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Last night Sara and I went to see Hotel Rwanda and were absolutely stunned by the power of the performances and the tragedy of the story it unfolds. As a million people were being killed in a tribal genocide the West stood by impotently ignoring the death and devastation. We didn’t care enough about the value of African lives to intervene and stop the carnage. This is the story of one man who put his life on the line when he did not have to and saved the lives of nearly 1300 people who would otherwise would have been raped and slaughtered.

I saw that movie this week in the climate of a number of Christian commentators condemning another Oscar-nominated movie, Million Dollar Baby for a plot twist they say sanctions an act that they are hotly debating in our culture. I won’t give the movie away, but just because a movie depicts a horrible act, does not necessarily validate that act. I found this movie to be a masterpiece, with characters you come to care deeply about and the plot twist only underlies the tragedy of a life uncentered in the reality of a Living God. This is a gut-wrenching movie that captures the desperation of the human drama without a deeper reason for living than one’s own personal happiness.

What bothers me is that so-called Christian commentators take up more air time blasting Million Dollar Baby instead of championing the redemptive theme and courage of the hotel manager in Hotel Rwanad. Perhaps that is because they don’t understand it. Both are compelling stories with some incredible lessons. They certainly are not escapist entertainment, but thought-provoking films that will trouble your emotions. I came away from both of them more resolved to live my life deeper in Jesus and let him make it available to folks got in the despair of their own loneliness or the violence of someone else’s anger.

So why do commentators have to make a target of one of them and ignore the other? Follow the money. They know that more people will attend Million Dollar Baby for all their complaining, the same way some Jewish groups did last year for The Passion of the Christ. But they also know that the media will crave their ranting and it will bring them increased personal exposure and more money in their fund-raising efforts. It’s a despicable game being played for the destruction of our cultural fabric.

It is often said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” But what good men do is to risk their lives in the face of evil as the lead in Hotel Rwanda not to use controversy to build their own following on Fox News and line their own pockets from an angry constituency. The challenge for us all is how we stand up to the evil that surrounds us each day—that which foments the anger in our culture instead of healing it, and that which dehumanizes others by its own self-indulgence.

I want to live squarely in the fullness of Jesus’ life today, doing whatever he asks of me to be a redemptive influence in my culture. If you need encouragement to do that, go and see Hotel Rwanda. It will humble you while it makes your spirit soar!

Every notice how angry Christians are? I honestly think it is the direct result of the system of religious obligation that has co-opted so much of the life of Christ for believers. I remember how angry it made me—angry at God for not doing what I thought he should do, angry at other believers for not working as hard as I was and angry at the world for their sin which seemed to make them so happy. Even now in my work with BridgeBuilders it is almost invariably true that the angriest people in the room are those representing the Christian agenda. We’re right, by God, and we’re going to make you see it our way.

Even those who spill out of that system seem to carry their anger for while, especially when somebody challenges their lack of Sunday morning attendance, or some other nonsense. I was reminded of that with some of the responses I saw to Just What Is the Church? Blog that I wrote about a recent Christianity Today article telling us we all need to get back inside the institution, even if it is painful and doesn’t work. Sure he’s got a crazy perspective, but he doesn’t merit our anger or frustration.

I remember almost a decade ago visiting my parents at a time when close friends were spreading lies about me. I was so angry I had to get away and spend some time in the mountains praying. I dropped my stuff off at their house and was headed out for a long walk when my Dad stopped me. “Let me read you something I read this morning, that might be helpful to you.” He read from Luke 7 in The Message:

There is no way we can choose to live like this in our own efforts, so don’t make this a new set of rules to follow. They will kill you. But we can choose to let Father work his love in us so that we find ourselves increasingly living in this freedom. Ask him! He’s really good at this!

If you have not ever heard Ray Stevens’ song The Mississippi Squirrel you really owe yourself the treat! I first laughed at this back in the 70’s when it was a hit, but have played it often at workshops I do, for the humor and the truth it contains. Someone sent me this link today. With apologies to Pascagoula, Mississippi. It shows just how easy it is to start a revival if enough guilt and a squirrel are in the same room.

An Open Letter to Tim Stafford

In the current issue of Christianity Today, author Tim Stafford in an article entitled The Church—Why Bother, states, “There is no healthy relationship with Jesus without a relationship to the church.” Here is my response to that article.

Sara and I are continuing through Blue Like Jazz and enjoying lots of wonderful observations. In one chapter he finds himself teaching a college group at a local congregation. He substituted one Sunday, only to turn out to become the college pastor the next few weeks because they liked his teaching so much. He describes a process too often repeated in people who have a heart for ministry in honest terms one rarely hears:

And he wasn’t kidding. After a year or more he discovers that his teaching has replaced his own relationship with God. In a quote worth the price of the whole book, he writes:

When he realizes how empty his life became while teaching a class that everyone loves, he goes to the pastor to resign saying he’s leaving for awhile. The pastor tries to talk him out of it, but Don knows something isn’t right and he needs to sort it out. He tries to explain to his befuddled leader why he is going away.

