Journeys In Between

Jesus, I'm NOT in Love with You

Wow, I just discovered John Stackhouse, an author whom I admire greatly, has a blog over at http://stackblog.wordpress.com. I think this will soon be on my favourites list.

I was searching for the lyrics of a worship love song that I got a bee in my bonnet about over the weekend when I found his critique of worship love songs and realized he had already done a superb job of it. Here it is:

One of the blights upon the hymnological landscape today is the continued presence of what we can fairly call the "love song to Jesus" genre. It's been around as long as there has been Christian pop music - and even earlier, depending on what you make of sentimental gospel songs in the nineteenth century, eighteenth-century revivalist hymns, and especially a lot of the mystical poetry-cum-lyrics of certain medieval saints.

Today our congregation was asked to sing, "Jesus, I'm in love with you" - a line that shows up, in one permutation or another, in several songs that occur frequently in our worship leaders' rotation.

Well, I didn't sing it. It's wrong, and I try not to sing wrong lyrics.

First, I'm not in love with Jesus. The locution "in love with" is one I reserve for one person only: my wife. I love my sons, I love my siblings and parents, I love my friends, I love my country, I love my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I love God. But I'm not "in love" with any of them. And I daresay most of the rest of us use this phrase in exactly the same, highly-restrictive way.

Second, it gives me the homoerotic creeps to declare that I am "in love with" another man. And I don't apologize for saying so. A gender lens is interesting here, for a lot of men feel as I do (many have told me so), while many (not all) women seem to love telling Jesus that they are in love with him. I saw them, swaying with closed eyes and waving hands in the air this morning, singing exactly that. Maybe, indeed, they are in love with Jesus. But they shouldn't be.

For the third point to make is a theological one. Jesus is not your boyfriend, not your fiance, and not your eventual husband.

By God's grace, Christians get to enjoy a wide range of relationships with Jesus. We are described in the New Testament variously as Jesus' slaves, Jesus' servants, Jesus co-workers, Jesus' friends, and even Jesus' brothers and sisters. Since the plural form of each of these is used, it is correct then for me to say, "I am Jesus' slave, servant, co-worker," etc.

But the New Testament never calls Christians Jesus' fiancees or his brides. Instead, it is the Church collectively, and only the Church as a whole, that relates to Jesus this way - just as individual Israelites did not relate to Yhwh as so many spouses, but only the nation of Israel as nation was his beloved bride.

So I'm not singing to Jesus that I'm in love with him, because I'm not. I love him, and I aspire to loving him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. But I do not aspire to being in love with him, and I'm sure he understands.

I wish our worship leaders and songwriters did, too.

Although for shear impact you just can't go past Southpark's take on this with the "Faith + 1" album. I think every worship leader and song writer should be forced to watch it and wince.

And if that wasn't enough of an inditement, it seems even Matt Redman is beginning to doubt the wisdom of whole worship love song thing.

Ah, now I remember, the song was "Arms of Love". I was sitting there thinking, yuck, if I substituted "Saviour" and "Jesus" for "Baby" and played it on Mix FM who would have known it was supposed to be Christian? I will demonstrate with some simple substitution:

I sing a simple song of love
To my [Baby], to my [Baby].
I'm grateful for the things You've done,
My loving [Baby], my precious [Baby].

My heart is glad that [y]ou've called me [y]our own.
There's no place I'd rather be than

In [y]our arms of love,
In [y]our arms of love.
Holding me still, holding me near,
In [y]our arms of love.

Homoerotic creeps ... and theological shudders. It was ironic that the sermon was about food offered to idols. That's food I definitely can't touch.

Woman jailed for worshipping tea pot

Oh, this is choise! Came across it via Ben Edson.

Thomas Bell reports: "A sharia court in Malaysia jailed a woman for joining a "tea-pot worshipping" cult. Kamariah Ali, a 57 year old former teacher, was arrested in 2005 when the government of the Muslim majority country demolished the two storey high sacred tea pot and other infrastructure of the "heretical" Sky Kingdom cult. For the eccentric sect, which emphasised ecumenical dialogue between religions, the tea pot symbolized the purity of water and "love pouring from heaven".

Tea pot worship! Doesn't get more unusual that this. Even beats sacred cow dung worshippers. Then again, I've seen a few old church ladies in my time who've come close to doing the same thing. Maybe not so strange after all :-) 

But there is a serious side to this. The report continues:

"But in Malaysia, despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of worship, born Muslims such as Mrs Ali are forbidden from converting to other religions."

