105 Sermon Illustrations on Spirituality

For many, if not most, believers, faith isn’t something that is limited to Easter or even only on Sundays — it shapes the way they live. That’s because we believe that God is at work in our lives.

But according to some neuroscientists, what people call “God” is little more that brain chemistry.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, anthropologist Lionel Tiger described what he called “relatively friendly challenges” to religious experience from scientific research. Specifically, he wrote about research “on the links between the brain and religious experience.”

This research proceeds from the presupposition that only a “tiny number of believers” believe because “they find a particular theology convincing.” For the rest, he says, “faith emerges from the group with which they are affiliating and in which they are likely to have been born and raised.”

It’s the belief that faith is a product of social connections that makes the alleged connection between neuroscience and religion possible. According to Tiger, previously unexpected “links between social behavior and brain chemistry are now almost routinely identified.”

To oversimplify that, what he is saying is that our brains are hardwired to make us feel better if we are connected to others. Belonging to a group triggers neurotransmitters such as serotonin, which makes us feel calm and contented.

Similarly, Tiger says, contemplating ideas “well outside the realm of daily experience,” especially in the company of others, can soothe our brains. From this and other findings, Tiger concludes that there is a “stunning possibility...that religion will find its sturdiest roots in the natural, not the supernatural.”

To put it mildly, I’m not convinced. For starters, Tiger is wrong about why people believe, at least in the case of Christianity, which is a religion of conversion. A majority of Christians live in places where Christianity is a recent arrival. They weren’t raised as Christians. And in many parts of the world, converts to Christianity are ostracized by their families and communities or even persecuted. That’s not the kind of thing that kicks into high gear those pleasant feelings.

And while we are undoubtedly “hardwired for connection,” as one study has already put it, such a connection does not explain why people contemplate things outside “the realm of daily experience.” If the goal is for people to come together, why not skip the metaphysics and just reward sociability with lots of chemically induced good feelings?

Of course, all of this begs the question of our being “hardwired by whom?” Why is there a “strange but durable connection between surviving in this world and contemplating another?” Tiger and others really haven’t a clue — they’re only sure because it’s their presupposition that it doesn’t have anything to do with God.

Put that way, it sounds foolish, and the late Cornelius Van Til would say “rightly so.” He argued that once you rejected the presupposition that “God is,” your attempts to make sense of the world would devolve into absurdity.

Such as reducing faith to brain chemistry and coffee hours in church.

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Copyright (c) 2010 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #11772]

If a consortium of thinkers were to discuss what defines the Western world’s primary pursuit, it would be difficult to find a consensus. At best, one could observe that the essence of Western culture is its willingness to die for a higher standard of living. But that would be unfair, for what emerges consistently from sociologists is that all is not well and that the solution is not in material gains. Moreover, there is evidence that reveals a deep-seated hunger of the soul that has not been quenched, in spite of everything that our communities have to offer.

This sense that something is missing spiritually is magnified by our harried lives and the admission that the culture in which we find ourselves is in turmoil. In spiritual terms the only statement one can confidently make is that the West is engaged in a momentous battle, and it is risking its very soul. And please her me: The ramifications are tremendous when the destiny of the soul is traded for the enthrallment of the moment. With increasing global awareness many honestly doubt the adequacy of traditional answers on matters of the spirit, and many now believe we must look to other shores for the answers we seek.

Although words like progress, wealth, and peace are common in our lexicon, the reality is that we are struggling to make sense of life. While we scavenge relentlessly in search of that all-fulfilling treasure, we seem to have forgotten that this pursuit and this emptiness are not new to the human experience. The atheist may suggest that all of this confusion is inevitable now that we know God doesn’t exist. Politicians may suggest that we are merely coping with pluralism. But the Bible spoke to this situation long ago through the prophet Haggai who called upon the people of his day to take note of their indulgences which were yielding no returns. He said:

"Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill."

Our pursuit will continue to yield bitter returns until we realize that it is our souls that are thirsty and that physical indulgences, good government, or good economics cannot quench that thirst. Jesus said this too: "Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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Fortune Cookies are not usually a great source of wisdom. But a friend recently found one with a particularly interesting fortune. It read, “You have richness in your soul.”

In our materialistic age we are quite familiar with material wealth, but we are not as familiar with wealth of the soul. Wealth of the soul is much to be preferred. Material wealth affords external comforts but wealth of the soul affords internal richness. A deep happiness, an overflowing joy, a sure peace, a true love, these are the fruits of a rich soul. Don't we all long for them? Don't we all long for something to tell us that we have richness in our soul?

