NeoZine

Xenos in Columbus was swept along in the energy and tide of about 50 teenagers, college-aged and even middle-aged adults from NeoXenos. It was an invasion of epic proportions: last year almost 30 made the long trip, but we nearly doubled attendance this time!

Was it worthwhile?

“Oh Yes!” was the resounding conclusion. This year’s Xenos Summer Institute (XSI) featured a collection of national authors, speakers and leaders who provided an infusion of stamina and strategic insight. Not all sessions were equally powerful, some were exceptionally memorable.

Larry Crabb

As a psychologist Dr. Crab brought insight and emotional healing for Christian counselors for several decades, but his insights at the XSI were novel for his usual fare and greatly confirmed the model of discipleship and fellowship we so greatly enjoy in NeoXenos.

“How does God’s reality become our reality? Through the church!” he said. “The best model of community is the Trinity,” he said:

“They [the Trinity] get along so amazingly well, and we’re invited to join in…The communion between the Trinity should be flowing between us, but we’re so hidden behind our persona, we just can’t reflect that closeness! Like trying to make love with your clothes on.”

But unfortunately:

“We are naturally self-obsessed. I don’t care one bit about you apart from the grace of God. Every act of kindness is rooted in narcissism. From birth on, the energy in us is directly opposed to that which is in the Trinity. We live to protect what we value in ourselves rather than living to give what might prove valuable to another!” (from Thursday night).

This is what Crabb is passionate about:

“In Dante’s hell the entry said, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ Hope for what? For community! Isolation in our own needs is real death! …What is a truly spiritual community? Not individualism! Therapeutic movements have made a mess of therapy! ‘I just want to get control over my addictions… to feel better about who I am…’ If we make these the ‘first things,’ they become idolatry. Individualism defines the health of the individual over the community.”

Crabb specifically cited discipleship as the greatest need in Christian community:

What is the church?s mission? What is your vision? …To make them “little Christ’s” is the goal of the church. Our number one priority is to make disciples. How are we doing? … It means we need to have conversations that matter: this is how you make disciples.

Three key elements are needed for an effective, discipleship-oriented church:

1. To “Enter the Battle Raging beneath the surface” in each other’s lives. “It?s not the battle for my self-esteem, to heal my wounds.” It is, in fact, the battle to get out of our narcissism and into other people’s lives.
2. To “see the vision,” where each other’s “hurt becomes an occasion to shape the flesh. In the Body of Christ, there should be a twinkle of hope in your eye for me.”
3. Finally, to “touch the soul with the spirit’s power,” and become “an agent of change” in another person’s life.

In the end, “it isn’t self-management, it’s God-trust that’s the battle,” Crabb said.

• Check out the slideshow of pictures from XSI.
• See Crabb - Change through Community for a collection of Crabb’s material from XSI.
• Up next: more sensational reviews!

You found us! We moved the old zine to neozine.org, along with all the posts and comments. Update your links and bookmarks! Also…

• Visit the Meetings page for schedules, contacts and directions.
• Read the Love Ethic table of contents about mature and immature love.
• Browse our Archives for past articles.

Leave suggestions or comments!

What an amazing story Spielberg tells: a sophisticated, new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) emerges from the labs in the form of a little boy. He seems mostly human, with self-learning and primitive but very real emotions. He is adopted by parents whose only child lay in a coma from a tragic accident, and the AI boy was designed to fill the void and ease their painful loss. The mother becomes emotionally attached to the AI, and the boy’s emotional life develops an innocent, sweet love for his new mother.

But then the AI boy is abandoned when the real human child suddenly awakens from the coma. The AI wanders aimlessly through the ages, never growing older, and always searching for love like he once knew with his adopted mother. He lost all sense of purpose, but not his emotions.

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of years pass while an ice age envelopes New York and recedes slowly. An advanced civilization of humanoids discovers the abandoned boy, and they re-create his beloved mother from the DNA in a strand of hair the little boy carried. At last, he can be loved! His mother will live again! But the AI is told he will not survive 24 hours with her because the emotional overload will destroy his circuits.

The movie ends with the boy wrapped in his former mother’s arms, knowing he would die in a few hours, but utterly blissful because he is loved. This love will destroy him soon, but it is worthwhile.

Thirst for Tragedy

The movie “AI” was a pet project for director Stephen Spielberg. He captured the beauty and tragedy of love. People wander aimlessly like the AI boy looking for someone—anyone—to give them the love they need in order to survive. But once found how it destroys!

How is it possible for something so beautiful to destroy a life? Spielberg is one of so many through the millennia to notice the poisonous yet irresistible nature of love. It was told in Romeo and Juliet, but millennia earlier in Sampson and Delilah. Nothing matters without love, yet nothing wounds so painfully deep.

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved,” Shakespeare wrote. Those who get shattered by divorce believe this is true as they seek yet again to get married.

The Bible provides clear insight into the tragedy and beauty of love, but it’s not easy to swallow: love is a poison in human hands. It poisons the one who craves it.

Love is a Battlefield

This is not a nice world, by any definition, and not a realm where love can easily flourish. “Love is a battlefield,” as one song puts it, but the singer has no explanation for it. But God does. Love is a battlefield in a war between those who take and those who take.

“I need your love tonight!” another song proclaims, but we never hear the other person’s response: “No, no, no…I need your love tonight!” It is precisely when love becomes a demand that it poisons the demander.

Going back to James and his effort to correct the relationships in that young church, he nails it:

“You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.” James 4:2 (NASB95)

“You lust and do not have” is the reason why love is such a battlefield. “So you commit murder!” The vast majority of homicides are called “crimes of passion” because they occur at home among spouses and other family members. This again proves that love is a poison in human hands. Something is desperately wrong when “love is a battlefield.”

Continue Reading »