And Another Thing

I usually try to keep an open mind about things but sometimes I just get tired of it all. I just don't care what people think and some things just need to be said. So here are a few things I would like to get off my chest before the end of the year.

Tattoos are ridiculous. Really, what is the purpose? Are we so desperate to express our individuality that we need to permanently mark ourselves? I have yet to see a tattoo that I thought really had staying power. I have never seen a painting that I would want permanently attached to my living room wall. How can people suddenly decide that they want something permanently tattooed to their bodies?

This leads me to piercings. Whoever thought that was a good idea? What purpose does a stud in the side of your face serve? How strong is peer pressure that people will mutilate themselves like that just to fit in.

And finally, coffee. Why can't there be a coffee shop where there are no flavors other than coffee and the only options are in terms of size and strength? The should have strengths from 1 to 10 with 1 being slightly tan and 10 being burned black. You could just walk in and say, "Give me a 6 large," and be done with it.

Well, that's about it. I am ready for 2012. I think I'm getting grouchy in my old age.

The Good Citizen

The point has been made repeatedly that our emphasis needs to be on the Kingdom of God. Jesus constantly talks about the Kingdom and when he uses the word "Church" he is still talking about the Kingdom. Of course, scripture also says a lot about the local church but it is always in support of the Kingdom. But what does that mean for the local church and individual followers of Jesus?

In the "Lord's Prayer" Jesus lays out the Kingdom mission when he prays, "They Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We understand then that we are to live in light of this mission. But what does that mean? I think we have a tendency to make it a lot more difficult to understand than it is.

One thing that we understand quite well is good citizenship. Not they we necessarily see a lot of good citizenship but we understand the concept and we talk a lot about it. though there are some significant differences I think we can apply our understanding of citizenship with being a citizen of the Kingdom.

A good citizen does his part for his country. He wants what his best for his country and understands that he has a responsibility to his country to do his best to make his country the best it can be. A good citizen is required to use his gifts and abilities for the good of his country. He has a part to play on a national level as well as regional and local level though most of the focus for most citizens will be at the local level where he wants what is best for his community and fellow citizens. He is obligated to represent his country well where ever he goes and what ever circumstances he finds himself in.

A bad citizen doesn't feel this responsibility and obligation. He lives with a sense of entitlement and has an adversarial relationship with a good percentage of his fellow citizens. He feels no compulsion to serve his fellow citizens or his country because he believes it is the responsibility of his state to serve him. He wants all the benefits of the state without having to make a contribution of his own.

The same holds true for the Kingdom of God. 1 Peter 4:10 says, "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, administering God's grace in its various forms." As a citizen of the Kingdom I have a responsibility to use my gifts and abilities to serve others. I need an "ends of the earth" perspective but I spend most of my time and effort locally. I am not simply a receptacle of God's grace, I also do my part in administering God's grace. I need to be a close observer of my local community and do my part to help it reflect the Kingdom positively.

It is easy for citizens of the Kingdom of God to simply sit back and expect the King to take care of all the problems in our location. It is easy to ignore our responsibility and obligation in that process. It is easy to blame our fellow citizens for the problems. It is easy to care little about the well being of our fellow citizens and proclaim they deserve what they get. But that is being a bad citizen of the Kingdom.

With the high level of patriotism we have in the USA you would think we would understand what it means to be a good citizen. How much more should be good citizens of the Kingdom of God.

"c"hurch No More

I think the use of the word "church" should be banned for 5 years in North America. I preached a sermon one time explaining the difference between the big "C" Church made up all followers of Jesus around the world and little "c" churches that we use to describe our individual local congregation that may or may not include followers of Jesus. And I still see a lot of confusion between the two. In fact, I was recently listening to a nationally know author speak and he mixed the two freely and had them mixed up in the same sentence. So, until we get it straight, I propose banning the use of the little "c" church from our vocabulary.

Every church name would have to relate to THE Church. No "Community Church" or "First," "Second," or "Third Church." Every church name would start with "The Church That Meets at ____________," where the blank would be the street address. Our church could no longer be called "ZUB Church" but would be named "The Church That Meets At 3092 W. Broadway."

Sure, it would cause a lot of problems. Just the website confusion alone would be a major headache. But maybe we would finally start thinking straight about the Church.

Where Do You Grow?

I've been processing some thoughts on the environments where we grow in our relationship with God. Here is a diagram of the concept.



















