Conversations on Faith and Life - Part 2

Excerpts from discussions in my Religion and Popular Culture course at Pima College:

 

QUESTION:

The context of the movie Signs is an alien invasion, but the theme of the movie is about faith. "Signs" include both crop circles and evidence of a higher power.

Give a personal response to the following statement from the movie Signs: "everything happens for a reason." In addition, how does Graham's explanation of "two kinds of people" coincide with the three primary ways of understanding reality: providence, fate and chance? Has he forgotten one, or has he combined two? Do you agree? Explain.
 

MY QUICK ANSWER:

That our answers to Discussion 3 underscore our core world and life view is clear. Most of the conversation around the themes in this discussion question center on our odyssey to understand the meaning of life's hardship and suffering.

My elderly neighbor, a sincere man and also an atheist, has long struggled with finding meaning in this life. His family has suffered painful loss and he has shaken his fist at the way the universe operates; it seems as if justice and compassion are in short supply. In his words, "If there is a God, I'd fire him!"

Truthfully, most people - dare I say all people - religious and spiritual ones included, are often at a loss to understand why things go the way they do. The perplexities and brutality of life serve as mounting evidence that God has left or doesn't exist or worse yet, doesn't care. For my atheist neighbor this is especially true. But even for those who believe in God, the spiritual realm, or have religious affections, one is left to wonder, often in confoundment, fear and rage, why this God does what he does.

It seems as if this mantra is true: "For the atheist, the challenge is to believe that God exists; for the theist, the challenge is to believe God is good."

I believe most of what God does is a mystery; think of it, a being who created the world and everything in it, he must clearly have ways that are far above our ability to grasp.

Yet, if you choose to be open for a moment longer, consider that even in suffering and hardship, this God may have clear purposes in view.

Consider the following: God allows suffering and hardship in this life ...

1. To carry out his redeeming purposes for his people
2. To punish our sin
3. To prevent our sin
4. To teach perseverance, hope and build character
5. To test us
6. To equip us to comfort others
7. To display his power
8. To advance his kingdom and reign in this world

This list is neither exhaustive nor a deeply satisfying one, I realize. But it does help frame the question about suffering and hardship and offer some reasons why things go as they do.

Try this on for a moment: What if this God, who is capable of creating and sustaining this world and is fulfilling his purposes in the lives of some seven billion people simultaneously, cares about and loves you more deeply than you know. What if you are thought about by this God and held closely to his bosom. What if every painful thing in your life is painful to him but necessary for your growth and is working toward eternal purposes?

No doubt this is what most of us long for and crave to be true ...

Conversations on Faith and Life - Part 1

Excerpts from discussions in my Religion and Popular Culture course at Pima College:

QUESTION:

1. Do you think that everyone - naturalists and theists alike - practices a faith lifestyle? Explain.

 

MY QUICK RESPONSE:

It seems best, for our purposes, to understand "faith" as a synonym for "trust" and in doing so, to view it not as a noun - simply a confidence or reliance or a belief - but rather as a verb form: "to place trust in," "to believe in," "to be reliant upon." I know that sound painfully basic, but at the core, so is the action of placing trust.

In this way, an atheist will "place trust in" science, reason, arguments and the like; and this is not bad but good. A theist will likewise "place trust in" all these same things - with obvious boundaries - but will trust most deeply in the central 'object' of one's trust, Theos, or God.

I've lived part of my life as an atheist, part as an agnostic, part as a shirt-pocket theist (God is whoever I say he/she is), and today as a non-religious Jesus follower.

One interesting thing I've learned is this. Of all the commonalities - and there are many - associated with various world and life views, i.e., various forms of theistic belief/non-belief, there is one major difference.

It is the concept of 'grace' or 'favor' without our meriting it. Of all the world religions and all the arguments against them, shining as a unique gem is the deep mystery of grace, that the person of God would favor us and take initiative toward us. To anyone who has experienced this dramatic encounter, it stands as a proof for God's existence like no other argument could. And with this encounter comes an imputed "trust" or "faith," a capacity "to believe in God" that was neither self-produced nor present before. Perhaps this is why foremost Christian philosopher and thinker Alvin Plantinga can argue that a Christian's experience of God is a cogent proof for God.

