matthew 9:37-38 (NLT)

Increasing in the knowledge of God

This again emphasizes the primary role Bible teaching played in The Jesus Revolution, and it’s the third time in Paul’s list. Why so much repitition? Quite simply, the core of it all is God transforming us “through the renewing of your minds,” as Paul said in Romans 12:1. Mental Transformation comes from truly knowing God’s Word.

This means becoming a Bible teacher. There really is no other way to know the Word of God in such intimate detail. Bible classes are extremely useful, as are so many other ways to study the Bible we might list here, but none of them compare to actually teaching the Word. Teaching it entails significant preparation, and it means living it, too. They say nobody learns more than the teacher at a Bible teaching, and I know it’s true.

It’s quite amazing to work with new, young Bible teachers, because it changes the way they talk. Suddenly they start engaging in spiritual conversations in a way they never did before, and they have something to contribute like never before. Most significantly, all the reminders, rebukes and exhortations in the world will never motivate a young Christian to study the Bible the way teaching it motivates. It’s the ultimate club: “don’t you have to teach next Thursday?”

All Christians should be able to teach the Bible effectively at some level. This sounds almost heretical in todays world of Church, but it’s a sound, biblical tenent. For example:

Hebrews 5:12 (NASB) For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

Was that rebuke not addressed to his entire audience in general, and not just the teaching-elite?

Colossians 3:16 (NASB) Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

If we set aside the controversy of singing for now and simply consider that admonition to “let the word of Christ dwell within (i.e., among) you,” is he not calling for “admonishing one another” using God’s Word? And isn’t that precisely what we mean by Bible teaching?

Matthew 28:20 (NASB) teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The above passage comes from the Great Commission, which the last time I checked was addressed to all Christians, and not a special class of “disciple-makers.” (Does such a beast exist?)

2 Timothy 4:2 (NASB) preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

Some claim the passage above applies only to pastors and priests, but if so, are the rest of us exempt from the “reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and intsruction” clause? I know some hotheads who would love to such an interpretation! (They really hate the “great patience and instruction” clause–it’s so much easier to vomit feelings of disgust instead.)  All those activities must be couched in “instruction”, else we end up simply chewing each other out in a most ungodly and ineffective fashion. “Instruction” means “teaching”, in my vocabulary.

I could continue, but I won’t. I will say, however, that all the “one another” passages in the New Testament are couched in the same framework of “great patience and instruction” as the passage above, and if we don’t promote and develop Bible teaching competancy in the Ecclesia, then we cannot fulfill the scores of “one-another” passages either.

That may be the problem with Church today: the lack of “one-anothering” underway.

“But I can’t teach!” someone might cry out tearfully.

It’s simply untrue. We all teach others: older kids teach younger ones, parents teach kids, we teach new people at work, and in many other ways we are always teaching. Sometimes our teachings are less-than virtuous.

For Christians, the teaching topics change. And the audience expands as Christian character grows. It may not grow into a stadium-sized audience, or even a big one, or maybe not more than a few disciples, but at some level we should be teaching God’s Word to others, and do it with competence.

Today it’s abnormal to depend largely on Average-Christian-Joe for the Bible teaching ministry of the church. What a strange world we live in! Bible teaching was never relegated to an elite caste, like it is today in Church. Average people from all kinds of crazy backgrounds taught God’s Word–even uneducated fishermen! And slaves, too!

Something beautiful was lost somewhere in Church history: great Bible teachings.

Is it a coincidence the leader of The Revolution was merely a carpenter, or did God plan it that way? It seems planned. And because he was a carpenter, what scorn the religious elite heaped on him! In so many ways Jesus was inferior to their breeding and learning, or so they thought. That’s why, when this ignorant hick from Gallilee tied them up in knots, the elitists resorted to personal attack against his parentage (knowing Jesus had a father-issue):

“Where is your father?” they asked. Jesus answered, “Since you don’t know who I am, you don’t know who my Father is. If you knew me, you would also know my Father.” John 8:19

But the carpenter and (later) his gang of fishermen twisted the religious elite like pretzels, and the people loved it:

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law. Matthew 7:28-29

Revolutionaries may lack the pedigree and long string of letters after their names, but they will always confound the so-called experts. Why? Because revolutionaries know God’s Word through discipleship, not in a classroom, and not merely to pass the test and graduate; more important, revolutionaries love God’s Word in a contagious fashion very difficult to immitate in a seminary.

It surprises people to discover that average Christians often know more about the Bible than seminary graduates. I discovered this by surprise during my own seminary experience: I went into seminary already heavily-engaged as a Bible teacher at all levels of teaching in Xenos, Columbus, so I was fortunate enough to receive significant discipleship from my brother and other accomplished teachers. In one class, a liberal professor asserted with great confidence that “as we all know, Moses didn’t actually write the Pentateuch.” (The Pentateuch was the first five books of the Bible.) I knew better, so I raised my hand and we jousted briefly–very briefly, because he was quickly dumbfounded, and said so.

I knew this incident had nothing to do with any great scholarship on my part. It really bothered me to think he didn’t know the scriptures as well as I did, which really wasn’t saying much.

I understand it better today, after long acquaintance with various seminarians and seminaries. Most seminaries today emphasize learning the history of interpretation over learning the Bible. So if my argument with that professor had centered on something St. Anselm said in the Middle Ages, I would have been spanked badly. But when the conversation shifts to the Bible, most professors’ knowledge is spotty, at best. They might hold vast reseviors of knowledge about a specific Bible passage, but the chances are good they won’t know the rest of the Bible quite so well.

More important–and here’s where the modern seminary system is one big crash-and-burn disgrace today–seminary graduates are often trained in running Church business, like fund-raising, Worship Service technology, accounting practices and other management tasks unique to Church. But very little time is spent studying the Bible, by comparison.

Am I anti-seminary? No, not really, although I do believe it has significant issues. I learned quite a good deal in semianry, and I highly recommend it for advanced Bible training, because the professors in a solid Christian seminary are experts in their fields. Even when a professor’s expertise is narrow, it doesn’t matter: expertise is valuable.

I say all the above in order to dismiss the superstitious fear Christians have toward seminaries and seminarians: don’t be intimidated! If you do it the way Paul tells Timothy, you’ll probably end up with more advanced Bible knowledge than most seminary graduates:

2 Timothy 2:15 (NASB) Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

Strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might

God’s revolutionaries are protected, strengthened and infused with exceptional spiritual life. This is God’s promise:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere…to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 (NLT)

No wonder it’s a Revolution of Joy! To unleash the Holy Spirit in revolutionary discipleship, teaching, preaching, sharing and real jailbreaks–how can the World System make a competitive bid?

For the attaining of all steadfastness and patience: it is so very difficult to bribe a revolutionary, you know. All the stimulation or wealth or power in the World System could never match such a revolutionary life.

This is why the Institutions of the Church took away the joy of learning God’s Word from people like the Galilean fishermen Jesus loved worked with: revolutionaries caught up in the mystery and beauty of God’s Word, armed with the “gifts to his people” that Jesus gave, with hearts full of Joy, and who understand, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” (Gal. 2:20) — who can tame such radicals?

The Revolution should look like this:

They and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord there. Acts 15:35 (NLT)

The believers who were scattered preached the Good News about Jesus wherever they went. Acts 8:4 (NLT)

Friedrich Handle nailed it in “Messiah”:

The Lord gave the word;
great was the company of the preachers.
(Psalms 68:11)

1. The Greek and Roman conquests were more innovative and tried to win loyalty from their conquered lands by accomodating local customs–if they didn’t challenge the authorities.
2. See Lk. 4 for the offer to rule “the kingdoms of the earth”; and see Jn. 6 where they wanted to crown him.

They made strict rules to protect their group from outsiders. They were frightened by the pagans and their gods and their dirty, moral problems. Groups like the KKK or Nazis do this, but these were Christians!

Pagan cults like Aphrodite, Eros and Baccus meant Gentile converts came with moral baggage.

Kosmos Rules

When Christians get confused about their loyalties, they might adopt tactics used by the World System (the Kosmos) to grow. But it’s a dangerous game, because the Kosmos grows cold-hearted institutions, not the living cells that build the Body of Christ. Through imitation, Christianity behaves and looks like another human institution (with a nonprofit status–and some abandon that distinction!).  It violates the most basic principle of God’s revolutionary change:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2

Institutions don’t “transform” or bring “renewing of your mind”; institutions say, “Be conformed!” And it’s quite difficult to “prove what the will of God is” if Christians depend on institutional organization and growth. With institutions come rules, and rules can dominate the Christian community: rules require more rules to plug all the loopholes in the rules, requiring an army of bureaucrats and lawyers to manage the rules and cultivate more rules.

Our Constitution is a model for protecting human liberties, but it can't model Christian community.

Rules of Exclusion

Rule-driven Christianity appeared quite early when Jews tried to exclude Gentiles from Christianity.

Rules define exclusion, and exclusion is the enduring blight on Church history. Church arose by adopting the tactics of hatred which fuel growth in the Kosmos, and the most foundational tactic is to define winners and losers–the excluded and included. They justified slavery this way, endorsed by Church institutions. The Inquisition and other inhumane practices were imported directly from strategies employed in the Kosmos to grow and secure petty, human kingdoms.

Boundaries exist, and there are winners and losers. The Nazis are notorious examples of real losers, and their anti-Semitic hatred operates far outside the boundaries of God’s Kingdom.  Without boundaries, there is no such thing as free will, because free will means chosing between this option or that option, between God’s Kingdom or Kosmos kingdoms, between the Nazis or the Christians.

Boundaries exist, but there is a wild difference between boundaries established by Kosmos kingdoms and boundaries set by God: His approach is always righteous and loving, and always concerned for the needs of others. Most important, God is concerned with choices made in the heart, not the superficial, rule-based conformity created in Kosmos kingdoms. The Rules of Exclusion established by Kosmos kingdoms are Manmade Rules, always self-seeking, and always promoting the interests of rule-owners.

Rules of Exclusion still define Church institutions today. These Manmade Rules become human traditions that suffocate The Revolution. An elite caste of super-Christians own the rules and gain power this way. Watch how easily the rules entered early Christianity, because the same pattern is developing in American Christianity. Manmade Rules have a wicked—but very reasonable—attraction.

Ethnic Church

Christianity started in Jerusalem where the original disciples were based, which meant Jerusalem was the guardian of pure Christianity, they felt. Their primary worry was the big influx of Gentiles, which clearly threatened the status quo for traditional Judaism. The solution?  Let Gentiles join only if they became Jews.¹ Jerusalem became not only the birthplace of Christianity, but also the first Church Institution. They laid an egg called Church History which unfortunately extends into the contemporary Church.

The greatest excesses of Church power came through the Spanish Inquisition, which was an ethnic-cleansing tool of the Spanish monarchy tangled in Church institutions.

When Manmade Rules tied The Revolution to a Jewish heritage, the Church Institution was born.  Today Christianity is tied to all kinds of nationalities, which created monolithic Church Institutions like Roman Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox, and other empire wanna-bees, like Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and others.

Protestant Church Institutions are late-bloomers, far-less developed, and largely decoupled from ethnic groups. But in recent decades American Evangelicals developed strong political ties in a WASP ethnic group. They grew more politically-powerful while losing spiritual strength at the same time. All Church Institutions share a common trait: they define membership with lots of rules.

Manmade Rules always seem reasonable and practical. The intention is to maintain the purity of the Church, but the outcome is a polluted definition of what “Christian” actually means: is it Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Russian Orthodox? Maybe Evangelical Republicans now define “Christianity” better than others? All this institutional pollution obscures The Revolution which actually defines Christianity.

Rule-Makers Rise

It began when Christianity grew popular in Jerusalem, so naturally the rich and ruling classes took notice, and many began joining the Christians: Priests, Sadducees, Pharisees and even members of the Sanhedrin, which was the elite Supreme Court in Israel. To win the ruling elite in Israel meant Israel might become a Christian nation after all!²

But when Gentiles became Christians, they threatened to alienate the rich and powerful Jews, the non-Christian Jews, and certainly they put Christian Jews in an awkward position with their people.

These fears became chains that stopped The Revolution in Jerusalem: Christians afraid to break their cultural ties.

Jerusalem Christians were chained to the Law of Moses, which defined their identity. Christianity was mostly a Jewish phenomena at this point since Jesus was a Jew, his disciples and followers were Jews, and God’s special people were Hebrews for 2,000 years, beginning with Abraham. As a Christian Jew, the obvious conclusion would be that Israel would become a Christian nation, especially since Israel was God-ordained real estate. Gentiles should not change any of this, they felt.

So circumcision became a requirement for salvation. It was a Manmade Rule, it appeared like magic, and it stuck like most Church traditions. It was a reasonable rule, since circumcision was a sign of sincere belief in Yahweh for more than 2,000 years. Nobody objected when it appeared. To allow Gentile Christians to remain Gentiles was unthinkable, so every male convert needed a little snipping…a quick and minor operation that solved everything.

Paul saw it different: he worked with Gentiles all the time, and he knew men would balk at this “minor operation”. More important, Paul knew Manmade Rules were incompatible with The Revolution that launched by Jesus. The disciples also knew how Jesus felt about Manmade Rules.

Rule-Breakers

Jesus taught and led his Disciples into The Revolution in disturbing ways: he openly defied the religious rules, he insulted religious leaders, he told large crowds about the dirty secrets and hypocrisy of their leaders, and he even ridiculed their uniforms!³

From the beginning Jesus behaved like a revolutionary intent on making trouble.

In his first miracle he desecrated some very sacred religious objects: big jugs used for their ritual holy-water. He filled these with wine! And not just the cheap stuff: it was the finest wine, a wine expert said. And not just a little—he made almost 200 gallons of it!

When a wedding reception runs out of alcohol, there’s lots of sad groans, people stop dancing, and some get their coats. Imagine the atmosphere when about 200 gallons of super-fine wine shows up unexpectedly!

Then picture this: how would those big jugs get handled? Probably not with much ritual.

As Jesus watched the spectacle with his disciples, did he laugh? Did they laugh?

This was The Revolution of Joy from its birth: irreverent, fun, and delightfully defiant! And that’s how Christianity spread: by revolutionaries who delighted in breaking silly religious rules wherever they went.

Decades later another rule-breaker arrived in northern Greece, and he too was a revolutionary like Jesus. When Paul came to Thessalonica, the religious, uptight people groaned. When he taught about The Revolution, they grew angry. Finally they had enough, and they tried to throw some Christians into jail. The accusation they made against Christians are as follows:

“These men who have upset the world have come here also!” Acts 17:6

“Men who have upset” — what a great description of The Revolution! Almost without exception, everywhere it went, the religious elite were were the ones who grew angry.

And what upset them most was the unquenchable, boundless, revolutionary joy!

Break-a-Rule Today!

Some Christians try so hard to be offensive (trying to be radical?), but they pick the wrong targets: non-Christians. That’s a big mistake, because Jesus was intensely careful to treat the non-religious with concern and compassion, while the religious elite got zapped with the Jesus-zapper:

“It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17

He was talking to “the righteous” guys when he said, “I did not come to call you guys!“  It’s a real in-your-face-thing.

Meanwhile, Jesus was having a blast with the non-religious:

When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?”  Mark 2:16

Lots of Christians are scared of the “sinners and tax collectors”, unlike Jesus, and feel more comfortable with “the righteous”, unlike Jesus. Christians sometimes feel awkward “eating with the sinners” and don’t know what to say — or feel afraid to mention  The Revolution.

Christian fear of non-Christians comes from either:

1. Isolated (i.e., Tribal) Christian environments; or,
2. Confusion about The Revolution.

The second problem is easily-resolved: step into The Revolution immediately, now, today. It’s this easy:

1. Find some “tax-collectors” or “sinners” (lots are around town).
2. Pray for strength.
3. Take a deep breath,
4. Open the mouth, and talk about it.

That’s easy.

Although someone might object, “I wouldn’t know what to say!” — it’s quite silly. (Try this once: “I wanted to tell you so bad about Jesus Christ, but I just don’t know how to tell you!”) Whatever the words, it’s just not a complicated conversation.

For Christians or Christian groups isolated from non-Christians, the problem is sticky: rules. Those suckers are a little harder to ditch (let’s save it for later).

Christians who break out of their Church Institution mindset will start drawing new spiritual life from the Revolution of Joy. The identity, culture, and uptight rules that build cultural barriers between Christians and all those people “out there” are simply Church Institutions, and nothing more.

Rule-Breakers Needed!

Big problems arise when Christians are afraid of being Christians around non-Christians. It’s a groundless fear, because do many would be thrilled to hear about The Revolution — and would gladly join it, too! Non-Christians lead such joyless lives, they’re fascinated by The Revolution of Joy—but they rarely see it.

Consider these two facts:

1. Interesting fact: 80% of the teenagers today attend a Christian group for two months or more. Two whole months!
2. Tragic fact: 75% of the teenagers from Christian churches will not be attending any Christian group by the time they reach age 30.

What does it mean? A whole bunch of teenagers aren’t seeing the Revolution of Joy.

So break-a-rule today: break out of the Church Institution and get to know some non-Christians.

Then break the ultimate religious barrier: talk to them about Jesus Christ.

1. In Gal.2:3-4 Paul tells us that circumcision was expected for Gentiles very early in Jerusalem. From Acts 15 we know Jerusalem Christians still considered circumcision a requirement for Gentiles. In Gal. 2:12 we read that Jerusalem sent emissaries to Gentile-Christian areas like Antioch and Galatia to raise a stink about allowing Gentiles into the church.
2. Unlike Americans, Israelis have good reason to view their nation as the center of God’s Kingdom on earth: the Bible says so. But all these passages describe a theocracy in Israel, not America. Church Institutions have tried to hijack Israel’s position in the Bible for millenia, citing God’s contractual relationship with Israel to describe Gentile nations and governments of all kinds–and none were theocracies like Israel. The trend still continues today among Christians who somehow think Gentile America is God’s new Israel. The effort won’t work because it can’t work: God won’t share His authority with the White House or Congress.
3. The diatribes Jesus unleashes against religious leaders encompasses the bulk of the Gospel narratives. The bottom line: “They do all their deeds to be noticed by men; theylengthen the tassels of their garments.” Matthew 23:5

Change means hope. We need Jesus-shirts like this. (Along with the model, too!)

It’s all about Change.

If nothing changes, there is no Revolution, of course. Presidents win elections promising Change, and revolutionaries are committed to Change. But what Revolution promises to maintain the status quo? It’s a silly Revolution!

Silly Things

People chuckle about silly Christians and their silly faith all the time; but especially when nothing changes in their silly lives.

If nothing changes, there is no Joy! Revolution is a nuclear furnace burning for Change, and when Revolution wins and spreads and overcomes obstacles and persecution, then Joy kicks in, like only a winner knows.

...but instead, we get a Jesus shirt like this. :(

Christians try to manufacture Joy by pushing a spiritual button—finding the right Worship Service or Spiritual Discipline—and what a restless life it produces! This is a primary cause for the Great Christian Migration from church to church, as proven statistically by Willow Creek and George Barna’s research.

Happiness alone only produces restlessness, because happiness disappears so easily. Happiness is tied to “happenings”, and it appears quickly and leaves quickly, like magic.

One advertising campaign struck a chord among Americans by promising to solve everything with a big, red Easy-button. Unfortunately, the Great Christian Migration is in pursuit of spiritual life the same way: a quick burst on Sunday morning, another shot with “morning devotions”, and another from mid-week “Prayer meeting”. But going back to the work-a-day world, it’s gone. So it is with circumstance.

The spiritual Easy-button might produce happiness or stimulation or elation, but not Joy.

The Power to Revolt

Joy settles deep in a Christian and leaps from one person to another because it isn’t momentary, and it’s contagious. Joy means, “We’re winning!” That’s how Joy is carried from day-to-day, from person-to-person, from place-to-place, despite great opposition: “Change is here, now!”

Revolt. It’s that simple.

People are groaning for Change everywhere, especially in America where disillusion is intensifying. The American Revolution was fueled by “the pursuit of happiness” promised by the Declaration of Independence, and the American Dream still promises happiness. But people are sick of the lies from Wall Street and fat Corps and their commercials feeding our quest for happiness: “Buy one more thing…!”

You can’t buy Change. Don’t listen!

Change doesn’t materialize either, like I thought back in my youth. It isn’t mystical. I was bewildered by the gap between myself and older, more-powerful Christians with rock-solid confidence. They knew what they wanted, and they knew how to get it. I thought it came with age, but I know this isn’t true because I know what it’s like to be older and grow less-confident and bewildered. And I see it in other Christians my age: shrinking, failing, and stuck.

Change means having the power to win. This is what God gives to anyone willing to revolt. It produces a Revolution of Joy:

Joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. Colossians 1:11-13 (NASB)

Christians snigger at my crazy “Revolution talk” sometimes, and that’s OK. I can take it (and dish it out).

But if anyone can read Colossians 1:11-13 without stepping back in awe at the majesty and scope of The Revolution, then nothing I say will help. Some people don’t want Revolution, maybe. It doesn’t matter, because God is leading a Revolution anyway.

It’s a Jailbreak!

“He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son” — it means revolt, sedition, mutiny, rebellion, defiance, war, and every other word that could possibly conceive to describe Revolution. It means His Kingdom versus that fake kingdom. One wins, another loses. His Kingdom is a real kingdom with a real King, and He’s pulling people out of a fake kingdom, headed by a usurper and a pretender.

It’s a jailbreak, as God describes it:

That is why the Scriptures say, “When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.” Ephesians 4:8 (NLT)

He “gave gifts to his people,” which are spiritual gifts, and they aren’t toys: they’re weapons. That’s right:

He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-12 (NASB)

All these gifts are for “building up the body of Christ,” which means to win, grow and spread Revolution: “He rescued us from the kingdom of darkness,” and we’re busy rattling cages with sleepy prisoners trapped inside.

A jailbreak ignites Revolution when the prisoners get armed, so “He led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.”

I think this video says it better than I could…(warning: not for the fainthearted.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIsKOwzv08[/youtube]

That’s cool.

Seasoned Killers–or Lambs?

But wait, we can’t repeat the same mistake Spartacus made.

Spartacus is famous for leading a slave revolt against the Roman Empire. Like Jesus, he too freed a “crowd of captives”, and his army almost toppled Rome. But not quite. Unfortunately, the Roman generals outsmarted the ex-slaves, even though outnumbered. So 6,000 surviving rebels were crucified up and down the Appian Way in miles of writhing, screaming bodies. Too bad.

Spartacus was cool, but not cool enough.

Spartacus was a gladiator and trained to fight, but he threw a mob of untrained, runaway slaves against legions of seasoned Roman soldiers, who were professional killers. That was the problem.

Coming fresh out of our prison cells, Christians are freed slaves as well, dominated by years of deceit, brainwashing and submission; we simply aren’t the strongest revolutionaries.

What would Jesus do? Surely not this--sheep stink, dont they?

Christianity seems so passive and non-revolutionary when our mob of ex-slaves are untrained and ill-equipped to fight. Perhaps even unwilling to fight! This is a valid complaint raised by Mark Driscoll against the Emergent Village and its flaccid “conversation” with Postmodernism.¹  He calls it the “limp-wristed Jesus” view, which is probably accurate, because this new breed of Christianity is either afraid to fight for a cause (when dialoging with Postmodernism), or simply confused about what “the cause” might be.²

Fighting is considered very un-Christlike in the popular Christian Myth. Christians should assume respectable, non-threatening positions in the job world and witness silently by their lifestyle, according to the Christian Myth. (Don’t make a fuss, for goodness gracious!)³ Has anyone stopped to consider if maybe this passive mythology was placed on Christians by Hollywood? “Father McKenzie” is the epitome of a Christian minister, “Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear,” according to The Beatles.⁴ How did we ever allow “minister” get so tarnished by such a weak, detestable, and useless stereotype?

Why would any Christian conform to a gentle-lamb mold? How lame! How unbiblical! And it’s ungodly.

It’s time to revolt.

Revolutionary Change

Remember that our task is to transform ex-prisoners into revolutionaries. Like slaves, prisoners are passive and must conform to whoever is in-charge. Revolutionaries stand up, think smart, and fight terrifically. This is why revolutionaries are such a terrific threat, and why revolutions can succeed with very few, while the status quo requires large numbers of conscripts: draftees, slaves and prisoners make a poor  stand against against free-thinking revolutionaries fighting for a cause.

Revolutionary Change moves people out of conformity (slavery) into the realm of authentic humanity (god-like), and it’s a marvelous transformation:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.  Romans 12:2 (NASB)

Be conformed or transformed: the choice between surrender or Revolution.

1. Revolutionaries despise conformity and think independently.
2. Revolutionaries gladly pay the price of training and discipline required for transformation.

It’s really quite simple, and Romans 12:2 captures these two principles of Revolutionary Change in that one, sweet verse, above. Transformation simply means:

1. Mind-renewal.
2. Proving God’s Will to the watching world.

The World System mass-produces trashed lives, so it should be easy to “prove what the will of God is: that which is good and acceptable and even perfect!”

Once the word gets out, people race to join The Jesus Revolution: history proves it. This is certainly what happened when Paul carried The Revolution into Macedonia:

Now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Macedonia and Achaia, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don’t need to tell them about it,  1 Thessalonians 1:8

Paul witnessed a Revolution of Joy breaking out across Macedonia and Achaia, the two halves of Greece, and what an amazing sight it was! This Revolution “is reverberating out from you people,” Paul exclaimed.⁵ This was not the result of Paul’s organizational skills or any “revival” campaign:

Apparently it was not through an organized evangelistic campaign that their witness went forth, though Paul’s preaching in Thessalonica and elsewhere illustrates this approach. But it was through the personal lives and testimonies of these transformed individuals that neighbors heard about their faith in God. As they went the gospel was heard everywhere, so an apostolic missionary campaign was not needed.–The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty.

Today the Chinese demonstrate the phenomena of “transformed individuals” that trigger Revolution. In the West, Christians are barely cognizant of the unprecedented growth underway in China, but it means America is no longer the leading Christian nation: our time is passing, it seems. How could any Christian in America instruct these new world leaders about Revolution? Is anyone from America asking the Chines how “to do church” or  how we can change our lethargy? Sadly, Americans largely ignore the Revolution in China, even though we desperately need to learn some lessons from these saints.

One thing is certain: when Christians grow from five to 100 million in China within 60 years, even though outlawed and persecuted, something exciting and very revolutionary is underway there: it’s a revolt against the grinding agony of Communism. God’s alternative truly seems “good and acceptable and perfect” for tens of millions of new Chinese Christians coming to meet Jesus.

The opposite is occurring here: people are racing away from Church, and they leave with a deep disdain for a weak and worthless Christianity–but they don’t realize Christianity is not Church.

We need something more spontaneous than Church: we need the “Spontaneous Expansion of the Church” as Roland Allen called it.

1. See The Panel. “7 Big Questions“. Relevant Magazine issue 24 (Relevant Media Group). http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7418. Retrieved on 2008-05-06.
2. Read McLarenism for a roundup of the Emergent Village and its efforts to accommodate Christianity with Postmodernism.
3. The “silent witness” approach is a distortion of “Lifestyle Evangelism” made famous in Joe Aldrich’s book of the same title. “Silent evangelism” goes back to the old Reformed Theology of John Calvin, in which Predestination, he reasoned, was evidenced by modesty, piety, and what we now call the “Protestant Work Ethic.” Since Calvinism was passive about evangelism and largely relegated it to God’s Predestined Plan, the Reformed tradition is focused on personal lifestyle, holiness, hard work, etc. This is not what Joe Aldrich taught.
4. From the song Eleanor Rigby.
5. The word exēchētai, translated rang out, could be rendered “reverberated.” Paul saw the Thessalonians as amplifiers or relay stations that not only received the gospel message but sent it farther on its way with increased power and scope–The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty.

He’s a worthy study:  he is complex, yet simple. Gracious, yet dogmatic. Novel, yet old-fashioned. So many listening were intrigued, but others were repulsed.

It was a live introduction to McLarenism: truly a one-of-a-kind, imaginative, entertaining speaker. He’s an activist par excellence for the Emergent Village, but oddly enough he loathes being called an “activist” or “spokesperson” in the Emergent Church movement.

“Nobody asked me to speak for them,” and the Emergent Church “is not a movement, it’s a Conversation,” he told a crowd of hundreds attending a Malone College event last night.¹ So really, this article should not be titled McLarenism, according to McLaren.

What a hooter! This reminds me of Microsoft. Remember when Mr. Gates tried to portray MS a benign member of the computing community? (We all know better today, I hope.)

Hopefully the listening audience knew better, too, about Mr. McLaren, since he’s on the Board of Directors at Emergent Village, and one of its founders. So when McLaren pretends to be a passive participant in the Emergent movement, he’s disingenuous at best (at worse, he’s lying). Here is a sample of the non-movement Conversation his organization promotes:

Emerging Theologians exists to produce scholarly thought that will shape Christian discourse, galvanizing women and men from a variety of ethic and geographic backgrounds who find themselves alienated within modern Christianity. — Emergent Village Website.

McLaren labels his activities a Conversation with Christianity (and other faiths). But Conversation is disingenuous, too.  It’s activism, pure and simple, not a Conversation.

1. He is clearly pushing an agenda (”Everything Must Change!”).
2. He is clearly dogmatic about his agenda (“If you think God has to hurt someone in order to forgive them, you really need to re-examine that…”).
3. He is clearly an activist—his own Web site says so, for goodness-gracious!
4. He repeatedly said he was an evangelist at the Malone College event.

How does he get away with it?

McLaren is an surely an activist, but with a camouflaged agenda. Salespeople do that if they can get away with it. (Remember this, young buyers of used autos: a salesperson pretends to have a friendly Conversation with you while, in fact, actually selling you a car!)

And camouflage is McLaren’s expertise. He is a skilled wordsmith.

Here is a wordsmith castigating the opposition: an entry on his Blog is titled “You’ve gotta love ‘em” (an endearing intro) where he ridicules a rather poor, uneducated Christian.² “Did the Lord make you a new creacher?” the writer asked McLaren. With a wink McLaren says “you gotta love” those ignorant “them” who don’t buy the Christianity he peddles. So why camouflage the disdain? Why pretend to be so magnanimous?

