Searching for Meaning and Purpose...

As I talked about the needed unity of essential beliefs, it also means I must think about things that are non-essential that become harmful. Are there things beyond the pale outside of that mission? Absolutely. Sin is always sin and sin leads to eternal death, thus we can never soft pedal that. By the same token, God is God and the entirety of Scripture is meant to show us who He is, what He has done, what He is doing, what He has called us to do, and what is yet to come. In other words, in those beliefs that are so far beyond the pale there cannot be room for wiggle because they remove us from the body of Christ. Paul addressed enough controversies through letters to the new testament churches that we ought to know how to deal with things fairly thoroughly! Fighting through the Gnostics and Judaizers, both of whom added things to salvation, Paul sought to keep the central things the central things and defined our place through Christ and Christ alone. Then we see through church histor...

Most of the time we can clearly identify what is one side of a line and the other. If you watch any football game, the different colored jerseys easily identify which team someone plays for and the line of scrimmage clearly separates the offense from the defense.  When driving, it's essential we stay on our side of the dashed (or solid!) line to avoid maiming or killing ourselves and others. In politics, the letter we associate with clearly defines who we follow and who we shun. Throughout the ages, the Church has defined orthodoxy with a clear line parsing out what we believe and delineating things outside the pale of those beliefs. The growth in creeds is clear from the Apostle's to the Nicene in the simple opening phrases: I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son our Lord...     becomes We believe in in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in ...

What is the thing you are most passionate about? Your family? Your job? One of your hobbies? Think about it this way- small talk tends to bring out our passion, right? Your favorite sport, your occupation, your favorite team, favorite TV show, favorite movies, etc.- these are the things we talk about to try and find a point of connection. We also choose these options because they are safe. Yeah, someone might mock you for one of those choices, but it's a lot safer to be a known geeky nerd than have something that is part of our core identity hurt! Why is that? Because we've learned the art of passionate superficiality to avoid deep pain! Most of us can attest to being hurt when our true selves have been on display. Someone betrayed our trust & we placed our true self behind protective barriers (whether we recognize them as such or not) to ensure we aren't hurt that way again. After so many times of being hurt and walling ourselves off, it becomes hard to ever shar...

Who do you think you are?   Simple question, right? But, let's throw in a wrinkle- answer the question without any references back to your job or your family... Gets a lot tougher, right? We often describe ourselves by what we do  or our family- husband, father, pastor, game store owner, etc. Take a minute and really think about who you are minus those roles. What defines you outside of them? Had you ever really thought about the ways your identity was tied to roles instead of actually you? We define ourselves in so many ways that completely avoid who we are and our society, via identity politics, aims to force us to define ourselves only as some label instead of a wholistic person. The whole conception of identity for a person is often distilled to their sexuality or their race or their religion- often an external characteristic, with nothing to do with the heart of a person. When the entire conception of self is something, it reduces people to less than their selves....

Have you ever heard of a resonance cascade?  The idea of a resonance cascade is that waves of energy combine in a continual loop, or cascade, that eventually multiplies out of control. In the story of the 90's PC game Half Life, a resonance cascade rips open the fabric of reality making a portal to another dimension that the hero has to put an end to. Now, I'm not L. Ron Hubbard and creating my own religion from fiction (even fiction I didn't write!), so don't worry about that! But the idea of a resonance cascade has applications to our hearts and faith that I want to flesh out. 2000+ years ago at the cross, something happened that changed everything. Let's take a look at Mark 15.37-39: With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.  The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.   And when the centurion,  who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” Many times we skip these details to move o...

There are a few things that I am dogmatically bound to. One of those is the priority of evangelism for anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ. If we follow Christ, we must understand that there is literally nothing more important than the sharing of our faith. Jesus' last words to His followers in the Great Commission were to "go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you." If you think about it, this being the last thing Jesus said to us makes it extraordinarily important. It's not something we can ignore, but we lose some of the force of the statement in translation. What Jesus is saying in sentence construction in the original Greek is: "make disciples as we go, make disciples as we baptize, make disciples as we teach." The absolute importance is on making disciples in every aspect of life. But, before we go o...

The official motto of the United States is the Latin phrase, "E Pluribus Unum" or "Out of many, one." It's fitting, as the US formed from 13 colonies and then became a conglomeration of 50 states working together as one country. But further, it fits because of the multitudinous peoples who filled the country- all immigrants coming to seek a future in a land beyond the sea- many of whom were greeted by the statue that stands for liberty and justice for all. It's the idea of a melting pot- many influences creating something unique, different, yet harmonious. That is what the idea is, but it doesn't necessarily take root when not encouraged to! It's also the idea at the root of the church- out of many, one. Diverse peoples with myriad giftings and abilities drawn into relationship because of the love of their Savior to do something no one else ever could. That is a miraculous vision- where people live, love, and work together with one purpose under on...