Indigenous Species ...

Indigenous Species

Why we do what we do ...

Just admit it, you've probably wondered
why The Gathering is building a network of 'home churches'. Is it just to be different or novel or hip?

Think of it this way: suppose I took an oak tree seedling from the Midwest and planted it here in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. Now what do you suppose would happen to the oak seedling?

Well, first, we Tucsonans would call it like it is, an 'invasive species'. In other words, it is not indigenous or naturally occurring in these parts; therefore, it would likely not thrive and probably not even survive. And the same thing would happen if you planted a Saguaro cactus in your midwest backyard. 

So, think of home churches as an indigenous spiritual species occurring naturally in Tucson, Arizona and the surrounding Sonoran Desert.

We believe home churches are a natural way to express our faith in Jesus; they are highly relational, intentionally simple, dramatically transformative and naturally occurring expressions of Jesus' body.

Expressing our faith in community as home churches enables us to focus on worshipping God in simple, authentic ways, connect with each other deeply, and engage people close at hand with God's grace.

This appproach is marvelously effective at achieving these benefits, but it is also a slow-moving process; Why? Because intention relationship building takes time; it can be neither forced nor hurried. Trust, intimacy, and committment in relationships take time to grow.
The process bears no little similarity to a Suguaro seedling taking root and growing. In the wild, they take 60 years to grow their first arm! Point is, home churches grow surely but slowly.
All that said, we are super-duper excited about this wild vision God has given The Gathering! We ask you to remember us and when you do, to pray that God would fulfill His purpose through us.

cool 'gathering' story ...

Hi Everybody,

Just wanted to share with you a cool story that just happened:

Our AC unit died and we had it replaced yesterday (yes, we're totally broke now). As they were installing the new system yesterday, God reminded me of a guy I met a few years ago, Jason, a metal scrapper, stopped by our house and asked if he could have some scrap metal on the side of the garage. We talked a bit after loading it in his truck and he shared with me he had a pretty rough background. I asked for his number and wrote it on a wooden shelf in my garage. I told him I would call him if I had any other metal stuff to give him.

So yesterday God reminded me of Jason, the metal scrapper, and I felt led to call him and offer him the old condensor, coil, and furnace units. Now bear in mind I could have brought these in myself to have them recycled and gotten some hefty cash money for them. But instead, acting on The Gathering mission to 'love the world selflessly,' I offered it all to him.

While he was here just now loading it all up on his trailer, I had great conversation with him. I asked him to share with me where he is spiritually. He said he believes in something higher than himself but mostly trusts in himself, in his positive thinking. Through the course of our half-an-hour together, I took the risk - and know that sharing our faith in Jesus with others is always a risk - and shared my story with him, how Jesus is my 'stand in man' and how God demonstrated His love for me (for us) by sending Jesus to the cross for us. He seemed to be connecting with it. I also shared with him how God reminded me of him and asked me to give him all that recycle stuff. I told him it was God's way of caring for him. He seemed appreciative and listened intently. I also invited him to join us on Sunday night at 5 PM for our Gathering gathering. He was receptive and said he would keep it in mind. Fun experience!

I share this story with you to help illustrate what 'faith in action' looks like, something we talked about on Sunday night. This story also illustrates The Gathering mission in a nut shell: Love God earnestly, love others tangibly, love the world selflessly. I believe this story would not have happened if I had not been deeply connected with and loving God through prayer and devotions this week. He enabled me to love tangibly someone at cost to myself. And this all toward the goal of loving the world selflessly.

I would love it if each of you would invite a friend or neighbor to join us this Sunday; I want to make it my habit to invite at least one person every week to our Sunday gatherings. Maybe you could do the same.

Hope your week is going well.

