Fred Peatross is posting notes from Len Sweet at the NexChurch Conference at Kentucky Christian University, and if you’re having trouble fitting into the “modern” paradigm – or even if you’re not – they are well worth your perusal/evaluation/meditation.

See Notes from NexChurch Conference; Len Sweet.

I have concerns about modernism. I have concerns about post-modernism. Modernism seems to favor the notion that rationality is God; post-modernism seems to prefer the idea that God is passion. Both, of course, are true.

Not just one or the other.

Those of us who grew up tiring of the church radio format of “all-rational; all-the-time” find fresh hope in examining the other side of the coin.

One coin. Two sides.

(Okay, I’ll stop beating you about the head – and heart – with my disdain of “only one way to view things” thinking now.)

Read Doug’s post The Storm Is Passing Over about the calm that seems to be descending on the ICOC fellowship after some clouds were recently growing dark.

If you prayed for this calm along with me, others and our siblings in the International Churches of Christ, thank you.

Don’t mis-read me as implying that there are no differences between churches of Christ and ICOC – there are plenty!

But I seem to remember my childhood hero Mr. Spock concluding in one of those dime-store Star Trek novelizations:

“A difference which makes no difference is no difference ….”

Thank you, God. Make us one in the fellowship of your Son’s table.

… plants a poisonwood tree in the middle of the garden He designed for His children, right close to a tree that would give life forever?

… lets the Adversary persecute and torture a just man like Job?

… permits His very own, innocent Son to be stripped, whipped, beaten, spat upon, mocked, and hung by nails until dead?

I struggle with that. I struggle with all the hurricane and tsunami and terrorism questions: What kind of a God allows all that?

Tony Campolo says that the Hebrew Bible never calls God omnipotent; just “mighty.” Maybe not, but the Greek part of the Bible prays: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine …” That’s pretty powerful. As Han Solo says, “I can imagine a lot.”

I don’t know all the big words that cover the big concepts regarding God.

But I believe He’s a God who is Love. He sees life and death and suffering and temporality very differently than we do. He doesn’t see them as un-real; very much the opposite. (Else why would He spend His time in eternity wiping away tears, as He is pictured doing near the close of the Revelation?)

He sees death as part of His plan for life, and suffering as a reminder that sin and its consequences make giving up our lives in exchange for eternity with Him an attractive prospect.

He planned for choice as the opportunity to un-do everything done wrong since He shared that garden.

He understands that choice has no value if there are no real, oppositional alternatives to choose between.

He’s doing everything within the limitation of our free will – which is His will for us to have, and His idea in the first place – to persuade us to see every”thing” around us as temporary. Grass of the field. A flower that blooms but a day. A vapor that vanishes.

Yet eternally important. Because now is the time we choose. Now we choose the future; not just for ourselves and our children and their children on this little world. We choose forever in the next world.

We choose.

Choice is a great, great good. We take it for granted in our nation, where blood bought political freedom to choose. We take it for granted in our churches, where blood purchased freedom to choose between life with God or death without Him. We think of it too cheaply.

We think too little of what choice costs.

We think too little of the God who bought it for us.

We think we know better; that we can create a God in our own image and box Him in with our philosophical cleverness. We think we can answer the questions He thrusts at Job, in our enlightened scientific brilliance. We think we’ll be able to cheat Death somehow by our own craft.

With apologies to the Broadway musical of the 1970s – we think His arms are too short to box with us.

With apologies to J.B. Phillips – we accuse God of thinking that we are too small.

God forgive us.

Please keep on being so great that You let us ask the questions in our frustration and ignorance, even when we can’t understand all the answers; even if You gave them all to us.

God forgive us.

Please go on being patient with us until we can get over ourselves and into Your heart.

God forgive us.

Please always be the kind of God You are.

I’m troubled by a sudden insight into my own character ….

I’ve long known that there is a point beyond which I will not go on any given temptation or issue of doctrine or question of faith. A point where I say to myself, “All right, I’ll do this … but I won’t do that.” I’m not real happy about where some of them are, but those defining points of wrongness and sin have to be somewhere, don’t they?

What bothers me more is not the floor formed by those points that I stand on, uneven and spiky though it may be.

It’s the fact that I’ve erected a ceiling of points beyond which I will not go in serving, in worshiping, in believing.

And they’re between me and my God.

They’re defined exactly the same way: “Okay, I’ll do this … but I won’t do that. I’ll go this far, but not a step closer. I’ll give this much, but not a moment / dollar / foot-pound of effort more.”

Limits. Ceilings. Points beyond which I will not go.

It’s pointless – pardon the pun – to have them, because if God truly works in me through His Spirit, there can’t be any limits in that direction.

There just can’t be any.

I think there are some folks in many church fellowships who want their brothers and sisters to be clones of God … or perhaps more accurately, clones of themselves. Thinking, believing, acting the way they do.

Like the Nazi-ish stormtroopers of Star Wars or the goofy-looking Oompa-Loompas of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: everyone looking, speaking, behaving the same.