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that He was a man of great richness of soul, and I believe that He instructs us in how to know His richness in our own souls. This is what He was talking about when He said that He came to bring life and bring it more abundantly. (John 10:10) Or when He said that the greatest way to live life is to love God with all our hearts, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, and also to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Mark 12:33) To live a life so permeated with love, that is a rich way to live.

Many think following Christ is primarily a path of sacrifice and self-abnegation, and so miss an enormous truth: not following Christ is the most costly choice, not just for the hereafter but for the here and now. Dallas Willard captures this point well as he discusses following Christ, or being a disciple of Christ as he puts it:

[T]he cost of nondiscipleship is far greater - even when this

life alone is considered - than the price paid to walk with

Jesus. Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated

throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of

God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands

firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what

is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs

that abundance of life that Jesus said he came to bring. [3]

Christ is not a killjoy. He lived the ultimate human life, and following Him involves no less of an adventure, and no less of a quality of life.

His soul is the richest of all. Follow Him, and He will become your benefactor.

____________

3. Dallas Willard, Spirit of the Disciplines, quoted from Devotional

Classics, ed. Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith (San Francisco,

Harper Collins, 1993) p.16.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #6274]

It seems everybody wants to claim Elvis as their own, from Jewish impersonators to Christian Elvis fans to those who believe Elvis is God. The religion of Elvis probably won't become a category on the 2010 U.S. census, but 25 year's after the King's death, Elvis worship is still going strong. The following links provide details on Jewish Elvis lyrics, Pagan Elvis rituals, the similarities between Jesus and Elvis, and much more. [Holwick: The following paragraphs in the original article contain links to the internet; I reproduce the summaries here to give an overview of weird faith, American-style.]

JEWISH

Schmelvis: Searching for the King's Jewish Roots

A new film and book, both called "Schmelvis," explain Elvis Presley's Jewish roots. Site includes complete Elvis family tree documenting the Jewish connection, as well as more information about the book and movie.Melvis: The First Openly Jewish Elvis Impersonator

Melvis's standard songs include "Blue Suede Jews," "Love Me Like a Gentile," and "Don't Be Cruel (to a Small White Jew)." Please note: Melvis does not perform on Yom Kippur.

Jelvis: The Jewish Elvis

Elvis impersonator Jelvis, who wears a tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl), bills himself as the "Kosher King."

Elvis - The Jewish Connection

This article, from Elvis Presley News, says that later in his life, Elvis learned Jewish teachings, became familiar with the Hebrew alphabet, and wore a chai (the Jewish world for life) necklace as part of his on-stage wardrobe. Includes a picture of Elvis wearing a Chai pendant.

CHRISTIAN

Elvis vs. Jesus

Learn what Jesus and Elvis have in common--including astrological signs, sayings, resurrections, and more.

The First Church of Jesus Christ, Elvis

A gospel-like rendition of Elvis' life, from his beginnings in the recording business to his death: "And Elvis so loved the world that he died, fat and bloated, in a bathroom." Features new lyrics to the Elvis hit, "Hound Dog:"

You ain't nothin' but a human,

Sinnin' all the time, Just an ungrateful human,

Sinnin' all the time,

No, you don't deserve salvation,

But you can be a friend of mine...

The Official Gospel of Elvis Web Page

Website for the book "The Gospel of Elvis," retelling of the life of Elvis in King James-style English. According to the site, the book "combines the two greatest stories ever told."

Elvis Worship, Catholic-Style

Short essay asserts there is an "aura of Catholicism" in Elvis worship. These Catholic forms common in Elvis reverence include saint's relics, and legends of sightings, miracles, and revered relics.

Elvis Is Dead (Deal With It)

This essay, from conservative Christian Probe Ministries, asks, "What does the fascination with Elvis tell us about ourselves?" The writer encourages readers to give up their obsession with Elvis in favor of Jesus.

HINDU

Hindu Elvis Worship?

A portrait of Elvis hangs in a temple in Karnataka, India, next to pictures of Hindu deities. CNN reported the same story.

PAGAN

Pagan Elvis Ritual

"The Lesser Elvis Banishing Ritual of the Sequined Pentagram"--the site describest the ritual's purpose as clearing the area of all Elvis-negative influences.