Such is McLarenism: it is an elitist philosophy with grand pontifications. And grand disdain.

A very kindly gentleman who certainly looks like father Abraham

He begins in gracious and gentle tones: “I hate putting pastors in that position of having to decide whether to join or not. The job is hard enough, just trying to love people and love God,” he told us. So McLaren is not a dogmatist? No, you think, here is a kind gentleman who looks like father Abraham. (Really!) Then suddenly disdain drips from his lips against “those people who have the idea that God can’t forgive anybody without hurting someone.” It was the Atonement he found so revolting. He called it “Penal Substitution”, emphasizing “Penal”. Such a devilish wordsmith! I’ve heard it called “Substitutionary Death” before, and “Penal Justice”, but never the twain combined.

• Listen to McLaren on “Penal Substitution”.

Would I cause offense if I said he’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I hope we’re big enough to laugh at the pun. (But really, I mean it.)

Our own Michael Toth asked if there was any foundational truth that defines Christian belief. McLaren said “That’s a great question,” but then tossed it aside: “I’m not interested in a minimalist Christianity. I want to keep it all.” And with that erudite flourish, he dismissed the “great question”.

• Listen to The Michael Toth Question.

In a rather rude fashion he lied to Rick Yoerger. “Do you believe God communicates clearly with us in such a way that we can understand Him clearly?” Rick asked. “Yes,” McLaren answered curtly, and everyone chuckled. But he lied. He just spent an hour explaining how complicated it is to “get it right” and understand God’s Word. No, he does not think God communicates clearly.

Would I warn people against hearing McLaren? Absolutely not! McLarenism is a grand performance, like a magic act: a wink and a nod, a flourish, a twist and a turn, then viola! Which way did he go?

On the Other Hand…

Can I flip-flop a little, too? I am a sympathizer with this man’s agenda in many ways:

1. He rightfully criticizes Evangelical Christians for excluding women from significant ministry opportunities, as well as other ways that Christians have cozied-up to the Kosmos in the past.
2. He correctly identifies the Kingdom of God as the core message of Jesus, which is often downplayed among Evangelical Christians. (Although it’s not really the “Secret Message of Jesus” as he asserts.)
3. His burden to take the Church out of Church is highly laudable (although he doesn’t need to dump the Christian message in order to do it).

The tragedy of his life and message is that McLaren is just too old-fashioned! He may not even realize it, but his theology (and rhetoric) is old-school:

1. He is mostly Liberation Theology from the early 20th Century (which became popular in the 60s and 70s) among some Third World theologians (thus his interest in Third World theologians, poverty, justice, Kingdom of God, etc.).
2. His theology rehashes most of the old-Neo-Orthodoxy from the early 20th Century by Barth, Brunner and Bonhoffer, among others (they first developed “The Story”, not the Emergents).

Because McLarenism is so rooted in old-school liberal theology, the outcome will be the same: once the novelty and controversy wears off, it’s a whole bunch of ho-hum blah-blah-blah which really helps nobody, and most important—it has nothing to do with reaching Non-Christians, who could really give a sh** about The Conversation.

What I wish would happen is for McLaren to find his way to The Revolution which Jesus started. Now there’s something life-changing!

• Listen to The McLaren Debate.

1. See Malone College, “Emerging Church Debate” –retrieved 3/31/2009.
2. See McLaren’s Blog, titled “you gotta love ‘em, cont’d.” – Retrieved 4/31/2009.

Christian joy must not be confused with excitement, stimulation or happiness. These are reactionary feelings triggered by various experiences, so the feelings change with circumstances. Happiness, for example, is derived from “happenings” and is directly tied to things that are happening.

But the strong emotional quality of Joy cannot be overlooked either. Joy is not a reactionary feeling, but it still belongs to the genre of emotions which include love feelings: both are emotions with value, because both are powerful character traits.

Joy and Love can produce experiential emotions like excitement, but not always.  Joy is intangible, but its presence is evident in the emotional fuel of a victorious Christian life and thriving Christian communities. In the language of Love Ethics, Joy flows out of our Permanent Love Values, not from Present Love Feelings, so Joy is sustained from day to day, and this is important because Joy plays a foundational role in building a meaningful life, unlike reactionary emotions. A towering skyscraper is held together by a hidden substructure: the lattice of steel beams woven together by engineering brilliance.

Christian joy is engineered too, but through the supernatural brilliance of the Holy Spirit, and it’s complicated, like a scaffolding. It has diverse roles, effects, and sources, like this brief survey demonstrates, and it occupies a vital and pervasive role in God’s book:

Complicated roles: Joy is the fuel for motivation in both the believer’s personal life and in the Body of Christ. A joyless fellowship is certainly demoralized or divided. But joy is vital for the individual Christian too: a joyless Christian pursues destructive behaviors in order to get the emotional fuel to tackle life.

Joy’s diverse effects: joy produces exhilarating and spontaneous emotions like excitement, or more determined emotions like courage.

Joy’s varied sources: for younger Christians (and children), joy comes largely from discovery, newness and surprise. For older Christians (and parents), joy arises from a deepening godly (and mature) character.

The Glory of Joy

Joy is linguistically tied to Glory, which is another neglected concept for some Christians.

Glory means significance or importance. The President of the United States is an imposing person because he carries all the Glory of the United States wherever he goes: the wealth, population, resources and military which command respect. But the Glory of Jesus Christ is far more imposing because he carries all the power and authority of the universe.

Joy is the thrill of encountering great significance: or encountering great Glory such as God’s Glory. Since Christian Joy is rooted in God’s Glory, and since God loves us so much, Christian Joy  becomes an unshakable, strong sense of courage, security, surprise, delight, and many other motivational emotions — the products of Joy.

One scholar summarized Joy well:

Predominant in the usage of this term is the focus on rejoicing over the redemptive deeds of God that come to fruition in the gospel in the person of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. — Expository Dictionary of Bible Words: Word Studies for Key English Bible Words Based on the Hebrew and Greek Texts.

Some Select Verses

The following small sample of New Testament verses demonstrate how Joy is so very fulfilling because of its connection with the significance that comes from participating in God’s redemptive works:

Romans 14:17-19 (NASB) for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.

Romans 15:13 (NASB) Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:32 (NASB) so that I may come to you in joy by the will of God and find refreshing rest in your company.

2 Corinthians 1:24 (NASB) Not that we lord it over your faith, but are workers with you for your joy; for in your faith you are standing firm.

2 Corinthians 2:3 (NASB) This is the very thing I wrote you, so that when I came, I would not have sorrow from those who ought to make me rejoice; having confidence in you all that my joy would be the joy of you all.

2 Corinthians 7:4 (NASB) Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction.

2 Corinthians 7:13 (NASB) For this reason we have been comforted. And besides our comfort, we rejoiced even much more for the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.

2 Corinthians 8:2 (NASB) that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality.

Galatians 5:22 (NASB) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

Philippians 1:4 (NASB) always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all,

Philippians 1:25 (NASB) Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,

Philippians 2:2 (NASB) make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Philippians 2:1-18 (NASB) But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all. You too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me.

Philippians 2:29-30 (NASB) Receive him then in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard;
because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was deficient in your service to me.

Philippians 4:1 (NASB) Therefore, my beloved brethren whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.

Colossians 1:11-13 (NASB) strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

1 Thessalonians 2:19 (NASB) For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?

1 Thessalonians 2:20 (NASB) For you are our glory and joy.

1 Thessalonians 3:9 (NASB) For what thanks can we render to God for you in return for all the joy with which we rejoice before our God on your account,

Philemon 1:7 (NASB) For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.

Hebrews 12:2 (NASB) fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 13:17 (NASB) Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

The effect of Christian joy is incalculable, because Joy is the fountainhead of revolution! There is strong biblical evidence that Joy is closely tied to Revolution, and Christians afraid of Revolution lead Joy-deprived lives.

Did you know “joy” is used almost 200 times in the New Testament? Is it surprising that “joy” is the most frequent word in the Bible describing the Christian life?

No Comparison

But first consider how unique this Joy is: Christianity was spread by revolutionaries pumped-up with Joy. No other religion or political movement can possibly imitate the Jesus Revolution simply because Joy is not taught, understood or held in high esteem anywhere outside Christianity.

Did you know that?

Man-made religions are keen on good works, paying for a ticket-to-heaven with lots of self-effort. Those arduous, torturous pilgrimages to spooky, sacred spaces–those echoes of somber chants, the flickering lights and dark rituals–are so foreign to the Jesus Revolution, but so central to man-made religion.

Did you know Christianity is the only faith on earth that actually denounces temples and sacred space? It was so sad when they tried replacing Joy with those spooky, dusky temples and sacred spaces! (”Mommy, why is it so dark in there?” says the child inside.)

But sacred space doesn’t fit well in Christianity. The ultimate sacred-space-project was the construction of St. Peter’s Basillica in Rome, and it triggered the Reformation. It was so costly they had to invent a new religion tax called Indulgences to pay for it, which sparked Martin Luther’s ire, which caused revolt, and then people once again found God in the heart where He’s finally at home. (Maybe sacred space is redemptive: when it drives people away from the god-building so they can find the living, true God, something good happened, even if it is revolt!)

Sacred space is just one reason why there’s no corollary for Christian Joy among the world’s religions. But there are more:

• The god of Buddhism extols a state of serenity through strict discipline, which necessitates the absence of  joy (and all emotion).
• The god of Islam is a severe deity, very unforgiving, and is spread by warfare, not joy. Suicide bombers buy a ticket to heaven, but what god would make such a bloody bargain?
• The god of Jehovah Witnesses forbid all celebrations, and the Mormon god is equally strict and full of foreboding.

Man-made religions are so feeble and frantic compared to The Jesus Revolution. What’s it like to be always-worried about pleasing “the gods”, or just one god? I don’t remember–it’s been a while since I’ve been to Church. It was a gross feeling, I think.

That’s Church: when people perceive Christianity as yet another somber and joyless religion, it means The Revolution is terribly suppressed — or it died.

Recently on NPR a young man said he left his parents’ Christianity become a Buddhist. Wow. Why would anyone abandon Joy and devote so much sweat to reach a state of emptiness–emotionless–like Buddhism teaches? He never found Joy in his parent’s  Church.

How’s your Joy doing?

Only the Jesus Revolution offered a personal relationship with our Creator. No religions offer that, not anywhere. And this is why nobody can imitate it. That personal relationship between human spirit and God’s Holy Spirit is the fountainhead of Joy.

Joy Sparks!

The spark of joy ignites when the Holy Spirit finds a grateful and responsive heart. Joy is the supernatural fingerprint of the Holy Spirit, and it looks like this:

He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Luke 10:21

It is the Joy of discovery: Jesus describes the Joy of participating in the great mysteries of God with God leading us there—things hidden “from the wise and intelligent” He “revealed to infants.” This is why “baby” Christians exhibit such a wide-eyed, almost childish, spontaneous faith called Joy: what amazing sights God reveals deep inside! He shows us who we really are, how we fit in the span of time, what makes us tick, why and how things are broken, but more important, how to fix broken things.

It is a courageous Joy: with astonishing courage young Christians share their faith with family and friends, often without hesitation, and sometimes without premeditation. So they might get in trouble for over-aggression or too much dogmatism, but the negative reactions surprise young Christians who only meant to share their Joy.

It is spiritual Joy, not manufactured Joy: it isn’t the enthusiasm of a salesman. It isn’t the clever theatrics or tricks we see on TV at times. It is a spiritual voice speaking God’s Word from God’s heart. It’s God’s revelation in a very dark world, so their Joy draws others into The Revolution:

“This is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;” (Matthew 13:20).

Joy heals the backlash and persecution Christian revolutionaries receive from this hate-filled realm. The Holy Spirit always rushes to our aid. Revolution for the sake of revolution sputters and dies after too much persecution, but in the Jesus Revolution the Holy Spirit compensates with Joy:

“You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 1:6 (NASB)

Joy follows the Word everywhere it goes, and this too is tied to the presence of the Holy Spirit:

“And the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 13:52 (NASB)

Young Christian lives are full of the Joy of discovering new and precious treasures, like this:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Matthew 13:44 (NASB)

Young children express Joy so easily, it’s one of the priceless treasures of parenthood. When each of my boys first learned to walk,  a journey in our small back yard was an adventure filled with surprise and the Joy of discovery. A dandelion was a rare flower, ants were like alien life, and a small stream was a world of magic.

How it passes so quickly! Today it’s a hard-sell to walk with them period, and now they’re salty teenagers with complaints and grumbles. Nothing is new, everything is and boring — including me, “the old man”. Backyard walks just aren’t the same anymore. (Forgive me boys for exaggerating a bit.)

Older Christians become Joy-deprived like this, too. (How does God bear it?)

It is an issue of spiritual life-or-death for baby Christians to get nourished. While their joy is still alive, and before they settle into an established pattern, they must gorge on a healthy diet of God’s Word.

Joyless But Mature Christians

But older, more sedentary Christians often lose their revolutionary Joy, so they don’t appreciate the Joy expressed by their younger siblings. More often the older ones teach the younger to be wiser and less-vocal and more cautious about their faith. We want them to start acting like older Christians. These efforts may be virtuous, but all that instruction and correction douses flames of Joy if older Christians aren’t fueling The Revolution.

It isn’t malevolence, it’s spiritual indolence quashing Revolutionary Joy in older Christians. Without noticing, they lag behind until they drop out of the fight. This is endemic among Christians in America, where Capitalism slowly strangles the life out of everyone (we’re Killed by Systems). Christians may not be enslaved to the World System, but it saps our spiritual lives dry and steals our Joy. (Who comes home from work full of Christian Joy?) The World System is a joyless place, but young Christians see it differently.

Younger Christians are spawned in The Revolution, and they naturally grasp the revolutionary nature of spiritual life. Yesterday they lived in a non-Christian world without spiritual minds, but everything changed.

Young Christians are enamored with The Revolution and they carry revolutionary spirits inside. Young Christians are surrounded by others they can win into The Revolution, unlike older Christians, so they live like revolutionaries with a purpose to their lives.

Without purpose, what are we doing here? This becomes the real question for older Christians further removed from the upheavals of Revolution.

Today there is an unprecedented migration of Christians looking for purpose and drifting from one church to another.¹ Quite simply, they grow older and bored and restless. If they don’t join The Revolution, the Joy they knew as younger Christians will fade and leave a thirst for something more.

Drifting Christians lack purpose or vision. Christian Migration stems from a core human need implanted by God: a boy dreams of being a pirate or some conquering hero. Girls want to marry a pirate, not because he’s a pirate, but to join his quest. Nobody dreams of becoming a thief, but we are enamored with Robin Hood, because his band of Merry Men have purpose. Humans long to fight for a worthy cause.

Joy springs from new sources as Christians grow older: no longer do the great mysteries of God stir joy like they once did. God’s mysteries continue to unfold, and even more with maturity, but the older Christian is more accustomed to God’s self-revelation. Awe or reverence (often mistranslated as “fear” in the Bible) are more-suitable descriptions of the encounters older Christians have with God. We see it in the first Christian group as it matured:

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.  Acts 9:31 (NASB)

When “the fear of the Lord” dominates a group, that group is full of older Christians. ((See “The Fears in Legalism” for a contrast between biblical and unbiblical fear.)) Baby Christians don’t grasp the Fear-of-God doctrine, or don’t appreciate it, and certainly they don’t teach it effectively: it is an advanced concept appreciated by older Christians.

Reverence should never overshadow joy in the Christian community. When reverence dominates joy, a false view of God dominates the group: “our God is an awesome God”, the song says, but without joy God loses much awesomeness because He’s no fun! More important, a joyless Christian group loses the ability to perpetuate The Revolution. It is not a reverential movement. It is often sacrileges (to manmade traditions), and it’s disturbing to static religion.

Rather than despising the spontaneous joy of younger Christians, the older ones should rediscover their lost joy. After all, joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) and the clear evidence of God’s supernatural presence in a Christian community is “the joy of the Holy Spirit” (as in 1 Thess. 1:6, above). Besides, older Christians are just plain boring, period!

For the sake of balance, we should add that a joyous Christian group without any reverence would have to be little more than a mob. Reverence is tied to authority and order, and “God is not a God of confusion, but peace” (1 Cor. 14:33).

Indomitable Joy!

The most significant outcome of Christian joy is the way it fortifies Christian Revolution and fuels the will to fight. After a flogging and severe threats from the authorities,

“they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.” And then, “every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” Acts 5:41-42 (NASB)

So bold! So defiant! “They kept right on teaching…”

But most important, they were “rejoicing” and not rebelling in a mean-spirited, hateful way, as revolutionaries in the World System rebel. Communist agitators spewed the most hate-filled rhetoric at anyone who disagreed with their philosophy. Without exception communists won by disgracing, silencing, assassinating and bullying opposition leaders. Such are the tactics of a revolution built on fragile or false principles.²

But our foundation is fact-based. It is verifiable and unafraid of open debate. All the founders of Christianity welcomed public debate, beginning with Jesus, and the Christian world view easily won in open debate, because the Christian world view is such a refreshing alternative to the cruelty and blind obedience usually mandated in human culture (still today). The greatest barriers to the spread of Christianity was censorship and false accusations (that Christians were cannibals, or they practiced incest, and other accusations that raised panic, but completely false).

What an attractive revolution it was!

It can happen today, too: these were joyous, fun and non-threatening revolutionaries, yet they were very threatening to the power-brokers and religious elite who lost powerful social advantages when Christianity appeared. These were the ones who grew more jealous of the Christians.

Joy feeds the Christian resolve to fight. This principle was first established by our leader Jesus Christ, who faced the most ominous and painful opposition at the cross:

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Hebrews 12:2 (NASB)

Anyone “despising the shame” of crucifixion is contemptuous towards a feeble opposition. This joyful contempt is the beating heart of a radical revolutionary, and it poses a formidable threat: it is Indomitable Joy.

And his joy ignited a real revolution. It wasn’t a theological concept, because Jesus then “sat down at the right hand of the throne of God,” and from this lofty position he declared the overthrow of all opposition: “Now all authority in heaven and earth belongs to me!” he said. Then he invited us to join his Revolution: “Go! Make disciples of the nations!”³ And by that he meant, “Go! Raise up some revolutionaries!”

Whatever happened to the spirit of Indomitable Joy? Why isn’t every Christian in America caught up in The Revolution? Can any corporation or cause compete? Sadly, Christians too easily exchange their rightful role in The Revolution for scraps and toys from the World System: simple bribes to pacify the prisoners.

The “Great Commission” is not a law or a road to heaven, as promised by the Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, Mormons and other world religions to their militant mercenaries. In fact, Christian revolutionaries are not militants at all, nor are they mercenaries: the difference is evident in their Indomitable Joy. (Ever seen a joyful military man? When the war is won, perhaps then, but not out in the battlefields the way Christians display it!) Christian revolutionaries are motivated by joy and they spread joy.

1. See Willow Creek’s recent research on church migration among older Christians.
2. The inherent weakness in Communist philosophy was the wild imagination of Karl Marx, who envisioned the advent of a selfless, generous society. Marx put his faith in Darwinian evolution, so naturally humanity was evolving out of its selfish, savage history. His faith betrayed him and hundreds of millions.
3. (Mt. 28:18,19

It filled hearts with joy everywhere it went.

The greatest difference between the Jesus Revolution and all the political revolutions in history is the presence of Joy. Everyone who joined the Jesus Revolution was amazed:

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
1 Peter 1:8 (NASB)

This Joy is life-changing! People dropped their careers, opened their homes, threw their wealth into the air, and even the entrenched social divisions of the Roman empire crumbled:

You, the Gentiles were at that time separate from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world. He is our peace, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. Ephesians 2:11-15

When race divisions break down like that, it’s Revolution! An incautious, care-free spirit carried this Revolution, and it was Joy:

All the believers were united in heart and mind. They felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had!
Acts 4:32-33 (NLT)

It was revolutionary generosity, and they lived like a commune of Hippies. But where the Hippie experiment failed, this Revolution thrived.

How did the Christians do it? Their generosity was not a tax or religious law. It was spontaneous giving. It was “joy inexpressible” like Peter says, and never repeated like this anywhere else in history.

Revolutions are always bloody affairs, and revolutionaries smash enemies. Not so with the Jesus Revolution: those not joining The Revolution were treated kindly, so onlookers were thrilled by the movement of the Holy Spirit among God’s people. The Joy was contagious:

And all the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon’s Colonnade…all the people had high regard for them.
Acts 5:12-13 (NLT)

Their Joy caused social upheaval. No tanks, guns, armies or bloody purges could ever do what God did when He pulled together such odd companions: joy and revolution.

What stirs this Joy? It is the Good News about Jesus Christ and the freedom he gives without cost to anyone. With Joy the Good News was proclaimed by the spiritual hosts of heaven at his birth:

“Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people: a Savior, who is Christ the Lord…”

Then a real celebration of joy kicked-in:

And suddenly there appeared a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
Luke 2:10-14

It was not an exaggeration: the Good News was “a great joy for all the people” racing across the Roman empire. People reacted like this:

When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord.  Acts 13:47-48a

This was not your average church Worship Service spreading so much Joy! Something is missing today, because “Church” is a somber, dark memory for a huge population in America who stopped going. Or if they attend, often it’s with dread fear and the congregants are impatient to leave.

Something is wrong today with the Revolution of Joy.

Where Have All the Gentiles Gone?

The passage above highlights the problem with the way we “Do Church” today — perhaps it should be titled, “The Way We Kill Joy Today.”

Where are “the Gentiles” today? There was a time, it says, “when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying God…” Today “The Gentiles” are nowhere near Christians on Sunday morning. They’re called the “Un-churched” now.

Where are The Gentiles?

More important, where are The Gentiles “rejoicing and glorifying God” today? It isn’t when the pastor or priest says, “Let’s Rise” and the singing starts, as commonly thought. “Rejoicing and glorifying God” came from the mouths of brand-new Christians or non-Christians in Acts 13. Those people were the “Un-churched” in Paul’s day, and how fortunate they were!

When The Gentiles start “glorifying God” it means Revolution is underway: strange and wonderful things happen.

They Don’t Fit!

The Gentiles simply don’t fit in Christian gatherings anymore. It’s a foreign and weird world for the Un-churched. Christians likewise feel uncomfortable around The Gentiles.

I made the mistake of bringing The Gentiles (baby, un-churched Christians) to a “Christian revival” by a nationally-known Christian speaker, and The Gentiles were conspicuous even in a large auditorium because they didn’t have gray hair. When everyone stood up to sing, I was horrified to see The Gentiles were boppin’, bellowing, shouting and shoving their fists in the air like crazies at a rock concert! I reached out to grab the kid, but I was arrested by another, sight: thousands across the auditorium standing prim and singing properly.

But Joy was missing.

Church is too much like Church.¹ This is why Church is losing today, and why it will continue to lose: new generations of Christian kids feel little or no loyalty to institutions, but institutions are the structures and bindings of Church. It is checkmate: institutions won’t flex, and the people won’t come.

Now please allow me to say what I might regret later: I’m glad Church is losing. By this I mean “Church” in the codified and institutionalized package developed over many centuries of authoritarian abuse.

Why would I say such a terrible thing? I don’t say it gleefully.

I want Church to lose because I know what Church would do to The Gentiles I brought into that auditorium: slowly and ponderously, their carefree Joy would be smothered by traditions and behavior modifications, and eventually monolithic institutions would bind their young spirits. So sad, because these traditions, behaviors and institutions define Church today, but they have no firm root in the Bible.

These are The Gentiles today.

Church means tradition. Church means institution. Church means oppression. Who can deny that Church was the instrument of torture, execution and bloody war for centuries?

Church is anti-revolution, because it is embedded in the Institutions of Man.

Church changed a Revolution of Joy into an institution of death, because Church is dying today.

But it doesn’t have to go this way.

1. We use “Church” as a capitalized, specialized label in this series to designate manmade Institutions of the Church, not as a translation of ekklesia as we might normally see it used. See Radical Terms in the appendix for more.

Why the Strange Terms?

In this series on “The Revolution” we are avoiding some terms which are easily misunderstood, or downright inaccurate. This may seem strange, but Radical Revolution means rethinking some cherished traditions, especially with traditional language. The language we use will either hinder or spread the Jesus Revolution.

Church

Church is the most glaring example of a word which never belonged in the Christian vocabulary. The Bible uses the Greek word ekklesia, which was a common term meaning “an assembly”, like a High School “assembly” or “town meeting.”  Why stigmatize Christian gatherings with this “church” label, especially when the Bible simply calls them assemblies? More important, “church” carries cultural baggage which blocks many from attending a Christian gathering. What is the advantage of the “church” word anyway? Does anyone know?

Christian / Christianity

Christianity and Christian are also polluted terms today. They make it impossible to distinguish between the Bible and those inhumane bureaucracies which were part of the Roman empire, and arose later in Europe as various monarchs created personal, patriotic organizations. Each dynasty created another brand of “Christianity” which became yet another branch of government.

The Bible, on the other hand, uses clean terms: we are “the disciples”, and our faith is “The Lord’s Way” (or just abbreviated as “The Way” — see Acts 6:1,2,7; 9:1,2,19,26,38; 11:26, 29; 13:52; 14:20,22,28; 15:10; 18:23,25, 26, 27; 19:9, 19, 23, 30; 20:1,30; 21:4, 16; 24:14, 22). It was non-Christians who first coined the term “Christian”, because they were ridiculing followers of Jesus Christ: the word means “little Christs” (see Acts 11:26).

Unfortunately, Christianity and Christian are entrenched deep in our language, and we’ll never get away from the tarnished labels.

Who wants to defend the Christianity created by King Henry VIII in order to justify executing his wives? (The monarchy still remains the "head" of the Church of England today.)

Kosmos/World System

Kosmos is the Greek word used in the Bible to describe the “World System” which governs human affairs on this planet. Irregardless of the form of human government, from God’s perspective it’s all different shades of a spiritual Counterfeit Kingdom ruled by “the god of this world.” (More to follow…)

Not Reformation.

Not Evolution.

It’s a Revolution in every sense of the word:

“A forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system; a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.” Oxford English Dictionary

How else to describe the upheaval? Clearly its followers move from one kingdom into another, from one world to another:

Open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God…’
Jesus, in Acts 26:18 (NASB)

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, Colossians 1:13 (NASB)

Proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
1 Peter 2:9 (NASB)

Overthrow

If Revolution is “a forcible overthrow of a government,” then Christianity is a revolution, because overthrow is the goal, the target, and the outcome of The Way:¹

“Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
John 12:31-32 (NASB)

At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:10-11 (NASB)

For it is written, “As I live , says the Lord , every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.
Romans 14:11-12 (NASB)

If Revolution is an “overthrow of a social order,” then Jesus spawned Revolution, because he turned the “social order” upside-down:

And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”
John 9:39 (NASB)

“These men who have upset the world have come here also…and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar…”
Acts 17:6-7 (NASB)

“So the last shall be first, and the first last.”
Matthew 20:16

(Notice his amazing proclamation in Matthew 20:16 is immediately followed by the shocking revelation of his death and resurrection in 20:17-19. Death is the expected fate for a radical revolutionary, but could anyone make sense of his promise of resurrection?)

If Revolution is “a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works” as the OED says, then Jesus and his followers certainly launched Revolution:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28 (NASB)

Those were radical, seditious words attacking the fabric of Roman (and local) society. Such notions of social, racial and gender equality were unmatched for almost 2,000 years, until the modern era which tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate the Jesus Revolution.

The Revolution Jesus started brought radical equality from the beginning. Galatians, the letter containing the quote above, is universally-acknowledged as an early snapshot of the most primitive Christianity, written before 50 AD. Christianity was an infant movement, yet embraced dangerous slogans like “neither slave nor free man.” How scandalous and subversive Christianity was to Roman civilization! Slavery was, after all, the economic muscle of the Empire, and slaves out-numbered freemen 2 to 1. If these “Called-Out Ones” (as they were known) championed equality, they were infiltrating the Empire with very dangerous ideas.

Far more scandalous was the worship and reverence these radicals held for their crucified leader: it meant they honored a criminal and dishonored Roman law, even if only in their hearts. And Paul rightly identifies the biggest hurdle to stumble potentially-interested outsiders was the revolutionary, disturbing nature of The Way:

But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a scandal and to Gentiles moronic, but to those who are “the called,” both Jews and Greeks, The Messiah is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:23-24

It meant those becoming Christians could also expect death, even crucifixion! Of course, this is precisely why Jesus warned potential followers:

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.  Luke 14:27

He wasn’t trying to be mean. He was preparing them to be revolutionaries.²

Radical

Yet even the OED gives a tame definition of the Radical Revolution Jesus brought: it was not “an overthrow…in favor of a new system” at all. His Radical Revolution is “anti-system”, not a “new system”. He introduced a radical redefinition of all the assumptions, activities and outcomes found in the world around. What human institution or government can still function by the principles of such a radical Revolution?

For example, here’s radical:

And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Ephesians 5:21 (NLT)

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;
Philippians 2:3 (NASB)

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor;
Romans 12:10 (NASB)

Such words describe a flattening of the hierarchy, which shakes the pillars of all human systems. “The Called-Out Ones” were precisely that: a movement against institutional hierarchy.

There is a hierarchy, but it breaks the rules of good business practices.

Yet The Called-Out Ones are not anarchists; they operate by authority, but it is a simple, one-tiered level of authority:

Christ is also the head of the The Called-Out-Ones, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. Colossians 1:18 (NLT)

Holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. Colossians 2:19 (NASB)

Today the Federal Reserve is playing a critical role in rectifying our economic turmoil. I was employed at the Federal Reserve in Cleveland, and I know how complex the bureaucracy is that moves trillions of dollars around the world every day. Consider what might happen if the Chairman of the Federal Reserve issued an internal memo one day like this:

“Henceforth, all employees of the Federal Reserve are equally responsible to oversee the daily operations and monetary management of the Federal Reserve.”

Banks across the globe would collapse overnight!

