Christianity is killing faith.

Sometimes I find church boring. And I wonder why. I think it has to do with how some people appear to me. And it’s something that I personally struggled with: avoiding the challenges of life.
Sometimes we as Christians appear to have stopped living.
We put too much emphasis on the change that comes from following Jesus. We see it as a lasting change. And because its lasts forever, we are free from ever having to change again. So we stop trying. We stop engaging in the cycle of change and development that living brings.
The whole thing is quite ironic, because in an effort to live more fully in Christ, we have stopped living. Life has essentially been anesthetized. And that is off putting to others. And it’s a problem.
It makes for a church of Christians who have checked out of life. We can become a church of the undead, stuck between life and death. Not really participating in the world and in life, but walking around in it. It’s a problem because not changing makes us stagnant, and boring. It makes us predictable, and outdated. And a little weird.
I believe that an unwillingness to change impairs the ability to have a living faith. Faith is a belief in the things to come, without seeing or knowing what lies ahead. In other words, faith is believing in the process of change and growth without doubting our ability, with Gods help, to keep adjusting successfully.
When we stop believing in life’s constant changes, we stop believing in personhood and so become the undead. And that further alienates us from the rest of the world. And separates us from what God in reality signifies: never ending change and renewal.
It’s really easy for many of us to get stuck wishing that our faith would reward us by removing all of challenges of life. I know I want life to be easier sometimes. Instead, let’s remind ourselves that life is wrought with hardships but that Christ brought us together as a community to support and encourage each other to face life with courage and faith.

Ebenezer

Last week, while at church humming along to the hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, I realized I didn’t know what one of the verses meant. The part that goes:

Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

I didn’t know who or what an Ebenezer was. So I dug out my smartphone – modern technology at it’s best and worst- and looked it up. It turns out Ebenezer isn’t a person at all. Ebenezer is a stone. A monument Samuel put up between two towns to commemorate how God was helping them. 1 Samuel 7:12 reads:

Samuel took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer—”the stone of help”—for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us. 

The song admonishes us to raise our own Ebenezer stone to remember how much God has helped us. It is important to take time to notice and think about how much God helps us in our day to day lives. But something else stands out to me here too. I can’t help but wonder how  big the stone actually was. I wonder, because I recently spent a day  digging out broken concrete from a driveway, and I had to use every ounce of my being to move some of the pieces. I felt sore for days after. My body wasn’t letting me forget the hard work that I had done. So I wonder how big the stone actually was. If it was anything bigger than a few feet Samuel would have had to strain to move it. It would have taken a lot of work to raise a stone in honor of God.

I thought about what we do each week at church. Many of us go in and halfheartedly sing the words to hymns we may not actually understand, and make small talk with the person next to you in the pew. I was struck suddenly by how much effort it takes to worship. Sometimes worship takes work. And I thought about that hymn, and Samuel, and the work he put in to raise a stone in worship to a God who helps us through life’s struggles. And I wondered how willing I am to work to remember the help I get from God.  I want to raise my own Ebenezer. I want to feel it in my limbs and my shoulders. I want my first thought after a tiring and long week to be joy in the work it may take to worship and remember God.

O to grace how great a debtor 
daily I'm constrained to be! 
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, 
bind my wandering heart to thee. 
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, 
prone to leave the God I love; 
here's my heart, O take and seal it, 
seal it for thy courts above

 

Denver the Last Dinosaur

 

Mighty Mouse

Everyday Leadership

A powerful 6 minute video about the everyday reality of what leadership is and what we can do.

Everyday Leadership

Felix

Just finished another gold leaf painting. Felix!

Liono

Brand new, still wet, just finished gold leaf cartoon painting…Liono.