ELVIS WORSHIP

The First Presleyterian Church of Elvis, the Divine

Click on Elvis to enter the church's site. Offers spiritual enlightenment, Elvis-style. Features a list of 31 holy items (such as hamburger buns, cans of sauerkraut, and El Producto cigars), an essay on the "Theory of Elvisivity," and an answer to the question, "Is this a cult?"

24-Hour Church of Elvis

This shop in Portland, Oregon is not really a church, but it does feature a resident "preacher woman." Offers marriages, t-shirts, Elvis ID cards, and Elvis drivers licenses.

Viva Lord Vegas

This 2001 article from The Bulletin, Australia, reports that Elvis worship may be developing into a real religion. "Call it Elvism, the Presleyterian church, Presleyanity, or a term yet to be coined, but it bears unmistakable signs of a cult changing into a recognisable faith," writes Christopher Reed.

Disgraceland Chapel and Meditation Room

The site encourages users to stop and meditate on Elvis and features a "brand new ceiling", a rendition of the central image in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. The chapel also features the Elvis Grotto and Relicquiem

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ELVIS LIVES

At least in the hearts of his fans.

And they are everywhere.

Twenty years after his death, our culture is still fascinated with the raven-haired, swivel-hipped entertainer. His songs fill the airwaves. His face graces postage stamps and velvet paintings in the U.S. and abroad. Thousands of the faithful annually trek to Graceland, his Memphis home, to pay homage to the king of rock and roll.

The National Association of Amateur Elvis Impersonators promotes the cause while the "Flying Elvi" (plural of "Elvis," get it?) jump from 13,000 feet. Featured in a hit movie, these Las Vagas daredevils combine skydiving with Elvis nostalgia. They're even available for Las Vegas weddings: 'Why settle for just one Elvis look-alike," asks the ad, "when you can have the entire ten-Elvi team in attendance on your special day?" They "make terrific groomsmen as well as perfect Las Vegas-style witnesses."

Internet sites tout Elvis fan clubs and even Elvis baby food. A Santa Cruz, CA, mall displays a plaque commemorating an Elvis sighting. Former NFL coach Jerry Glanville often left two tickets for Elvis at the will call window on game days.

"Elvis is Greek" announced a college fraternity newsletter. Three members of Tau Kappa Epsilon at Arkansas State University discovered in a safe deposit box Elvis's signature on a membership scroll and photos from his honorary induction. "It's amazing what computers can do with photos," cracked one cynic.

Even academics are into Elvis. The University of Mississippi has held International Conferences on Elvis Presley. Scholarly seminars included, "Civil Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Elvis"; "Elvis, Faulkner, and Feminine Spirituality"; "Elvis: The Twinless Twins' Search for Spiritual Meaning (Elvis's twin brother died at birth), and "Elvis 'n' Jesus."

America. What a country!

HOUND DOG?

What is all this about, really? My own informal, nonscientific survey yielded fascinating analyses from many levels of society.

"It's a national joke," claims a San Diego housepainter.

"I gave my wife an Elvis Valentine's Day candy box," admits a Miami interior designer. "Our cat is named Elvis Presley," explains his wife. "He's fat with a black coat, white collar, and eyes that glaze over -- Elvis in his later years." The husband quips, "The other day, we had an Elvis sighting -- in a tree." (Was a hound dog responsible?)

A Sacramento van driver attributes today's craze to "all the lonely people who sit around and watch TV. "Besides," the driver says, "Elvis's grave wasn't marked right, and there's evidence he's not really buried there. I read it in the tabloids."

A California mayor feels people need to link up with something, to create a sense of belonging. "They could be seeking memories of better times," she reasons. "Some people wish he was still alive. My husband is an Elvis fan. He knows Elvis is dead, but he likes the music."

A southern California doctor wonders if fans may be bonding with a romanticized part of their youth. He adds, "People who don't have God make a god out of all sorts of things."

Indeed. Deep reverence and even worship characterize many pilgrims to Graceland. Some hold candlelight ceremonies, offer flowers, and display icons.

One scholar at Mississippi's International Conference notes that "without looking at spirituality, you can't explain the Elvis phenomena....There's a tremendous force that brings people back to Graceland."{1}

ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?

Elvis's August 16, 1977 death brought an unusual outpouring of grief -- feelings of loneliness and despair. Those feelings, though perhaps not as intense now as when he died, are still very real in many people.

