I Really Wanted To Put A Curse Word In This Title

I was fooling around on the net and came across the George W. Bush fansite on myspace and found this little treasure:



I know my blog is extremely insignificant and as much as Charlie, Scott, Pastor John and other like minded bloggers carry out our little cyberspace war, civil religion will persist. But I simply cannot let this go. My conscience would harass me and I'd go home and be curt with my wife and neighbors and dog and would be too distracted to work on my paper that is due before Friday and none of this would be any good for anybody. So let's take a little look at this shall we? This will at least let me think I've done something.

"The thing that separates the American Christian..."

- Wow. In seven words George Washington has succeeded in rending the Body of Christ that Jesus gave his life to establish. It is fitting that he does this in seven words (seven being the biblical number of completion) because he has completely set American Christians above and against every other Christian in the world (remember, England was a Christian nation too). This is a classic (in both senses of the word) example of the powers that be using peoples' faith to subsume them into a nationalistic identity and agenda. If people can be made to believe that their government is the only one that truly sides with God then they will do anything for that government. Even kill other Christians. Because they are no longer seen as true Christians. Because the are not American Christians.

- What really separates the American Christian from every other person on earth is those who understand themselves as AMERICAN Christians have bought into exactly this type of rhetoric. It is no longer our identity as a part of the redeemed, as one of those from every nation and tribe who have been washed by the blood of the lamb and bought with a price (Revelation 5:9; 14:6), that allows us to see others who are radically (culturally, ideologically) different than us as brothers and sisters in Christ (Romans 10:12-13; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11), but our being born into or submitting ideologically to a specific, divisive, nationalistic agenda that estranges us from our Christian brothers and sisters. (FYI: most Christians is the Holy Land are Palestinians. How close are we to them?) This is supposed to be a good thing? That American Christians are better than all other Christians?

Whatever happened to the catholic Body of Christ? Precisely this type of evil. The sheep no longer recognize the voice of the Shepherd, so we answer the insatiate calls of the wolves.

"...from every other person on earth is the fact that he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees."

- Now, forget restricting this to being an issue between Christians. This gorgeous little bit elevates the issue to a whole new level of ethnocentrism. It separates us "FROM EVERY OTHER PERSON ON EARTH?" Seriously? What about the slaves who initiated rebellions (The Stono Rebellion, The New York Slave Insurrection of 1741, Nat Turner's Rebellion, etc. etc. etc.) against the white American Christians that forced them to live on their knees? What about the 1851 Indian Tax Rebellion in San Diego? Or the Texas-Indian Wars, et al?

Well...sorry. My emotion got the best of my pragmatism and I got off track there. Obviously they were inferior to the American Christian's who rebelled against England because they lost to said American Christians. Butt-kicking = verification of truthfulness. Job was soooo wrong. I can't wait to tell him in paradise.

- And I said we'd forget this being an issue between Christians, but I cannot help but ask, "What about the Christians in the colonies who were against rebellion? Some who formed their stance on their Christian beliefs?"

Oh, sorry, I made the same mistake twice. They lost.

It's not like Christianity was founded on losing or anything. I think I'm starting to come around and see how much of a good thing it is that we no longer follow a gospel that is foolishness to the world, that confounds the wise, and uses the weak to shame the strong (I Corinthians 1:23-31). Who wants a gospel that doesn't guarantee us bloody victory over our enemies of flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12)?

Read What Words Cannot Express

"God of all grace, whose thoughts toward us are ever thoughts of peace and not of evil, give us hearts to believe that we are accepted in the Beloved; and give us minds to admire that perfection of moral wisdom which found a way to preserve the integrity of heaven and yet receive us there. We are astonished and marvel that one so holy and dread should invite us into Thy banqueting house and cause love to be the banner over us. We cannot express the gratitude we feel, but look Thou on our hearts and read it there. Amen." - A.W. Tozer

This prayer comes from a little book I've been reading entitled, "The Knowledge of the Holy." Sometimes Tozer's modern Calvinism throws me a bit (e.g. what exactly he means by us being accepted "in" the Beloved - that little preposition bears huge interpretive options and theological consequences). However, Tozer usually escapes many of the pitfalls of modernity by immersing himself in the writings of the Saints. In this small book (124 pgs.) he quotes and interprets through "The Cloud of Unknowing," Miguel de Molinos, Julian of Norwich, The Athanasian Creed, St. Anselm, Novation, and Nicholas of Cusa. We are all, to a great extent, products of our environments, and it's refreshing to see someone, especially someone who had recieved no formal education, intentionally choose to expand their formative context to include the faithful who worked from a completely different set of (often more truthful) assumptions. One would be hard pressed to assemble a group of influences any less modern than the above. (Especially Nicholas of Cusa: Attaining a knowledge of God through the divine human mind that was unattainable through the senses? Calling the knowledge gained through the senses "learned ignorance?" Come on now! Enlightenment be damned!)

Regardless of these little bits here and there that cause me to raise a post-modern eyebrow, Tozer's work indeed "breathes a spirit of devotion." Hold Warren or Olsteen's work up next to Tozer's and they look like a corpse next to an Olympic athlete.

Maybe that was a little to harsh...No. It's about right. Just look at the last two lines from the above prayer, unpack them, then let them rip apart your modern assumptions that reduce faith and worship to linguistic systems and propositions. Oh, and while you're at it, let it draw you into deeper communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I believe one of the signs of a truly faithful Christian thinker and writer is that their own work in one line or paragraph will criticize itself in another section. If this is true, though Tozer is definitely no Augustine or Anselm, he is indeed in line with the writers at whose feet he intentionally sat.

This Is Just Crass

The past two weeks of my life have been spent in intense study of the book of Revelation with Dr. Andy Johnson and a handful of great students (including Scott) at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. I do not pretend to now understand everything about the book. Far from it. In fact, I probably have more questions now than I did going in to the class. But I feel like I can now say, with absolute certainty, that this is not the way to do interpretation on chapter 21. Though I'm happy to see that there will be a place for midgets.

p.s. I also managed to watch three seasons of Scrubs with Scott in between all the studying. And though I'm convinced that, thank God, heaven will be nothing like the above, I'm sure Turk will be there. Because it just wouldn't be heaven without him.