Seems there is some confusion in Malaysia over what takes precidence with apostates, Sharia Law or Consitutional Law. Implications for accomodating Sharia Law in western countries? I'll let you think about that.

As for me, though I find her believes odd I support her freedom to hold them.

Missional Resources for Christian Engagement with New Religions and Irreligious Spiritualities

Every now and then I get enquiries about "How do you share the gospel using tarot cards?" or "Where can I find papers from Philip Johnson now he isn't blogging anymore?" or "How did we used to engage with people at Mind Body Spirit Festivals" or "What other resources do I have for incarnationally engaging with people interested in New Age, Western Buddhism, and other new religious movements?"

Well if you are one of those people, or are just curious about what the hell I'm talking about, then this is the post for you. I have a buckload of article here.

Now, there is some material I that I am not in a position to pass on because its either unpublished, or published but subject to some copyright restrictions, but what you should be aware of is that there is a gold mine of material freely available on the web from the Lausanne Group on Religious and Non-Religious Spirituality in the Western World (“New Age”), a group which included many friends and collegues of mine and which thoughfully explored many of these questions back some years ago.

The final paper produced was Religious and Non-Religious Spirituality in the Western World (“New Age”) and this should be the first one you look at. But there was a whole lot of background work done before that paper was published which in many cases included more detail. It is these papers I now draw to your attention to.  Being preliminary papers by individuals they should not be considered representative of the group as a whole, as there was considerable diversity within the group and differences over some issues, but I trust they will stimulate your thinking and hopefully encourage you to wrestle with some of the issues raised. They include reflections on Tarot, Astrology, Buddhism, Mormonism and New Age.

Drafts and suggestions to final statement

Suggested statement of IG 16
Annotated Bibliography on Astrology & Christianity
Suggested Bibliography
Suggested preface of a coming position paper or document
Forum Case Studies

Case studies:

Christian Naga Yoga
Exhibition evangelism and the local Church
Reaching Post moderns through "Seeker Course Evangelism"
In the Master's Light booth ministry 
Tarot read with Christian spectacles
Tarot Gospel Presentation
Bridging the Divide Cross-Cultural Mission to Latter-day Saints
Methods and Perspectives in Understanding and Reaching Satanists
Mission to Western Buddhists
Hinjews, JUBUs and New Age Judaism
Mormonism Case Study
The Iglesia ni Cristo
Gospel Choirs

Provided background papers:

New Age, NRMs etc:

An Introductory Training Manual on New Age 
Moving New Religions from the Fringes to Mainstream
Astrology Paper by Johnson, Payne & Wilson 
Encountering New Religious Movements 
Evangelical Countercult Apologists Vs Astrology 
The Aquarian Age and Apologetics

Western Buddhism:

Initial reflections on Buddhism in the West as an NRM 
Love, Compassion and a Warm Heart 
Mission to Western Buddhists - some practical case study reflections 

Youth Spirituality:

Youth Spirituality in Rave Dance Cultures

General missiology and apologetics:

A Fresh Apolgetic Agenda for the 21st Century
Alternate Spiritualities as the unpaid bills
Mapping areas of affinities, mutual concerns and spiritual conflict
Revised Spiritual Reality of Our World Section
Statement from Salvation Army
The Disenchantment and Re-enchantment of the West
The Spiritual Reality of our Western World
Toward Contextualized Apologetic Through Astrology 

Earth Hour Reflections

In case anyone was wondering, no I wasn't blogging during Earth Hour last night. That last post was pre-written and pre-programmed to launch while I was otherwise occupied.

What I was actually doing was having a relaxing chat with my wife and elder son by candlelight in our dining area after our younger son went to bed. Very civilized.

My son was old enough to actually appreciate a bit of what was going on this year and I took the opportunity to join some of the dots for him between our actions and our sacred stories. As a four year old, the story of Noah is one he already knows fairly well and we explained, "Just as Noah took care of the animals when they were in danger, we're doing this to take care of the animals too." He got the point, we should care for all life. God gave us this beautiful world God to live in - we should respect his gifts.

Hillsong grabbing attention

The other day I was running some searches on Google Trends and thought it was worth noting that, while there has been a downward trend in search volumes for many religion related subjects, there have been a few notable exceptions. One of those exceptions was Hillsong. Make of that what you will but it seems Hillsong are grabbing more and more global attention with each passing year.

Jesus Conspiracy - Part II

The 2008 Jesus conspiracy has finally emerged!

You may recall me expressing disappointment last week (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) that the usual Easter cash in was conspicuously absent this year. Well, you need wait no longer. A reader just alerted me to this new movie, Bloodline.