"I get so depressed," admits a Texas woman. "Anytime I've got anything bothering me, I can get in my car and turn on the stereo and listen to Elvis and just go into a world of my own. It's like he's right there singing directly to me....It's like he's always there to solve everything."{2} "I sit and talk to him," claims a New Jersey follower. "I feel he hears what I say to him and he gives me the will to go on when things are really bad....Somehow you talk to Elvis.. I know if anybody ever saw me, they would probably tell me I was crazy, but I do. I love him. I talk to him and I know he understands and I feel so much better after. I think I always will." {3}Some fringers actually believe Elvis is still alive. My informal survey encountered no actual Elvis spotters, though a few claimed they had seen the Energizer Bunny.

"I'm not a weirdo like that," you might say. "What's this craze got to do with me?"

Years of interacting with people on six continents have convinced me that nearly everyone is looking for happiness and fulfillment in life. Some seek it through fame, success, wealth, or career. Others look to relationships, friends, or family.

Pursuits from sports to sex can be driven by the need to fill a void. Probably everyone has at least one "Elvis" in his or her life, a person or idea or team or goal or possession or practice to which they are devoted and from which they seek happiness.

Many feel a spiritual emptiness, a need to personally connect with something that represents greatness, something that will replace inner loneliness with friendship, fear with love, and desperation with hope.

Loneliness is rampant today. Broken marriages, fragile relationships, and general incivility have raised emotional armor over hurting hearts. Newspaper personal ad sections swell with pleas for companionship. Lonely singles and lonely marrieds search cyberspace for someone to connect with. Humans need belonging and acceptance.

Once I was in a motel room convalescing from surgery. My best friend had just deserted me. Some coworkers had betrayed me. The inner pain felt like the worst argument I'd ever had, multiplied by a trillion -- like I was being reamed out by an emotional Roto-Rooter. Loneliness ran deep.

Then a close friend called to ask how I was doing. What a lift! Everyone needs friendship to counter loneliness.

LOVE ME TENDER

We also need love. Los Angeles psychiatrist William Glasser says everyone needs to love and be loved and to feel a sense of worth -- both to themselves and to others. He says we each need to become involved with at least one other person who cares for us and for whom we care, someone who will accept us for what we are but tell us when we act irresponsibly. Without "this essential person," he writes, "we will not be able to fulfill our basic needs"{4}It's nice to be accepted based on our looks, personality, or performance, but these criteria can also bring fear and pressure. What if my looks change or I don't perform well? Will I still be loved?

To be loved unconditionally, to be accepted in spite of our faults, can bring peace and contentment and motivation to excel. "You are so special to me," says a spouse "I want to please you," feels the mate.

Human love is great but not perfect. People can disappoint us or give us wrong advice. Those you trust can show their selfish side, use you for their own ends, or discard you. Is there something better?

Besides friendship and love, we also need hope. A study showed that many of the 31,000 Allied soldiers imprisoned in Japan and Korea during the 1940s suffered from lack of hope. Although they were offered sufficient food, more than 8,000 died. Psychiatric researcher and editor Dr. Harold Wolff believed many of them died from despair. He wrote, "Hope, like faith and a purpose in life, is medicinal. This is not merely a statement of belief, but a conclusion proved by meticulously controlled scientific experiment." {5}Ultimately, however, searches for hope based purely on human endeavor lead to emptiness. For most of us, there will always be someone faster, richer, more intelligent or articulate, better looking or more popular than we are. Our favorite teams will lose. Our heroes will show their faults. Even if you reach the top, what than? According to the latest statistics, the death rate in this nation is still 100 percent.

Oddly enough, some clues to solving our struggles with loneliness and our quest for love and hope may lie in one of the songs Elvis recorded. Few may realize that Elvis's only Grammy Award for a single came for his 1967 recording of "How Great Thou Art," a famous hymn. The lyrics, which likely reflected his own spiritual roots, speak in "awesome wonder" of God's creation of the universe as a majestic display of His power.

The God this song alludes to is described elsewhere as a friend of those in need. If we let Him in our lives, He promises to be there in our successes and in our failures, when others praise us and when they desert us, when things are going well and when we're painfully lonely.

"How Great Thou Art" also tells how all this is possible. Because of God's great love for us, He sent His Son here to die, to carry the burden of humanity's injustices, selfishness, and wrongs.