Yet such a memo is written to The Called-Out Ones, which makes the Jesus Revolution so dangerous and anti-institutional:

“Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ.” Matthew 23:10 (NASB)

“Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.” Matthew 23:9 (NASB)

With such a radical mandate, is it any wonder the Institutions of the Church have historically tortured, burned and killed The Called-Out Ones wherever they could be found? What a threat The Revolution poses to the powerful bureaucracies of “The Church”.

The Real Question

It is not “how do we do church?” Such a question assumes it’s only a matter of theopraxy in need of tuning — and perhaps there are times to fine-tune our practices. But not so today. Not with Christianity in steep decline. Not when we’re facing “The Last Christian Generation” as Josh McDowell predicts.

The real question is this: what happened to The Revolution? Is it so distant from our collective Christian memory that we can’t grasp it anymore? Or, perhaps more relevant, what are we doing as Christians in this country to kill The Revolution?

Is it possible American Christians are afraid of Radical Revolution? It is, after all, a stigma and a label often applied to hateful movements, like Communism. But it is fair to ask: why is it left to the hate-filled movements to call for revolution? Are not Christians already at odds with the World System? More important, would Karl Marx have made such progress if the name of “Christianity” was not so deeply-embedded in the oppressive regimes of the World System?

Issues Raised

For discussion and consideration:

1. How is it possible to reconcile “radical, seditious words attacking the fabric of Roman (and local) society” with “honor the king” in 1 Peter 2:17?
2. Do you see the close association between “willing to die” and “resurrection” in this revolution? (Read Matthew 20:17-19) What is that association, and how do we communicate this?
3. How do you reconcile Matthew 23:10 with Paul’s later writings which describe qualified leaders? (See 1 Tim. 3)
4. Does it make any practical difference at all wether Christianity is a “Revolution” or not? In other words, does it change the way you tell others about the Gospel?
5. Is there any difference between Christianity as a “Revolution” and Christianity as a “Spiritual War”? More to-the-point, how important is it to distinguish between “Revolution” and “War” in Christian ministry?

1. ”The Way” — was the name preferred by early Christians, and reflects their understanding of  the exclusivity and “overthrow” character of their movement. See Acts 6:1,2,7; 9:1,2,19,26,38; 11:26, 29; 13:52; 14:20,22,28; 15:10; 18:23,25, 26, 27; 19:9, 19, 23, 30; 20:1,30; 21:4, 16; 24:14, 22.
2. See “The Crux of Church Growth” - a related discussion of discipleship as a revolutionary’s paradigm.

“I’m so lonely!” Lennon screamed, “Wanna die!”  His heart was tortured, his guitar wailed, and he is dead now.

What kind of world kills minds like Lennon or Martin Luther King? Why did they kill Jesus Christ?

How do you tell a child what cruelty lies ahead?

It still happens, all the time. Every day when a little child begins school, the parents know this child will never be the same. His small spirit will be slowly ground away, and he’ll die long before he’s dead. The tragedy is captured in picture of a father speaking to his son:

May you always be courageous,
Stand upright,  and be strong!
And May you stay forever young! — Dylan

Those words sting in the hearts of parents. Much courage and strength is needed to stay “forever young” in a world so random.

But it isn’t madness, the Bible says. It’s oppression. More precise, a child steps into slavery, where life is cheap, expectations are overwhelming, and precious emotions like love or virtues like significance are tortuously ridiculed.

The Bible calls it “a spirit of slavery leading to fear”  where people are “subject to slavery all their lives” (Romans 8:15; Hebrews 2:15).

Blind Obedience

Only performance matters, and it’s fear-driven slavery: compliance, production, meet expectations no matter how overwhelmed. Why so frantic? Because the consequences are too fearful to imagine.

Why does everyone comply?

American democracy is smug and pompous the way it forces its brand of “freedom” on the rest of the world. Freedom of the press, speech and even religion are more propaganda than free expressions. All press, speech and religion is tolerated only if it conforms to the dictates of the Madison Avenue mold, which is no more than brain-dead marketing propaganda financed by the the rich and powerful. Today it’s called “Politically Correct” (who knows what that means?), but tomorrow a different genre will dominate the culture, and nobody dares challenge it. Our jobs and station in life are determined by our conformity:

So goes the cancer of the Western World: everyone is just doing his “Job.” Nobody learned the lesson of Eichmann. Everyone still points the finger elsewhere. America and the West suffer from a great spiritual crisis. — Jerry Rubin¹

Ghettos are the most visible evidence of oppression, but it's systemic in Capitalism. (Photo: Life Magazine).

Behind the curtain of so-called freedom, millions of people are chained to harsh expectations. The stories of suffering are endless.

The Origins

Exploitation fuels the economy, and this is the source of both pain and conformity in our culture. Capitalism smashes the weak under the iron boots of American Captains of Industry, Wall Street Icons, and the wealthiest corporation on earth called the Federal Government. How many tried to change the cruelty of this system? It always grows more sophisticated and cloaked.

Who sets the expectations, does anyone know?

Money drives everything, so we forget the greedy characters who own the money. Capitalism is not kind. It is cold and demanding, like any slave-owner, but without crude whips or chains. People are driven under the lash of economic forces beyond their control, at the whims of unknown faces in lavish boardrooms, issuing edicts from leather chairs.

Occasionally the Overlords emerge, especially when the economy collapses.

Greenspan - disillusioned with the virtues of Ayn Rand greed.

Stocks are tumbling along with Wall Street and monolithic institutions across America, exposing the vermin and thieves, fools and impetuous rich shakers and movers who perpetrated the economic collapse. What greed was hiding in the boardrooms! They were already rich beyond reason, but not rich enough, so they manipulated the economy and stuffed their pockets with money squeezed from millions of victims. How many families lost their homes because these men wanted another hundred million dollars?

Everybody knows Capitalism thrives on greed, but everybody somehow overlooks the evil nature of greed. The most brilliant minds are somehow deceived on this point, as the legendary head of the Federal Reserve recently admitted:

“Those of us who have looked to…lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” Alan Greenspan, 10/23/2008 Congressional Testimony

How could such a brilliant man think greedy people will protect shareholders? His faith in American greed was rattled, but not by just a few oddballs. Nobody should believe those few disgraced CEOs and CFOs from the current Wall Street crisis are gone, because more greedy chieftains are lining up to replace them. They too will dash hopes for well-behaved greed to run the country.

Such is the beast controlling America: economic slavery. Everyone knows it, everyone fears the lash, nobody wants to lose their cash, and everyone submits to it peacefully.

Systems of Oppression

The fact of economic slavery is not merely a Christian teaching. It’s evident to anyone who thinks about it, even famous atheists:

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand Russell

How can it be that everyone knows the human spirit is so degraded by a system we so adore? The Bible offers a viable explanation for the mind-numbing source behind human slavery:

Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. 2 Corinthians 4:4

This is not a local problem, it’s a hideous problem. Human oppression and slavery is systematic across the globe. It describes history. New ideologies and new forms of government arise, but human slavery remains the underlying glue holding societies together.

The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" enslaved billions.

Karl Marx eloquently exposed the undercurrent of oppression in the late 1800s, but his solution created the most brutal and oppressive regimes of history. The atheist regimes of Communism killed 200 million or more and turned vast populations into slave camps. What a terrible embarrassment it is for evangelists of atheism like Richard Dawkins, who claims atheism brings emancipation–so he avoids discussing the bloody fruit of Communism.

It’s an organized oppression, it’s not accidental. It’s pervasive, not isolated to a few greedy rich.

It’s called the World System in the Bible, and it kills any thoughts or interest in God. This is why the Bible pleas for for us to understand:

Do not love this World System nor the things it offers you, for when you love the World System, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 1 John 2:15

American economics “prevents us from living freely and nobly”, as Russell said, because the World System excludes God, who created us to live “freely and nobly.”

The World System is the reason why John Lenin was so lonely, why he was murdered, why Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ were murdered, and why a child’s sweet spirit is ground to dust: it’s a cruel system, even if it is antiseptic on its surface. The author is evil and oppressive, and to keep people from considering God, the World System subjugates and destroy what remains of the human spirit.

Revolution!

Social revolution will not produce freedom. It is a sad fact. Thus the failure of the youth revolution in the 60s and early 70s. The “Yippie Manifesto” is a pathetic and whining document of all the terrible things wrong with the world, but offers no solutions.

Communism replaced Czarism with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat that enslaved billions.

Democracy and Capitalism create massively-oppressed populations, based on the morality of rational self-interest, as Ayn Rand described.

Anarchists claim freedom comes from throwing off the shackles of government altogether, but history proves whenever this happens oppression and cruelty only become more chaotic and widespread, not less.²

A movement among famous scientists in the early 1900s claimed they could be trusted to form a benevolent society led by enlightened scientific minds, but they were the same scientists who created our Nuclear nightmare. They quickly lost their following.

But there is one point in history where real human freedom and dignity thrived under a kind and benevolent government:

• It wasn’t a social revolution.
• It was a revolution of the heart.
• It was led by the most successful revolutionary in history.
• His name was Jesus Christ.

1. A Yippie Manifesto, retrieved 2/20/2009
2. The onset of the Russian Revolution was initially anarchistic, until people began starving. The French Revolution was anarchistic as well, until Napoleon brought order.

When you take steps to undermine the powers-that-be, it’s called sedition.

Revolutionaries practice sedition.

Jesus Christ taught his followers to practice sedition.

Really:

“But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.  Mark 3:27 (NASB)

Just to clarify:

Jesus told this story to his disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money.

So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’

“The manager thought to himself, ‘Now what? My boss has fired me. I don’t have the strength to dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg. Ah, I know how to ensure that I’ll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired.’

“So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe him?’
The man replied, ‘I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.’ So the manager told him, ‘Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.’

“‘And how much do you owe my employer?’ he asked the next man. ‘I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat,’ was the reply. ‘Here,’ the manager said, ‘take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.’

“The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light.

Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.

“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.

And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?
And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

The Pharisees, who dearly loved their money, heard all this and scoffed at him.
Luke 16:1-14 (NLT)

Get it?

Coming soon: a series on Christian sedition, as taught by Jesus Christ.

Over the last 5 years, many articles have emerged about our newest generation, dubbed “The Millennials.” They are 80-million strong and born roughly between 1980 and 1995, which puts them at 13 to 28 years of age.

They are an interesting group, because some articles written about them discuss how they are revolutionary, wonderful and self-actualized people. However, other studies and articles have described how deeply depressed, entitled, and emotionally bankrupt they are.

So which is it? Can both be true? In either case, what should the church’s response be to this generation?

First, what shaped the mind-set of this generation? There are a number of theories. Some sources trace it back to a reaction of the Baby-Boomers against their own circumstances, inferring that they wanted to raise their kids with freedom from the hardship and struggles they faced. According to this view, Boomers protected, coddled and did whatever they could to give their kids the best and happiest of childhoods. This motive may have contributed to the “self-esteem” movement that emerged in the 70’s.

One of the most famous faces of this movement was Marlo Thomas. A well-known celebrity, she and other celebrities kicked this movement into gear with her “Free To Be…You And Me” series. Through songs and performances, things such as self importance, tolerance, and personal happiness were extolled, telling children that no matter what, they can get what they want out of life. The sky is the limit! The series went on to win an Emmy and Peabody Award. It was all the rage.

By the 80’s, the self-esteem movement touched every as aspect of our culture. Many children’s TV shows weaved the mantra of how important little Bobby and Susie were into their storylines. Programs were developed in school sports where everyone was a winner, regardless of their performance. And they were rewarded as such.

The Legacy

Responsibility was equated with hardship, so some parents steered clear of pushing responsibilities onto their kids and teaching them to be accountable. Instead of having a generation that values things such as absolutes, security and a strong work-ethic, we now have a generation that has no absolutes, and holds the value of their lifestyle and fun above all.¹

This is evident in the segment of the Millennials that is just now entering the workforce. Wall Street Journalist columnist Jeffery Zaslow recently echoed this sentiment on the show 60 Minutes.

The codling virus continues to eats away even when junior goes to college“You now have a generation coming into the workplace that has grown up with the expectation that they will automatically win and they will always be rewarded.” On the same 60 Minutes segment called “The Millennials Are Coming”, one young man admitted that he wants to be praised for whatever he does. Zaslow continued, saying that “the codling virus continues to eats away even when junior goes to college.” He then told a story about how one professor had a student come up after class to complain about their grade, and then handed the phone to the professor saying their parent was on the line to discuss it!

Marian Saltzman, an executive at ad agency JWT, has been managing and tracking Millennials for the past five years. She says there is a segment of this group that is hard working, clever and resourceful, but there is also a segment of this group she has dealt with that are incorrigible.

When speaking to Millennials, “you can’t be harsh, you cannot tell them you are disappointed in them, you can’t really ask them to live and breathe a company because they are living and breathing themselves and that keeps them very busy,” Saltzman said.

Morley Safer summed it up: “They come first… childhood filled with trophies and adulation didn’t prepare them for the cold realities of work.”

Words like ‘narcissistic’ and ‘entitled’ are often used by journalists, researchers and commentators to describe this group. For example, the December issue of Allure published an article titled, “The New Narcissist.”

In all fairness, ‘narcissistic’ can’t be used to describe the entire group of Millennials. There are a number of kids in this generation that do value hard work, have the ability to delay gratification, and look out for others. But the amount of attention and study this phenomenon has gathered says there is something veridical to the “me first” attitude displayed in the 10 to 30 age range.

Hard Research

So after 25 years did it help American children to be told how special they are? Are grown-up Millennials more able to cope with the ups and downs of life than previous generations?

According to a study published in the May 2003 issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest – the answer is a resounding “no!” The report, “Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?” took an objective scientific look at the effects of self-esteem in the major areas of life (work, life success, etc.). The authors were researchers from large universities, such as Roy F. Baumeister at Florida State University and Kathleen D. Vohs from the University of Utah.

“We have not found evidence that boosting self-esteem causes benefits,” the authors wrote. “Our findings do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes.” They discovered that “efforts to boost the self-esteem of pupils have not been shown to improve academic performance and may sometimes be counterproductive” They go on to say:

“Subjective experience creates the impression that self-esteem rises when one wins a contest, garners an award, solves a problem, or gains acceptance to a social group, and that it falls with corresponding failures. This pervasive correlation may well strengthen the impression that one’s level of self-esteem is not just the outcome, but indeed the cause, of life’s major successes and failures.”

On the contrary, they said, “indiscriminate praise might just as easily promote narcissism, with its less desirable consequences.”

nearly one in two young people have some sort of psychiatric conditionEven more troubling is a recent study reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the New York Psychiatric Institute. The study included a nationally representative sample of over 5,000 young adults aged 19 to 25. Including substance abuse, the study found that nearly one in two young people have some sort of psychiatric condition. Nearly one out of five has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and less than 25 percent of this group gets treatment.

The publication Pediatrics examined psychosocial issues in thousands of millennial children ages four to 15 during pediatric visits for common health concerns. The study found significant increases in reports of emotional problems, including depression and anxiety, between children studied in 1979 and those seen in 1996.²

So scientifically, not only did the self-esteem movement not work like it was suppose to, but the rate of emotional problems has increased. The increasing rate of depression and alcohol abuse could perhaps be attributed to the increase in broken families, abuse and neglect, which has been on the rise since the 1970’s. But part of this striking increase in psychosocial problems is also attributable to children being raised in a “me-centered” environment, free from failures, only to have the realities of the world hit them head-on as they get older and with little framework for coping with them.

The Christian Response

So what should our response be? Popular thought, expressed by motivation consultant Bob Nelson, is that “If you want to…get the best out of them, you sure better know what presses their buttons.” Thus, many believe they must be entertained and showered with lots of thanks, gifts and rewards to get them to do what is wanted. Is this really the answer—to continue to coddling trend? To perpetuate catering to their every whim and need? Probably not. This doesn’t get to the root of the problem, it just pacifies (and prolongs?) the situation.

This is where the church can help. Here at Xenos Christian Fellowship, we encounter youth all the time who have these exact issues, ranging from being totally consumed with self, to more serious issues such as emotional problems and carrying the pain from a broken or abusive home. Many have never stepped into a church, but they see the real relationships the youth at Xenos have with each other—and they are intrigued.

Anele Howell, a high school senior who attends Xenos, describes her experience this way: “At school it is cool to hate God, but they see the tight relationships we have that are nowhere else, and it is different than what they are use to, and they want that.” Christian relationships demonstrate a vitality that go against the grain of many relationships see among her peers, “where jumping from friend to friend is the norm when they don’t meet your need,” Anelle said.

Chloe, another high school senior attending Xenos, agreed:

“The movie Mean Girls is only a slight exaggeration - girls at school are competitive, are in cliques, and they look at relationships as something to fill their basest instincts. One day they say they love you, then the next days they are calling you names for daring to wear the same shoes they have. They don’t know how to find the real love that only God can bring to them.”

The love of Christ has transformed the lives of many youth at Xenos. They hear for the first time how the God of the universe loves them so much that He died for them. Discovering the gift of God’s love makes people “feel much of their loneliness fall away as they experience the love of God in their lives,” said Keith McCallum, who works with this age group. “They soon learn how rewarding and fulfilling it is to serve and love others.” This is in marked contrast to the self-esteem movement which clearly emphasizes selfishness.

Not only do these kids build meaningful relationships with peers, but they love others outside their peer group. Many Xenos youth volunteer their time in an after-school program at South Street, an inner-city ministry in Akron. A Xenos college-age group also volunteers weekly at ACCESS, a homeless shelter for women in Akron, folding blankets, cleaning trash, helping with childcare, throwing birthday parties, and whatever else is needed.

For their hard work, Xenos volunteers were honored by the United Way at a 2007 Volunteer Celebration:

“The service Xenos Christian Fellowship provides ACCESS is incalculable. In addition to helping out in so many important ways, their friendly manner brings smiles to the faces of children who would otherwise go without much recognition on a special day.”  United Way Newsletter.

Sean, a 20-year old man diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, struggled most his life with relating and loving others. He was plagued with bitterness from years of brutal treatment at the hands of his peers at school. In 2003, he became a Christian at Xenos, and since then has blossomed into one of the most loving and serving individuals at Xenos.

Sean started volunteering his time at Salvation Army in 2007, and in 2008 he was awarded the “Outstanding Student Volunteer of the Year” in front of a gathering of more than 200 prominent Akron business people, organization workers, and other volunteers. When asked about his change from being bitter at people to wanting to serve others, Sean said “When I learned to forgive, then I learned to have compassion, especially for those who have it more difficult than myself.”

Teaching kids from the Millennial generation the love of Christ, generosity, gratitude, and the joy of serving others has melted away a lot of the negative stereotypes that plagued them. So it is possible to resolve the paradox; Millennials’ depraved, emotionally bankrupt lives need the same treatment as all the generations that preceded them.

The law of love is the Lords’ prescription for lives that work, and as the scriptures say “…the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations (Psalm 33:11).”

1. McCrindle Research Generation Map Study 2003
2. Harvard University study reported in Harvard Mental Health Newsletter, February 2002

The Young, Restless Reformed are leaders of remarkable movements in the Reformed tradition.¹ Their “bleeding edges” are split into the Emergent Church and Piper-Reformed Church movements racing away from the Reformed status quo still held by senior citizens. But dead traditions remain unchallenged in the new movements. The Restless Reformed are courageous, but they still need to examine the legalism in the Reformed tradition, because this builds real spiritual prisons:

But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Galatians 3:23 (NASB)

The Piper-Grudem Team

The conservative branch of the Restless Reformed is led by John Piper, famous for Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and other books about God’s sovereignty. Along with popular young leaders Driscoll and Chandler, the Piper-Reformed are spreading across the country through the Acts 29 Network., which provides tremendous resources to the Christian community.

Another fascinating figure in this movement is Wayne Grudem, from Trinity Seminary. When my brother “Buck” was at Trinity he was excited by Grudem’s systematic theology for Gen-X readers, which surprised me because my experience with Dr. Grudem was a little different.

I knew Dr. Grudem from a class I took at Trinity when I was still a young “Fishy” elder at “The Fish House” OSU ministry, and what a bunch of juveniles were were back then! We called this esteemed theologian, “Dr. Gruntum” behind his back (I’ve matured since then). To be fair, he was skinny with a whiny voice that made him a classic “Ivory Tower” academic so irresistible to wise-crackin’ sophomoric minds (he’s buff now).

There is a redemptive point here: Dr. ‘Gruntum’ surprised us.

God-Terror

Dr. Grudem 20 years later.

What shock we faced one day when Dr. Grudem leaned forward, deepened his voice, shook a finger and declared, “FEAR THE LORD!” It may be exaggerated by memory, but he somehow transformed from a mouse into a threatening stalwart of theological prowess. The wiry Grudem arrested all us Fishies, and we were all Wise Guys. The silence was stunning.

“The Bible says ‘fear’ God, which is ‘phobos’ in the Greek, meaning ‘terror’,” he said. “To ‘tremble with fear’.”

Fishies were flabbergasted. We were steeped in radical grace from Dallas Theological Seminary, and Grudem’s “phobos” challenged our foundations.

One confident student spoke up: “‘Phobos’ also means ‘awe’, so context determines meaning. 1 John 4:18 says ‘perfect love casts out ‘phobos’. That means terror doesn’t belong with God’s love.

Dr. Gruntum rubbed his (pointy) chin. “I’ll…get back to you on that.”

How many professors retreat with such nobility? (Yet how many should!) Dr. Grudem never did “get back” with a resolution, but he did acknowledge the problem, and deserves accolades.

The Universal Fear

The story demonstrates a terrible poison saturating many Christian teachings and lives: fear of Jesus. This fear is irreconcilable with all gospel records of Jesus, and the antithesis of “the New and Living Way” Jesus brought, but it is compatible with all manmade religions.

I may have wasted my life, but at least I don't look stupid...

Fear is an institutional necessity in religions around the world, and writers like Dawkins are nauseated by the trite, self-inflicted punishments triggered by religious fear. The God Delusion was a best-seller because many readers were Christians! His Web displays heartbreaking testimonies from Christians who lived in fear until saved by The God Delusion. Dawkins was victimized by Jesus-Fear until saved by atheism.

Institutionalized Jesus-Fear makes Christianity nearly indistinguishable from other religions. Fear of spirits or a spirit-force like Karma is the pervasive, universal trait in religion, and it’s a terrible enforcer. “Blind obedience” and “blind faith” are synonymous terms, both driven by religious fear, and both necessary in authoritarian, religious regimes.

Is it any surprise that “obedience” and “holiness” are the pillars of sermons in Institutionalized Christianity? “Holiness” is vague and so trivialized: it is the religious behaviors that characterize Institutionalized Christianity, but stray far from biblical holiness.

Holiness is a cuss-free zone, and this is a huge pillar for Institutionalized Christianity. I can prove it: go to a nice-looking Christian church, find the narthex, find someone friendly-looking, walk up and say, “Hey, what the F*** is goin’ on? My name is…” and offer to shake hands. Watch the reaction. It will be similar to what happened to this “youth pastor”:

A real MF-er, apparently

“It was way out of line,” says the chairman of the board. “We’re still trying to figure out why he felt he had license to speak that way.”

At last Tuesday’s board meeting, a 3-D rendering of the church’s master plan was revealed, causing the youth pastor to let loose the word.

“It was long and drawn out and sort of lingered in the room for a moment,” says a co-worker. “I think he meant it in a positive way, but everybody froze.”

The youth pastor says he had been practicing using the word in his office so it would roll off his tongue naturally when he uses it with young people, but that apparently it came too naturally at the meeting.

He has been suspended from pulpit duties for two weeks. Source: Lark News.

What did he say? “The f-bomb” — means “F***”. And for those who feel words like “F***” don’t belong on a Christian publication, let me point out that “F***” is not an obscenity: it’s three asterisks and a letter ‘F’. Such are the silly games in Christian Legalism. All this big stink comes from merely one verse in Ephesians 5 which may or may not be referring to obscenities per se (most likely it’s referring to pornographic language like you might hear at Hooters, however). Meanwhile, the scores of passages renouncing rich American greed and materialism go unnoticed in Legalistic ethics!

“Holiness” should describe a loving character like God’s character, and not simplistic prohibitions against behaviors like cussing, smoking, drinking or gambling (none of which are temptations in the sheltered world of Institutionalized Christianity).²

So many Christian sermons manipulate through guilt and fear, like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards, the famous Reformed preacher. Like the other “fire-and-brimstone” sermons that followed his pattern, he raised the threats of Mosaic Law which Jesus buried at the cross (see Rom. 7:6,9; Gal. 2:19,21). Edward’s sermon style became a stereotype of mean Christianity, tragically, and God is not praised by the slander this brings on His kindness:

Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? Romans 2:4 (NASB)

How many Christian institutions would lose their members if their sermons focused on “the riches of His kindness” instead? The problem is an issue of the wrong rules.

The Wrong Rules

The Piper-Reformed Church embraces the Mosaic Covenant (or, “The Law”), which was a legal code for nation Israel in the 1500s BC, and was never intended for Gentile nations, especially in the modern era. This is a popular and egregious error: Reformed doctrine applies the “blessings and curses” of the Law to modern America, so the secular world howls at the glaring incompatibilities between The Law and the real world. In Deut. 22:8, for example, parapets are required on roofs. (A parapet is a balustrade, if that helps understanding.)

Uneducated Christians are quickly embarrassed defending Old Testament Law in today’s world. If the “blessings and curses” of the law apply to America, why not stone gays and rebellious kids to death, as prescribed in The Law? But the embarrassment is defending Reformed theology, not the Bible! The Emergent church resolves the anachronisms by reducing the Bible’s authority rather than moving away from their stifling Reformed roots. Perhaps it is easier for those raised under strong traditions to discard the Bible than to break church tradition.

There is no reason to fear modern criticisms of Old Testament law. First, it applied to Israel, not modern Gentiles. And second, compared against any culture of its time, the Hebrew Bible is remarkably lenient and enlightened. Third, and most important, such criticisms are a phenomenal opportunity to cite the Jesus Ethic that matters here-and-now:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you… John 13:34

The “new commandment” is the Jesus Ethic (what the NeoZine calls Love Ethics), and this marvelous ethical view describes how love works. It is a revolutionary ethic which always draws people into freedom, and non-Christians respect it (see John 13:35; Gal. 5:1).

Reformed theology suffocates the Jesus Ethic with the Mosaic Code, which is guaranteed to produce guilt and failure: “the Law came in so that transgression would increase” (Romans 5:20). The Law was given to create a desperate need for forgiveness and realize the need for God’s help, specifically for salvation (see Gal. 3:24). The Law reveals moral inadequacy only in order move us towards God’s Grace, which means that eternal salvation is a gift from God (see Eph. 2:8,9).

The Law is useless beyond salvation, and this is a central theme in New Testament ethics. Christians are dead to The Law, pure and simple.³ Spiritual life and growth come from Identity Truths, which we cannot possibly elucidate here, but this large body of understanding is not taught or understood in Reformed theology. Instead The Law is a “means of growth” and a source for spiritual life.⁴

Here is the tragedy experienced by young Christians living under Reformed doctrine: they will necessarily struggle with guilt as they rely on The Law for spiritual growth, because they will fail, and the failures will erode their joy. The Law identifies failure, not success:

At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. Romans 7:9-10 (NLT)

Anyone who claims to be joyful and spiritually-alive by living under The Law is either lying or is not understanding “the law’s commands,” because they cause “spiritual death instead.”

Lonely Legalism

Living under The Law is angst: “a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition…” (OED). It is a great word to describe the defeat produced by The Law. This is called Legalism.

Legalism is especially depressing because it is a lonely effort: me, myself and I fighting against moral defeat. The joy of Christianity begins when we understand our battle is not a personal moral battle, but rather a group effort to help each other overcome immaturity and build increasingly-mature and stable love relationships: this is the outcome of Love Ethics in the New Testament, and it is not burdensome.

Reformed theology produces the misery of Defensive Spirituality, where each person fights for moral improvement in private worlds. Recent sermons in Reformed pulpits are moving from hellfire-and-brimstone diatribes towards Spiritual Disciplines, which is more positive, but Spiritual Disciplines still occur in the same isolated context.

The loneliness of Spiritual Disciplines still perpetrates angst: “I’m failing, and nobody knows,” the heart groans. Often in Reformed churches people appear happy because behavior improves, but few dare expose their angst.

Where is the joy of the the Jesus Ethic in Spiritual Disciplines? Where is the Body Life and the love relationships that impact the secular world as Jesus describes in John 13:35?

In Pursuit of Change

The Mosaic Law failed to change lives from the beginning!

The Love Ethics taught by Jesus changes character, not behavior, because it is “the kindness of God that leads you to repentance,” and not Jesus-Fear. This is a radical departure from the fear-threat motivation common with Institutionalized Christianity. The Restless Reformed are innovative thinkers, but they remain sadly attached to the fears of Legalism:

I have provided the following verses of Scripture to simply scare you into seeing God in his holiness and power rather than re-envisioning him in your mind as much less holy than he is, and subsequently your sexual sin as much less unholy than it is. From Re:LIT Web, a ministry of The Resurgence.

The intentions are honorable but the effects are short-term, at best. A porn habit is not a behavior controlled by fear and threats. A porn habit is a failure to connect intimately and sexually with a spouse, and this issue requires Love Ethics and deep character change, as Paul describes:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 (NASB)

“There is no law” that build love or joy. Can anyone stipulate a”joy” rule or live by it? “You will be filled with joy–or else!” What a self-refuting lifestyle that is! So many Christians give up because they live in a soul tortured by the hypocrisy built on fear, rules, threats, and deceptive behavior-change.

1. Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists by Collin Hanson, Christianity Today editor.
2. See Spiritual Maturity for more on the holiness of Love Ethics.
3. Paul teaches we died to The Law, sin, self, and “the world” all in the same fashion, so any return to The Law would be considered a fleshly life, in Pauline theology. Compare Gal. 2:20;6:14; Rom 6:11;7:6.
4. Berkhoff’s Systematic Theology — the tertius usus legis (”third use”) of The Law is for Christian growth. See Christian Ethics for details.

The keeper of God’s word was the Catholic Church, the only religion in all of Christendom. The supreme religious leader, the Pope in Rome, crowned the Kings who became rulers of the Holy Roman Empire stretching from Sicily north to Poland. The Emperor was ruler of the temporal world while the Pope and his Bishops reigned supreme over the Spiritual world. — PBS.org

We call it Institutionalized Christianity to distinguish it from Biblical Christianity, because none of the above is found in the Bible, nor does it resemble anything found in Christianity prior to the collapse of civilization.