That’s what religion does to you. In pretending to be what we’re not we lose sight of who we are. How can recognize the presence of the Living God beckoning us to his life if we are so busy pretending to be what we think we should be instead of letting God have us just as we are. God doesn’t live in our fantasies. He lives in reality. Part of learning to see him clearly is emptying ourselves of all that we use to hide behind. It may be a painful process, but it will allow us to once again connect with the Father who loves us so much and who is the only one who can put our lives back together.

No, I did not wash away in the torrential California rains. (The picture at left is a rainbow I found dancing along the Marin County hillside.) The blog has been quiet, because I’ve been way too busy! I’ve been on a circuitous trip of California. I left last Friday, drove an hour to I-5 just as they closed it because of snow. I had to drive back the hour I’d come and take 101 north through Santa Barbara to meet some old friends for lunch in Fresno. Later that afternoon I drove up to Elk Grove to have dinner and fellowship with two couples and a single brother who spilled out of the system a while back. We had a chance to talk together about de-toxing from religion and the joy of embracing relationship with the King and with his people without the complicating factors of guilt and institutionalism.

I spent the next two days with believers north of Sacramento who have been on an interesting journey with Jesus that has resulted in deconstructing their congregational structure. Over the last five years they have transitioned from being a traditional congregation to learning to live as God’s people in relational community. It has not been easy, nor did they see from the beginning where they would end up. In October they ended their Sunday morning gathering, in December their paid staff relinquished their salaries and in January they are selling their building. I’ve been with them a number of times through this process. On Saturday I facilitated some dialogue on “Thriving Outside the Box.” Needless to say there were lots of questions about rethinking the church and relational life without the safety of the box. One theme kept repeating itself over and over with those who had gone through this process: It had not been easy and though they missed some of the props that used to hold up their life together, they had so grown

On Monday I drove down to Fairfield to meet the District Superintendent there who was the person most influential in helping me start BridgeBuilders. From there I met with a delightful man in Marin County who has one of the most incredible salvation stories I’ve ever heard and is helping believers in that area have a positive impact on their public schools. He invited me to come back later and help with a similar effort in Oakland involving a couple of Oakland Raider football players who are deeply devoted to Christ. (Yes, I was shocked to hear that too!) It will be interesting to see how that develops. I ended the day in a home on the San Francisco Bay in Tiburon overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, Oakland and Richmond. I stayed with Chris and Cathy, two people I’d met in Alaska a few years ago and we talked the night away with breathtaking views of the Bay.

The next day the three of us when to Mac Expo in San Francisco! Many of you know I am a Mac freak and spending the day looking at new products and getting questions answered about programs I have trouble with was incredibly helpful even if it did peg my covet meter. I didn’t spend too much though, but learned a lot. I even had lunch next to a man who called himself an orthodox atheist. Needless to say we had a great conversation. From there I drove down to Gilroy to stay with some dear friends from my Visalia days.

On Wednesday, I drove down to King City to have lunch with a school principal there with whom I attended high school and who had been a pastor for a number of years near where I had made that same mistake. We had a lot to catch up on and I got a copy of an essay he wrote years ago entitled “Moldy Buns in the Pews.” I’m going to use it some day because it is brilliant, humorous and makes a profound point, but am not sure how yet. After lunch I drove back home which was no easy task. Southern California roads are a mess with the mudslides and washouts. Ten people were killed about 20 miles north of us where a mudslide swept through their neighborhood. It too me almost four hours longer to get home since I could not use Hwy 101 and had to go back into the Central Valley and use I-5. But only one lane was open on the southbound side due to a mudslide, so at one point I spent almost two hours traveling only five miles.

But I did get back home. Yesterday I had stitches removed from the surgery I had two weeks ago to remove basal cell carcinoma from the back of my head, tried to catch up on over 200 backlogged emails (so please be patient those of you waiting responses) and prepared for a meeting today to possibly revive our radio show idea from a year ago, but this time with an interesting twist. I hope to share more on that in that with you in the next few days.

What a crazy week, but one filled with so many incredible conversations and moments sharing the life of Jesus with people across the broadest spectrum—from orthodox atheist to radical out of-the box believers..

The pictures in this week’s Time magazine of the aftermath of the tsunami disasters in the Indian Ocean are almost incomprehensible. Over 150, 000 people are believed to have died in tsunami’s rage itself, with the prospect of more deaths to come as unsanitary conditions and disease wreck further havoc on the survivors. I heard one man tell of running from the rising tide with a five-week old daughter under his arm, and couldn’t help but think of my own granddaughter at that age. So many people have died, so many families torn asunder.