In Jesus,
Jimmy

Gathering Vision Night Almost Here!

I'm really, really, really, really excited about The Gathering Vision Night this Sunday evening! If you are in Tucson, AZ, you don't want to miss it!

I am excited to share The Gathering vision with you that God has lodged in my heart. He gave it to us during a long season of prayer and we feel like we're ready to give birth!

A new church is born much like a baby. Our anticipated "due date" is October 2013. Right now we've come through the 'conception stage' (which was lots of fun!) and now the spiritual baby is growing and developing in the prenatal stage. We are looking to add body parts and grow them and are gathering a team to help us labor until the birth next fall.

Wanna help and be part of the journey? You can learn more by checking out The Gathering Vision Night this Sunday at 6:30 PM at our home (contact us if you need directions). There will be plenty of drinks and snacks and babysitters on hand so you can bring the whole family.

We are super excited and would love to have you join us!

Jimmy and Liz
The Gathering

A New Dream ...

A New Dream: 'The Gathering' reimagined ...

God has refined The Gathering and given us a clear sense of His vision for this community for the future:

OUR NAME:

We long to do life together. An hour together on a weekend isn't how we define 'church.' We are 'the church' and the church shares its life together. So yes, The Gathering is about 'gathering' and doing life together.

But at the core it is more. The Gathering is borne out of a Holy Spirit movement that strives and is driven to 'gather in' parts of Jesus' body that presently aren't connected with Him. While we do 'gather' to share our lives together and worship God in community, our purpose is about living as ambassadors, pleading with those without hope and without God to be reconciled to Him.

OUR CONVICTION:

We believe God desires to recreate us from what we are now - a broken, miserable mess - into a perfect reflection of Jesus. In other words, we believe in transformation. And we believe this creative God-activity happens best and most genuinely within a committed, transparent, trusting community of people walking together tightly, exploring the relevance of Christ's life to ours. We believe life-change is real and that is why we hold firmly to an approach of nurturing relationships within small churches meeting in homes as our core 'church' experience.

OUR STORY:

We began last fall to seek God's direction for this new expression of Jesus in Tucson. Part of this seeking is exploring and experimenting. We hosted Friday evening 'events' for a while, hosting various kinds and sizes of parties, ate with lots of people, heard other's stories and shared our own, all the while allowing our lives, our home, our life-rhythm to be a labratory of learning in the spiritual eco-system of Tucson's rugged cowboy lifestyle. Much learning is still taking place.

Much seeking after God's design for us has enabled us to experience new clarity for the Gathering's future; we believe God has given us His dream for this new community of faith and we're excited to share it with you now ...

OUR DREAM:

We long to become a large network of small churches meeting weekly in homes to worship God, disciple each other, nurture community, and practice mission. This weekly gathering is our core church experience. Each church in its specific location will express tangibly some aspect of God’s Kingdom in its neighborhood. This network of churches also gathers together for weekly celebration to worship God as a larger community.

OUR APPROACH:

With trust in God and on Him depending, we are beginning a 'pilot' church in our home. Once the pilot church grows to roughly fifteen people, adds at least two new Christians to God’s Kingdom, and identifies, raises up and trains a new leader, we will multiply the one cell church into two and two into three and so on. We hope to see Jesus raise up and build a network of small, home-based churches with this approach.

OUR FOCUS:

We do not hold as canons for success buildings, budgets, or numbers. Success for us is being God’s grateful kids, submitting to Him for transformation & repair, maturity & holiness, and preparation & opportunity for mission: to bring His Gospel of grace & truth to lost, hopeless, hurting people.

The Human Heart - an idol factory

My heart - or emotional core - is an idol factory. And so is yours. This is the reason John warns "Little children, keep yourself from idols" (1 John 5:21). This stern command comes after over 100 sentences in which he is teaching about who God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are, who we are, and how we should scurry to believe in Jesus and follow Him. John knows we are prone to wander from God and craft and worship our own created gods. 