And it’s a fear-driven religion.

Codified Confusion

Odd, superstitious, sick and even horrifying traditions began their incubation in the darkness of the Middle Ages, after Rome fell. As the curtain raised centuries later, Christian churches were replaced by a thing called “Christendom”. It was a beast of snarled beliefs still difficult to trace today. They were disjointed, poorly-reasoned beliefs, often mixed with local superstitions and the rampant racism and fears of Medieval Europe.

Transubstantiation, for example, emerged from the Dark Ages stained by bloody purges of Jewish communities, called Pogroms: the burning, looting, murderous slaughter of peaceful, unarmed civilians by “Christian” armies and mobs.  “Praise the Savior, Jesus!” they would sing above the screams of burning children and mothers and cursing fathers.

One of the justifications used for slaughtering Jews was Transubstantiation, a widely-held belief in Christendom. This superstitious belief works much like a heavenly Star Trek transporter beam, and Jesus Christ is materialized inside the wine and wafers of Christian communion (to be precise, Jesus materialized but still remained invisible). The Transubstantiation beam begins when a priest utters (in Latin) a precise, somber incantation, similar to a magical spell.

Then comes the weird part: once Jesus is trapped in the wine and wafers, he’s vulnerable (obviously). “Handle With Caution” rules are complex: an altar boy holds a special “Jesus-catching” tool under each communicant’s chin to catch a falling Jesus-crumb before it hits the ground.

But the greatest threat to Jesus-wafers are Jews. They could stab the Jesus-wafers and kill Jesus again, and many times a Jew was spotted sneaking into a church at night with a knife to stab Jesus. Thus the peasants launch another Pogrom against Jewish villages, torch it, and sing while Jewish children and adults are screaming and burning.¹ The reader may be offended at this disrespect toward a sacred tradition, but someone should speak for the victims too.

How did this absurd superstition get so enshrined in Christendom? No church councils, scholars or Papal Bulls established it. But bloody massacres surround Transubstantiation, and it’s an emotionally-charged, dogmatic superstition, and by the Early Renaissance it was woven into the culture. No authorities — civil or ecclesiastical — wanted to change it.

Transubstantiation was finally codified and given a (somewhat) thoughtful foundation at the Council of Trent, but that was later, in 1544. Unfortunately, the Bible was overshadowed by the urgent need to combat Protestantism, so preserving “The Traditions” were paramount at Trent. Fear dominated the Council of Trent.

Fearful Traditions

So little thought or discussion supported these strange, new traditions, and it’s nearly impossible to trace with certainty their historical development. Some of these beliefs were appearing by the 4th Century when Constantine dissolved “The Great Church” into Rome’s government. At that time, Roman bureaucrats from the old pagan system jumped on career opportunities with the new Roman church, and maybe some were Christians, but many church authorities were unfamiliar with the Bible. This was especially true for Constantine, the self-proclaimed “Pontiff Maximus” (high priest). He knew precious little about the Bible.

The ignorance factor in the new ecclesiastical order required attention, and Pope “Gregory the Great” undertook the challenge and established many of these gnarled beliefs. He only wanted to rectify the biblical ignorance in his far-flung ecclesiastical empire. Gregory was a formidable intellect, and the precision of our modern calendar is one of his great achievements. He was also perceptive, and saw Roman authority crumbling fast in the 6th Century.

Working under tremendous pressures before chaos descended on Europe, Gregory desperately gathered the writings still accessible from across the empire and tried to distill them in Dialogs and Sermons. He hoped to stabilize Christian beliefs.²  But this was a daunting and impossible task, because he was under far greater pressures in the political arena. There was no longer a Roman Emperor in Rome, so the job fell in Pope Gregory’s lap. One scholar summarizes Gregory’s pickle:

On the one hand he was an able and determined administrator, a skilled and clever diplomat, a leader of the greatest sophistication and vision; but on the other hand, he appears in his writings as a superstitious and credulous monk, hostile to learning, crudely limited as a theologian, and excessively devoted to saints, miracles, and relics. –Norman Cantor

Gregory’s confusing legacy seeded Medieval Christianity with faulty scholarship. One of the most glaring errors was his misinterpretation of Augustine’s writings about salvation-by-grace.³ He thoroughly garbled it, so by the Renaissance a well-entrenched, complex system of religious works emerged which resembled nothing of Augustine’s writings about grace.⁴

Fear built a foundation of beliefs that incubated in the Dark Ages.

So went the Dark Ages: layers and layers of odd beliefs stacked on top of each other and glued together by the dogmatic minds of feudal Europe. Only a fresh start could unsnarl this tangled web.

The Courage to Start Fresh

It began early in the Renaisance: a fresh return to the Bible, headed by courageous man named John Wycliffe. He was the most eminent biblical scholar in England, and this position made him untouchable.

He dared to break all the rules and translated the Bible into common English!⁵ The Wycliffe Bible is a treasury of Old English, immanently useful for scholars today.

It was a best-seller! Without the help of printing presses, England was flooded with an astounding number of handwritten copies. People were so hungry to read the Bible after long centuries of church monopoly.

It kicked off a spiritual revival in England as people found spiritual life through the Bible. A movement spread across England called The Lollards (because they muttered when they prayed–a strange thing for those accustomed to the chants of the Mass). Authorities desperately tried to stamp out these subversives, but it was a spiritual awakening impossible to suppress.

The Vatican itself took action soon after Wycliffe’s death, and sent a solemn Anathematizing Committee from Rome to dig up his bones and perform the solemn candle-light ritual that anathematized him (sending him to hell).⁶ Then they burned the bones and scattered the ashes. Apparently the Vatican thought their ceremony yanked Wycliffe out of his heavenly haunts and sent him to hell where God should have sent him in the first place!

They feared Wycliffe even in the afterlife!

Wycliffe set in-motion a long chain of rebellious movements triggered by more and more common-language translations of the Bible. Huss, Luther, and the brilliant linguist Tyndale all launched famous translations, spurred by Gutenberg’s printing press. Every time the Bible hit the streets, people rebelled en masse against ecclesiastical authorities and their unbiblical traditions.

Tyndale’s efforts were especially brilliant, because he went to Amsterdam to leverage new printing technology that reduced the entire New Testament into a palm-sized, highly-subversive format that flooded England.

The Fear-Killer

At last, here is a well-grounded fear: the subversive nature of the Bible! It attacks the assumptions of the authorities. It exposes so many of the silly, flimsy traditions that maintain social order through fear, such as racism, sexism, and slavery. When it was written, Christians were killed and hounded because they had the courage to rise above the rigid social order of the Roman world:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28 (NASB)

Such words coming out of the 1st Century AD were unparalleled for thousands of years. Still today the holy scriptures of all the other world religions maintain strict dividing walls between the sexes, races, and rigid social castes.⁷ But the Bible calls for Christians to understand that with Jesus,

He Himself is our peace, who made both Jews and Gentiles into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, Ephesians 2:14

The Bible’s greatest threat against tyranny is its attack against blind faith, a tool used by religious overlords to dominate ignorant masses. Richard Dawkins is almost silly in his stereotype of “biblical blind faith”, when in fact the Bible says blind faith is reprehensible:

For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 2 Peter 1:16 (NASB)

“Blind faith” is one of the most insulting rumors spread against the Bible, considering the many superstitious, blind-faith institutions and beliefs it overthrew in history. Dawkins was one of the chief perpetrators of it until he met Lennox at an Oxford debate in 2007.⁸

It’s no wonder the “god of this world” wages an all-out war to keep the Bible out of circulation. People hold an unreasonable fears about it, like it’s the only book in the world nobody can really comprehend, and trying to do so might warp the human mind. Even in the modern era communists were terrified of Bible circulation, not because it contains a call-to-arms like Karl Marx’s writings, but because the Bible promotes independent, free thought.

Without any clear idea of why they’re so scared, people are strangely aversive to reading the Bible for themselves.

Today the same fear of reading the Bible for oneself still rages in people’s hearts. I once gave a copy of The Scarlet Thread to a friend (a survey of the Bible), and he began reading it voraciously. He was amazed as he read the Bible for himself without a priest! But he was Serbian and Eastern Orthodox, so when his priest found out he was engaged in a self-taught Bible study, the man’s enthusiasm was drowned with dour warnings about how complicated the Bible is, how dangerous it is to read it without a formal seminary education, and how nearly-impossible it is for anyone to truly understand. My Serbian friend dropped the project like a hot potato.

He was too afraid to study the Bible himself!

Spread the Revolution!

Contrary to popular myth, the Bible is easily understood by the common man. Wycliffe’s generation could understand it, and they rediscovered a revolution of spiritual life. Certainly our modern generations can grasp it far easier: we’re better-educated, can access more study tools, and we don’t have to hide and study the Bible in dark caves by candle-light!

History is undeniable proof that the Bible contains something wonderful and revolutionary. Authorities were terrified to see it falling into people’s hands. These authorities knew the Bible challenged their traditions and threatened established order. Yet this is precisely why God wants the Bible spread as far and wide as possible:

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery! Galatians 5:1

The Bible is anything but oppressive! It prods, challenges, uproots, revives and revolutionizes the human heart. The Bible propagates freedom, according to its own claims.

At Xenos we’ve stumbled accidentally upon this amazing fact: when a Christian group breaks out of the traditional 10-20 minute “homily”, when people really teach and study the Bible, when everyone engages in it, then hearts come alive by it.  Then people care very little for organ music, choirs, “sacred” Worship Services, and the musty, old traditions of the Medieval church.

1. See Rausch, Legacy of Hatred, with extensive documentation of the racism surrounding Transubstantiation.
2. See Olson, The Story of Christian Theology.
3. Augustine, On Nature and Grace, an attack on the Pelagian view of salvation-by-works.
4. See The Story of Christian Theology, Gregory the Great, in loc.
5. Download and read Wycliffe’s translation to get a feel for ancient English. His Bible is one of the earliest English writings, and almost 200 handwritten copies remain today.
6. See The Dawn of Covenant Theology, where we describe the superstitious ritual of Anathema. It requires a papal delegate and 12 other preists standing around in a circle, with candles, repeating a strict forumla similar to a witch’s spell.
7. Islam is famous for its demeaning and even cruel treatment of women who won’t conform to the Koran’s dress codes. The Hindu scriptures are famous for a cruel caste system and its doctrine of women as those who must pay the price of bad kharma from a previous life — including the practice of burning widows alive on their husband’s funeral pyre. The Book of Mormon is also notorious for its injunction against allowing blacks to become Mormons, up until the late 1900s.
8. Dawkins was left flustered and speechless because his was unable to build his case against Christianity when Dr. Lennox proved that “blind faith” was despised in Biblical Christianity. Without an false, dysfunctional faith to argue against, Dawkins becomes quite hobbled in his crusade against Christianity. Lennox: “For Christianity, faith isn’t blind. Delusional gods are roundly condemned in the Bible…” See the 2007 Dawkins-Lennox debate online.

It’s not reformation.

It’s not evolution.

It’s not revival.

It’s a revolution, pure and simple.

Read the series.

One man launched it over 2,000 years ago. He only needed a small handful of people to carry it out because it was so contagious and wonderful, it took off on its own momentum.

Bottlenecks in History

The distant past throws long shadows across modern life. Americans recently fought a war in the Balkans that lasted from 1991 to 2001, but did you know this conflict actually began in the 1500’s?

In the same way, many Christians don’t realize the trends in their modern Christian church are tied directly to the 1500s. These long chains of the past are now stressed by secular culture, forcing Christians everywhere to reconsider hallowed institutions once codified during this violent era in European history. The greatest impediment to the Gospel is the Christian’s blind loyalty to those antiquated human institutions.

During this war in the 16th century, King Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire tried to block Ottoman Turk Muslims from invading southern Christian Europe. King Charles did halt the invasion, but lacked the strength to dislodge the invaders. Known as “the Balkan Peninsula,” the area became a perpetual powder keg between Islamic and Christian religions.

Then 500 years later President Clinton and the American military finally settled the issue, theoretically, right here in Ohio at the “Dayton Peace Accords”.

The Birth of a Movement

As strange as it may seem, the Muslim invasions brought welcome relief to the infant Protestant movement. For two decades King Charles was entangled with Muslims in southern Europe, while Protestant uprisings grew in Germany, far to the north. The Vatican chaffed and issued threats and edicts from Rome to quash the Protestant movement, but Rome was unable do anything to prevent Protestants from dismantling a millennium of well-established church authority.

It was a raucous movement led by rowdy, beer-drinking Luther. The Reformation rocked Germany like John Bellushi’s Animal House (minus the sex, drugs and Rock ‘n Roll.) Protestants turned the Sunday Mass into a spirited attack against the papacy. This was all terribly exciting for the peasants.

The movement enjoyed widespread popularity. “High Church” ceremonies were swept away by spiritual freedom and love for a personal Savior. The somber atmosphere of Mass was shattered by a crazy new, beer-hall instrument called an organ. A joyful cry of “Sola Scriptura!” raced across Europe and spilled into France, where the carefree movement was suddenly crushed in great bloodshed.

One who fled these massacres was John Calvin. While in hiding, he furiously wrote his famous Magnum Opus a mere three years after his conversion. With Institutes of the Christian Religion, he established a theology of crushing, sovereign authority headed by Jesus Christ which justified torture, massacres and wars. He loved the Protestant cause, but his disciplined mind was repulsed by its wild pace and enthusiasm. He wanted more law and order.

Calvin soon unleashed his theology in Geneva where he established an orderly Protestant world and ruled it with an iron will. Catholics, who were previously the hunters of Protestant rebels, suddenly became the hunted ones in Switzerland.

Institutionalized Christianity

Without a doubt the institutions of the church are the greatest obstacles for God’s love and the single cause for Christianity’s dark history. With good motives, brilliant men wrapped tight structures around the church to preserve it.

Yet the Gospel is conspicuously silent about the structures and institutions we humans are so-enamored with. During the entire first century while the New Testament was written, Christianity spread like wildfire, yet we find little written about their structures and institutions. Why is this? History screams the  answer: whenever the Gospel gets wrapped in the systems and business of the Kosmos–the “World System” as the Bible calls it–the sweet message of God’s grace is gripped by a monster that won’t let go. Human institutions always grow more complex, and their hold grows continually more fixed and frozen.

In this way biblical Christianity became the beastly Institutionalized Christianity that emerged in Europe from the Dark Ages.

An amazing transformation was underway in Europe. Large cities appeared everywhere for the first time since Rome’s collapse a millenia earlier. Suddenly the Renaissance exploded with new technologies and culture. But the rigid social structures of Feudalism remained, albeit with greater population and wealth. This created suffocating fiefdoms and monarchies. It became an age of servility.

Threaded throughout Europe was a monolithic institution called The Church. Its power was absolute and unquestioned. Even the Roman Empire was never so oppressive. At least the Romans allowed people to worship a conglomeration of gods and religions. But the early Renaissance Church censored beliefs, labeled dissenters as “blasphemers” and “heretics”, banned long lists of books, gouged out eyes, burned tongues, pulled out hair, and burned people alive in public squares…

Such is the monstrous face of Institutionalized Christianity.

God’s Spirit cannot be controlled, however. With all its rules, wealth and vast bureaucracy, The Church could not stamp out this revolt. It was ignited by the Bible itself, and fueled by the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately, Europeans were accustomed to authoritarian governments and felt safer that way. The intellectual freedoms of the Enlightenment were still a century away, so when Protestantism stirred Peasant Revolts, oppression was quick to follow.

Protestant leaders endorsed Institutes, which brought their revolt under the control of local regimes. The Five Solas of Protestantism were far too liberal and triggered far too many freedoms. With Calvin’s Institutes, feudal lords gained the power to suppress the unrest of ignorant peasants infected by Protestant freedoms. Christianity fell under state control again, but with a Protestant flavor, as Calvin intended:

The characteristic of a true sovereign is, to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God. He who does not make his reign subservient to the divine glory, acts the part not of a king, but a robber. He, moreover, deceives himself who anticipates long prosperity to any kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God, that is, by his divine word.” Institutes of the Christian Religion, Prefatory Address.

The assertion that a human emperor must “make his reign subservient to the divine glory” defies the  teachings of Jesus Christ, who said, “My kingdom is not of this world!”¹ But for Calvin it was a shrewd political maneuver designed to place his religion on the throne of power.

With armies and wealth on his side, Calvin slammed the lid on the wild Protestant ride, and the movement was transformed into a respectable state religion. Calvin’s Institutes established an institution of faith, or a Protestant “Declaration of Faith” with fiber and respectability badly needed for an insecure, new Protestant Europe.

And he smothered the spiritual life out of it!

Cold-Hearted Theology

It is fair to say Calvin was a cold man and purpose-driven to the extreme. This is reflected in his ponderous and precise writings. Calvin’s epitaph for his diseased wife is revealing:

Calvin wrote that she was a helper in ministry, never stood in his way, never troubled him about her children, and had a greatness of spirit.²

He was a cold man, and he Reformed Theology he established is notoriously cold, spawning the era of “dead orthodoxy”. Early Reformed churches were highly ritualistic with formal creeds, recitations, responsive readings, and other High Church rituals.³ To the modern mind there is little difference between Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed or Presbyterian services and the Catholic Mass. Following the pattern established in the Middle Ages, Protestants developed rituals, traditions, systematic theologies and academia ad nauseam which still continue today. Most seminaries and commentaries are still dominated by Reformed Theology. Although highly useful, the output from such Reformed institutions is often dry and obtuse. They read like a lawyer’s brief. This is far from the “living and active Word” described in Hebrews 4:12.

Reformed Theology became notorious for stressing pure and true doctrine, because doctrinal purity meant spiritual purity, or so it was believed. In the early Reformation it seemed necessary to separate “Protestant” from “Common Rebellious Peasant.” However, the effort to define a “Protestant Orthodoxy” also extinguished sweet, spiritual spontaneity.

This cold orthodoxy is causing many young Christians to leave their faith today. Consider the case of Ashley:

I recently de-converted from Christianity, the faith I have been brought up in for the past 17 years. I wanted to give an explanation as to how I came to this, and why… At 16, I “gave my life to Christ” and was baptized. After that event, I was in evangelist mode. I passed out Gospel tracts, witnessed to people, read my Bible everyday, studied apologetics, etc. I was quite sincere in this…

Ashley had right doctrine, but it provided no spiritual power. Then she read The God Delusion by the famously-hateful Richard Dawkins. Amazingly, his book won her over!

I started to see the world as it really is, and appreciate my life far more than I did as a Christian.
“Ashley” from Converts Corner, Dawkins Web.

Something is terribly wrong when Dawkinism, with its hate-filled rhetoric, can make a Christian “appreciate my life far more…” Christians are losing their children to the emptiness of spiritual death everywhere, ⁴ and the time to dump those Heartless Institutions established in the 1500s is now.

In retrospect, the problem is clear: Institutes garbled the original, simple call for Sola Scriptura, and overshadowed the Five Solas. Calvin and others fell prey to the classic scholarly pitfall of systematizing far too much. Calvin’s complicated mind prioritized great cosmological complexities which still entangle Reformed theology.⁵ Astonishingly, Calvin soon began to make claims that Institutes was on equal footing with the Bible:

And since we are bound to acknowledge that all truth and sound doctrine proceed from God, I will venture boldly to declare what I think of this work, acknowledging it to be God’s work rather than mine…I exhort all, who reverence the word of the Lord, to read it, and diligently imprint it on their memory… - Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1545.⁶

Institutes embraced Sola Scriptura in theory, but in practice, Institutes became the test of true orthodoxy and the Bible lost its prominent position.

Manmade structures were again smothering the simple message of God’s love in the Bible.

The Dogma of Dogmatics

More layers of control were wrapped around Christianity. The Vatican was forced to respond to Calvin’s Institutes by formalizing its own beliefs.

When he was finished fighting Muslims, Charles V convened the Council of Trent in 1544, gathering the most learned and brilliant minds in the empire. It was not an academic inquiry. Trent was governed by the need to condemn the Protestant rebellion, so all the dogma established by the council was a refutation of Protestantism.

The Council of Trent made a mess out of traditional Christianity. For the first time in church history beliefs such as the veneration of Mary, purgatory, transubstantiation, the infallible church, and the divine inspiration of the Apocrypha were canonized (proclaimed church law), among a litany of other decrees. After four years of debate, the council sealed a set of beliefs which simply lacked any credible ties to the Bible. They were derived primarily from political necessity and the astonishing claim of the “infallibility of the church” (which also required “the unconditional surrender of human reason”).⁷

Justification for these new beliefs relied heavily on various comments and citations made in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; therefore, elements of superstitious folklore and magic entered canon law. (To claim the communion wine is actually blood when it is, in fact, actually wine and tastes like wine with all the chemical properties of wine is irrational at best, but since it defies science, is it not a superstition?)

Thus the discipline of dogma developed. Dogmatics is “a system of principles laid down by an authority, especially the Roman Catholic Church, as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.”⁸ When the Renaissance gave birth to the university, it was customary to systematize and codify knowledge. This led to a great explosion of scientific discovery. The same practice applied to Christianity became the course of study called Dogmatic Theology, and the results were not so great.

Theologians with good motives and brilliant minds still try today to distill God’s Word in a format compatible with university programs, so Dogmatics is also called a science. Structure is highly beneficial and even necessary for comprehending a vast body of knowledge, and at Xenos we study and teach systematic theology. But when systematized theology takes precedence over God’s Word, it actually suffocates the knowledge of God.

The Restless Reformed we discussed earlier are simply not restless enough. In the tradition of systematic theologies, they teach topically and break away from the biblical approach.⁹ The intentions are good: topical teachings are perhaps more relevant and seem more organized for the modern mind, which is cluttered with an overload of diffuse information. But Dogmatics should never replace the depth of God’s Word. Our knowledge-engineering is inevitably flawed because structures often emphasize things not emphasized in scripture, and minimize what scripture emphasizes.

The Owner of Truth

The Bible is clear that Absolute Truth does exist, and it can be studied and validated. However, it is tightly-coupled with the person of God.

The famous Roman governor Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” He did not expect an answer. But Jesus defines truth in clear terms:

Jesus said* to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6 (NASB)

It means God owns Absolute Truth, not humans. Scientists can safely assume the universe is governed by truth, not by arbitrary or imaginary forces. Calling it “natural law’, the Renaissance Man emerged and began discovering how creation was designed. It may be said that natural science shows more respect for God than the history of theology. Science reveals the Designer’s design, but theologians smothered revelation from the Designer whenever they impose external authority over the Bible. Calvin did this with Institutes, and the Vatican did it by creating something called “church tradition”.

One very positive aspect of Postmodernism is the acknowledgment that truth is too vast to be packaged neatly by knowledge-engineers. Packages of Dogmatic Theology will always be an inferior substitute for God’s Word. History reveals glaring errors by theologians and “The Church”, especially as church authority grew increasingly oppressive in this era. Their Inquisition, the condemnation of Galileo, witch trials, and many other cruelties were initiated by church authorities and justified by theologians. Thus “dogma” is an insulting label today, but in the 1500s “dogma” was considered brilliant scholarship.

Of course, church law can never be the final determination of truth, since that domain belongs to God alone, as Paul says:

As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. Galatians 1:9-10 (NASB)

Our marvelous penchant for organization can build institutions that harbor falsehood and oppose God. The Vatican has, more than once, been in the embarrassing position of holding to the “infallibility of the church” while also attempting to rectify its terrible mistakes. Its bureaucracy grew so rigid that it became nearly impossible to change the institution.

In 1963 the Vatican finally reversed the lynchpin holding together the decrees made by the Council of Trent: Protestants were no longer deemed heretics (but no apologies were offered.) Galileo remained condemned, however, until 1992 when the Vatican finally admitted he was correct about the earth revolving around the sun!

Canon law is sticky business. The decrees made by the Council of Trent remain largely intact despite the Vatican’s recent dismissal of the viewpoint dominating all discussions at Trent. If Protestants aren’t going to hell, is it not possible some of those decrees were the passion of politics and not the Word of God?

The Traditional Trap

This brief survey demonstrates how sad it is when Christians turn away from the certainty of God’s Word and rely on manmade traditions instead. This was also the problem in Jesus’ day: “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” (Mark 7:8 NIV)

The traditions of both Reformed and Catholic theologies are glaring examples of moving away from the spontaneity and freedom of God’s Word and towards the controlling, suffocating institutions of tradition. The motives begin well. Augustine’s writings were an honest attempt to codify the Christian faith as he saw the darkness of the Fall of Rome looming. Calvin genuinely wanted to stabilize Protestantism in order to preserve it. The Catholic church codified its traditions because its officials were genuinely concerned for the preservation of Christianity through the Dark Ages. Even the Jewish leaders in Jesus’ time were sincerely trying to preserve their heritage and knowledge of the scriptures of God, or what they called “The Traditions of the Elders.”

But all these human efforts to preserve God’s Word backfired and ended up replacing God’s Word.

There is but one simple problem plaguing Christian history. Namely, if Christ is the head of the church as the Bible claims, then He is the one who will defend and preserve her. When humans usurp His role as “defender of the faith,” they ultimately become “owners of the faith.”

The Jesus Solution

Jesus was not ignorant of our penchant for building heartless institutions. In fact, he prophesied it.

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32 (NIV)

Indeed, the institutions of the church in the Renaissance were monstrous old trees with gnarly branches where “birds of the air” nested in it. Because the church was so closely tied to the state, it was routine to pay political favors with high church positions. Many nesting “birds of the air” were political lackeys and relatives of the nobility and monarchs.

But at the same time, Jesus taught that God already knew how to work around this gnarly mess of Institutionalized Christianity in another parable.

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
Matthew 13:24-30 (NIV)

The point is clear. Non-Christians and people with evil motives will come alongside those who truly love Jesus. His instructions are clear, too: don’t try to separate the wheat from the weeds! Why? We can’t do it! Only God sees the heart, and it’s in the heart that true spirituality is formed.

Jesus proved the futility of trying to guard the integrity of Christianity with “weed-proof” institutions. For all their many Catechisms, Protestants could not keep “the birds of the air” from nesting in their institutions. For all their many Papal Bulls, edicts, and church councils, the Catholic church fared no better.

Ray Stedman nails it in his classic work, “Body Life.”

What we call “the church” is really two churches! One is selfish, power-hungry, and sinful. The other is loving, forgiving, and godly. One has a long history of stirring up hatred, conflict, and bloody persecution, all in the name of God and religion. The other has always sought to heal human hurts, break down barriers of race and class, and deliver men and women from their guilt, shame, fear, and ignorance.

One is a false church, a counterfeit, masquerading as Christianity, but whose head is Satan. The other is the true church, founded by Jesus Christ, mirroring His authentic character through acts of love, self-sacrifice, courage, and truth.

For some reason, we are continually surprised when we are confronted by this counterfeit church. For some of us, a painful encounter with this false church creates so much pain and disillusionment that we actually begin to doubt the reality of God and His true church! But we shouldn’t be surprised or disillusioned when we bump up against counterfeit Christianity. Jesus Himself predicted that the false church would come. Ray Stedman, Body Life, Chapter 1.

Well said, Mr. Stedman! Christians badly need to read his material!

The Need for Change

As noted in the beginning, the secular pressures gathered against Christianity and churches everywhere demands — necessitates — a thorough reevaluation of the traditions of the church. The institutions of the Renaissance simply will not work in today’s world. This includes the traditions of the Renaissance, too.

The Restless Reformed described earlier are certainly refreshing, innovative thinkers moving away from some of the institutions of the Reformed tradition. But unfortunately they still cling to the theology of Calvin which can only be described as outdated, manmade, and rooted in the traditions of the “false church” Stedman described.

Next: the Fear Factor of institutional Christianity.

1. In The Dawn of Covenant Theology we discussed the contradiction between the Bible and Reformed Theology’s penchant for government control.
2. See Wikipedia, John Calvin.
3. The term “High Church” was actually coined later by Anglicans to describe their efforts to retain the Catholic “Solemn High Mass”, but all the early Reformed traditions incorporated the formalism of the Mass, in varying degrees.
4. Read D. McCallum’s review of “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation” for statistics about the decline of Christianity.
5. Elegant speculations Calvin raised include Lapsarianism, Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism which we won’t delve into further; but it is entertaining to ask a Calvinist looking for a joust which of these schools he subscribes to!
6. From Institutes of the Christian Religion, Subject of the Present Work, Prefixed to the French edition, published at Geneva in 1545.
7. From The Catholic Encyclopedia: “The act of faith being nothing else than the unconditional surrender of human reason to the sovereign authority of the self-revealing God, it is plain that Catholic theology is…basing its teachings, especially of the mysteries of faith, on the authority of Divine revelation and the infallible Church established by Christ.” The “infallible Church” clause is necessary to sustain the novel “mysteries of the faith” arising from Trent.
8. Oxford English Dictionary
9. See the teachings at Mars Hill, for example, where all their teachings are organized topically, not around books of the Bible.

We have always been a super-fun and happening church. No one can throw a party like our church. We just weren’t getting the same results as we did earlier. Parties didn’t lend an opportunity for conversations of substance. We realized we needed to change.

Though this undertaking was a first for this home group of young couples and professionals, they met the challenge with spirit-led vision and energized resolve, guided by the previous C & C experience of leader Kathryn Hughes. Pressing onward, they were undeterred by several “bumps-in-the-road.” Amy Lagotte recalled:

We understood that a lot of planning was involved - like the logistics of planning a dinner party. We knew that it would be a lot of work. What was surprising was that, as a group, we weren’t as eager to get out there and actively invite our friends and family. This is wartime - people - get out there and reach the dying.

A week prior to the event no one was coming. Invitations didn’t get to most guests until just days before the C & C. The morale was a bit low for a while. Amy took action, called everyone in the church and set a deadline for the final guest list.

It was amazing. God really honored our meager efforts. One day we had no one coming. A day or two later we had 16 to 20 possible attendees. Things were getting exciting.

So, What is Conversation and Cuisine?