You can view the trailer at www.bloodline-themovie.com.

Priory of Sion, Opus Dei, Templars, Freemasons, nasty Vatican men hiding secrets, Jesus and Mary getting down and dirty, Holy Blood Holy Grail,...it looks like we may have a full house. Although Egyptian mystery religions, Gnostics and Cathars were not mentioned in the teaser I'm quite confident they will show up.

Now, I'll award a bonus prize if there is an Egyptian stargate to the constellation of Orion that will open in 2012, ushering in the eschaton.

Postscript: Wait, Egyptian mystery religion has turned up.

From the official Bloodline blog:

"Can you imagine the extraordinary energy that Mary Magdalene embodied, as a master of the mysteries of Isis, and the companion of Jesus? Is it any wonder the Holy Roman Catholic Church suppressed her true identity?"

LOL

Interview with the Vampire Writer - Anne Rice

Jamie Arpin-Ricci  interviews Anne Rice on faith, writing and Christian art. Awesome interview.

Incarnational Ministry – What’s It All About?

I have been thinking about how to explain incarnational ministry more simply and more succinctly to people who have never come across the term before and thought I’d float some preliminary thoughts here for comment. In essence I see the incarnation of Christ as having a number of implications for Christians:

Like Jesus we are to humble our selves, becoming nothing

In Philippians 2:5-11 the apostle Paul advises that Christians should have the same attitude as Christ and, just as Jesus humbled himself in becoming human, we too should to make ourselves nothing. Some theologians refer to this process as self emptying (Greek: kenosis). I am thinking the related concept that true worship is to offer our lives as a living sacrifice, as Paul speaks of in Romans 12:1, also speaks into this. And one of the implications here is a sharp critique of high and mighty forms of Christianity.

Like Jesus we are to engage our world, becoming all things to all people

In 1 Corinthians 9:22 the apostle Paul speaks of challenging people within their own cultural reference frames, meeting them where they are at. The woman at the well story is a good illustration of how Jesus went about it. Again, one of the implications here is a sharp critique of all attractional “you come to us” and “if we build it they will come” forms of Christianity and any notion that spiritual conversion should be accompanied by some form of Christian subcultural conversion.  No room for disengaged puritanism here.

Like Jesus we are to embody the Word, mediating between the seen and unseen

Now I understand this is potentially the most controversial bit so let me explain before reacting. One of the things we need to hold in tension as Christians is the universality and uniqueness of Christ, that is, his full humanity in which sense he was one of us as well as his full divinity in which sense he is truly in a class of his own. I am not minimizing how crucial God’s grace is, I am simply highlighting that we become like that which we worship and true worship leads to divine imitation (Greek: mimetes). Whether we worship God or a God substitute this has concrete lifestyle implications. We are called to be true to our original nature, as images (Greek: eikon) of God. Some verses to pay attention to here are John 1:14, John 20:21 and Ephesians 5:1-2. Again, one of the implications here is a rejection of lifestyle dualism and an embrace of holism and the lordship of Christ over everything in our lives. Another implication is the embrace of beauty as well as truth and goodness.

Faith and Theology

I thought I'd quote myself from elsewhere:

We are not saved by theology
We are saved by Theos.

Note: Theos (Θεός) is the Greek word for "God" used in the New Testament. Logos (λόγος) is the Greek word for "rational discourse", "knowledge" and "study" amongst other things, and in English is the root word for "logic". So "theology" is essentially the study of God and religious truth.

Emerging Downunder by Ray Simpson and Brent Lyons Lee

Mike Lowe has alerted me to a book launch coming up next week that may interest a few of you, particularly if you're in Melbourne.

The book is called 'Emerging Downunder'

The blurb goes: "Emerging Downunder: Creating Celtic New Monastic Villages of God taps into the current hunger for spirituality, the death pains of obsolete church forms, and the rising tide of hope felt by many Christians. It suggests ways the fragmented church may reconnect both with its roots and the contemporary environment, providing practical examples of church that bring praying, eating, learning and hospitality together in one place."

"This book was first published as Church of the Isles by Ray Simpson for a British audience. In collaboration with Brent Lyons Lee, it has tapped in to worldwide conversations about ‘emerging church’ and ‘new monasticism’ and applied it to a ‘downunder’ context."

Tim Costello will be launching the book in Melbourne at 6:30pm on Thursday April 3 at Credo Café, (The end of Baptist Place Laneway off Little Collins St between Swanston & Russell St.)

If any of you can make the launch I would be interested in hearing your take on it.