The larger the circle the larger the impact the indicated environment has on your spiritual growth. In this diagram "Personal Bible Study" has the biggest impact and a relationship with a "Mentor" has the smallest impact. This is just an example so in real life there would probably be several more environments and the sizes would be different for each individual person.

The thought is that each person needs a number of environments where we can grow in our relationship with God. Some of the environments may serve other purposes so just because they are small doesn't mean they have less value. The church can help people by making learning environments available for people.

But to do so we also need to understand that everyone is at a different point on a continuum with regard to their desire to grow. Consider the following diagram.








Individuals would fit all along this continuum. A learning environment that included people from a wide range of this continuum would have a smaller impact on an individuals spiritual growth because to include everyone the environment would probably need to target its purpose and activities to meet a broad range of desire. An environment that included individuals that also fit fairly close together on the continuum would be able to focus more and would therefore probably have a greater impact on the individual's growth.

Environments could also have greater impact the farther the members of the environment are toward the "Highly Motivated" end of the continuum because these individuals would be more likely to accept a purpose and activities for the environment that targeted spiritual growth. Individuals toward the "casual" end would tend to favor other purposes and activities for the environment.

Practically, we can set expectations for an environment, and avoid a lot of frustration, if we are aware of these factors. If we create an environment that consists of individuals from a wide range on the continuum we should realize that we are probably not going to get high impact spiritual growth from that environment. Instead we can use that environment to build community, nudge individuals in the direction of growth, etc. On the other hand, if we create an environment that is made up of a group of individuals that all come from a region far to the right on the continuum we can expect that this environment will need to challenge the individuals to grow or they will probably quickly lose interest.

Just thinking out loud.

Education

I'm a big fan of Khan Academy. I think it is genius and I have fun learning on it. But I think Khan makes a great point about how we learn and it has me thinking about a lot of different areas of education.

In a typical educational setting a teacher will teach their block of content and give a test to see how well the students are grasping the material. Let's just say the students take that test and a few get 95% correct, several more get 85% correct, and a several get 75% correct. The question is what will happen in the very next class after the test.

The answer is that in most cases the teacher moves on to the next block of content. I suppose some teachers may take a few moments going over what was missed but it is doubtful that such a review is very thorough. The fact is a good portion of the students do not understand 25% of the content, the average student in the class doesn't understand 15% of the content, and even the brightest students do not understand 5% of the content. A few subjects can handle this problem because understanding the new block of content has little impact on understanding the previous block of content. But most subjects build on previous learning so this lack of understanding is just not acceptable.

When I was at boarding school I remember a teacher arriving who taught my brother's class and a few other classes below me. I remember that one of the things he wanted to do was teach basic English grammar no matter how long it took. If nothing else those kids were going to know about sentence structure, verbs and nouns, adjectives and adverbs, and all the rest. I think that was brilliant. I think a lot of us went through school learning only about 75% of what we needed to know about grammar. A thorough understanding would have been a blessing.

I also admire Kahn's approach to using technology to actually humanize education. In many cases technology has the effect of de-humanizing whatever it is we are using it for. How many times have you heard people complain about automated answering systems when calling a company or organization on the phone? Using technology to increase the value of our human interaction is something we need to work on a lot more.

Reality

Heh Heh. I can't believe that I am writing a post on reality.

I think it is very hard for most Americans, including American Christians, to accept the reality of reality. It is much more fun to create our own.

Calvin, from the Calvin & Hobbes comic series, said, "Reality continues to ruin my life."

Adam Savage, of Myth Busters fame, said, "I reject your reality, and substitute it for my own."

That pretty much sums up the view of reality for most people I know. Instead of dealing with reality we seem bent on creating our own. And we do it with utmost seriousness at times.

I recently watched a news report that told the story of a Somali family who walked 24 miles to reach help at a famine relief camp in Kenya. The mom died on the way and the father and children were very weak when they arrived. That is the reality of the world we live in. That's some serious stuff. Funny how we can turn a lot of other aspects of our life and elevate them to "most serious" status.

Sometimes I hear Christians saying that the end of the world is near because of the bad things they are reading about in their communities. I used to go to church with a guy in Africa who didn't have any ears. They had been cut off by rebel soldiers. I bet he thought the end of the world was long past due. We probably would have given up on church if that happened to us. I guess "How bad things are" is relative.

I don't mean this post to be a downer because we have so much to be thankful for. But I think the more we truly grasp reality the more thankful we become. A book title that really helps me (You can tell I am a deep thinker, can't you?) is Eugene Peterson's "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." Now there is a dose of reality I can relate to.