Scrumptious fare, and engaging, thoughtful discussions - this describes the night in a nutshell. The goal of the C & C is to provide a hospitable and an other’s centered environment, where all views are openly welcomed. The views are respectfully heard and then discussed. More questions are asked rather than answers given. The goal is to engage in meaningful conversation and to establish a platform for deepening relationships. Remember people matter.

Discussion moderator Jake added:

The idea is to get people to a place where they are comfortable and can talk about what they believe. Our goal was to get to know where people are spiritually. The measure of a successful C & C is whether opportunities for follow-up develop and if relationships deepen.

Ideally, the entire home group participates in the planning, preparation and execution. A topic and menu are selected and various duties are divvied up among the workers. An equipped moderator is chosen, stylish invitations are delivered “mano-a-mano,” theme-based menu items are prepared and brought to the venue, and appropriate decorations are displayed. Those bringing a guest attend while the rest of the the home group gathers at a different location and simultaneously prays for specific needs. Prayer and group participation are vital to make this a successful outreach event.

What Was The Draw?

Prospective guests were personally invited - recall, friendship and deepening relationships are the goal. The topic was one everyone can relate to - suffering. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” the invitations queried. Further questions posed were, “Is there any meaning to suffering? Or is it just something in life that we must cope with?” Such a universal, troubling problem drew a diverse crowd to the dinner party.

The food was Southern - of course - the perfect fit to comfort those longing for answers - those who were about to delve into the deep hurt of their souls. Amy put together a tantalizing menu to satisfy even the most timid palates.

I wanted people to be at ease with what they were eating. The food was not strange or exotic - people felt safe to dig in. And boy did they ever.

Appetites were fired up with hot crab dip, followed by an entree of BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, blackened chicken, and gumbo - Cajun style. Sides of southern green beans and mashed turnips rounded out the meal while a “carbo-licious” euphoria was reached by those indulging in the pecan pie and praline topped ice cream. Dry whistles were wetted with sweet tea, lemonade and a variety of fine spirits. This body can pull off an excellent spread. Need more be said?

What Went Down?

The atmosphere was warm and welcoming - Southern hospitality filled the air. Conversations flowed freely during the meal. After dinner, a short clip from a episode of Frontline, covering people’s reactions to the events of 911, was shown.

The clip presented two different reactions: one person lost family in the tragedy and questioned where was God in all of this suffering. The other showed an Episcopalian minister who explained the reactions of his parishioners. Many viewed it from a theological perspective. While some focused on the importance of family and of relationships. Still others became more cynical about life.

This was a difficult topic. It is hard to talk about both the emotional and the philosophical implications of suffering. One guest commented, “You can’t consider such pain and discuss this issue without God coming into the mix.”

The group really owned the conversation. Different views were heard and considered. People were willing to listen to others opinions. Some had strong opinions. The objective of the conversation was not to “get stuck in the detail.”

People need to know that they are being heard. When they are heard, they are more open to hear what someone else has to say. So many people think that Christians are just people who judge them, and then tell them what they should do. This format clearly stands against that misconception.

The personal stories of suffering really added to the intimacy of the evening. Dar McCallum and Melanie Avdeyev shared profound examples of suffering. This really brought the issue to an emotional and personal level. People seemed genuinely affected and interacted best during this type of sharing.

The conversation went on for an hour. “People should be engaged without being burned out.” Jake reflected. “The discussion should leave everyone wanting more.” Apparently, they did as small groups broke out and the conversations continued. Guests stayed late, further testifying to the success of the night.

Don’t Forget The Prayer Warriors

Meanwhile at a different location in the Falls, some strategic prayer was going down. The reminder of the body that was not at the Avdeyev’s home migrated to the Beech House. They had a job to do.

Their hearts were heavy with a burden for their fellow comrades-in-arms and the last minute glitches that appeared suddenly, but not so unexpectedly. This was after all a forward attack in the spiritual realm.

Kathyrn, with cell phone in hand, received updates of the pre-event needs and the current status of the guests. The number of guests kept fluctuating. Some guests were detained by childcare issues. Others by work and errands. Would there be enough food? Sufficient seating? Who would actually attend? Oh, the uncertainity of it all!

Not to mention that the topic was edgy. How would people respond and would they be receptive? So many unknowns - so much at stake. God had a lot of work to do through His willing servants. Hearts and mind unified with a common goal, prayer continued for over an hour.

Will They Do This Again?

In a word, “Absolutely!” The success of this event is measured by the opportunity for future, substantial conversations. Several attendees plan on checking out a Central Teaching. Others have already arranged to meet in more personal venues - like catching dinner together later this month.

Angie Bertka’s sister perceived the aroma of Christ. She noted, “I didn’t notice any meanness in any person present. Such a wonderful group of people. I have never met such a group as this. The discussion was just amazing.”

“Next time we host a C & C we will know better what to expect.” said Melanie who, aided by fellow workers Kathryn and Nicole Wondercheck, was instrumental in pounding out last minute details.

“Next time we host an event like this, we need to have a better set-up schedule, and to get our invitations out sooner. Having everyone involved is what makes this such a worthwhile and unifying time.”

Amy added, “We usually can throw a party together in a day - I think everyone thought that this dinner party would just happen because we wanted it too. We learned a lot about rallying the troops.”

So, with one Conversation and Cuisine under their belts, this church is fired up and excited to see God working among them in such a powerful way. Where they were once reluctant, or at least a bit uncertain, they now are eager to step forward and host more of these events. When God moves, the energy is exciting and contagious. There is even talk among the workers to host another one in August.

Chaos suddenly flared across Europe, tearing apart the fragile coalitions of the Holy Roman Empire, the “Protector of the Church.” This was bad timing, because Muslim Turks were marching into the soft underbelly of Europe and advancing to the heart of the Empire.

Europeans were romantic and hopeful about their Holy Roman Empire. It was the rebirth of ancient Rome and Europe’s best hope for holding back the invasions of Muslims equally bent on world domination. When Charles V (1519–1558) came to power, he wore the crowns of Spain, Austria and Germany, which could finally unify most of Europe under church rule.

But a crazy monk messed it up early one frosty morning in 1517 with a hammer, a nail, and a handwritten list of “protests” against local abuses by church authorities. As he tapped the nail he had no idea his protests would expose deep fractures lying beneath the glossy surface of the HRE.

His complaints became a movement defying the Vatican’s monopoly on Christianity. It was infectious and flashed across Europe, triggering religious confusion, chaos in revered social structures, riots and wars. The armies of Charles V were preoccupied with the invading Turks and could do little to quash the Protestant Reformation for years, and then it was too popular and unstoppable.

Luther’s Mess

Martin Luther was the guilty monk, but he never meant to plunge Europe into a revolution that rocked dynasties, but it happened anyway when he posted a Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (he was long-winded). Today we call it The 95 Theses. It was an endless list of Luther’s “protests” against Indulgences: a growing practice of the church not dissimilar from mob racketeering!

By paying the church an Indulgence, peasants could free their dead relatives from the tortures of Purgatory. This practice grew so widespread it became a major stream of revenue for building St. Peter’s Basilica.

With such monies at stake, it is not surprising that the Holy Roman Empire was desperate to throw enormous energies and armies to stamp out Lutheranism, but it was not easy.

Brave Beginnings

The achievements of early Reformers like Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Melachthon were extraordinary. They were courageous men breaking away from superstitious dogma fermenting for a millennium in dark pockets of the Middle Ages.

When Roman Emperor Constantine seized control of the church in 383 AD, Christianity required major surgery to function as a branch of government. The greatest need was to establish and modify an “official” version of Christianity, so the decrees of the Pontifex Maximus¹ (Pontiff) gained equal standing with the Bible.²

By Luther’s time it was called The Holy Roman Empire, and it dominated most of Europe. Today’s Catholic church bears little resemblance to this product of the Middle Ages. Catholic and Protestant historians largely agree it was corrupt, fantastically wealthy, and a fat bureaucracy in pursuit of conquest.

Luther’s “protest” was dangerous, but not uncommon. Calls for church reform were increasing across the empire. But the pressure to unify Europe under Charles V and fight Turkish invasions greatly reduced tolerance for dissent at this time.

This whole affair is so foreign to modern Americans because we enjoy the separation of church and state. Columbus “sailed the ocean blue in 1492″ just before the Reformation exploded, so his discoveries opened escape routes for large numbers of Europeans fleeing religious persecution. This is the reason why the American Constitution was the first attempt in history to separate the church from state. In 1776 it was radical, but in the 1500s the separation was unthinkable.

Europe was emerging from feudalism in the 16th century, and society was ordered by strict customs. Protestants were disturbing the social order, not merely raising questions of faith, so they were branded enemies of the state and suffered terrible persecution.

But persecution only spread the rebellion as people fled one jurisdiction for another. A newfangled invention by Gutenberg also enabled Protestant refugees to bring along Luther’s new German-language Bibles. Suddenly people could see and discuss the book which only church authorities were allowed to read, and it became immediately clear why the book was controlled so tightly: many popular beliefs were not in the Bible, or contradicted by it. Soon monks, priests, bishops and masses of peasants joined the movement.

Just as the monarchs and church warned, chaos erupted as church authority was questioned.

Five Solas

The Vatican demanded that Luther and his sympathizers either recant and retract their protests, or become excommunicated. This was a serious threat, since the church could make life like hell not only on earth, but for all eternity, too! Since the church owned the keys to heaven and hell, Luther was anathematized by excommunication, meaning he was damned to hell!³

The Reformers united under “Five Solas” against the Roman Catholic church, and these became the first clear divisions between Catholics and Protestants:⁴

• Faith alone (Sola Fide) - Justification (that is, becoming right before God) comes through faith only, not good works.
• Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura) - The Bible is the only inspired and authoritative Word of God and is accessible to all. This is “the formal cause of the Reformation because it was the underlying cause of disagreement” in the Reformation.
• Christ alone (Solus Christus) - Christ is the exclusive mediator between God and man, not Mary, the saints, or priests.
• Grace alone (Sola Gratia) - Salvation comes by grace only, not through any merit on the part of the sinner.
• Glory to God alone (Soli Deo Gloria) - “The Reformers believed that human beings (such as the Catholic saints and popes) and their organizations (the Church) were not worthy of the glory that was bestowed on them.”

The Solas were bold, rebellious claims. A large body of authority and official church practices were supported by these pillars of Medieval Christianity attacked by the Protestants.

Everyone who comes to know Jesus as their personal savior today must be deeply indebted to the early Reformers and their success at resurrecting biblical Christianity. The Solas became the bedrock of classic Reformed theology and still distinguish between Protestant and Catholic views today.⁵

The Visible Church

The Solas were great strides toward biblical Christianity, but more strange beliefs from the Middle Ages remained which the early Reformation retained. The Visible Church was a big one retained by Reformed theology.

The Visible Church concept justified the Vatican’s claim on divine privilege to rule the earth. It teaches that the organized institution headquartered in Rome is the only true church on earth, and it will eventually establish the reign of Christ on earth as Revelation 19 describes: the so-called “The Millennial Reign of Christ.” Reformed theology simply moved the Visible Church from Rome to their native countries where Protestants retained a close relationship between church and state authorities.⁶

A thousand years earlier Augustine wrote The City of God in which he formulated the Visible Church to help Christians deal with the shock of the fall of Rome. Terror gripped the Roman Empire when Goths sacked the great city:

Since Rome had been undisputed queen of civilization for a millennium, her fall shocked the ancient world. As [church leader] Jerome put it, “The whole world perished in one city.” Josef Pieper notes, “To Augustine himself and to all with whom he dealt, Rome was nothing less than the symbol of order in the world.” …Augustine’s answer was The City of God. - Christian History & Biography

In the City of God Augustine wrote about a hopeful future for Christianity: it is not dependant on the Roman empire, but God’s authority. This is clearly a biblical position. But Augustine went further and reasoned that the Visible Church was God’s earthly kingdom which will last forever.

This would all be very abstract except that Emperor Constantine turned Christianity into a state-run institution. As outcasts in the empire, Christians gathered in simple groups that shared spiritual life and God’s love. But once legalized, this simple “fellowship” became an institution called “church” with military, money and power. ⁷ This institution of the church gained more authority and power when Augustine identified the Visible Church as God’s Kingdom on earth.

The Dark Ages plunged Europe into social chaos, but the church organization survived and became the center of civilization and learning for 1,000 years. It seemed that Augustine’s Visible Church was indeed God’s earthly kingdom because it endured and grew into a monolithic Holy Roman Empire.

Visible Atrocities

By Luther’s time the Visible Church had the power to grant salvation or damnation, gather armies, and was intimately tied to state authority.⁸ It maintained an iron grip over people’s lives, often with cruelty and great military power.

It is mistaken to think the teachings of Christianity caused the horrors perpetrated in that era. The Spanish Inquisition and so many other atrocities were initiated and sustained by human governments subjugating their populace and expanding territory. Tyrannical governments like monarchies, oligarchies, and eve the dictatorships in our modern era are especially cruel, but democracies can also be cruel, as American Indians and African Americans know.

Monarchies controlled everything during the feudalism of the Middle Ages, including the Visible Church, and great atrocities were perpetrated by the state-owned Visible Church. Augustine was brilliant, but The City of God exposed Christians to government control and transferred God’s authority to human-engineered institutions. It was common for monarchs to give high positions of church authority to cronies and relatives, irregardless of belief.

Bad ideas like the Visible Church arise when Christianity strays too far from the authority of God’s Word. The Bible in fact teaches against a Visible Church. God’s kingdom is invisible and spiritual, according to Jesus:

Pilate summoned Jesus and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” John 18:33,36

Anyone who claims that Jesus Christ established an earthly kingdom is somehow overlooking one of the clear teachings of the New Testament.⁹

The Visible Protestant Church

Why would Protestant leaders continue to embrace a philosopher’s concept of the Visible Church? If the Bible taught otherwise, why did it transfer to Reformed theology?

The answer is found in one word: Anabaptists. They were the most feared threat to arise from the Protestant movement.

European monarchies were initially thrilled by the opportunity to relocate church power to their own locality. King Henry VIII of England is a famous example of a monarch who leveraged the Reformation for his own political gain. These political favors were not unwelcome to leaders of the Reformation, because they enjoyed abundant protection from local, ambitious fiefdoms. This was especially helpful to Luther, who worked in safety among the “German princes” for most of his life.

But Anabaptists threatened this new social order. Their name came from “baptizing again” church members already baptized as infants. Anabaptists claimed that only adults could make the decision to be saved by Jesus Christ, so adults who made this decision were baptized as Jesus instructed (Mt. 28:18ff).

This was more than a dispute over rituals: it was sedition. The state church needed all citizens to be “Christian,” which meant Christianity-at-birth, not later. Especially in wars against Muslims, the battlefield is no place to ask, “Am I a Christian yet?” Infant baptism settled the issue, and battlefield generals wanted it that way.

But more seditious was the Anabaptist teaching that Jesus Christ was the only head of the church, not any human authority. They denied the vast spiritual authority assigned to the Visible Church, and this clearly alienated any monarchy that might support Protestants. Monarchs controlled a Visible Church with authority over ignorant peasants, but Anabaptists denied that authority.

The Institutes

The leaders of the Reformation were not thrilled with the social chaos that erupted with the Visible Church of the HRE removed, so John Calvin established a new Visible Church in Geneva. But this was ruled by Calvin, not the Pope.

And rule he did! Thousands of Catholics and Anabaptists were hounded, persecuted, burned alive and tortured. Calvin provided a scholarly foundation for his “Geneva experiment” by writing Institutes of the Christian Religion. He reaffirmed Augustine’s City of God, affirming the authority of the Visible Church, infant baptism, Christian salvation at birth and other doctrines which perpetrated a state-owned church.

Armed with Calvin’s Institutes and other condensed “confessions of faith,” European authorities held the weapons to stamp Anabaptists out. They were hounded and hunted everywhere by the tens of thousands. No European powers wanted Anabaptists around.

Thus Protestant European states killed more religious dissidents than the Holy Roman Empire, many estimate.

The Calvinist Problem

Calvinism as a movement took a wrong turn when it placed such great authority on Institutes and other “Great Confessions”. All these new tests of “true faith” undermined Luther’s original, simple conviction: “Sola Scriptura!”

Sadly, despite their efforts to remove the unbiblical precepts of the Holy Roman Empire, early Reformers still retained whatever restored social order and legitimized their organizations. In the end, the church and the state remained integrated organizationally and theologically.

Reformed theology today is virtually unchanged since Calvin’s Institutes. Burning heretics and torture are not condoned, of course, but Calvin’s modern adherents cling to the legacy of Institutes with a tenacity that knows no end.

Next: Calvin’s Amillennial doctrine.

1. Pontifex Maximus was a title used by the ancient Etruscans of Rome for their high priest. “At the end of the 6th century Gregory I was the first Pope to employ Pontifex maximus in a formal sense, in a broader program of asserting Roman primacy. It has remained one of the titles of the popes to this day. - BibleStudy.org
2. The right of the Vatican to modify and add to the Bible was formally approved at the Council of Trent in 1514, as a response to Luther’s denial of the Vatican’s authority. But the church’s power to add “divine Revelation” to the Bible was already common practice. Vatican II reaffirmed this broad authority in 1964: “[Bishops] bring forth from the treasury of Revelation new things and old, making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.” — Wikipedia, Vatican II.
3. Only the pope could sentence people to hell, and it required a ceremony which included 12 other priests. Thus Pope Benedict VIII pronounces: “Let them be accursed in their bodies, and let their souls be delivered to destruction and perdition and torture. Let them be damned with the damned: let them be scourged with the ungrateful; let them perish with the proud. Let them be accursed with the Jews who, seeing the incarnate Christ, did not believe but sought to crucify Him. Let them be accursed with the heretics who labored to destroy the church. Let them be accursed with those who blaspheme the name of God. Let them be accursed with those who despair of the mercy of God…” So it goes on and on - from History of the Christian Church, Volume IV: § 86. Ecclesiastical Punishments. Excommunication, Anathema, Interdict.
4. Quoted from Theopedia, Five Solas, but edited for brevity here.
5. See Theopedia, Reformed Theology.
6. Easton’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary provides a good snapshot of Reformed theology on the Visible Church: “A credible profession of the true religion constitutes a person a member of this church. This is ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ whose character and progress are set forth in the parables recorded in Matt. 13. The children of all who thus profess the true religion are members of the visible church along with their parents. Children are included in every covenant God ever made with man. They go along with their parents (Gen. 9:9-17; 12:1-3; 17:7; Ex. 20:5; Deut. 29:10-13).” Later we will see the importance of the children clause imported from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant.
7. The Bible uses the Greek word Koinonia to describe Christian gatherings, translated “to share” or “fellowship together.” But the word “church” means “building”, and the Bible never associates that word or concept with Christianity. As a Roman institution, however, buildings and property were a vital part of Constantine’s new “Department of Christianity”, so “Christian building” became synonymous with Christian gathering.
8. From the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Moreover, there is a true sense in which they may be said to be saved through the Church. In the order of Divine Providence, salvation is given to man in the Church: membership in the Church Triumphant is given through membership in the Church Militant. Catholic Encyclopedia, The Church: The necessary means of salvation.
9. Wherever people indwelt by the Holy Spirit gather, in whatever format, they are part of the invisible “Body of Christ.” (See Eph. 1:22 - 23; 4:12; Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19.) Thus, the biblical term “ecclessia” (or “gathering”) is a generic term which describes a house meeting of Christians, a whole region where Christians reside, or all Christians across the globe. Only God knows the real members of the ecclesia, according to the Bible. Augustine’s Visible Church turns a generic, broad word (ecclesia) into a narrow, technical term used by institutions today to define church membership.

You just gotta love ‘em: the “New Calvinists” they’re called, which means they embrace Reformed theology, commonly known as Calvinism.

A young generation of Christian leaders like Mark Driscoll are capturing headlines even in the NeoZine! They are dubbed “the young and restless Reformed” because they are innovative church-planters, but they still maintain a strict diet of old-fashioned Reformed theology.

Driscoll is speaking in July at the Xenos Summer Institute, so it’s worthwhile to study Reformed theology and its history in order to appreciate Driscoll. Especially at Xenos, people are largely unfamiliar with the old, tired dog of Reformed Christianity called Covenant Theology.

Reformed churches were once-monolithic Protestant denominations, such as the Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians, but since the ’60s they are growing increasingly irrelevant, with few exceptions. Research now shows about 7% of the population is “evangelical”, and the hardest-hit are these Reformed denominations.¹

But changes are underway, and some Protestant churches are trying to stop the bleeding.

A Gen-X Revolution?

Generation-X made a big splash in the pool of American church life with “Emergents” (Emergent Church) and young, Restless Reformed. The Emergents and Restless Reformed are driving new directions, but with very different theologies.

Emergents are represented by the Emergent Village, and is renown for blending Postmodernism with the Bible,² but the Restless Reformed maintain a classical epistemology (view of truth).

Driscoll characterizes Gen-X as largely ineffective, silly Christianity:

This generation can be a whiny bunch of idealists getting together in small groups to complain about mega-churches and the religious right rather than doing something. - quoted in Relevant Magazine

He then describes his Restless Reformed theopraxy³ as a backlash against the “whiny” Emergent church:

In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.

The Thrill is Gone

Still, these very different Gen-X movements bear the same prominent Gen-X trademark: a penchant for the banal. (What does “Generation-X” stand for, anyway? Nobody knows, and nobody cares.) They know how take the zing out of the Bible.

Certainly the Emergents kill a good thing by drowning it with Postmodern Political-Correctness. PC already dominates the lawsuit-conscious workplace, but does anyone relish another walloping dose at church? Yes, the Gen-X crowd wants it, so PC thrives with the Emergent church:

There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. Driscoll, Wikipedia

Maybe it’s unfair to call the Restless Reformed “banal”, because they deserve accolades for their courageous efforts dragging their old, tired Reformed brethren out of the Middle Ages. Among the most stodgy of American evangelicals are traditional Reformed churches: the keepers of hand-hewn pews, stained glass, ornate altars and priestly robes. It is all wonderful craftsmanship, but musty (and creepy).

Driscoll thus chides his Reformed brethren (and others):

“So if you’re sitting in pews, you’re right at the cutting edge of the 13th century! Congratulations!” - Why Multi-Site?

He’s called “Mark the Cussing Pastor” for irreverent language like “get laid” (see his Banned Church Planting Video), and “The Chickified Church” dominated by “evangellyfish”:

The major blind spot of mega-churches is that they tend to be very effeminate with aesthetics, music, and preaching perfectly tailored for moms. Manly men are repelled by this, and many of the men who find it appealing are the types to sing prom songs to Jesus and learn about their feelings while sitting in a seafoam green chair drinking herbal tea—the spiritual equivalent of Richard Simmons - Interview, Christianity Today

The dress-down attire of Driscoll and his Gen-X peers is a radical departure from the “business casual” favored by older Reformed leaders like Hybels. Watch Matt Chandler, also a Gen-X dude, who swigs water and saunters on the stage in a most un-Reformed style.

They are young, they are innovative, but still the Restless Reformed can dampen the joy of the Gospel with all the musty mystique of a Benedictine chant. To dive into Reformed theology is not a refreshing plunge into a pool of God’s love, but rather a dull thud from hitting hardened Reformed dogma — set in stone by old John Calvin in the late 1500s.

What makes Reformed theology so spiritually depressing? Quite simply, its affinity with dogma from the Middle Ages.

It is no surprise that the earliest Protestant Reformers did not understand all the extra-biblical beliefs picked up during a thousand years of Dark Ages.⁴ It is surprising, however, that Reformed churches still today refuse to think much beyond 1536 and John Calvin’s Institutio Christiane Religionis (”Institutes of the Christian Religion”).

There are three major areas of extra-biblical dogma shared by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Reformed theology. Although beliefs are quite firmly embraced, they are not advertised much today, for obvious reasons:

• Five-point Calvinism, which says God predetermines all human choice, but God also holds individual humans 100% responsible for His predetermined choices.⁵ It is what Calvin himself called “the dictim horribulum” (the “horrible decree”) which truly degrades the good character of God.
• Covenant theology, which decrees that human-engineered institutions bearing the name “church” must conquer and subdue the earth in the name of Jesus Christ (and the name of the human institution). This dogma has obviously degraded the Gospel of Christ more than any other in history by replacing God’s love with human swords.
• The Law as a Means of Growth, which smothers the joy of the “New and Living Way” taught by Jesus Christ. This dogma advocates returning to an Old Testament approach to God.

Next: a condensed history of Reformed Theology and its genesis.

1. See Dennis McCallum’s review of “Fall of the Evangelical Nation“.
2. See Wikipedia - Emerging Church: Postmodern World View and the language of deconstruction.
3. Theopraxy is the practice of theology, or what some call “the practice of God.”
4. The term “Dark Ages” refers to the cultural and literary darkness that descended over Europe after Rome fell, throwing Europe into chaos.
5. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox dogma refer to this as “Augustinianism” rather than “Calvinism”, for obvious reasons.

By Dennis McCallum

Now, I was not happy to see that McLaren is on the cover of Bruxy’s book because the emergent movement is headed directly away from biblical orthodoxy. I should make clear that I know most of these leaders personally (not McLaren), have attended their conferences, visited their churches, had lengthy arguments with them in public debate, blogs, email, and by phone.

McLaren is at this print doubting the reality of hell, saying universalism is okay for Christians, denying the need for penal substitution at the cross and suggesting that would be child abuse, declaring all language to be indefinite and incapable of transmitting objective truth, and all “truth” to be discursive (which undermines the usefulness of Scripture, and flies in the face of what Jesus and Paul taught). So, I believe McLaren is a bad player, and I’m not surprised to see the top evangelical thinkers here and abroad finally critiquing his stuff.

One of their own, Mark Driscoll, has broken with them over their increasingly extreme theology. He was one of the original leaders of the movement gathered by Leadership Network. He participated in their leadership councils for a decade and knows exactly what they think. He mentions the following serious problems in his critique:

1. Scripture. This includes the divine inspiration, perfection, and authority of Scripture.
2. Jesus Christ. This includes his deity and sovereignty over human history as Lord.
3. Gender. This includes whether or not people are created with inherent gender differences, whether or not those gender roles have any implications for the governments of home and church, and whether or not homosexual practice is sinful. This also includes whether or not it is appropriate to use gender specific names for God, such as Father, like Jesus did.
4. Sin. The primary issue here is whether or not human beings are conceived as sinners or are essentially morally neutral and are internally corrupted solely by external forces.
5. Salvation. The issue is whether Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation and whether or not salvation exists for people in other religions who do not worship Jesus Christ.
6. The Cross. The issue here is the doctrine of penal substitution and whether or not Jesus died in our place for our sins or if He went to the cross solely as an example for us to follow when we suffer.
7. Hell. The issue is whether or not anyone will experience conscious eternal torment, or if unbelievers will simply cease to exist (annihilationism) or eventually be saved and taken to heaven (universalism).
8. Authority. This issue is perhaps the most difficult of all. Much of this conversation is happening online with blogs and chat rooms. However, as the conversation becomes a conflict, the inherent flaw of postmodernism is becoming a practical obstacle to unity because there is no source of authority to determine what constitutes orthodox or heretical doctrine.

With the authority of Scripture open for debate and even long-established Church councils open for discussion (e.g. the Council of Carthage that denounced Pelagius as a heretic for denying human sinfulness), the conversation continues while the original purpose of getting on mission may be overlooked
because there is little agreement on the message or the mission of the Church.

Rob Bell, a popular Emergent Church advocate

I think there is a range of views represented within the group calling themselves emergent. You can see this range if you read the book, “Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches” (Zondervan) which ranges from Driscoll at the conservative end to Paggit and Ward at the liberal end. In between, you see Kimball and Burke, who are not that bad, whereas Paggit sounds like a non-believer. Driscoll’s views are no more liberal (probably more conservative) than ours. McLaren is at the liberal end of this continuum, in my opinion.

Keith mentioned their problems with evangelism, which are acute. Even one of their own leaders, McKnight, acknowledged that he sees a huge problem here–and it’s not just because they are ineffective at reaching non-Christian postmoderns (which would be a major problem, considering that their literature implies that they are the ones who know how this should be done) but that they are increasingly unwilling to witness at all! This is because they don’t want to be arrogant in asserting that Christians are right and everyone else is wrong. So you just witness with your life, not your words. McLaren is in the vanguard of this view as you can see in his treatment of other religions in “A Generous Orthodoxy.” I can only say, my Bible does not take the same view of other religions that McLaren does. Rather than respecting them and learning from them, refusing to view what we teach as superior, Paul says the gods people worship are in fact demons (see 1Cor. 10). Both New and Old Testaments agree on this.

Why Navpress would have no problem with McLaren, or Zondervan, or Baker, is a baffling question. The only answer I can imagine is 1. they have no idea what he teaches, or (more likely) 2. Dollars and cents mean more than being faithful to God’s word.

I think Bruxy Cavey should consider removing his endorsement in a new edition of his book. McLaren’s Secret Message was a more innocuous book. Also read his more inflamatory stuff like Generous Orthodoxy, and some of the careful and fair critiques by many of the leading thinkers in the Christian world today, such as D. A. Carsen, Millard Eriksen (editor of RECLAIMING THE CENTER:
CONFRONTING EVANGELICAL ACCOMMODATION IN POSTMODERN TIMES, which includes a dozen of our best theologians writing essays about why they are so worried about the movement), and many others. Groothius’ book, Truth Decay is good.

Amazingly, it has taken over ten years for the evangelical church to realize what we are dealing with in the emergent movement, and they are still partially asleep on this. But I do believe that finally we will see in the next few years the believing church mobilize against the extreme liberal wing of this movement.

The movie ‘Prince Caspian’ extends our church leadership series and the implications on church growth. Here we consider the heirarchy within the Priest/Prophet/King leadership paradigm and why the Prophet-leader is so essential for spiritual church leadership.

It’s fair to blame the failures in Prince Caspian on Kingly-Leadership working independently from Prophetic-Leadership. We covered these failures in the first Caspian review, and they typify the “Natural Man” Paul describes:

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 1 Corinthians 2:14

The efforts of King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund and Prince Caspian were brilliant. Their “hidden hole,” the ambush of the castle, their call to attack and not defend were all sound, practical solutions, but also doomed to fail.

