Month: August 2013

Following – 2

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

First, you do what’s right.

Then, you speak of the One who makes things right.

Jesus began his life of public ministry by listening to his prophetic cousin John encourage people to repent and submitting Himself to the waters of baptism.

See Matthew 3, Luke 3, and Mark 1.

Why?

It’s not like He needed to repent, because He did not sin (Hebrews 4:15).

I think John the Baptizer gives us one reason: to reveal Jesus to others (John 1:31) — and Jesus gives us another that is equally inarguable: it was the right thing to do (Matthew 3:15).

So among all the other extraordinary qualities communicated in baptism, here are these two reasons as foundational examples. We need to begin our lives of public ministry by revealing Jesus to others, and to do the right things because they’re the right things to do.

I’m not going to get in to a discussion of faith and works. I’m convinced that Paul and James have no argument with each other. We do what we do because we believe. We communicate Whom we believe in by what we do and say.

And you can’t separate doing and saying as powerful tools in communicating the gospel. If what you do doesn’t match what you say — or vice-versa — you have no credibility as a follower of Christ trying to live and speak His life to others.

Don’t forget that not only did John identify Jesus as his Lord; the voice of God Himself and the presence of the dove testify to Who the Christ is, and Whose Son He is, and Whom He pleases by doing the right thing, and Whose Spirit rests upon Him.

If there is a better way to begin a life of ministry to God and to others — bringing them together or even just closer together — then Jesus doesn’t communicate it to us by His words or His example.

Following Him means going with Him into the water, into death to self, into a resurrection to a new life.

Following Him means being immersed in His life.

Following – 1

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I’ve come to a conclusion today. I think I’ve been building toward it for years.

We’ve done ourselves and others and our Lord a disservice by trying to categorize the Christian life.

We’ve split it into categories like good behavior, faith, spiritual discipline, discipleship, evangelism, benevolence, worship, fellowship, and on and on and on.

Convinced that we must master one area, perhaps, before we move on to the next.

Listening in Bible class a couple of weeks ago to what the apostle had to say in 2 Peter 1, I realized that wasn’t what he or his Lord had in mind at all:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ~ 2 Peter 1:5-7

You don’t master one before you move on to the next. You keep adding them to each other in an ongoing, lifelong process. How do I know that?

None of us is going to master any of them. I mean, we’ve all read Romans 1, haven’t we?

But we can all grow in each of them:

For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ~ 2 Peter 1:8

So we don’t grow into them for ourselves alone, nor even to glorify God alone — but to become effective and productive.

The Christian life is a life that follows Christ, in every way. Being a disciple means following Him in every way He lived His life. He is our perfect example of a life that IS ministry; He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant and became obedient even to death on a cross, serving as our example of self-sacrifice even to that extreme..

His life was one life; not a series of mastering categories and moving on, but of meeting people who sin — where they are in their sin — and helping them master it. He pointed, not to Himself, but to the Father.

So I’ve tagged this first post in a series of indefinite length with several tags that are new to this blog: “evangelism,” “ministry,” and “following Christ.” They’re new because I’ve never really written much about them before. I’ve never really written much about them before because I don’t really know very much about them.

I’m 58 years old. I may not have that many more years and opportunities to learn. Now is the best time there is.

I’m planning to learn as much as I can from studying Jesus’ life and example from the gospels, prophecy, epistles and any other sources where I can find His journey.

You’re welcome to join me on this journey. I would love to have the company, and the chance to benefit from the wisdom of others who have traveled it before (or have never been on this road) and have come (or are coming) to the same conclusion (or even a different one).

Even if it didn’t take you 58 years to get where you are.

Why War Is So Popular These Days

/ W. Keith Brenton / 12 Comments

Oh, did I shock you?

I’m so sorry to have treaded on your delicate sensitivities.

JesusBearsHisMachineGunBut war is popular these days, and I’m going to tell you why I think it is.

We glorify it. We worship it. Because it’s exactly what we think we want.

Since long before 9/11, we’ve made and gobbled up the movies and television shows and books and video games where might makes right and good guys blow bad guys away and heroes are people who have at least one gun in each hand and a missile launcher in their backpack and a couple of ammo belts crossed over their chests.

What a bunch of crap.

But we buy it and we love to buy it because we believe the world is full of evil and it has nicked us once or twice and we want our revenge and we want to believe that the best way to deal with it is to blow it away.

What incredible bullpuckey.

That’s the easy way to deal with evil. You don’t like something; it’s evil: blow it away. You were right and righteous to do so. Good must always triumph over evil, and you must be the agent of good, so if you blew something away, you must be good to do so and it must be evil.

What a heap of fewmets.