How boring.

God didn’t make us clones. He made us different from each other. He expected us to generate different points of view, interact with each other about them, appreciate the differences. It’s part of what enriches His creation. Peter didn’t preach like Paul. John the Baptist wore itchy camel’s hair.

If He had wanted every detail of His will to be perfectly clear and universally known, couldn’t He have done that? (Even if it took a MUCH bigger book than the Bible?)Or is it more likely that He wants us to meditate on what He has revealed … discuss it; share it; learn from each other – struggle? disagree? love and accept each other anyway?

Rather than marching in lock-step on the “only correct” side of every single issue we can think of?

There are probably a few folks out there – all right; all two or three of you – who wonder why I bothered blogging about or why I would care anything about what happens in the ICOC. After all, the reaction of most people in the fellowship of Churches of Christ to trouble brewing within the International Churches of Christ has usually been a grumpy and very un-Christian “Well, good.”

Well, it’s not good. Christians are Christians, no matter what the sign reads above the door of their meeting place.

And I have a debt of gratitude to one particular group of believers, then known as “Boston movement,” who met on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis many years ago. They expressed first an interest, and then a deep love, for the soul of my younger sister and persuaded her that Christ still loved her in spite of some of her self-destructive tendencies.

Their persistence in what is now known as “discipling” her went far beyond trying to reach goals or quotas, and had an effect that has also persisted. My sister, now a married mother of three, has been a Sunday school teacher and care group leader among many other roles in her walk with Christ since then. Those believers reached out when our parents, as well as my older sister and I, could not have reached her – and I will always be grateful for that.

I don’t have to agree with everything that folks in the ICOC teach and believe. (Hey, they tried to recruit my dad in those days to be an elder at their church … isn’t recruiting elders from other churches a pretty peculiar way to get them?)

They loved my Sis, and nothing can ever change that or its effect on her life.

And, by heaven, even if Jesus Himself were to write them out of His will (ridiculous thought!), I would still love them right back for that.

That’s why I care.

Pray today. Pray for Rachel Pleasant. Pray for little Ira Hays. Pray for Rebekah. Pray for the ICOC. Pray for victims, families, rescue workers, repair crews in the wake of destruction left by Hurricane Katrina.

Never doubt that prayer has power. Your will and my will may not be what God initially had in mind, but He is God, and He can – and has in the past – “bent” His will to accommodate what His children have asked for.

Thank you for your prayers. After a drought of career opportunities this summer, there seems to be a good soaking rain of them all about me. A friend called yesterday out of the blue and said he’d been praying about me. I told him it was having an effect! He sounded a little disappointed, and said “Please don’t accept anything until I’ve had a chance to get back to you within seven to ten days.” What he could only hint at was a possibility that would put my skills to good use for the Lord. I promised him I wouldn’t say “yes” to anyone until we had talked again.

Nothing puts the paltriness of your own career satisfaction into perspective like seeing the devastation of a hurricane, or of cancer in a little girl, or of a rapidly-spreading infection in a young wife, or CDH in a tiny baby, or the potential of devastation in a struggle within a fellowship of believers.

Prayer has power, though.

Be powerful today.

It’s a phrase Jesus uses twice in Scripture, as nearly as I can tell – and it fascinates me.

Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
– Matthew 5:19

He’s talking about the Law and the Prophets (see context, v.17-20), I think. It may be a limited blessing, as some think, that’s in effect only “until everything is accomplished” (v.18). But was everything accomplished when He uttered “It is finished!” on the cross? Or was there still work to be done, through the Holy Spirit, through believers – leaving that comment about being “least in the kingdom” still in effect?

And is He also talking about commands that are implicit in His beatitudes, His commission to be light and salt – and the ones that follow: treating others with respect, seeking reconciliation, resisting lustful urges, marrying for life, speaking with your own integrity, sharing and serving rather than seeking retribution, etc. etc. etc.?

Can someone disobey the least of commands, and teach others to do the same, yet still be a part of the kingdom of heaven – even if he or she is the “least” therein?

Could Peter still serve in the kingdom even though he was a bigot?

Could Paul and Barnabas still serve in the kingdom even though they had a sharp disagreement about John Mark?

Could preachers who preached Christ out of egotism and for profit still serve in the kingdom?

And is being “least in the kingdom” the worst thing that could happen to you?

The other instance when Jesus uses the phrase is in His description of John the Baptist:

I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. – Matthew 11:11 (and Luke 7:28)

Somebody like me who messes up all the time and sometimes inadvertently misleads others can be least in the kingdom yet still be greater than John the Baptist? Can I concatenate those two separate descriptions of “least in the kingdom” to ask that question?

If so, how could that be true? In what way could you or I be greater than a prophet who gave up a normal lifestyle, diet and wardrobe to live off the wilderness? Is it because the message I have is greater, more complete? Not just “The kingdom of God is near!” but “Here it is; and here are the details about how it got started … and how Jesus accomplished it … and how it involves you!”

Is it really possible that the message so far transcends the messenger?