Why was failure inevitable? Yes, their youthful characters were flawed, and they cracked under pressure. But as the story unfolds, it becomes evident they must fail, even without the flaws: quite simply, Narnians were too weak and too few against the power of the dark lord and his swarming armies.

In the ferocity of spiritual warfare, the Kingly-Leader’s brilliance and power is worn down into a dull and pathetic leadership. I’ve been there. I sympathize with those brave Narnian leaders when their escape routes were severed, their strength and strategies all exhausted. Meanwhile, fresh hordes of the enemy advance with trebuchets pounding mercilessly away.

“We’ve waited for Aslan long enough,” Peter told Lucy earlier. Oh what fatal words those were.

The Lonely, Weak King

The power of God made Kings subject to the prophets in Israel. That theme is repeated often in the Old Testament, and kings who rebelled against God’s hierarchy of of leadership met terrible defeat.

Consider King Uzziah. At 16 he was a decent king, who “did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight,” especially because he “sought God during the days of Zechariah, who taught him to fear God. And as long as the king sought guidance from the Lord, God gave him success.” (2 Chronicles 26:4-5)

Uzziah was a teenager like the Narnian leaders, but unlike them, he succeeded against his enemies. He was keenly aware of his need for God’s leadership, despite his royal standing, and so he valued Zechariah, the lowly citizen-prophet .

Then he became a much older, wiser and more-powerful monarch:

But when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly, and he was unfaithful to the Lord his God, for he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. 2 Chronicles 26:16

Even though God prohibited kings from usurping the role of priest, Uzziah grew impatient with God’s meticulous, slow ways, and did the job himself. He didn’t realize that God was reserving the role of King-Priest-Prophet for his son to fulfill in one person, but he didn’t care. Kings are busy people, you know.

So Uzziah ended up isolated in a world of hurt:

As he was standing there raging at the priests before the incense altar in the Lord’s Temple, leprosy suddenly broke out on his forehead…So King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in isolation in a separate house…
2 Chronicles 26:19-21

The character flaws of youth are easy to see for us “older kings”. But growing older can develop greater flaws when we feel competent, experienced and powerful with our vast holdings. But our competence is our undoing, just as with King Peter and company.

The lonely king standing tough against the world is indeed a weakling.

The Lonely Prophet-Leader

Little Queen Lucy on the other hand was right. From the beginning of the movie, her longing for for Aslan enabled her to “see” what the others missed.

Lucy was always alone but firmly-resolved because she longed for Aslan. It helps to know that Aslan is Jesus, the way C. S. Lewis conceived it. Jesus is, after all, the “Lion of Judah” in the Bible, the term for the royal household of Israel and its greatest king, the Messiah. Jesus holds the keys to the mysteries behind time:

“Stop weeping! Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory!” Revelation 5:5

Lucy is the Prophet-Leader whose heart aches for Aslan. When Paul was about to die, he described his own life this way:

As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight… And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing. 2 Timothy 4:6-8

This is a life led by hope: which “eagerly looks forward to his appearing” like Paul. There are no regrets about a life “poured out as an offering to God.”

The secret of Lucy’s power was her desire to see Aslan. This is the heart of Prophetic Leadership:

Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Isaiah 55:6

And this is when everything makes sense:

Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. James 4:8

The power of the Prophet-Leader lies deep in the heart where God sees and dwells:

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable. Hebrews 4:13

God draws near to a sincere and loyal heart. Such a person maybe stands alone in a world dominated by the dark lord, but not without with great joy.

The Joy of the Prophet-Leader

When Lucy found Aslan, there was so much joy and frolicking and rolling around and playing in the woods.

Then they talked, and Aslan raised the big issue: “Why didn’t you want me earlier?” He wasn’t picking on her, but rather trying to clear the air so they could enjoy their fellowship together. This is what Jesus wants to do with us:

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. 1 John 1:8-10 (NLT)

It is God’s secret to joyous relationships of all kind: the ability to confess our weaknesses in the presence of forgiveness. This is “living in the light” for Christians, who should never have to prove their worthiness to each other the way Kosmos-relationships require:

But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 1:7

“Hello! There’s no time for this!” I kept shouting in my mind. How could Lucy and Aslan frolic in the woods while there was so much bloody carnage underway back there? It was unsettling.

Then it struck me: God says it really is this way! The contrast was obvious: while those Kingly-leaders were thrashing in the confusion and defeat of their own brute strength, the Prophet-leader enjoyed the hope of coming into presence of the King of Kings.

I should have known. Jesus himself counseled this:

“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. John 15:9

By “remain” he means to “stay right here, with me, in my love.” It describes much of the strange wisdom in the New Testament:

For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest… Hebrews 4:10-11 (NLT)

And the really cool one:

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 (NLT)

The Personal Prophet-Leader

All the power and victory in the Christian life is tied to the person of Jesus Christ. Lucy sought the person of Aslan. This is unique to Christianity.

Did you know that Jesus does not always answer prayers?

In all manmade religions, “God” is a fairly aloof but useful resource in time of need. This clearly was not why Lucy longed to see Aslan, even though he indeed was very helpful, and she did have many needs to press upon him.

Did you know that Jesus does not always answer prayers? Some people teach Jesus answers all prayers, “But maybe not the answer we expect.” This is not what the Bible teaches. God can and will turn a deaf ear:

But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double -minded man, unstable in all his ways. James 1:6

To “ask without any doubting” seems impossible, especially for a young believer with many uncertainties. But this arises from a gross misunderstanding. James clarifies: don’t be “double-minded” and “unstable” about it. In other words, don’t pretend to trust Jesus with words when in fact we fully intend to pursue our own answers.

It works this way: we toss a prayer at Jesus because “that’s the rules!” Maybe we wait a little, impatiently, but then we’re off! We run back and continue our Kingly-leadership without Him. Who knows what God’s up to?

But our answers to prayer come from the way we deal with Jesus in our hearts:

“For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Luke 11:11 (NASB)

I’ve often misunderstood that passage to mean “really, really, really try hard to pray about it!” But Jesus goes on to explain that it means developing a love-trust relationship with him:

“Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? “Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Luke 11:11-13

Those who approach Jesus longing for his wondrous presence are those who “seek…ask…knock,” and they know about his deep love for us. “How much more will your heavenly Father give…?” It is a good question, and Lewis depicted it with Lucy’s relationship with Aslan.

The Power of the Prophet-Leader

There is one more vital point to make. It is the secret of discovering the promise of Matthew 11:28 that “I will give you rest…” It goes on:

Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Matthew 11:29-30

What a tragedy the movie would become if Lucy and Aslan continued frolicking in the woods while the battle raged! Yet Christians get confused here: drawing close to Jesus for his “rest”, they do not enter into his victory.

Without spoiling the movie, there is a scene where the dark lord’s hordes rush across a bridge, when suddenly they all stop, astounded: at the other end is one little girl. It’s Queen Lucy, and she pulls out a cute little dagger. The crazy picture arrests them momentarily. What is the little girl up to? But she knew something they didn’t know…

The power of Prophet-Leadership occurs in “The Stand.” When Lucy takes her stand, that’s when all hell breaks loose! It was a stroke of C.S. Lewis genius. What purpose was served by Lucy’s stand? Aslan surely did not need such a dramatic entry.

It is the same question many Christians ask: “What does Jesus want me to ‘Go to all nations’ for? Can’t he reach them without me?”

There are many reasons why Jesus delegated the “Great Commission” to us, but certainly one stands out: we are now members of his household, members of a new race, “new creatures in Christ,” and he is building in us a new set of experiences we’ve never known before.

For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 2 Peter 1:4 (NASB)

The new life in Christ goes beyond theology and becomes a new set of experiences in life, a different set of memories and a new foundation.

To “seek… believe… receive” is to see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit through our lives. This is how Jesus described answered prayer: “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

This is the difference between a freak “coincidence” and real, answered prayer is evident because God-answered prayers mean His person, His power and authority are poured out through us:

But you are a chosen race, A royal priesthood, A holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people OF GOD; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 (NASB)

In the proclamation, the power of God is unleashed. The marvelous miracles of God in your life “proclaim the excellencies of Him…” In the stand, the Prophet-leader unleashes God’s power. Everywhere in the Old Testament the Prophet-leader takes a stand. It is even more abundant in the New Testament:

“Their voice has gone out into all the earth , And their words to the ends of the world.” Romans 10:18 (NASB)

It has always been, and always will be the flash-point of God’s glory exploding into the domain darkness:

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6 (NASB)

Warning to Macho types: two of the most functional people I know (among others) both said they cried through much of the movie. To protect their machismo, we will not reveal Josh or Kyle’s last names, but we will say that one works at Wendy’s and the other at Bob Evans.

Prince Caspian is the study of a Christian’s greatest weakness: “the Natural Man”, as Paul calls it, or “Carnal Christianity.” We’ve all struggled with this handicap, and we get so confused by it, mostly because we feel so much strength in the Natural Man…

Until the “fog of war” descends.

That’s when Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy reappear and take turns thrashing, fighting and scheming in a series of brilliant failures, until they reach utter despair and the end of their brilliant plans.

To those familiar with Christian leadership, it’s a familiar task these brave souls undertake. They must lead a strange, motley crew of Narnians out of their snug habitats in the deep, dark woods and into a bloody crusade. On unfamiliar ground the gentle Narnians clash with a savage dark lord who is the epitome of “The Father of Lies.” Christians in the modern era face a tidal wave of spiritual hostility, and these Narnians likewise take such a pathetic stand against hoards of rabid, advancing enemies rising out of “the pit of darkness.”

Pathetically Isolated

The Narnians become surrounded and isolated even in the safety of their wooded homeland. Like the Narnians, so many loving, Christian families discover there is no safe-haven in the Kosmos. The Narnians had hidden in the woods for centuries, but were still hunted almost to extinction.

Narnians are exterminated for no good reason. Why hate Reepacheep, the chivalrous little Musketeer-mouse?

“He’s so cute!” Lucy exclaimed, and the proud little guy drew his tiny sword and protested with a squeaky voice: “Who said that!?” (Infantiles sound this way then they demand respect they don’t deserve, you know.)

These Narnians are no threat, but are still targeted for extermination simply because they are outsiders in the dark lord’s domain.

This dark lord is truly evil, too. He is not royalty by nature, but still craves the throne, so he is a usurper, liar, and murderer just like one we know: “the thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” John 10:10

Bold, Immature Leadership

The real story is how mere teenagers undertake such bold leadership roles. With admirable competence they presume to reverse a long history of dark defeat for the demoralized Narnians. Their courage and energy was so infectious, the Narnians followed and emerged from the safety of their familiar woods.

Unlike the more-experienced Narnians, these younger leaders knew their only chance for survival was a preemptive strike against the dark lord, so they lead an army to storm his fortress with brilliant, clear-headed incisiveness. Younger minds often face real-world threats better than parents imagine.

They approach victory, just as Jesus told his small band of followers: “The gates of hell won’t prevail against you!” (Matt. 16:18) But when they brush aside the gates, they enter hell itself! Victory is close, and then they meet their real enemy: the scars of unformed character. Their leadership is stolen by uncontrolled rage.

How do explain immaturity to an immature person? Go see Prince Caspian, then talk about the movie at Starbucks.

The Realm of Hate

It was Prince Caspian who cracked first, at the most vital moment. He was truly a lifelong victim of the dark lord, his uncle. His scars were hidden, but suddenly erupted at the worst possible moment and nearly destroyed all his friends. However, the dark lord never suffered. Hatred only scars the owner.

Hatred also brought him close to domination by the White Witch–the same one who used hatred to imprison Edmund.

Nobody could stop Prince Caspian from destroying the brilliant offensive once he surrendered to a tidal wave of immature emotional demands. The prince was a teenager. How tragic it is when adults much older are still blinded by irrational demands of the heart!

Prince Caspian puts a delicate topic in an understandable framework. It is a most difficult message for youth to hear: what matters foremost is character, not willpower or gifts.

Look at the lethal power of cracks in a dam: so inconsequential except for the tremendous pressures building behind the dam! Youth is the time when vast stores of vitality and potential builds dangerous pressures which must not overpower the awareness of those small but growing fissures.

But God’s Word lovingly exposes those “tiny faults” of immaturity which can blast apart a life. God also offers real solutions, readily available and delightful when discovered. Prince Caspian captures the great tussle between God’s urgent message about flaws (or sin) and our urgent but immature demands.

In one scene the young leader watches his friends get systematically slaughtered because he led them into battle, but he did not have the character to stand and fight. He ran away at the most crucial moment, when victory was within reach. The last cry as each friend died will echo in his ears forever.

So goes the Natural Man.

Next up: Lucy’s “Prophetic Leadership”

When you read the history of Xenos, you read about chaos - or so it seems to the institutional mind. But to those who enjoy the love of Christ, it’s called freedom, and freedom is chaotic for legalistic minds. This is the “real Xenos model” in a nutshell: some call it chaos, while others call it “freedom through the love of Christ”. (What a cool slogan!)

Here’s the kind of chaos I love: listen to The Road Less Traveled by Dave Browning, some dude from the West Coast.¹ He’s a Willow Creek mega-church business-model dropout who is now more relaxed and happier than ever — and more fruitful than ever, too! This was Dave’s life in the business-model church:

Dave’s high didn’t come from a bottle or a needle, but from those Sunday mornings when a big crowd packed his church, everything went just right and he hit the ball out of the park with another power-packed sermon. The need for that rush nearly destroyed everything Dave cared about.²

The Business-Leader Model

Such is the life of the business-model church leader: it’s all about “Kingly-Leadership” which kills a good Church Planting Movement. The business-leader model also kills the kingly leaders through exhaustion.

Willow Creek’s own research now reveals a disturbing trend with this entire approach. I recently blogged about the “Revolving Door Syndrome” that kept us stagnated here in Northeastern Ohio, and Willow is discovering the same trend through research. It’s called the “Old Christian Syndrome” (or OCS), and it looks like this:³

Willow’s research clearly demonstrates that people grow more dissatisfied with their church the older they become as Christians. This phenomena extends across-the-board with other Willow Creek Association churches (and probably most churches in the American experience):

In summary, these six segments capture the spiritual journey expressed by more than 11,000 surveys taken by seven churches. We learned so much and were so intrigued with the findings that we started a second test phase of 25 churches. To see regularly updated findings from that research, click here. Finally, we are currently in the process of our third test phase of 500 churches.⁴

Isn’t “self-feeding” for selfish people self-defeating?Thus, George Barna writes a new book which could be titled “The Revolution at Laodicea.” It describes a massive population of dissatisfied dropouts forming new churches on golf-courses.These dissatisfied and apathetic revolutionaries are strengthened by the business-model of church leadership.

Business savvy says “the customer is number one,” but Jesus Christ says “the customer” should be numbered last if the customer is an older Christian: “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) In the church-planter’s mind, the “customer” should be non-Christians, and older Christians should be serving “the customer”.

But surprisingly, Willow’s answer is to build a “customized, personalized growth-plan” for everyone plagued with OCS. It sounds like a massive undertaking and quite expensive, and doomed to increase the tragedy of OCS. Here’s what Hybels says:

We should’ve taught people to read their Bibles in-between services, how to practice the [spiritual] disciplines on their own. The older a Christian gets, the more that Christian should become a self-feeder…So we’ll provide customized, personal spiritual-growth plans to people at Willow to become self-feeders.⁵

Is this not an obvious, problematic approach? Is this not more of the same? Self-feeding for selfish people is always self-defeating. Where is the “others-feeding” approach Jesus talked about? Here’s the Jesus solution for OCS:

“If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you…If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. (John 13:14-17)

OCS gets healed by doing something. That is, by feeding someone else, not self-feeding! Both Reveal.org and Hybels could benefit by focusing less on their business-model and more on the “Reveal” book called the New Testament!

The Columbus Business Model

Without sounding too sacrileges — I am, after all, a Xenoid — isn’t it true that Xenos history reads differently once we tried to adopt the Willow Creek business-model? In 1990 I was an elder when we all took a pilgrimage to Chicago to study what Willow does best: grow.

Xenos credibility in the secular realm comes from sharing the Gospel one-on-one. There are many wonderful facets and fruitful aspects of Willow, and we readily identified with their language of the “seeker-sensitive church.” But we also adopted their business-leader model and launched expensive programs to establish Xenos as a respectable peer among successful churches. After all, as Hybels said, the credibility of church is judged in the secular realm by its business-savvy and holdings.

We forgot what really gave Xenos credibility in the secular realm: it was one-on-one sharing the Gospel.

At this year’s Servant Team Retreat some of the teachings pondered wether statistics were the culprit suppressing the wonderful “Grace Explosion” which lies at the heart of the Xenos model. Perhaps this is true.

But if Xenos growth was stymied from the early 80’s by “church growth technology”, why not also consider the influence of Willow’s business-model on Xenos growth? Isn’t this a tremendous cause for the Kingly-Leader imbalance? Did it not significantly reshape Columbus Xenos in the 90s? And if so, how much of that reshaping caused missteps from our earlier revelation from the Lord?

The NeoXenos Business Model

The purpose here is not to lecture Columbus (although it wouldn’t hurt), but rather to ascertain what works and doesn’t work at NeoXenos.

We too fell prey to the business-leader model and launched an expensive building program with much fanfare and a huge investment of manpower. It was a Herculean effort made with all the right “seeker-sensitive” moves all in the hopes of infusing new life into our “northern flank,” as we called it.

In the end, even though it imposed great traveling hardships on our growing southern population, it was actually the “southern flank” which grew like wild with new converts.

Meanwhile, how did we grow in the south? By sending. At first two, then three households picked up and headed south. And what a mess it was!

Sending means chaos. It was pure, sweet chaos in “the southern flank.” Our meeting place was a messy thing, with messed-up people and poor planning and resources stretched beyond breaking.

And it was exciting, and there were conversions, and many are those today who are so very thankful for the “Xenos chaos” that came their way.

I think the Lord approved, too.

1. The Road Less Traveled, by Dave Browning from Christ the King church in Washington. His podcast is from last month’s Multi-Site Exposed 2008 conference
2. Quoted from Leadership Network.
3. Research from the Reveal Web site.
4. (Reveal Web site
5. See http://www.revealnow.com for Bill Hybel’s presentation and more of their research.

A Word of Prophecy

Tom Dixon’s teaching began with some fumbling and mumbling mishaps with the microphone and sound system, which probably shook Tom up a little. It promised to be a dismal teaching from an obscure figure.

But then Tom launched into a strong message about what it means to carry out the Great Commission: “GO!” It’s all there in the first word. Aside from Tom, there was a surprising paucity of insights about the Great Commission at the STR.

Calvary is perpetually sending out leaders to plant extra-local churches.This Great Commission oversight was not only unusual for the STR, but very noticeable since Calvary Chapel was often cited. As a model of a healthy church, if Calvary is actually driven by the Prophet-Leader extolled in the “Tri-Perspectival View,” there should be a clear path to follow in their footsteps. But what is it?

Dennis strongly endorsed Calvary’s “hot theology of ministry,” but then grew vague about exactly why it was so hot. It was difficult to discern what changes leaders could implement from the STR, beyond avoiding the obsession with statistics. The deemphasis on counting was only marginally-helpful for NeoXenos leaders, since our statistical work is already sloppy and pathetic enough.¹

NeoNews reported the aspects of Calvary which Dennis said were not enviable or easily-transferred into a Xenos ethos, and the list eliminated most of the distinctive differences from Xenos.

But there was one major distinction from Xenos which Calvary pursues with gusto: Calvary is perpetually sending out leaders to plant extra-local churches. This was, of course, the point of Tom’s teaching about “GO!” Unfortunately, only Tom’s teaching tackled this issue. Some of the other teachings casually mentioned the “sending” ministry of Calvary, but without much practical benefit.

The Multi-Site Movement

Driscoll’s “Tri-Perspectival View” of leadership is merely an introduction to the real excitement and drama in Driscoll’s teaching. He uses the Prophet-Leader concept to call for potentially-unsettling changes at Mars Hill in Seattle. He calls it “Multi-Site Church”, and whatever else may be said about his vision, it is certainly valuable for Xenos in two big ways.

This issue should get resurrected and resolved before long-term demoralization robs Xenos of its vitality.First, Driscoll is successfully planting churches extra-locally. This alone means he is teaching something Xenos should consider. The reluctance in Columbus to plant extra-locally is now about 20 years old, and since growth has been drying-up for a while now, this issue should merits resurrection and resolution before long-term demoralization robs Xenos of its vitality.

Second, Driscoll is leveraging the most effective tools in the modern era for growth, and not merely as a conveniences.

NeoZine published an article about the Meeting House last year describing their “teleconferencing” strategy. Driscoll’s approach goes further by adding Web technology and - most significantly - targeting the elusive Church Planting Movement (CPM).

The Difference in Fruit

Willow Creek church in Chicago became a major influence on Columbus Xenos at the same time our first feeble efforts at extra-local church planting met with catastrophic failure. Instead of extra-local churches, Willow built annexes and larger parking lots at its central campus accommodating nearly 50,000 people. This is double the attendance in 1990 when Xenos elders (including this author) first visited Willow.

“Sending” is far more-compatible with the Xenos paradigmBill Hybels, Willow’s Senior Pastor, explained that sending away good leadership was poor stewardship of God-given gifts and people, when keeping them at Willow brought so much more growth. Indeed, Willow grew with their “holding back” strategy, but Columbus was not so fortunate. But Xenos also reaches predominantly unchurched people and relies heavily on the “relational model”, unlike Willow, which relies more on a “programmatic approach” to church growth.

“Sending” is far more-compatible with the Xenos paradigm, since Willow’s “holding back” strategy means increasing organization, structures, buildings, bureaucracies, budgets, policies and many other elements not conducive to a “relational model” of fellowship.

The Mars Hill “sending” strategy is experiencing more growth, more salvations, more giving, participation, leadership development and more enthusiasm at their extra-local sites than back at the “mother ship”. These facts should not be overlooked at Xenos.

Weenie Wars

There is a silly online gaming site where gamers wage “Weenie Wars”, or mini-wars. The battlefield is all contained in a tiny square window, and gamers pitch battle with cute little tanks and little men. All the excitement comes from the creative control the gamer has over the the battlefield, so gamers create their own battlefields. Unfortunately, other gamers don’t play on your battlefield since you know all the advantages!

I thought it was a humorous depiction of the spiritual battlefield under excessive Kingly-Leadership:

Yes, it is fun, and it does work, but only for a little while. Then the game gets boring.

Next up: “The Weenie Wars.” Stay tuned to NeoZine for more about the spiritual vitality and excitement of the big “GO!” in the Great Commission. Get an RSS feed of our upcoming articles, or sign up to receive e-mail alerts when new articles are posted.

Editor’s Note: NeoXenos was, of course, far ahead of Mars Hill in the use of Web technology when we launched the groundbreaking and renown Basecamp years ago. (FYI, our Basecamp also beat Facebook to the punch and was only a few months behind MySpace!) All jocularity aside, it is noteworthy that Mars Hill developed a similar online community for their church which enhances their fellowship and helps to resolve the difficulty of extra-local church planting. We know from experience in Northeast Ohio that such online communities greatly enhances Christian fellowship and communications.

What will happen when Basecamp II is launched?

1. Leaders discuss statistics about once every six months: the October leader retreat and February FST retreat. View a slide show of the 2008 retreat slide online.

Greg Morscher and I were watching this cool online broadcast by Mark Driscoll titled, “Why Mulit-Site?” Driscoll is the big speaker at XSI in Columbus this summer, and his arrival is none-too-soon. Columbus Xenos is re-evaluating itself, the major topic at this year’s Servant Team Retreat (STR) in Cincinnati. Listening to Driscoll’s broadcast offers a refreshing and visionary alternative to some of the hand-wringing confusion at the STR.

Driscoll proposes answering the big question left unanswered from the STR: how will Columbus regain its vision as a Church Planting Movement (CPM)? This is a significant issue for NeoXenos, because we are absolutely committed to CPM, and we fought a long and hard battle to get here. STR was certainly inspirational by teaching us the differences between spiritual and carnal leadership, but never resolved was The Quest for CPM, as most of the STR teachers acknowledged.

But Tom Dixon’s teaching at the STR raised the most exciting and clear answer for The Quest. Surprisingly, it is an ancient solution, but still highly applicable, and Driscoll frames it well.

The “Tri-Perspectival View” of Leadership

Driscoll approaches the Great Commission in a fresh way even though he uses silly terms like “Tri-Perspectival”. Jesus is the pattern to follow, he says, and names three roles of effective spiritual leadership: the Priest, Prophet and King. These Old Testament offices were all fulfilled by Jesus, as we are studying in Hebrews. This is God’s eternal paradigm for spiritual leadership, and since the authority of Jesus is driving the Great Commission, these aspects of his leadership should be evident.

The Priestly Leader is compassionate and concerned about people’s needs, like we studied in Hebrews: “He is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people…” (Heb. 5:2). Driscoll says the Priestly-Leader asks the question “Who?” In other words, he cares for people. This is what someone does with the “pastor/shepherd” gift, and it is an invaluable leadership role (see Eph. 4:11ff). But churches don’t grow without the other leadership roles, and they often shrink.

The Kingly Leader is a builder, Driscoll says, always asking “How?” These leaders are not only practical, but phenomenal organizers who bring people together to build. This energetic, effective leadership is a spiritual gift in Romans 12:8, but still requires the other leadership roles for balance. The King-Leader becomes too results-driven and uncompassionate without the Priest-Leader, or too institutional without the Prophet-Leader, thus eliminating God’s dynamic leadership altogether.

The Prophet-Leader is perpetually asking “Why?” and pursues the quest for change, Driscoll says. This corresponds to the gift of prophecy in Romans 12:6, and it is highly-valued in Paul’s writings. This is a powerful gift with strong influence in the church because it arises from the spiritual and mystical leadership of God. As such, this leadership gift also brings the upheaval and change that God desires for his people (see 1 Cor. 2:9, Luke 5:37; 2 Cor. 5:17). But these leaders are too theoretical or rhetorical without the other leaders who implement, build, and touch people’s concerns.

Leadership Imbalances

The STR teachings were aimed at the overwhelming influence of the Kingly-Leader model working in Columbus. When this occurs it means structures, organization, programs, buildings, statistics, bureaucracies, policies and budgets dominate a Christian group.

Dennis McCallum’s teaching about Calvary Church was an explicit renunciation of the Kingly-Leader imbalance. Then Gary Delashmutt called for a return to the “Grace Awakening” which fueled the phenomenal growth in the early days (from about 300 to 3000) before it ever became “Xenos”.¹ Columbus never experienced such spectacular growth since that time, so it must be asked: did Columbus get dominated by the Kingly-Leader model?

Prophecy is the most important spiritual gift for a Christian group, Paul says, and so we should pray earnestly for it (see 1 Cor. 14:1). Authentic church growth is God-inspired, but His growth evaporates without the Prophet-Leader. Eventually the church becomes a dead institution destined to perish.² It means the Prophet-Leader influence must be prioritized, but still harmonized with other leadership roles in the same way God works in our personal lives:

For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me. Colossians 1:29 (NASB)

The thrilling teachings at STR put the Prophet-Leader view back on its rightful place. As Dennis put it, “The Lord must build the house, else we labor in vain,” and, “the less structure, the more the Holy Spirit can work.” Neither of these statements declared an end to laboring or structure, but they clarify the high priority of Prophetic Leadership among other the leadership roles.

The STR Frustration

What is God’s prophetic word for Xenos leaders? To recognize the high priority of the Prophet-Leader’s voice is not the same as hearing that voice. What does it all mean? This became a somewhat garbled discussion at the STR.

One of the swirling controversies at the STR centered on the “methodology of church growth” as taught at Xenos. Columbus elders picked it up from Fuller Seminary’s “Church Growth Movement” in the early 1980s.³ Some of the teachings from Fuller were imbalanced and emphasized numeric growth above too many biblical priorities, but much of this “church growth technology” became nearly axiomatic at Xenos.⁴ Statistics, graphs, charts and other tools for measuring growth were standardized and still persist.⁵

“The size of the church shouldn’t be a concern,” Dennis said in his STR teaching, quoting Chuck Smith’s opinion of church growth methods. He added, “They do count heads, but probably not like us.” Staff at Calvary Chapel knew how many people attended and they knew the comparable sizes of Calvary churches.

“Still, I find myself not looking at [growth] statistics as much this year,” Dennis said, shaking his head. The audience chuckled, but it was unclear wether other leaders should follow suit.

Is Columbus no longer concerned about church growth? Was this to become the big change introduced at the 2008 STR?

Gary indicated as much in his “Grace Explosion” teaching. It was a marvelous and exciting teaching about grace. But his central point concerned the period of great growth at Xenos. This occurred before church growth theology appeared, he said, but never clarified what, if any, problems church growth theology caused - if any.

“We are not called to be successful, but to be faithful,” Jim Leffel said in his teaching. “‘Harvest’ [convert-growth] is the wrong focus. God called us to be His people. Christ will build his church.”

Jim’s teaching contained many significant and refreshing biblical insights as I mentioned in my blog, but his repudiation of church growth theology was confusing at best.

He retracted the repudiation at the same time he repeated it: “The success of the Jerusalem church arose from apparent defeat: persecution,” he said. Jerusalem’s “success” is repeatedly measured by numeric growth in Acts, with emphasis on size.⁶ Jim used a video to demonstrate that other kinds of “growth” can have far greater implications than salvation-growth, but the Christian workers interviewed were uncooperative: they talked about the joy of fruitful conversion-growth in their ministries. (Eight people in one year!) I thought Jim might resolve the inconsistency for us, but for whatever reason it was left alone.

“It is true that a measure of success is ‘the Harvest’, but not the only measure,” which is a more-balanced view of church growth, Jim said later. But was not this “more-balanced view” always taught in leadership classes? So perhaps Jim was re-emphasizing the old position. It was unclear.

Let’s not have a misunderstanding about my high regard for Jim’s teachings, and the same is true for all of these great teachers. Despite the shortcomings, their STR teachings were good spiritual food.

Still, the voice of the “Prophet-Leader” was mostly garbled at the STR, except for one teaching which voiced it with clarity.

