Would you deny Christ?

This is my last blog post of 2010…where has the time gone, it seems like I just started this thing.  I’ve been thinking about New Year’s Resolutions; I’ve already committed to reading 100 books in 2011.  Another resolution I’ve toyed with is finishing the novel I’ve been working on for about 7 years.  Reading Silence by Shusako Endo has really motivated me to dig back in and finish the story.  The novel is about an inner city pastor who ministers to prostitutes and drug dealers.  He is so successful at getting them to transform their lives that his home is invaded by one of the kingpins of the city and his henchmen who is furious at the loss of revenue and bodies.  The kingpin ties up the pastor and his wife and two children.  The pastor is asked to deny Christ or else his wife and children will be tortured and killed.  He refuses several times throughout the ordeal and the kingpin follows through on his threat leaving the pastor that only one left alive.  The Christian fundamentalist media types hail the pastor as a hero for not denying Christ; however the pastor begins to think the heroic thing to do would have been to suffer eternal hell if it meant his family would not have been brutalized.  He begins to see a spiritual director who leads him on a journey of discovery into the land of a God who looks to love rather than judge. 

That is it in a nutshell.  I find it sad to believe that some really believe God would send someone who has served God most of his life to hell for all eternity for denying Christ under such horrible circumstances.  I am thankful on the eve of a New Year that God has way more grace and mercy than we allow at times.

Incarnation

I think the more educated a person gets the more they realize just how much they don’t know.  There was a time in Bible College when I thought “you know what, I’m pretty smart, I think I have my mind around all this theological stuff”.  Later when working on my Masters of Divinity at Northwest Nazarene University I opened up my mind and saw that everything was not nearly as neat or black and white as I once thought.  I began to realize there were some things I just didn’t have an answer for.  Now that I am working on my doctorate degree I know that I don’t know crap!  Besides being a small fortune in debt and the realization that I don’t know much my education has given me TSE (theologically sensitive ears).  Much like the musician with perfect pitch is annoyed by notes played even slightly off key; TSE causes me to be annoyed by theological inconsistencies.  This reared its ugly head this week while I was listening to some Christmas music.  I was listening to “Away in a Manger” and heard these words:

The cattle are lowing

The poor Baby wakes

But little Lord Jesus

No crying He makes

After I realized that “lowing” is not the opposite of heightening, but a sound cows make I thought about why Jesus didn’t cry when he seemed to be startled awake by the cows lowing.  I asked some friends about this and the most popular answer was that Jesus wasn’t startled awake, he was simply enjoying a peaceful moment in the manger with the cows gently mooing in the background.  I pondered all this and concluded the popular answer was wrong.  You see lowing is not a gentle sound, as matter of fact a synonym for lowing is roaring.  And why would they call the baby “poor” if it had not been startled awake?  You don’t say look at the poor baby enjoying a peaceful moment.  You say “oh poor baby did those nasty cows wake you up!”  I then concluded the author of the song was making a theological point that the baby Jesus did not cry because that somehow equated to sin.  I further concluded that when people think of the baby Jesus not crying they disconnect from the fact that the baby Jesus was 100% human.  And if we forget that Jesus was 100% human we miss out on how much God loves us through the role Jesus played in the Christmas story.  Who else but a God who loves unconditionally would empty himself of all divine power (Philippians 2:7) and become like us to show us love!

The Value of Human Life

I started watching the HBO series ROME last night.  Outside of the gratuitous sex scenes I am fascinated by the show.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live in those days—the days just prior to the Incarnation.  Watching ROME coupled with the reading I’ve been doing on Herod the Great (did you know Herod saved the Olympic Games and ensured its future) made me think about the value of human life.  It seemed nothing in those days to kill a person—even family members.  Herod killed so many in his own family it was said “it is better to be Herod’s pig than his son”.  Unnatural death seemed to be an everyday occurrence in the days of Christ’s birth; no wonder there wasn’t a huge outcry when Herod demanded that all boys two years old and under be killed in and around Bethlehem.

                                    

Today we seem to place a much higher value on human life—or do we?  Abortions are happening at an alarming rate.  And even the anti-abortion crowd seems to only care about abortions in their own country and could not care less about children starving to death in other countries.  I am still horrified by the genocide in Rwanda where an estimated 800,000 people were murdered over a span of approximately 100 days.  The genocide in Darfur has left over 400,000 murdered.  Those numbers are staggering, yet, because they happened in a far away land we don’t seem bothered by them.  If we really believe that all people are created equal shouldn’t we value the human life in Ethiopia just as much as we value human life in Detroit?  If we really believe that all people are created equal shouldn’t the great number of people dying of Aids in Africa break our hearts just as much as children dying of cancer at Mott Hospital?  Do we really place a higher value on human life than the ancient Romans?  

The First Post

If you are not aware my blog name comes from one of the finest moments in cinematic history.  In this scene (youtube link provided below) from the 1966 Batman movie, Batman is trying to safely dispose of a lit bomb found in the backroom of a watering hole.  He at first thinks of throwing it in the local tavern, but can't get everyone to evacuate.  He then runs around the pier looking for a place to put it, but runs into a marching band, a woman pushing a baby carriage, nuns and even a few ducks.  He pauses with the lit bomb in hand and says "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb".  He finally finds a safe place to put it just before the bomb explodes.  Robin finds Batman safe and sound.  He marvels that Batman would risk his life to save that "riff raff in the bar".  Batman replies: "They may be drinkers Robin, but they're also human beings and may be salvaged...I had to do it".  Who knew Batman was such a theologian!

In this blog I will talk about powerlifting, strongman contest, motorcycles, theology; but most everything will be discussed with the spirit of loving the "riff raff" in our lives.  However, before we can love the "riff raff" (oh please, do I really need to keep putting it in quotations!) like Batman we have to be willing to pick up the bomb.  There it is...what will you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUpF7rvfnk