The depth of human sorrow and suffering are beyond our imagining. Many have taken to calling it a crisis of Biblical proportions, and it is! Some news reports have said that one-third of the population vanished in the waves in some areas of Sumatra. That same one-third figure is used throughout Revelation 8 as the seven trumpets are blown and disasters follow. I don’t think this is that fulfillment, but it is interesting to note all the same. With a world now ravaged by religious war, and natural disasters, who can say what the days ahead might bring to our generation?

In considering such things, however, I am always a bit troubled by those who call these things God’s judgment, as if he is the destructive influence in creation. There are two things I know. One, God is the redemptive influence in Creation not the destructive one and, two, judgment in Scripture is never something his people dread. The chaos of creation is the fruit of our own sin—a world out of synch with its Creator. Judgment in its truest sense is not God wiping out people in senseless violence but God setting things right. In the Psalms it is why the trees are clapping and the hills are dancing. “God is coming to judge,” is not the cry of terror, but the song of his people. Let the kingdom come! Let the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ! Those are not days to fear, but to celebrate.

So how do we look at these days? Let us not find relief in blaming those affected by the disaster as some how deserving of it. I heard one fundamentalist Muslim cleric note that these happened during the Christmas holidays as Allah’s wrath against Christianity and the moral depravity of western cultures and against Muslims that have not done enough to rid the world of this influence. No, he doesn’t speak for all Muslims, and yes he looked as ridiculous as Jerry Falwell did after September 11, decrying that day of devastation as God’s judgment on America because of homosexuality and abortion that has been legalized in America. Our Father just isn’t like that. Jesus warned us (Luke 13:4) that we shouldn’t think the victims of tragedy any more guilty than those who escape it.

What do we do in tragedy? We weep with those who weep! I cannot imagine how God contains in his great love all the terror of that fateful day and all the sorrow that follows it. I don’t know how he holds in himself the desperate cries of need that rise out of the aftermath today. But he does. Our prayers can join with him as he reaches to people devastated by this disaster. We can also put feet to our prayers by doing whatever we can to help further God’s redemptive purpose in sending money or resources to provide help to those in need—feeding the hungry, providing housing, caring for orphaned children. By doing it for them, we do it for him.

And somehow our hearts can hunger a bit more for the day when this whole world reflects the glory of its Creator rather than the chaos of our sin. We can feel a bit less at home here and the frustration of creation that has been subjected to the futility of sin. And we can let Jesus have a bit more of our hearts today so that we can be even more the sons and daughters of God revealed in the world so that others might know who he is.

My recent blog on Just How Deep Is This Rabbit Hole, inspired a friend of mine to put the finishing touches on a poem she has been working for about five years. I enjoyed it at the same time I related the struggle and the new found freedom that lies at its end. Many of you will recognize her references to various terms we use around Lifestream. I reprint it here with her permission

You can see our Year In Review Photo Album at Ofoto.com for those that want to see some of the places and people we got to hang out with over the past year. We couldn’t include every one or every body, but this will give you a taste of an incredible year…

Also please keep in your prayers the victims of the horrendous tsunami in Asia. And if you can afford to give generously to help in the rebuilding of those stricken countries, please consider doing so. There are many fine organizations that can be a conduit for God’s generosity through you.

And may your New Year be filled with God’s presence as he works in you!

In my last Blog I wrote about the amazing miracle of God making the Word flesh among us—first in Jesus himself, now in us. As I’ve thought about that more, the last phrase from the last verse of O Come All Ye Faithful, has really captured my heart—“Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.”

I live near LA, where our entertainment section is filled with which stars are appearing in which venues here or in Vegas, such as “Celine Dion Now Appearing at Ceasar’s Palace.” It has made me think of the lives I’ve known this year in whom Jesus is now appearing. And I mean that not just because they confess him as Lord and Savior, but because God has changed them in significant ways and liberated them to know him better, even through the most unspeakable tragedies. So that today I can see the Word of the Father in Tim, Nancy, John and hundreds of others whom Jesus is making more like himself. None of these would even claim to be replication of Jesus, but I see him now appearing in them in cities all over the world.

Religion doesn’t transform people. It weighs them down with obligation and busies them with countless activities. While it may compel us to make external cosmetic changes to appease God, it doesn’t change them at the deepest core of their being. Only God does that and I think he does it best as we simply live each day with our eye focused on him and responding to his grace as situations unfold around us.

Nothing illustrates that better than one of my favorite Mike Yaconelli stories, this one from his book Messy Spirituality. He tells the story of Daryl, a reluctant youth group volunteer who got roped into visiting the local nursing home with the youth group. Daryl didn’t want to participate in the service so he stood against the back wall between two residents in wheelchairs. Just as the service ended Daryl was thinking about a quick exit, someone grabbed his hand.

I can’t imagine any greater joy than to be mistaken for Jesus in the way we love and care for others. As this New Year begins, I pray that Jesus will be more visibly seen in me this year and that somewhere often in the year ahead you might be mistaken for Jesus. Word of the Father, now in YOU appearing!