God's love is endless, and He offers us hope. When we tell Him our problems, unlike Elvis, He can do something about them And not only can we rely on Him for our needs today, but the Bible promises a new heaven and earth in the future, free from death, sorrow, crying, and pain.{6} Jesus Himself promised, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" John 5:24).

Friendship, love, and hope -- from one who cannot fail us. Sounds great. But is it true?

JESUS IS ALIVE. LIVE WITH IT!

Jesus said the final test of the truth of His claims would be His resurrection. Historical records indicate that he was executed on a cross and declared dead. His body was wrapped like a mummy and placed in a solid-rock tomb. A huge stone sealed the tomb's entrance where an elite Roman guard kept watch.

On the third day the stone had been rolled away and the body was missing but the grave clothes remained in place. Hundreds of people witnessed him walking around alive again. Cowards became heroes as ten of His previously frightened disciples were martyred for their faith.

Some years ago, as a skeptic myself, I discovered that His resurrection is actually one of the best-attested facts of history.{7} It's all true!

If you're longing to link with someone great, He's the greatest. Since Jesus is alive, you, too, can know Him as a friend.

Elvis Presley is dead. Chances are, you might have hints that some of the "Elvises" in your life really have little or nothing lasting to offer. But Jesus is alive. Care to meet Him?

_______________________________

NOTES

1. Gregory Rumberg "I Know Your Elvis," Contemporary Christian Music, February 1997, p. 31.

2. Ralph Burns, "How Great Thou Art: Photographs from Graceland," California Museum of Photography, University of California Riverside Website.

3. Ibid.

4. William Glasser, M.D., Reality Therapy, New York: Harper & Row, 1965, p. 7.

5. "A Scientific Report on What Hope Does for Man" (New York State Heart Assembly, n.d.), quoted in S. I . McMillen, M.D., "None of These Diseases," Old Tappan (NJ): Fleming H Revell, 1968, p. 110.

6. Revelation 21:1,4.

7. See, for instance, Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, San Bernardino (CA): Campus Crusade for Christ. 1972.

_______________________________

© 1997 Rusty Wright. All rights reserved.

This article appeared in Pursuit magazine, Vol. VI, No. 1.

RUSTY WRIGHT, associate speaker and writer with PROBE.ORG, is an international lecturer, award-winning author, journalist, and syndicated columnist who has spoken on six continents. He holds Bachelor of Science (psychology) and Master of Theology degrees from Duke and Oxford universities, respectively. He can be reached at RUSTYWRIGHT@AOL.COM.

Probe Ministries is a non-profit corporation whose mission is to reclaim the primacy of Christian thought and values in Western culture through media, education, and literature. In seeking to accomplish this mission, Probe provides perspective on the integration of the academic disciplines and historic Christianity.

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Christianity Today, July 8, 2002

Buffy's Religion

Like her show, Sarah Michelle Gellar's faith is a hodgepodge of belief.

By Ted Olsen | posted 07/17/2002

Like her television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, actress Sarah Michelle Gellar's personal spirituality borrows from a hodgepodge of religions. "I consider myself a spiritual person," she told Scotland's Daily Record. "I believe in an idea of God, although it's my own personal ideal. I find most religions interesting, and I've been to every kind of denomination: Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist. I've taken bits from everything and customized it." But Gellar also did her homework, telling Rolling Stone that she read through the Bible in 1999. Two actors reportedly have become Christians while working on the show, but its emphasis on witchcraft and other issues have kept it at the top of many Christians' "Must Flee TV" lists.

Copyright c 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

July 8, 2002, Vol. 46, No. 8, Page 10

While The World Sleeps

Read: John 1:1-14

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. --John 1:10

In the vivid imagination of many young children, high above the decorations and colorful holiday lights, a jolly man in a red suit is pulled through the sky by a team of flying reindeer. Youngsters go to bed in fitful anticipation of the next morning. It's Christmas Eve!

Yet today my mind wanders across time and space to a very different scene. The animals are restless. A mule brays. A cow bumps the stable door. An anxious husband stops pacing the makeshift delivery room floor to console his love. Suddenly a newborn baby sputters with His first breath. With a spirited cry He announces His own arrival. The long-awaited Son has come!

On Christmas morning this year, children will leap out of bed and rush downstairs. Paper and ribbon will soon threaten to push everyone out of the room. Will we let it push out the Son of God too?