When you gulp them down like they were steak, you don’t have a clue or care to guess how many dollars you are pouring into the coffers of the very, very rich people who fund that propaganda in order to make themselves very, very much richer at the cost of sanity, limbs and lives.

When you buy into that philosophy — when you spend those bucks to see that movie or buy that video game or purchase that gun or gullibly swallow everything that website has to say about your God-given American right to own and use a gun at your discretion so you can blow away the bad guys — you’ve bought shit.

The problem is not that I’m willing to call your closely-held sacred beliefs a bunch of excrement; the problem is, there’s hardly anyone left who’s willing to say so and give you the reasons why. American Christianity is almost totally sold out to might-makes-right religion and God-is-on-our-side theology.

And the secular voices that have been willing to try to stem the tide have been almost totally flooded over as well.

There are no popular movies like Bridge on the River Kwai or television series like M*A*S*H or the original Star Trek around to show episodes that show and tell or even just imply how absolutely devastating, barbaric, and unconscionable the acts of war can be. No documentaries are ever made anymore that hint at criticism of anything that our government and armed forces might be doing that’s questionable.

In fact, journalists and photographers are literally not allowed to even show us what it’s like to prosecute a war or to exterminate entire towns and villages of men, women and children or even photograph the flag-draped caskets of the young men and women we sent to wage those battles as our proxies. No, that might jeopardize the ongoing operation — even if the coverage is years old when it is shown.

Plus, I don’t know of any current high school teachers or even fully-tenured college professors who would, career-wise at the very least, long survive teaching works like Johnny Got His Gun or Mark Twain’s The War Prayer.

There’s no thrill to the seemingly endless talks of a peace table, so you won’t find any video games that feature them. Instead, they feature the virtual unreality of getting to blow away someone that you want to hate — even when you don’t have a clue or care who they might be, or might be working for or toward, or protecting. They just have a uniform of a different color. Or skin of a different color. Or a religion of a different color. So they’re the bad guys, and even though you’re in their territory close to their homes and their families, you go there and blow them away. Glorious. Rah-rah for our side. And if you miss and get blown away yourself, hey — you get a re-do!

I don’t have to tell you that the people we send to do our battles for us do not get a re-do. Just because you don’t see their caskets doesn’t mean some don’t come back in them. Or that others don’t come back severely scarred — physically, mentally, emotionally, socially — because of what they’ve seen and sometimes what they’ve had to do.

And practically no one is willing to say a word against it.

No, we’ll just let our returning patriots burn out and fail at life and go quietly mad and continue to cut funding for their care and rehabilitation.

Utter, unChristian, inhuman insanity.

Well, dammitall, I will say a word against it from time to time. War is hell. It maims people. It poisons people. It drives people insane. It kills people. It kills our people. It kills their people. It kills Gods’ people.

“Thou shalt not kill.”

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

“Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”

So you are free to disagree with me and my interpretations of the above scriptures (plus many, many, many more) and embrace your closely-held sacred beliefs that this is exactly the way Jesus would handle things in defense of God’s chosen people, Americans — with a machine-gun in each hand and missile launcher on his back and two ammo belts across his chest.

You can defend every one of those beliefs with whatever twist of scripture you wish to quote from your favorite pulpit or website, in absolutely clear conscience because that’s what you’ve heard and read and — by God, literally — that’s what you want to believe and Jesus died so you could believe it. In fact, you are free to take your sacredly-acquired gun and ammo and just shoot me dead for disagreeing with you because you are right and therefore have the right to exterminate me. I’m your bad guy. Shoot away. I won’t stop you. I don’t have a gun.

But I will tell you, while I still live and breathe, that the way things are in the world right now was never what God intended or wanted for us.

Folks, if you think you can make it better by supporting the culture of blow-it-away, you’re not just fooling yourself but you’re bequeathing future generations a heritage of bloodshed and death and madness and conscience-less violence.

That future is a sewer.

If you’re not standing against it for the sake of your kids and their kids, you are just going with the flow and adding to it.

What a thrill for you.

Why is war so popular these days?

Because it’s what we think we want.

And we are dead wrong.

A Farewell, and Thanks

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

Dear Friends,

1It gives me no pleasure to write this, but I am no longer going to be publishing the e-zine New Wineskins. As both a print magazine and later an online e-zine, New Wineskins has had a colorful history over the last 20+ years, but I can no longer continue to publish it.

I simply don’t have any of the essential ingredients that it takes: time, money, and heart.

I’m working fulltime now in a university office where two recent departures have left the rest of us shouldering more responsibilities, and I’m raising a teenage daughter on my own — as well as preaching once or twice a month at my small and loving church home — and that is taking all the time and energy I can spare.

The money wasn’t a problem until my family’s income shrank by 80%. And while hosting has always been generously provided free, the e-mail connections are not. Fact is, I just can’t afford them anymore.