You may wonder "What is an idol anyway?" An idol is anything that occupies the place due to God, in other words, a God-substitute. Idols are illusions, counterfeits, unreality, fakes; I call them spiritual implants. John, in writing from Ephesus, no doubt had in mind the Temple of Diana, the center for false worship in his day. It was a place filled with immorality, temple prostitution (live porn), criminal activity, sorcery, incantations, astrology, and the list goes on. In sum, it was a cesspool of vile debauchery and devil worship. That following Jesus in Ephesus was dangerous is an understatement.

Paul is similarly alarmed and grieved in Athens. He sees there a vast cultural, social, and spiritual landscape enmeshed and devoted to idols, most identified with a stone carving. He addresses idolatry in Romans 1 saying it is exchanging the truth of God for the lie and worshipping the creature and created things rather than the Creator.

Frankly put, we also live amid a dangerous cultural landscape; we do the same thing. This is how it works then and now: we take something created, like jobs, families, hobbies, power, money, sexuality, sports, medications, food, hope, beauty, dreams, churches, motherhood, treatment plans, or healing and devote ourselves to it so much that little by little, it begins to occupy the place in our lives that belongs to God alone. We worship and serve created things rather than our Creator. Not one of us is guiltless; we've all fashioned and worshipped God-substitutes and taken pleasure in it.

Let's stop doing it!

Let's call others to worship the One, true God.

And that is our motive for raising up a new community of Jesus followers: for God's honor and glory, to call His wayward children back into vital relationship with Him.

But before that can happen, God must first deal with my heart and yours. I pray that the Holy Spirit will mine my inner space for idols and do a spiritual crap clean.

God says that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. I've been wondering how that looks. How can we draw near to God? You mean, there is something I can do to make this happen? Yes, I believe there is.

First, we must acknowledge Him as the One, True God. Those on Mount Carmel in Elijah's day wavered between opinions about who God is. After they saw God chuck down fire from heaven, opinions were burned up too. There were no questions about who God is. Read 1 Kings 18:39.

Next, have you ever pulled a Joshua? Have you ever chosen God for your own? Now, I'm not saying that our choosing God is the beginning of our relationship; but it is a part. Check out Joshua 24:14-15. There he says he and his family are choosing God and committing to do life with Him.

Further, God cuts a covenant with us and says "I will be your God and your children's God." There is much richness and depth to God's covenant that I won't get to here. But for now it is enough to say there is a 'response' side to what God promises. Will we also covenant with Him and commit to being His?

There is also our response of praise and adoring God with emotional affection. Nehemiah and Ezra, along with all the people, pressed their faces to the ground, bowing and worshipping Him. We ought to do the same. (See Nehemiah 8:6)

Another aspect of relating rightly to God is having a healthy fear and awe for Him. Do we fear Him with a holy awe that we dare not sin against Him? Isaiah speaks of a day when people will fear His name and revere His glory (Isaiah 59:19). Let's start today.

Trust God in everything and for everything, not just in easy times. We must rely on His power as Creator and on His love as Father. To trust God as His kid is necessary for us and pleasing to Him (See Psalm 62:8).

Love God with your whole self. Jesus talks about doing this and says it is the best thing we can do (Mark 12:29-31).

Finally, obey God without backtalk. We are prone to disrespect and question God on various levels. But how often do we simply obey what He asks and commands? A favorite verse of mine on this idea is 1 John 2:3-6.

Crafting idols is safe and comforting; it makes us feel alive and in control. But it never dulls the raw emptiness and ruggedness of our inner soul life. It is like digging a cistern to store water and watching the water slowly drain out; idols do not last, they do not satisfy.

Cultivating a relationship with the living God is terrifying, risky, and unsafe. It requires that we actually trust something outside of ourselves, it means giving up our demand that life make sense, it means surrendering our lives and laying down our dreams and letting Jesus live through us, it means being content with our brokenness and relying on God's repair to bring wholeness. It means we are willing to feel again and trusting that God is enough no matter what chaos the world, the flesh and the devil may bring.