In Part II we discuss a “word of prophecy” given at the STR.

1. See the 4/13/2007 Legacy of Love NeoZine article which describes this period of growth. During its growth explosion, Xenos was called “Layman’s Challenge for Today” and then (oddly) “The Fish House”.
2. See the letters to various churches in Revelation 2-3. The evaluation for each church is based on their spiritual sensitivity to presence and authority of Jesus Christ. For each city addressed, neither their name as a “church” or their organizational skills will save them from getting cutoff entirely from Christ’s leadership. The Prophet-Leader is gifted to keep the eyes of the church firmly fixed on the living leadership of Jesus Christ.
3. Fuller Seminary’s “Institute of Church Growth” included such noterieties as C. Peter Wagner, Donald McGavran, Win C. Arn, and Ralph D. Winter. They spawned a “Church Growth Movement” from which the Vineyard church arose and spread nationally. The concepts are in How to Grow a Church and Understanding Church Growth. See the Center for Church Growth for a current list of resources.
4. Unwelcome “Church Growth” ideas included endorsements of approaches such as Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral.
5. See the methodology repository.
6. For Luke’s measure of success in Acts, see 2:5, 17, 39, 47,41; 3:25; 6:7; 9:31, 9:35; 11:21; 13:44, 48, 49; 19:10;

The Simplicity of Maturity

Modern parenting is a best-guess scenario.Our world is deeply confused about parenting, and it shouldn’t be any surprise that kids are deeply confused about growing up. For millennia the proven path to maturity required children to learn sacrifice for others, but new and unproven theories are redefining parenting and the family itself in the twenty-first century. Often seeded with humanistic assumptions, modern approaches have now shipwrecked a few generations of children, beginning with Baby-boomers, and now secular research and even the popular press are documenting how widespread this failure is.¹

It means modern parenting is a best-guess scenario. Little social consensus remains, and even the self-proclaimed leaders among academics and social scientists are deeply divided.² Far more tragic, parents often cannot (and sometimes should not) look to their own parents for guidance. The confusion and failures of parents now spans generations, and the proven model of maturity is fading from modern memory.

Fortunately God provides us with a clear and simple path to maturity. It is a process:

1. To move away from immature demands that others meet our needs.
2. To become capable of providing for our own needs.
3. Finally, developing a surplus to give in sacrificial love.

Paul captures this process of growth in one verse:

He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need. Ephesians 4:28 (NASB)

“He who steals” accurately describes demanding Infantiles. The solution? “Steal no longer!” Infantiles may not feel their demands are thievery, but that is what God calls it, pure and simple. (Read “Steal No Longer” which is someone’s blog about employing this principle, and how to win.)

It means the demands must stop! This is not optional. It is a timeless, culturally-agnostic fact of human genetics that until “he will have something to share with one who has need,” the Infantile lives in a cauldron of seething emotional turmoil. Demands will not satisfy long-term emotional needs.

The Furnace of Present Love Feelings

The modern child-centered home and the influence of the “Self Esteem” movement is producing a new social phenomenon where childhood extends far beyond the age of 18.³ It means a population of “adult kids” is forming. It is a subculture with a consensus that further perpetrates Infantile demands. Their propaganda is seeded in the media, movies and TV sitcoms.

This new Infantile subculture is a furnace of super-heated emotional needs. As Infantile meets Infantile, expectations crash against demands, and when relationships crumble they fall back to one conviction: I was betrayed! The furnace intensifies with loneliness and heartbreak, but the Infantile is oblivious to the obvious problem: the problem is me!

Often our response is not repentance. Many move into self-protection. “I can’t be wrong. It is the world that is wrong!” ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

Parents were the first to stoke the furnace of Infantile demands. In a safe and loving home, kids were provided Present Love Feelings that met their emotional needs. Growing up in the center of the universe, the child charges into the world with confidence, feeling loved, supported, and completely ungrateful.

The goal for parenting is not to make kids feel loved. Nowhere in scripture can we find such an injunction. We don’t mean to say that parents shouldn’t make their kids feel loved, but we are saying this isn’t the goal of parenting. Many parents would agree, yet because it’s the easiest way to make someone feel loved, pumping out the Present Love Feelings ends up becoming a parent’s default effort. “Soccer Moms” and minivan families lavish such a wealth of Present Love Feelings on the kids, but these are all modern behaviors and part of the modern confusion about maturity.

Leaving home, these kids thrive on a reservoir of Present Love Feelings which fuel their spirited dreams of conquest. But a latent emotional bomb lies beneath the surface: unable to create healthy relationships, these young adults suffer painfully in their quest to refill Present Love Feelings. Usually the bomb explodes after the collapse of a few random romances.

Without emotional fuel people cannot function for long. The hidden bomb explodes in a cloud of emotional instability which can deal crippling blows to the body’s chemistry, its immune system and large array of crippling maladies, as research has demonstrated (see Loneliness). These young adults become new patients at Dr. Ankenman’s clinic, crippled with emotional distress:

Every emotionally unhappy person in the world works from the perspective that says, “love has to come to me.” The final cure of the emotionally-upset person is learning to give love. ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

The problem for parents is one of investment.

Strategic Investment

Children need Present Love Feelings for confidence and motivation, and parents provide these feelings through Investment, a buzzword of Baby-boomers. It typically means building positive memories (those Present Love Feelings) with their kids. But these memories not only lack endurance, they get distorted.

Children and parents perceive love differently. Parents may be loving, but kids are not. Kids are born with all the menacing traits of Depravity, and are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Without gratitude, children perceive love as a reward. The more they receive, the more convinced they become of the right to receive love. The Infantile Love Defect is formed when this expectation for love migrates to adulthood:

When you don’t know how to love, your love bank goes dry. Then you go seeking a juvenile form of love – the adolescent dating mill. ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

Investment by Reality Parenting means imparting Permanent Love Values, not only Present Love Feelings. From God’s view the most worthy and enduring investment is the understanding of what makes love work. This is how kids can keeps their emotional reserves full, endure failures and continue to fight. This is how they build the significance they long for (see “A Significant Story”).

But significance is only possible where substance first exists.

A Foundation of Substance

With substance, kids can negotiate with the world because they own something of value. The Herculean effort of child-raising is to build this substance, and it requires extensive schooling, discipline and consumes a great deal of resources.

::callout("We do remain confused about how to build substance...", "width:150px")::Reality Parenting means helping children translate their potential into substance which they can use in their “world commerce” as Seligman notes:

So what I want to say about self esteem is that it’s a consequence of poor commerce with the world, and what needs improving in kids with low self esteem is not directly how they feel, but the skills for good commerce with the world.

The self esteem movement cares more for feeling good than for doing well…In two generations, our societies have switched from doing well societies to feeling good societies, and it’s quite odd that in these two generations national depression got worse by all measures. Dr. Martin Seligman.

Teenagers either possess some substance or they hear well-deserved terms like “no good”, “shiftless”, “lazy” and “useless”. Young adults either hold enough substance to pay for basic needs, or they begin stealing from those with substance. These people are, of course, Infantiles.

There was once a custom called a dower which young men paid in order to get a wife, and it goes back to the dawn of recorded history and was practiced by most cultures. In poor villages the dower was perhaps a couple of goats, but it served as a way for a young man to prove his substance and ability to care for a wife and family. This primitive custom is now replaced by the modern Infantile Male who believes he has the inviolable right to the woman of his dreams. Which is more primitive?

American culture no longer uses the primitive dower, but we are confused about how to build substance. We rely on institutions of learning and corporate bureaucracies to build the substance of a young adult. But as Dr. Ankenman pointed out:

Growing up on the outside does not necessarily mean you have grown up on the inside. There is often an outward form of maturity but an inward void. - from ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

This is not an attack on higher education, but a fair critique of the simple-minded significance produced by our modern systems. Kids need diplomas and career development, but those systems cannot deliver authentic significance as we discussed earlier, and they certainly lack the substance contained in God’s love.

Kids desperately need the diploma of advanced Love Ethics, as revealed by God. This is the weakness of the modern era: to “act like men” (1 Cor. 16:14) is a fading memory, and not taught anywhere in the World System. What does it mean?

Real substance means “let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14). It leads to a powerful life backed by an unshakable character, like God, “with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).

Reality Parenting

To live “in love” is the epitome of courage and strength. This is the character produced by Reality Parenting:

• Raising children with an emotional stability able to face the upheavals headed their way.
• Rising above the foolish and hurtful ways of people all around us who lash out against the world.
• Penetrating and impacting the hearts of others despite their resistance, yet with kindness.
• To be an agent of change by healing the haunting alienation of past relationships.

The retreat and withdrawal of the Tribal Christian home is a loser strategy. Supposedly withdrawn from the dangerous world, Tribal homes still drink its poison when the home revolves around the kids. They build a contrived significance which produces princes and princesses without any real significance except, “I’m me!”

We need a more biblical paradigm, because effective parenting does not come naturally to the natural mind.

Living With Depravity

Healthy parenting is deeply tied to the supernatural aspect of our humanity, which means viewing kids from God’s viewpoint, guided by His rules and not those feelings we cherish and define as love. How difficult it is to play with our little kid and then read, “By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger” (Ephesians 2:3).

Kids are cute, but their deeply-sinful and flawed natures are not cute.

“We raise kids with the sense of, ‘let’s have a nice life.’ But also let’s realize that all of life is not nice. How do teach them to handle it? Protect them and keep them naïve until they get burned? No! ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

What follows are some of the most basic principles of Reality Parenting in a depraved world.

• Welcome and listen to criticism about our kids.

How I hated the way my own mother reacted when the school called! I knew she would take their side, and she did every time. My parents firmly held to the biblical tenant that we cannot blame problems on teachers, and especially on those in authority.

Yet some authorities and teachers are terribly corrupt or incompetent. So how do we reconcile this?

It is both possible to be on your kid’s side and also teach obedience to their authorities. The Principle at one of my boys’ school was a picky bureaucrat. His name rhymed with “Black-heart”, “Black-fart”, “Hard-heart” and other delightful names, I pointed out to my son. We had many chuckles over that, but we also talked about obeying him. My son knew I was on his side because I shared in the pain of dealing with Mr. Blackheart.

• Welcome and listen to criticism about our parenting style.

“I must be honest with you, but I really haven’t a clue about how to raise kids,” a frustrated father told me. I had to chuckle, because I knew the feeling. Without the Word of God, everyone is guessing. It is no more embarrassing to admit shortcomings as parents than to admit we’re all sinners. The two are identical concepts.

After raising kids everyone says, “I know I’ve made mistakes!” Then why get defensive when someone says, “You’re making a mistake…”?

If mistakes are unavoidable, the best reaction would be, “Oh good! I was wondering what my mistake was!” We must react this way, because people take such big chances to raise the issue, and we want that feedback to continue.

Do we realize that when one person gives us negative feedback it’s probably just the tip of the iceburg? This isolated feedback probably represents the voices of many others not daring to say anything!

Even if the feedback is defective, insufficient or perhaps off-base, there must be something which points to the underlying weakness. Even if the feedback is motivated by jealousy or some other illegitimate basis (Which is almost impossible to know, anyway!), still there must be a weakness in your parenting (or child) which is vulnerable to this kind of “attack”, if that’s what it truly is.

• Be not be surprised by your child’s evolutionary sin.

One young Christian couple was horrified by a phone call from school. Their child had forged their signatures on a note, and then lied to the teacher about it! They were incensed!

I asked the parents a simple question: “Weren’t you doing far worse things at his age?” (Of course!) “Then how can you possibly be surprised?” Their answers were muddled.

Authority-by-Pretense occurs when parents are outraged by a child’s behavior. When exercising authority all the time, as parents must, it is easy to lose sight of the real basis of our authority: our love. Admitting foibles does not undermine loving authority. To acknowledge our own sins dissipates the shock of failure we see in our kids.

The Priority of the Jesus Love Ethic

Christian parents like myself think the greatest task in parenting is teaching the kids how to “receive Christ.” But how is this possible? Can parents control their kid’s will?

This explains why the following is so tragically common:

So you have the Wilson family, and it’s composed of two Christians, and two kids who have their parent’s religion. The world can’t tell the difference, but I could see that two had the grace of Jesus in them, and the others were conforming to the Wilson household…Maybe they were saved, maybe not.” ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman - Christian Family)::

There are more important priorities for the Christian home:

So what is most important thing to teach my child? How to hold the fork right? No. How to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior? No. Both are good, but the most important thing for anyone to realize a good love life with God and society is to know how to give love. That is the prime focus of child-raising.” ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman - Christian Family)::

This squares with God’s Word. Godly parenting means illuminating “God’s ways” so the decision to “accept Christ” is not about pleasing parents, but an intelligent decision about Christ:

Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 (NASB)

To instruct “in the way he should go” is a Hebrew way of urging that each kid is instructed uniquely, and not with a generic, shotgun approach to “Receive Christ!”⁴ The invitation to receive Christ is great unless it becomes impatient or replaces instruction on “God is love.” This has significant implications.

• The most pressing task for parents is to plant a clear awareness of what God’s love means.

The greatest fact about Jesus Christ is God’s love. The truth about God is distorted everywhere else, so Christian parents bear the burden of teaching about love, especially when some of the greatest distortions come from legalistic Christians. Parents who model God’s loving character with diligence impart a legacy kids “will not depart from” easily.

• Sibling rivalry is an unhealthy enemy of the Jesus Love Ethic

::callout("The popular belief that sibling rivalry is healthy is a myth.", "width:150px")::Unloving, mean-spirited behavior between siblings should be anathematized. This is what the culture won’t teach, and what Christians must prioritize. Cruelty, pain, hatred and jealousies of any sort should bring a sobering response from parents.

Ankenman tells the story of a school bus rolling up to a house and kids come running out to greet their older brother! This was a sincere bond that should be normative among siblings in a Christian home, he points out, if kids are living sacrificial love.

The popular belief that sibling rivalry is healthy is a myth, he says:

They need to learn giving love one toward the other. To understand their position in relation to the other requires total sacrifice. “Not my will, but the will of my loved one. I want the best for my loved one.” There’s nothing in the Bible that says you should have a family argument. ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman - Christian Family)::

Today the culture separates kids and no longer mandates that older kids care for the young ones, but why should Christians follow the culture?

• Correction must be character-oriented, not behavior-oriented.

Strict families appear healthy, but only because the rules are so shallow. Like the Flanders family in “The Simpsons,” all seems well in this house, but the rules are merely polite behaviors. Kids can conform to superficial rules without actually maturing. Underneath the politeness lies a deep-seated rottenness building in the heart.

The goal is to effect character change, not merely behavior change. This is the essence of biblical Love Ethics. Punishment is not as desirable as the kids learning to understand and care about others. More desirable than punishment is developing heartfelt gratitude in the heart, and no amount of rules, strict disciplines or good manners can produce thankful hearts.

• Hobbies and extra-curricular activities are inconsequential compared to the relationships kids develop.

The many activities of Yuppie parenting do not produce mature kids. This issue must be made emphatically:

• This does not mean hobbies and extra-curricular activities are wrong or useless. Childhood is a vital time for exploring and developing those latent skills, but it is not the last chance for developing these skills either.
• It does mean those activities should never come close to the priority given relationships. Unlike any other time in life, childhood is where the emotional foundations are established, by all standards of measure. Childhood memories should never be filled with bizarre, failed, painful or non-existent relationships.
• It does not mean relational development is opposed to these other activities. Wise parents should be involved in the child’s activities to help develop relationships among the peers.
• It does means if a choice is necessary, hobbies lose! Childhood is where ethical priorities are established. Parents are the first and most significant teachers of what makes relationships work and what doesn’t—in a selfish world this is not intuitive knowledge, and where else can they possibly acquire such priceless wisdom?

Teach the Hierarchy of Love Ethics

::callout("Read more about Infantiles in the new Love Ethics Section.", "width:150px")::Spend an afternoon with a parent who fusses, corrects, picks and monitors a kid’s movements. It’s nerve-wracking to watch—how does the child feel?

There is a great war for the hearts of our children in the modern era. Kids were never able to escape their parent’s authority so easily. Watch the TV shows kids watch and you’ll see how often parents are depicted as fools. Our culture advocates rebellion and provides all the outlets to make rebellion easy.

This means Christian parenting must be persuasive. The old-world “because-I-say-so” parenting is not entirely convincing, and yet kids receive great persuasion from competing sources outside the home. Fortunately, Christians are in a unique position to leverage wisdom in their parenting, not mindless rules. God’s wisdom is so evident in the hierarchy of ethics we studied earlier. It is so tragic and unnecessary when Christian kids leave home relieved to be “free at last!”

Persuasive Parenting means Love Ethics are not discussed only when infractions occur. Parents must use the process of discipleship described by Christ: “teaching them all I commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19) What did Jesus do with his disciples for three years? He taught the primacy of love, the mechanics of God’s love, and the specific ways their personalities were unloving and required change.

For example, consider the way Jesus dealt with Simon when he made his typically-rude remarks about one of Jesus’ guests: “Simon, I have something to say to you,” and then he told Simon a story that ended with a question that hit the bullseye target of all wise instruction and correction: “Which of them will love more?” For three years Christ taught his “boys” Love Ethics. (Read Luke 7:40ff for the full account.)

Years later, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” summarized his personal experience under the discipleship of Jesus:

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. John 1:17 (NASB)

The Framework of Reality Parenting

Biblical parenting operates within a framework, and that means teaching the hierarchy of Love Ethics. In practical terms it means:

• Not all “harmful behaviors” are equal. The most harmful of all is the kid who suffers in loneliness in a morally-rigorous, uptight home. Such homes are alienating to their friends and creates an isolated Christian island of resentment. But these parents not only raise resentful children, but children with peers eager to educate about rebellion. It might not happen while the kid lives at home, but they won’t live at home for long. Excellent examples of foolish Christian over-protection is found in the book “Playstation Nation” (read about it), or the silly injunction against Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course dangers lurk in addictions to TV or gaming, but such addictions are much more likely to flourish when a kid lacks healthy peer relationships. The priorities must be taught, not the whole corpus of ethical behavior.
• Social etiquettes and mores should receive the lowest priority. Clean language and injunctions against “rude” behaviors are given the highest priority by some Christian traditions, far beyond any biblical standard.⁵ Respect is a virtue, and few would argue otherwise, but not a character trait. Respectful mannerisms can, in fact, become excellent tools for camouflaging deep and damaging bitterness. There are so many other times and places where social niceties are taught and learned. Why spend so much parenting capital on this one? And here’s a shocker: it means cussing is by far one of the most trite issues parents can raise. Compare how many scriptures address cuss words against those addressing bitterness, and then look at how many cuss-free Christian homes are plagued with sibling rivalry and sibling indifference. Something is terribly wrong here.
• Neither simplistic nor heavy-handed discipline can possibly instill Love Ethics. To learn loving interactions requires more than conformity. It must become a mind-set. Harassed and busy “Soccer Moms” (and Dads) dish up terse, sharp reprimands which are utterly ineffective for this level of change. How many times have we watched a parent picking and nagging away at a child, yet because there is such a flood of injunctions it’s impossible to follow through with meaningful discipline. The kids know it and ignore the ceaseless, simplistic chiding. What a waste of breath! Chiding disqualifies a parent’s authority in the child’s mind. On the other extreme, homes characterized by excessive or harsh punishment create an atmosphere of resentment in which Love Ethics can never flourish.

An Outreach Focus

The fearful “Tribal Trap” is perhaps the most deceitful way to raise kids. From the viewpoint of our Savior, it’s rebellion against His expressed will to “Go!” - which means “out into that dirty world!” Without leadership, the kids will never “Go!” in a godly way. They will, of course, eventually go out from the home, but they’ll do it as naive Punks and Sissies vulnerable to a world of predators. Tribal Fear and Tribal Inexperience are not strengths to pass on to kids.

The Christian family must have a total outreach focus. This protects the family from the typical problems of how to keep children safe from the satanic devices that trap them later: they’ve already been exposed, but in a victorious way. - ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287″,”Ankenman - Christian Family)::

There are two ways for kids to escape the Tribal Trap: one is through rebellion, which I mistakenly chose in my youth, and the other is through the family’s outreach focus. Ankenman tells a story about his own daughter’s introduction to the dirty world:

People will say “Young people won’t learn until they try it for themselves.” That is untrue. My oldest daughter got involved with a girl that was an outcast in her church group. She got an eye-opener because the girl was truly a selfish brat! She had many selfish demands. Finally one day Terry lit into her and just let her know what she was doing and demanding. It was a step forward because Terry never had to deal with someone who did a whole lot of yelling and screaming to get her way. But she had the experience of getting involved beyond where she normally would have had to and she learned certain people have to be confronted with discipline…she learned that she can handle herself and not be hurt and crushed because people are nasty. ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman - Christian Family)::

“Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you,” (1 John 3:13). This is perhaps the most unsettling discovery waiting for Christian kids. No matter how much they try, they will be hated if they “act like men” as the Bible adjures. Why? Because Christians love, and the world hates. It is as simple as that.

Next: Building substance with Permanent Love Values

1. See Raising Infantiles for more about the Baby-boomer parenting phenomena and the sensational results in Millennials documented by 60 Minutes and others.
2. See ::bibtex(Seligman-Forum,Seligman)::.
3. See ::bibtex(Safer-Millenials,Safer-Millenials)::.
4. see ::bibtex(LASB96,Life Application Study Bible, in loc)::
5. See, for example, the books Raising Respectful Children in a Disrespectful World and Respectful Kids. Polite behavior can be very helpful, but don’t deserve the great emphasis assigned by these books.

Children are insignificant, despite the parental instincts that tell us otherwise. Children are also and weak and incompetent, so they need protection. Except for their potential to become adults, a child has little significance. But if a child never matures, even their potential significance is never realized, and the result is something we call an Infantile.

The Infantile offers little contribution to others. Nobody really likes an Infantile for very long. An adult who acts like a child is a most loathsome and boring creature. Like leeches or children in a schoolyard, Infantiles seize and take and demand from others.

Read more about Infantiles in the new Love Ethics Section.Emotionally, Infantiles offer very little love. Yes, they can feel love, but like children they don’t understand what love really is, and they certainly have no idea how it works. Parents get confused about this as well, believing their child is loving when actually the child only reflects the parent’s love.

One of the most heartbreaking experiences of parenthood is to love a child who leaves and rarely cares about the parents. Parents with young children can hardly conceive that one day this child may in fact hate them, and it’s a mystery how that could possibly happen, but it’s simple: it happens because the child never understood love in the first place!

Infantiles can be Princes and Princesses who come from loving Tribes (tribal homes), full of idealistic zeal and high expectations in life. Not surprisingly, they soon run afoul of the opposition and disappointment in the real world. At first they demand love and respect from their brave, new world away from home, then they come running back to their Tribe where their Love Demands have a more sympathetic audience.

Parental Concerns

Parents are broken-hearted by the suffering of their poor, abused Princes and Princesses, so they surrender to those Love Demands at home. Is it weakness on the parent’s part, or a God-given, natural desire?

As loving parents our hearts ache to provide shelter and placate our distressed children. We’ve been doing that since birth, after all, and how painful it is to give up those tender mercies, especially when the child suffers…

But until we teach kids thankfulness, their Love Demands are perpetuated. As caring parents we inadvertently set them up for more painful defeats. Princes and Princesses walk out of the house thinking what hot stuff they are. Without thankfulness, they think love feelings come on-demand.

Instead, parents should stop their kids from demanding love. In a sense,

“Children should be afraid of their parents, to an extent - this is a sane view of the world. It is a scary world, where stronger people exist.” Ankenman-Interview

Parents can always rebuild their kid’s shattered lives, but only in a superficial and temporary way. What parents can’t do forever is build significance into their kid’s lives.

Earlier we studied how Tribal Christian homes become castles of retreat, because Christian parents know how frightening the world is. So the Christian Tribe furiously builds and expands its small domain through career-paths, house-building, car-care, kids’ education (and a mountain of bills), but then, sadly, these highly-loved kids are fleeing their Christian Tribes in unprecedented numbers.

Tribal Christians are actually retreating into the enemy’s arms! Christian parents may denounce secular values but still miss the actual menace thriving in their own living rooms: materialism. The unadvertised side-effect of a plush and materialistic culture is an emerging generation that never understands how to “act like men.” Maturity should bring competency, strength, and a welcome contribution to the family’s future, but the Millennial Generation emerging from prosperity is so immature that social scientists are pushing “the age of adulthood” into the mid-20′s and even older.¹

Baby Boomer Infantiles

Consider the drift of modern history: Baby Boomers marked the first generation in America which could afford to cast aside the fear of poverty and the horrible wars known by their parents and ancestors. The Great Depression Generation knew poverty. The World War II Generation knew wartime sacrifice. The Baby Boomers knew neither, and they passed neither on to their progeny.

Boomers could afford the luxury to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” as Dr. Leery once declared. The mud-wrestling scenes from Woodstock depict an ocean of Infantiles wallowing in self-indulgence.

Woodstock Infantiles playing in mud-puddles

Contrast the rich kids at Woodstock against the sacrificial character prevalent in the WWII generation:

“Each week I took my paycheck, bought the food I needed, and bought War Bonds with the rest. It was my duty. Everyone knew it and did the same.”

As a historian, Ken Burns produced his WWII documentary precisely because he knew the maturity and sacrifice so prevalent in that age was fading from memory.²

Just a few of the many ways the WWII generation practiced unhesitating sacrifice. Would these posters work on the Millennial Generation? Pictures from the Library of Congress and PBS.org.

The Child-Centered Home

happy soccor moms

Boomers fell prey to the poison of revolving the household around their kids. The American family is dominated by the fast-paced hustle and bustle of clubs, sports, arts and many other activities designed to promote the child’s talents. All of these activities are splendid endeavors, but something is dreadfully wrong: where do the children learn sacrificial love for others? More to the point, how do children develop the character to love? When parents measure their kids’ progress by academics and other  achievements, they teach kids that they are, in fact, the great Princes and Princesses they know themselves to be!

Today the family is faced with unprecedented threats. Single-parent homes, multiple-marriage homes, same-sex-parent homes and other radical upheavals means the concept of “family” is completely severed from its historical roots.

But the Child-Centered Yuppie Home is the greatest novelty. Parents believe that enough loving attention will launch children into adulthood, but the opposite is true. All the coddling and fussing produces Infantiles struggling with their own insignificance and making unrealistic demands on the world around them:

Zaslow says that the coddling virus continues to eat away even when junior goes off to college. “I heard from several professors who said, a student will come up after class and say, ‘I don’t like my grade, and my mom wants to talk to you, here’s the phone,’” he says. “And the students think it’s like a service. ‘I deserve an A because I’m paying for it. What are you giving me a C for?’” - Safer-Millennials

The Loss of Significance

The great confusion is the changed role for children in the family. Children once assumed a helpful role and were vital contributors with chores and the family welfare. Fights erupted and jealousies flared, but still the older kids by necessity cared for the younger ones.

These kids were important to the family, and they were significant. They cooked and fed and led someone other than themselves, and they expected the same from their siblings. Of course, families were larger and required greater cooperation. The 2.5 kids of the modern family pursue more personal priorities with little use for each other. In the Yuppie household, siblings are obstacles.

Where does the modern child learn that significance comes from serving others? Child-centered homes produce Princes and Princesses because they never learned to serve anyone.

Infantiles are incapable of building their own significance, so they demand it from others. They learned this pattern at home. Without significant roles in the family, where do kids fit? All the income is generated somewhere outside the home. Kids are left idle and bored and turn to Gameboys or television. Some families keep the children busy with self-improvement activities in sports, arts, hobbies and academic achievement.

What emerges is the Millennials, and they are a pampered royalty in search of a kingdom to rule.

Demanding Significance

It is entirely possible for parents to destroy a kid for a lifetime by continually doting and investing and heaping love on a child, who then grows into an adult Infantile prowling for love, “because I’m me!” Whenever someone treats love as something to take and grasp and hold and shelter and covet, love is perverted into self-indulgence. This is poisoned love.

Millenials reshape the workplace. CBS News

Boomer parents are the greatest culprits in breeding a generation of unreasonable, demanding Infantiles unfit for the real world. Parents instinctively wish to avoid disciplining. It might be alienating, it won’t work, it feels so unloving, and so the fears go and grow. These become Infantile adults unable to conform, as documented recently by 60 Minutes:

Stand back all bosses! A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred: from giving orders, to your starched white shirt and tie. They are called, among other things, “millennials.” There are about 80 million of them…’You now have a generation coming into the workplace that has grown up with the expectation that they will automatically win, and they’ll always be rewarded, even for just showing up,’ Crane says.³

“I deserve to be rewarded, because I’m me” is such a farce! There was only one place and time where such a ludicrous thought was entertained: at birth. But even then the kid was loved because God’s hand kindled a flame in the parent’s heart, and not because a poopy, stinky, crying infant deserved it.

For the child, a parent’s love feels like adulation and worship. Without correction the kid becomes an adult Infantile in search of the same adulation and worship. This takes the form of Love Demands.

Loving parents produce demanding Infantiles. But the antidote is not to become mean, nasty parents. Parents need to teach kids authentic significance.

The Significance of Hatred

Christian parents need more than good instincts in order to raise kids in a culture so confused and unhealthy. Parents operate in a dangerous atmosphere, despite how secure our households may feel. Hatred is so pervasive it penetrates the most insulated and loving homes. The real threat is not “the terrible things out there” as Christians imagine. The threat is not confined to evil behaviors like drugs, sexual immorality or superficial issues like clothing or music, as some think.

The real threat is actually carried inside the child. Born in a world infested with hatred, not love, a child is simply another depraved mind planted at childbirth, and the depravity blossoms into adulthood.

Long ago it was discovered that hatred thrives within the sanctity of the family:

This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. - 1 John 3:11–13 (NLT)

John raised a good question: why did Cain kill Abel? It was jealousy, pure and simple: “the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry…” (Gen. 4:4,5). Jealousy is the twisted quest for significance we read about earlier.

Jealousy twisted Cain’s mind and whipped him into a bloodbath of revenge—he was covered with blood, and the ground was soaked in it.