But the main ingredient was heart, and I have lost mine. Angi was my partner in this ministry for the past ten years, starting with a simple jointly-written article and progressing to helping editor Greg Taylor move the publication from print to online, and eventually publishing it on our own. With her death on May 8, half my life and heart went with her, and it was simply too much to continue doing this.

100For a while, I could continue the conversation to the best of my ability as a loving brother in Christ … even with angry people, hateful people, bitter people, condemning people, people who could only see the communion cup filled with the blood of vengeance and exclusion for those who did not share their every view — rather than with the grace of Christ.

I don’t have the heart for those arguments anymore. And I was tempted to lose my own measure of His grace beyond what I cared to resist. I am much more interested in exploring new and better ways of sharing the Story, the gospel of Jesus Christ, with those who have not heard it, or who seek to more fully grasp it.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate every person who has ever contributed time, thought, prayer, money, advertising revenue, articles, encouragement, participation on the ZOE board of directors and music ministry which oversaw this ministry for a good long while, offers to assist, technical assistance and free hosting from Alliance Software (which I pray they will continue to provide as the site moves to an archive, at least for a while), leadership and spiritual direction, founding zeal, enthusiasm for resuscitation when energies and resources were running low — all of the vitality that made the New Wineskins conversation worthwhile.

I do, and with a depth of gratitude that mere words can’t express.

I would list the names, from founding Wineskins editors Rubel Shelly and Mike Cope through Greg Taylor and Eric Noah-Wilson to the last person to send me an article proposal just a couple of days ago — but there would be too many. You know who you are, and you know what a difference you have made in opening hearts to the greater grace of our Lord.

If New Wineskins has been as much of a blessing in your life as it has been in mine (and I sincerely doubt that is even possible), then that is all of the gratification that I’ll ever need from having served as her WebServant for all these years.

Thank you for your grace, patience and understanding as I close out that service.

And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the transcendent peace of His Holy Spirit and the love of our God and Father be with you always.

Keith Brenton, WebServant

New Wineskins e-zine
on Facebook

Movies I Can’t Watch Right Now

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Most of ’em. Most of ’em that I own, it seems like.

Certainly not our favorite, Angi’s and mine: Sense and Sensibility. Not because of any great dramatic loss in its story that triggers the pain. No reason other than the fact that it was our favorite.

Not Goodbye, Mr. Chips. We both kind of liked Brit-lit movies.  I never got to share this one with her. It was still in the wrapper when I made the mistake of trying to watch it weeks after I lost her, and completely came apart when Arthur Chipping (Peter O’Toole) said to his bride of twenty-some years, “Will we always be in love this way?” Because I suddenly remembered, from seeing the movie when I was fourteen years old, the scene that came next: the buzz-bomb’s motor cutting out, the shriek of air as it fell, the sound of her voice singing from the USO tent below.

sleeplessI can’t watch Sleepless in Seattle. Can’t handle Tom Hanks as Sam Baldwin telling the D.J.: “Well, I’m gonna get out of bed every morning… breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out… and, then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.”

I’m not ready to be there, Sam. Not now. If ever.

Won’t be watching What Dreams May Come, even if there’s a reunion in the afterlife painted by widower Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) by his deeply grieving wife Annie (Annabella Sciorra).

No viewings of Love Actually. Don’t want to break down with Liam Neeson’s character Daniel when he remembers his departed Joanna.

Shadowlands is off my viewing list. Not going to put myself through Jack’s (Anthony Hopkins) loss of Joy (Debra Winger), or the unanswerable question her daughter puts to the renowned theologian.

Can’t watch the first five minutes of Up. Not a chance.

Not even the first five minutes of 2009’s Star Trek. No way.

These and a quite a few more are off-limits right now. They may be for quite a while.

It’s hard to imagine a Christmas without Love Actually. But then it’s really hard to imagine a Christmas without Angi.

Seems so easy to tell someone who’s lost half their life to buck up, cheer up, stiff upper lip … when you haven’t experienced a loss that deep yourself; or even haven’t for a long time. It’s easy even when you have. But it’s inconsiderate at the very least.

We all grieve in our own way.

We all mourn at our own pace.

And I think we all deal with it any way we can.

Maybe there will come a time when I can try out one of those banned movies again. Right now, though, just thinking and writing about them is costing me half-a-box of tissues. Still, I write to deal with it, as much as I can deal with it. Maybe I will deal with it better, someday.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just have to be entertained with brainless comedies and storyless sci-fi and pointless adventures.

Yet even when I do get to the point where I can watch you again, Sam Baldwin, I will still be grateful to be able to think about how I had it great and perfect … for a while.