“The point is taken up again and again in the New Testament. If we do not live the good news in joy and in freedom, we quickly turn it into a constraint, an obligation, or a law, which is the exact opposite. The moment someone has lived the experience that the kingdom of heaven is more important and beautiful than anything encountered before, it puts everything else in a different light. This includes possessions, ideological commitments, spiritual orientation, or anything else that is part of the context of our daily life.”

Jacques Ellul On Freedom, Love, and Power. 

More and more I keep having conversations about “the fix”. The problem is “the church”.

You will hear problems like sunday mornings, too much structure, not enough evangelism, looking at the back of people’s heads,bad structure, too easy, too hard, too much money being spent, not enough community, etc…

You will hear solutions like being more missional, being smaller, more dialog, more discipline, higher standards, more covenant agreements, more small groups, more discipleship, more leadership, more conferences, workshops, and training on leadership and discipleship and small groups, and being missional and covenant agreements, etc..

The more I talk to more people who are done with Christianity (and Church) the more I think the fix is much more simple: our theology.

The way we have thought about God, the Bible, and every other issue related has sufficiently removed most passion, most joy, most trust, and most desire to do anything related to Christianity.

Until the passion, joy, trust, and desire return, well, what’s the point?

You won!

You don’t have cancer!

Your investment doubled!

The weird thing about good news is that it generally requires some kind of context. Won what? Were you worried I had cancer? What investment? How much?

God loves you. God forgives you. God wants to transform you and this world.

Did God ever not want to do any of those things?

I just read a 6 page paper explaining the good news of the Bible. On one hand something seems really weird if it takes 6 pages to explain what some would claim is the best news ever. On the other hand, maybe the paper is trying to explain context.

But, what’s weird is that when this best news ever was originally shared it was religious people who already believed God loved them who were offended and it was non-religious people who… well… had other issues… that jumped for joy over it.

Why is the good news today generally the news that all the religuos people feel great about and all the non-religous people “have to be convinced of”?

Have we lost the context? Or have we lost the good news?

It always comes to a point. Some moment at which things have to change. Some moment at which the train leaves the building. I’m there. After a Monday of watching Easter services, reading Bin Laden posts, and then seeing a few more “heretic and false teacher” comments from some of the most “respected” names in Christianity about another Christian, well… count me out.

Don’t call me a Christian anymore. Please. I’m not saying this to be cute either. But, at some point, what Chrisitans are saying and what my own faith is, just don’t match up. Not in the sense of… it’s great we  need diversity and we need different opinions in this whole thing, centered around Jesus (which is true) but in the sense of… we don’t believe in the same Jesus, so we can’t be centered around Jesus enough to disagree on the other stuff.

And yeah maybe they should be called something different and I should claim the name of  Christianity for what it truly stands for (in my opinion), but it’s too late. They can have it. I’ll be called something else. Maybe nothing. Those labels are kinda stupid anyway. (and Jesus follower just sounds too cheesy.) Any ideas?

It’s not all bad though. I’m actually more convinced of the grace, mercy, and love of God than ever… from watching Christians these past few days. I’m pretty sure God loves them just as much as me. I’m pretty sure that if we can both claim to read the same Bible and follow the same God, and read the same Gospels that talk about the same Jesus… and yet be so completely different… God has to be pretty big and pretty forgiving.

In case you haven’t heard there’s a new book out called Freedom Wins. The idea is simple: all people should be free. In other words, slavery is wrong, freedom is right.

At first glance, of course, we love the idea. It appeals to our hearts, our emotions, and our intuition of what is good and beautiful versus what is evil and ugly: who would realistically argue that any human being should be in chains, literal or figurative, at the hands of another person?

Freedom Wins, does a masterful job of appealing to that reason, that logic, and that persuasion of our hearts and emotions. Live as free people, 1 Peter says… and why should we not?

But, as always, we must be careful… we have to be wary of the wolves who come in the clothing of sheep. Is there a darker road that we can so quickly began to travel down when when our desire for what seems good and beautfiul begins to contradict two thousand years of church history and the Bible itself.

If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.

Of course, Freedom Wins does a masterful job at focusing on the seventh year of going free, while completely ignoring the six years of slavery. Clearly there is no intention of making slavery wrong or even of receiving freedom without six years of slavery first.

Over and over throughout the Bible we receive rules on how we are to treat our slaves… yes, we are to treat them well, of course… but it does not change the fact that they are slaves.

Fathers of the Faith: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David, Solomon and on and on, each employed and used slaves and yet, were God’s chosen people.

Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament writers never tell us that every person deserves freedom, in fact, Paul himself tells earthly slaves to obey their masters as though obeying Christ.

And yet, here we are staring at this desire, this intention to call it wrong?

It was this doctrine of slavery that marked the first major departures from theological orthodoxy in the United States. Those with liberal leanings could not and would not accept a doctrine of slavery.

So it was rejected. They offered proposed evasions of the Bible’s teachings, revisions of the doctrine, and the rejection of what the church had affirmed throughout its long history.

We have slaves, some more and some fewer. Athenagoras writes to the early church.

Ignatius said Do not disdain either male or female slaves. Yet, neither let those slaves be puffed up with pride.

And the Apostolic Constitution clearly stated We do not permit slaves to be ordained into the clergy without their master’s consent.

I’m sure the author of Freedom Wins loves people and cares about them. He is a master communicator and uses words well to convince us of this inherent longing for freedom, to cast doubt on the words of the Bible and unravel orthodoxy.

We must be careful.

This post-modern world, this world where good and evil have lost their distinction and contrasts, is slowly giving way to appeals of the heart. Emotion and what “feels” right are given more attention than they should.

Let us be on guard: 1950 years of Church history, thousands of years of Biblical narrative and within the last 50 years, suddenly, someone knows better?

It’s laughable, of course.

Freedom does not win. Slavery does.

(In case it’s not obvious this is satire. Please don’t think I believe this.)

My wife bought me this book for Christmas and the other night I came across this quote about why people gather in a church. I think I like it.

You?

“These [people] have come to renew their vision, to hear and to speak the grand metaphors about how life and the world should be, and to do so with such trust in God that past tenses will be used as though these things were already true. And in this time and place of prayer and praise we will preach.”

Today I sat in a meeting that started with the proposistion that people hate restaurants but love food. At first it sounds like a decent proposition but you start to realize pretty quickly that it’s a very complicated one.

What kind of restaurants do you hate? What kind of food do you love? Maybe you haven’t been to the right kind of restaurant – would you really want to throw all our restaurants just because you did not like the style of food you ate at the one you were at? Are you going to make your own food once you stop going to restaurants or will you starve to death? Maybe your food will actually be better? There are definitely lots of crappy restaurants out there… but there are also some good ones. And even at the ones you think are crappy, there are people who are loyal customers. It’s true some people like restaurants for the ambiance, or the service, or the owners or the little toys you get with the kids meals or the convenience… or even the food.

In the end, do I really care that people hate restaurants or do I care that they hate my restaurant. I can’t really do anything about all the restaurants out there but I can actually affect the one I eat at.

Okay the conversation wasn’t about restaurants but it could have been – just sub restaurant for church and food for Jesus.