The ground is still soaked in blood today. Hatred is axiomatic here: one person’s advantage means another’s disadvantage. One grows stronger, another grows weaker. Just as in Cain’s day, everywhere the struggle rages between one subjugating another, demanding significance.

This is why John, above, calls this blood-soaked ground the work of the “evil one.” Cain was gripped by jealousy, but never understood he “belonged to the evil one.” The “evil one” is an accomplished manipulator of the compunctions that seize an ungrateful, Infantile heart. The bitterness he breeds become chains of imprisonment around the human heart. Cain was a mere pawn trapped in the hatred that governs this realm.

The Poison Beneath It All

The hatred here is the perversion of that sweet spark of significance planted by God in our hearts. To feel significant is the heartbeat of existence. But it was perverted by the evil one. He fueled the drive for significance into a furnace for hate long ago, and it poisoned the universe:

“How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! …You who have weakened the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” - Isaiah 14:13–14 (NASB)

The heart of rebellion against God is the mistaken belief that significance can be seized by sheer force of will. “I will ascend!” and “I will raise my throne!” the evil one said. What splendor and glory he lusted for! Yet what tremendous cost others must pay for his quest for significance - even the Creator God! His drive to seize significance is a hate-filled, vicious struggle, soaked in jealousy. It is significance soaked in blood, as we saw Cain unleash his jealousy against Able, followed by ages of repetition.

It’s all a terrible deception: significance is not self-determined. Significance lies within the domain of others to grant. Only by the free choice of others will anyone become significant, or feel significant.

Truthfully, the Infantile only wants to feel significant, which we all need, but the Infantile pursues a false approach to significance as discussed earlier. Significance is actually determined by others, free-willingly, and not self-determined.

What a tragedy it is when Christian homes produce kids in hot pursuit of professional success! Those kids are launched on a lifetime struggle that produces a most hideous prize: so much achievement, so little significance! Who listens to grandpa’s stories of lofty promotions and raises? The old geezer lived a dreary life of enslavement, despite the excitement he felt about his career path. Nobody wants to hear about it.

Where is the significance in all this very tiring and fast-paced American dream? It is in fact just a dream. The reality is a realm of slavish insignificance, permeated by jealousy.

T. S. Elliot nailed it:

“For our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and an evasion of the visible and sensible world. But to say all this is only to say what you know already, if you have felt poetry and thought about your feelings.” - T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

A Different Approach

Which way will your child turn out?

The difference between the WWII and Millennial generations is a shift in building significance. Millennials demand significance, but the WWII generation knew it was earned. God’s Word says the WWII generation was closer to the truth: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24) Giving one’s life to Christ inevitably leads back to serving the lost, hurting and disenfranchised people (Matthew 25:31ff).

What magnificent significance, what emotional reward, what great honor, what love is returned when we discover such a role!

God’s Significance

God builds His significance quite differently. Contrary to the accusations of His enemies, God does not acquire His significance through heavy-handed demands and subjugation. It is fair to say that the tragedy of the universe is how very insignificant the Creator God is in the minds and lifestyles of the teeming masses. Everywhere people are raising complaints against the Creator and concluding with certainty He is essentially irrelevant.

Taking the approach of the evil one, God would of course smash anyone who dares to disregard His omnipotence. But He never does, and never has. His patience and kindness in the face of the vast storm of unfair criticism and ingratitude proves that “God is love,” as the Bible claims.

But the so-called enlightenment of the modern ungrateful heart is not the final verdict on God’s significance. He knows about a different conclusion already underway, and it culminates with great significance:

The number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” An every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.” - Revelation 5:11–13 (NASB)

God’s approach is resulting in the greatest significance ever known in the universe, and unlike the evil one, His will be authentic significance, the most eternal significance, and it will be acknowledged by all. Some, perhaps grudgingly, yet undeniably it will and must be acknowledged as the only pathway to significance. How is He doing it? As “the Lamb that was slain” he sacrificed all His rights and power completely, unreservedly, without pre-conditions. His love and kindness will be left standing long after the false significance of the evil one crumbles and falls.

The clash of significance is between the “I-Will” approach that dominates this realm, and the “I-Give” approach that rules in the next.

Next: Reality Parenting.

1. From bibtex:Safer-Millenials: “Sociologists tell us most Americans believe adulthood begins at 26 or older and that having witnessed so many sacrifices by their parents to achieve middle class security has had a huge impact.
2. Burns-Civic Center speech in Cleveland.
3. See Safer-Millennials

To Be Grown-up

“Act like men!” God says. That surely is one of the most concise and poignant statements of God’s Love Ethics in the Bible. Three words capture the difference between depravity and redemption, emotional sickness and health, uselessness and significance: act like men. If the writer lived in today’s political correctness it would be phrased at both sexes: “Grow up!” The rest of the quote explains it:

Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. - 1 Corinthians 16:13–14

These concepts go together: alertness, resolve, “grow up!” and strength. But how does “love” fit? These thoughts seem so disjointed: all about power…then love? Either these concepts are incompatible, or our understanding is wrong.

This is a three-part series which tries to clarify what it means to “act like men!” It means means understanding God’s plan for growth, which is immediately helpful to all Christians, but it also applies to Christian parents trying to lead their children into maturity. It may require some effort to study this material, but it comes with a great promise: to end the confusion about love means converting painful emotional defeats and struggles into astonishing victories. We begin with the most foundational but hard-to-believe points…

From God’s viewpoint love is the most potent and victorious force in the universe. God proves this in practice: although He is omnipotent (all-powerful), this is not His weapon of choice against a universe in rebellion. If humans held such omnipotence, all personal conflicts would be quickly resolved, but nobody would be left alive on earth!

We foolishly think strength and victory comes from smashing the opposition. The Romans built an empire this way, and even today the Hollywood heroes are those great killers like Clint Eastwood. With glowering eyes and chewing a dead cigar, this cold-hearted killer always wins, or so it seems. But it must be remembered he holds a .44 Magnum, which is impractical for the office or home. Clint also has serious relationship issues. When Clint arrives, the streets vacate, and those who remain are soon dead.

Clint actually lives in a simplistic and childish world where pulling a trigger makes problems disappear, and at the end of his movies he rides away all alone. Psychologists identify similar behavior in “parallel play,” a phenomena seen in little kids in the same room who play by themselves, “parallel playing” and oblivious to each other. This occurs because these children are too immature to understand how to participate in a world outside their own.

God’s strength is loving strength, and extremely victorious. He is always loving, even when dealing with rebellion and hatred. “Love never fails,” the Bible says. To “act like men” means living the way God does, and it means victory is an expected way of life.

All the above points are lost on Infantiles. We need to begin by addressing the fundamental immaturities of the Infantile, because this is where everyone starts in their journey towards Mature Love. People may mature beyond Infantile Love, but they retain vestiges of those immaturities well into adulthood, and would be well-advised to understand what Infantile looks like.

In the process of studying Infantiles, it is necessary to distinguish between Tribal Infantiles and Diffuse Infantiles. Infantiles operate differently in Tribal and Diffuse Love Spheres.

Punks and Sissies

Love is equated with softness because love is misunderstood from our earliest years.

One of the heartbreaks for parents is to watch your sweet, tender child heading into the torment and bruises sure to come from all those schoolyard bullies out there. How sad it is that loving kids from loving homes are the most easily victimized by bullies! Even more tragic, those kids from loveless, abusive homes are less likely to be victimized, and more likely to be victimizers.

This ought not to be, it seems: does love strengthen or not? Does not a loving home provide the best chance for success in life? Yes it can, and kids from a loving home can become phenomenally powerful if they don’t become punks or sissies! As adolescence dawns, kids discover the love they learned at home made them weak: either as Punks or Sissies.

The Punk is fully convinced of his own significance. The little boy was so significant to mommy, he melted her heart! But “out there” where the bad guys roam, nobody cares for this kid’s feelings. He is insignificant and feels insignificant. Knowing how wrong this is, the kid acts like a punk and demands to be treated with the significance he knows he deserves!

• The Punk is a Tribal Infantile. He is obsessed with his own significance, unjustified though it may be. His towering view of himself is unrealistic because he’s never been tested outside the home.

The Sissy from a loving home tries so hard to be sweet. Full of frothy, warm, pointless emotions, the sissy can’t find anyone who responds like mommy did back home. To be nice with the bullies of the world means to get pushed around. By late adolescence the sissy either learns a different approach or becomes extremely despised by peers.

• The Sissy is also a Tribal Infantile, but unlike the Punk, the Sissy is obsessed with the need for emotional warmth in order to make life work. Significance comes from feeling loved, whereas the Punk’s significance comes from being treated like the king he was at home.
• Sympathetic parents keep trying to pour more love into their sissy kid to counter-balance all that hatred, but they fail to realize “those mean kids out there” are not entirely wrong: a sissy is a weakling who must change.

Consider God’s Word on the weakness of childhood:

We are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; - Ephesians 4:14 (NASB)

Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. - 1 Corinthians 14:20 (NASB)

For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. - Hebrews 5:13 (NLT)

Children are weak, easily dominated, ignorant, and poor at thinking things through, according to those verses. When someone remains childish past childhood years, punk or sissy are fitting labels. It is time to grow up!

The contradiction between childish love and biblical love means kids emerge from their homes with a weak and defective definition of love destined to fail in the real world. Childish love only works in a highly restricted place where few others are involved. Childish love brings naive expectations into the larger world and is terribly hurt when people don’t respond as they did back home.

The Tribal Trap

The “Tribal Home” is the production factory for Punk and Sissy Infantiles. Their home is a strong fortress against the uncertainties of the outside world. Everyone inside is furiously building and expanding this domain through career-paths, education, house-building, car-care and fighting a mountain of bills. Despite these ominous pressures, it is a safe home where kids feel loved and significant.

Dr. Ankenman used the term “Tribal” to describe the phenomena seen in primitive cultures where members of other tribes are often viewed as sub-human, commonly using their tribal name as the word for “human being.” Tribal people have little interest or experience relating to people from other tribes, and outside contact is limited to superficial business or diplomacy. This same ancient tribal pattern is evident today in American suburbia.

But this supposedly-safe Tribal Home is actually a breeding-ground of dangerous minds:

• The American Tribal Home is building a repository of insignificance and disillusionment. There is no power or significance in the Kosmos! How foolish to build a fortress against the Kosmos by embracing the values of the Kosmos! All this effort is merely building a trite realm of insignificant busywork, and is little more than a curse: “Through painful toil,” God said about the Kosmos, “it will produce thorns and thistles for you!” Is anything more insignificant than thorns and thistles? This is a fortress of heartbreak underway. The “god of this world has blinded the minds” of his subjects, reducing people to slaves plodding through life, yet loving it, and the Tribal Home is merely raising another crop of mindless slaves.
• In the Tribal Home people form few relationships and can get trapped, remaining loyal to an unhealthy extent in destructive relationships. When all the emotional needs are expected to be satisfied within the Tribe, it creates an atmosphere suffocated by Love Demands which become normative. People living in such a narrow world often have no idea how very strange or unhealthy their relationships are.
• Hyper-control often marks the Tribal Home, and kids carry the effects for life. The Tribal home is necessarily dominated by someone with the strength of will to guard the Tribe’s perimeters and maintain the Tribe’s customs. This can have a devastating effect on kids. Punks, for example, try to exercise that hyper-control in the outside world, but never knows why those relationships fail or why intense conflict seems to follow everywhere. Sissies grow incredibly fearful outside the control of their Tribal Home.
• When adolescents wander outside the Tribal Home, they suffer the shock of Tribal Naivete. It’s a much different world at work “out there,” and they can become easy prey for predators, or cannot handle conflict successfully. They leave a trail of broken, disillusioned relationships.
• Punks are kids bathed in love and security, but never taught thankfulness. Doctor Ankenman calls this handicap, the Little Napolean Syndrome.

If you don’t teach your kids gratitude, you might as well be feeding them poison. The more you invest in them, the more poison you feed them, and you end up raising Little Napoleans. The problem is that parents lie: they made the kid feel significant simply for existing. - Ankenman interview

• Some emerge from the Tribal Home struggling with anxiety, or Tribal Fear, because they cannot build enough emotional closeness with anyone to feel the security they once felt in the Tribal Home.

“Panic attacks could be described as rational views of the world: it is a dangerous place and there are no guarantees for safety. Rather, it is those we call ‘well-adjusted’ who hold an irrational view of the world, because they feel ‘I’m immune’ even though they aren’t. But this only goes to show that emotions are irrational, and love is irrational, and when someone feels loved they can make irrational assumptions because they feel safe.” - Ankenman Interview

• Others struggle with depression from Tribal Guilt:

“This is someone who says, ‘I know that if I’m nice to someone, they’re nice in return.’ It always worked in the home. So when she encounters someone different who is not so nice—say, a group of inner-city kids who don’t respond the same way—she thinks it’s her fault. She did something wrong.” - Ankenman Interview

Those adventurous but wayward adolescents return later as defeated adults in order to feel loved. It is a terrible trap, because when these kids have kids, they pass along the dysfunctional and strange rules which don’t work outside the Tribe.

Naive Tribal Versus the Bad Guys

The greatest weakness in the Tribal Home is the way love is defined by human fears and not God’s Word. Tribalism turns a home into a place where small-minded rules and strange traditions define the Tribe. It is a childish and fearful place, but the fear is justified because Tribal members are naive about dealing with the “super-bad guys” in the real world.

Solutions are simplistic. Punks lash-out with hair-trigger anger, like Clint and his .44 Magnum. They get isolated like Clint, too. Sissies placate with pretty smiles, or suffer silently and slide into Clint’s pillar of strength mode—Martyr Mode—which pretends to be strong and unaffected. Unlike a real martyr, however, the Sissy is suffering from impotence, not strength of conviction. “Dumb Sacrifice” is a better term.

The Tribal world cloaks the harshness of reality. Punks and Sissies grow up in a loving home which does not fit the world they encounter, so they get surprised and disillusioned. They need to learn how to deal victoriously with mean, demanding people, and not with the Punk’s Slash-and-Burn approach nor the Sissy’s Dumb Sacrifice. Both approaches aggravate the “super-bad-guys” still more.

Naive Failures

In my mid-forties I was in a situation suddenly surrounded by four cop cars and a K-9 unit of German shepherds! Ten cops emerged from the cars and dust and advanced menacingly towards where I stood with a few friends completely dumbfounded. We were merely praying together on a nearby park bench and were about to leave when all these cops and lights and guns and night-sticks magically appeared because some curious cop saw my son’s toy gun sitting on the back seat of my car. When we approached he called for backup, and what backup he received!

The cops moved in and grabbed us, ordering us to “Place your hands on your heads…”

One guy was indignant: “Do you know who I am!?” he demanded loudly. “I am a Christian leader! I am an upright, tax-paying citizen…” but he never got to finish the sentence. Two cops slammed him against a car into the spread-eagle position for searching.

It was a memorable event, and how many times we laughed at the guy who said, “Do you know who I am?” What a naive thing to say! He truly believed his righteous indignation would intimidate men with guns and clubs!

Punks and sissies share a common approach to life: one demands, the other suffers silently, but both are naive. The love and acceptance in the Tribal Home produces kids with a common, false assumption: “Don’t you know who I am!?” Like those cops, the world answers in return: “No, we don’t!”

Bullies and Tramps

While parents watch their sweet, sweet children grow into Punks and Sissies, another class of citizens are coming to meet them: Bullies and Tramps. Unlike Punks and Sissies, these kids know very little about the warmth of a secure home, or their home was anything but loving. A growing population of homeless souls is now emerging from among the “Millennial Generation” as they’re known, but these Bullies and Tramps have always existed.

Bullies are much like Punks, but far more brutal. If punks are the Little Napoleons of the schoolyard, Bullies are the Genghis Khans from Outer Mongolia. Uprooted and homeless, knowing or caring little about love, these lawless souls are on a pillaging quest to satisfy their wandering desires. Bullies thrive on Negative Love Feelings, which are powerful emotional jolts that come by theft—usually domination. Bullies get a perverse kick out of dominating Punks and watching Sissies squirm. Bullies are often themselves brutalized in some fashion, and they pass it on.

Tramps are emotional vagabonds in need of shelter. Uprooted and homeless like Bullies, Tramps are perhaps more dangerous because they prey on the hearts of the Tribal Naive who need to be loved so badly. Unlike Bullies who care only for their own exploits, Tramps will dive into someone’s heart, form a relationship and steal whatever love feelings they can before moving on to the next victim. At lightening speed they start and cut relationships with little concern for their value.

• Tramps seem sincere because they exude emotional warmth, but these emotions are only residues from the previous victim, and when they run dry, the emotional vagabond begins to steal and demand a fresh supply from its new host. They also carry the baggage of pain and calluses from all their earlier relationships, and this poison inevitably leaks into the current one.
• Not all Tramps are exploiters. Since they survive by stealing love, the reservoirs can dry up, especially if a poor Tramp falls under a Bully’s domain. Some are so relationally depleted they have no strength or confidence to pursue any further emotional exploits. Remember Wanda? The poor girl was reduced to an emotional vagabond without any options.

What horrors await our sweet little Punks and Sissies! Bullies and Tramps are not philosophical concepts, but real flesh-and-blood terrors waiting for those sweet-and-naive children incubating in the warmth of the Tribe.

Diffusion

Bullies and Tramps are the products of what Dr. Ankenman called a Diffuse Love Sphere, which is a fast-paced, electric world of short-but-jolting emotional rewards.

The Diffuse Love Sphere is like the Wild Wild West of the heart. “Westerns” make great popular fiction because the encounters are so emotionally-intense and the stakes are high: every glance, movement or twitch of a finger can bring life or death.

The Diffuse Love Sphere is dominated by lawlessness. While the Tribal Love Sphere is bound in its trite, home-made rules, in Diffuse Love there are no rules. Encounters and feelings matter most, and the only rule is the Rule of Drool — the more mind-numbing and intense is always the more rewarding.

Hollywood is criticized for its many deceptive stereotypes, but it should be praised for its grasp of the Diffuse Love Sphere. (Because Hollywood is filled with Diffuse people?) Watch the “rave” in the opening scene of Blade, or think of those countless Westerns with crazy saloons and bodies flying through swinging doors, and then Diffuse Love becomes clear.

Human depravity leads to Diffuse Love, as we read in Romans 1. “Depraved means “worthless” or “empty” as we studied earlier, and depravity robs human life of its significance. With increasing emptiness and loneliness people enter the Diffuse Love Sphere to steal and assault and grab whatever they can to get significance and love feelings. As Paul describes it, depravity looks like a Hollywood Western:

Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; - Romans 1:29–31 (NASB)

Diffuse Love feels like the ultimate combination of significance and emotions: feelings are so intense and the stakes are so high, Diffuse Love becomes irresistible and even addictive. The drugs, porn, sexual deviance of all kinds and other lawlessness can be loosely described as love because lawlessness can produce love feelings. Thus Diffuse Love approximates love through Present Love Feelings, as Dr. Ankenman labeled them, and people experience moments of emotional fulfillment when they get their Love Banks filled through Present Love Feelings—but only briefly.

Diffuse Love holds great attraction for Punks and Sissies from Tribal homes because everyone has a legitimate and compelling need for the emotional energy which Present Love Feelings provide. Tribal parents are greatly deceived to think the Tribe will continue to fill the emotional needs of their kids. For kids, Tribal Love is notably absent of Present Love Feelings. The Tribe once produced Present Love Feelings, but God built a timer into that mysterious thing called parental love and it slowly stops filling the Love Bank for kids, even though parents continue to experience Present Love Feelings.

The Diffuse Love Sphere ultimately leads to increasing decay and depravity, creating Bullies and Tramps with a growing history of failure. Present Love Feelings are by nature fleeting emotional experiences, and without something more substantial to contain and invest these feelings—without a good Love Bank—Bullies and Tramps grow diffused and spread across a large number of shallow relationships and emotional experiences. Their behavior grows more malicious and predatory as their failures increase.

Irrational Power

The power of Diffuse Love is its irrational nature. Despite their sad destination, Bullies and Tramps can dominate Punks and Sissies. Tribal kids enter the world armed with homespun traditions, but they fail with Bullies and Tramps cloaked in the power of lawlessness.

All the rules of social etiquette which Tribal parents typically impart to their kids simply make them predictable, easy prey. Parents think these social niceties prepare kids to deal with the adult world, and perhaps there was an age when this worked. But the world today is filled with predators from the Diffuse Love Sphere who can dominate these kids by either appealing to their kindness (as with Sissies), or smashing their rules of fair play (as with Punks).

Clint always wins because he is such a powerful Bully, and his enemies lose because they’re Punks. The opening scene in “Dirty Harry” is classic: “Well, what’s it gonna be, punk? Do you feel lucky?” he asks, pointing a .44 Magnum in a bank robber’s face. “Is it empty or not?” The robber surrenders and then asks, “I gots to know!” Dirty Harry holds the gun to his head and squeezes the trigger…click! It was empty. Oh so cruel, so unfair, such a Dirty Harry! Yes, and the audience loved it because they knew this is how to defeat a Punk.

Relationships are inherently irrational because emotions are involved. Punks and Sissies always cry for “fairness”, while Bullies and Tramps play quite unfairly. Their lawlessness runs circles around fair play.

Love itself is irrational and mandates a change in Infantile assumptions. Infantiles are by nature filled with childish, rule-driven expectations which guarantee their failure. Lawless Infantiles like Bullies also live by demanding rules, but those of their own lawless making, and seem successful for a short while until they’ve destroyed so many people, they end up alone and empty.

Truthfully, Tribal kids don’t understand love. Their Tribal rules and expectations pervert love into a rational exchange of favors. This is not love. Love will not be bound by such rules.

Diffuse Infantiles are even more ill-equipped to build lasting love relationships because they become takers and not builders—certainly not givers. They become perpetually dependent on others to provide the love they need to survive.

Real Power

Jesus Christ taught a different path to victory: through Victorious Love Output. This is what “act like men!” is all about.

God’s love is also irrational and therefore penetrates the heart. Forgiveness is irrational. Sacrificial love is irrational. But God’s love is not lawless love, and this is a key distinction from how Infantiles love.

Corrie Ten Boom tells how she learned this late in her life. While teaching at a Dutch church, an old Nazi guard came forward in tears and repentance. She recognized him as a guard at her camp. She struggled with forgiveness and wanted to tell him she saw the atrocities he performed and remind him how detestable he was, but the Lord convicted her to forgive instead. She led the old Nazi to Christ that night, and God’s love was victorious against the brutality of the most brutal kind of Bully.

Victorious Love Output is not merely being nice, and it doesn’t stop with forgiveness. It moves outwards and towards enemies. It is determined to conquer through love.

Two Real Hopes

Despite the gloomy outlook for Infantiles, there remains great hope. There are, in fact, two paths to emotional maturity found in the Bible, and they correspond to these Tribal and Diffuse Love Spheres.

Tribal Hope

As mentioned already, the biggest problem in the Tribal Love Sphere is how far it strays away from God’s Love Sphere. God’s Love Sphere looks like this:

For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16

Jesus Christ brought us into God’s Love Sphere when we received the gift of Redemption, and by his precious blood he purchased whatever was redeemable from our damaged, illegitimate Tribal Love Sphere:

God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. …So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. For he said to God, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among your assembled people.” He also said, “I will put my trust in him,” that is, “I and the children God has given me.” Hebrews 2:10-13 (NLT)

It means that Punks and Sissies can be released from the chains of their unloving Tribal Love Sphere. “Unloving” is an accurate term–however painful it seems–to describe the Tribal Home. Inside that world we were taught to be fair-minded with others, to exchange this-for-that, and to “love your neighbor as yourself,” meaning “be fair to people!” Nobody denies the value of all these lessons. But taken together, they fall far short of what actually makes love work in the real world. This is why Jesus says:

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. Matthew 10:37 (NASB)

Hope begins with understanding the need to leave behind that defective view of love which makes the Tribal Love Sphere work

The Power of Faith and Hope

What the Tribal Love Sphere lacks by definition is the ability to extend real faith and hope into the outside world. Faith and hope are the foundation for authentic love.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NLT)

And:

What is important is faith expressing itself in love. Galatians 5:6 (NLT)

Faith and hope in a Tribal Home is trapped within the confines of the trustworthy Tribe. Yet even the Tribe’s trustworthiness is not truly based in faith or hope, but in conformity and human control. Tribal members are trustworthy only if they conform, not if they forsake or betray the sacred Tribal trust.

God’s Love Sphere reaches to all the peoples from all Tribes and ethnic backgrounds, and Jesus Christ has brought his adopted brothers and sisters into this new “Tribe” — really, it’s the Tribe of the Human Race, as he says:

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:18-19 (NLT)

Two characteristics mark God’s Love Sphere:

• “All the nations,” or “ethnoi” in the Greek, meaning what? “Tribes!” That’s right: all Tribes! What a threatening concept it is for Punks and Sissies! They were completely unprepared for this by their Tribal Homes. And this would be justifiably threatening, except for the next characteristic…
• “All authority has been given to me,” Jesus says. This means he is fundamentally operating from a position of great authority and victory, not fear and a great potential for defeat as with Tribal Love.

But how does this transition from a Tribal to God’s Love Sphere take place?

From Punk to Viceroy

Israel’s son Joseph is the story of one such transition, and in some regards Joseph’s transition is a dreadful picture. But from God’s view, and truthfully from an historical and objective viewpoint, Joseph was yanked from the ash-heap of destruction so typical in Tribal Love. While his brothers grew more cruel and depraved through Tribal intrigue, inbreeding and cavorting with depraved Canaanite women, Joseph’s world view was exalted and expanded beyond Canaan’s borders, and he became the most powerful man in the civilized world, excluding the Pharaoh.

Joseph was truly a Punk if ever there was one: bragging about his dreams, alienating his brothers and even his father, he was astonishingly naive. He waltzed out to meet his brothers alone, in his multi-colored coat which he knew would inflame their jealousies. He thought he moved with impunity wherever he went–even outside the protection of his father. When they sold him into slavery he discovered how vulnerable a Punk truly is!

But Joseph rose above his Tribal roots through a process of great breaking and disillusionment–not untypical of what all Tribal Infantiles first encounter in the “unfair world out there.” Time after time Joseph learned how terribly unfair the world is, as he went from captivity in slavery to unjust imprisonment and then betrayal by trusted friends (the Pharaoh’s baker and wine-taster). Everywhere he encountered the truth about depraved humanity.

At the same time Joseph somehow did not slide into further depravity like so many other Punks. He could have and should have become a Bully himself, considering how many Bullies (his depraved brothers) and Tramps (like Potiphar’s wife) he met. His faith and hope in Yahweh gave him the authority to move with confidence and victory in the most dire circumstances–is anything more depressing than an ancient Egyptian jail? Yet even in jail he rose to great heights as the warden’s right-hand man. An Infantile would first demand to be released!

Joseph emerged from all this with the character typical of someone whose faith and hope is rooted in God’s Love Sphere:

“God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household,” [and] “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Genesis 41:51-52 (NASB)

No, Joseph did not actually abandon his family. As we know, he was able to return and save his family. But he was truly saved from the shadow of that illegitimate Tribal Love Sphere he grew up with, and he could move forward in life as a Viceroy. This is God’s will behind Redemption, and the reason why He adopted us into His family.

Diffuse Hope

God’s Love Sphere can capture and heal even the depraved Bullies and Tramps lost in a world of Diffuse Love. Jesus explained it well:

And Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he replied , “Say it, Teacher.”

“A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. “When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.” Luke 7:41-43 (NASB)

In many respects, it is easier for the Bullies and Tramps of the world to enter God’s Love Sphere than it is for Punks and Sissies. Diffuse Love is so degrading and without structure, there is no structure holding them back. These are people far-removed from the Permanent Love Values of a Tribal Home. They’ve already forgotten “all my father’s household,” as it took Joseph so long to achieve. They do not “love father or mother more” than Jesus, and so have little allegiances standing in the way, unlike those closer to their Tribal roots.

Still, there must be enough value or substance in their depraved (empty) humanity for Christ to redeem. It is entirely possible to cross a threshold of depravity in which there is nothing redeemable in this person, and in fact they are little more than ravenous beasts, hardly human. Undoubtedly Adolf Hitler fits such a description of depravity, but exactly who does and where that line is crossed requires God’s ability to see deep inside a person’s heart, where the depravity is eating away.

These people can “love much” only if they’ve been “forgiven much,” which means they must receive forgiveness. As long as Bullies and Tramps hold onto their unquenchable thirst for Present Love Feelings, they remain beyond the reach of God’s Love Sphere.

The Need for Permanent Love

God’s Love Sphere is firmly based in Permanent Love Values, and from that foundation flows the badly-needed Present Love Feelings. This means the Diffuse Infantile must be willing to undertake a fundamental redefinition of love feelings.

Permanent Love Values also generate love feelings, but much differently than Present Love Feelings. PLV feelings are not as electric, but they have an enduring quality missing in PLF’s. Forgiveness is a PLV which produces feelings of acceptance and joy, but not the intense acceptance and joy one might experience with sex, for example.

In fact, Diffuse Infantiles find it very difficult to appreciate the more mellow-but-substantial feelings generated by PLV’s. These are new feelings, and they feel strange. Diffuse Infantiles quickly begin to feel restless because they miss the electric jolt of Present Love Feelings, not realizing they are actually experiencing a new set of feelings which will become, in time, a strong foundation for Victorious Love.

PLV’s build deep-seated significance which does not disappear easily. This is the greatest paradigm shift for the Diffuse Infantile, whose sense of significance is so intimately tied to the immediate experience of strong love feelings. The Diffuse Infantile must take the long-distance view of love feelings and love relationships in order to appreciate these PLV feelings.

Although Diffuse Infantiles are far more ready to enter God’s Love Sphere than Tribal Infantiles, they are also far less capable of making life work inside God’s Love Sphere. Tribal Infantiles have some of the basic structures of Present Love Feelings in-place, and they appreciate the feelings generated by PLV’s. For Diffuse Infantiles, their addictions and fundamental assumptions about the primacy of Present Love Feelings keep clouding their appreciation for God’s Love.

The process of Redemption changes life for the Diffuse Infantile. But that process will have to wait for another day.

I was always frustrated by the lack of participation and interest from my beloved brothers and