In all the excitement of the holiday, let's draw attention to the Savior. Like John the Baptist, let's point others to the One who came into the world but was not recognized by it (Jn. 1:6-10). May the greetings we speak, the cards we send, the presents we give be motivated by our love for Jesus. After all, He is the real reason for the season! --MRDII

The world drowns the carol with its sleighbells--

Giftwraps the manger--shoves it out of sight;

Yet though the darkness deepens while the din swells,

The Star of Bethlehem still shines as bright. --Gustafson

The best gift in the world was wrapped in a manger.

"Called to be saints." - Romans 1:7

We are very apt to regard the apostolic saints as if they were "saints" in a more especial manner than the other children of God. All are "saints" whom God has called by His grace, and sanctified by His Spirit; but we are apt to look upon the apostles as extraordinary beings, scarcely subject to the same weaknesses and temptations as ourselves. Yet in so doing we are forgetful of this truth, that the nearer a man lives to God the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart; and the more his Master honors him in his service, the more also doth the evil of the flesh vex and tease him day by day. - Charles Spurgeon

The fact is, if we had seen the apostle Paul, we should have thought him remarkably like the rest of the chosen family: and if we had talked with him, we should have said, "We find that his experience and ours are much the same. He is more faithful, more holy, and more deeply taught than we are, but he has the selfsame trials to endure. Nay, in some respects he is more sorely tried than ourselves." Do not, then, look upon the ancient saints as being exempt either from infirmities or sins; and do not regard them with that mystic reverence which will almost make us idolaters. Their holiness is attainable even by us. - Charles Spurgeon

Lessons From Rock Bottom: The church can learn about grace from the recovery movement.

In earlier times, some theologians wrote "natural theologies" by first explicating the wonders of nature and then gradually moving toward theism, revelation, and Christian doctrine. If I were writing a natural theology today, I think I would start with recovering alcoholics.

It staggers me that psychiatrists, pharmacologists, and scientific reductionists cannot improve on a spiritual program devised by a couple of Christian alcoholics 60 years ago.

Anthropology, original sin, regeneration, sanctification -- the recovery movement contains within it seeds of all these doctrines. As an alcoholic once told me, "I have to publicly declare 'I am an alcoholic' whenever I introduce myself at group. It is a statement of failure, of helplessness, and surrender. Take a room of a dozen or so people, all of whom admit helplessness and failure, and it's pretty easy to see how God then presents himself in that group."

The historian of Alcoholics Anonymous titled his work NOT-GOD because, he said, that stands as the most important hurdle an addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not being God. No mastery of manipulation and control, at which alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in the arms of the Higher Power. "First of all, we had to quit playing God," concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself to "play God" in the addict's life, which involves daily, even moment-by-moment, surrender.

Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, reached the unshakable conviction, now a canon of twelve-step groups, that an alcoholic must "hit bottom" in order to climb upward. Wilson wrote his fellow strugglers, "How privileged we are to understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection: that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth." The Apostle Paul could not have phrased it better.

The need for humble dependence continues throughout recovery. Although an alcoholic may pray desperately for the condition to go away, very few addicts report sudden, miraculous healing. Most battle temptation every day of their lives, experiencing grace not as a magic potion, rather as a balm whose strength is activated daily by conscious dependence on God.

One alcoholic wrote me,

I know that I can go out and start drinking today and... have

all the sex I want with all the women I want and live in a state

of continued drunkenness for quite some time. But there is a

catch. I know firsthand all the misery and guilt that comes

along with it. And that is something I want no part of. I have

experienced guilt and misery so extreme that I didn't want to

live anymore at all -- and that, my friend, is why I would rather

not have to take advantage of God's generosity in being willing

to forgive me once again should I go that route.... Plus, in my

present life, every now and then I think I do manage to do God's

will. And, when I do, then the rewards are so tremendous and

satisfying that I get kind of addicted to that closeness to God.

There is a common saying in AA: "Religion is for people who

believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been

there."

In correspondence with Bill Wilson, the psychiatrist Carl Jung remarked that it may be no accident that we refer to alcoholic drinks as "spirits." Perhaps, suggested Jung, alcoholics have a greater thirst for the spirit than other people, but it is all too often misdirected.

Early in the AA program, two groups divided over the issue of perfectionism. One, an offshoot of the Oxford Group, insisted on "Four Absolutes" and required its members to commit to a strict Christian creed. The other, led by Bill Wilson, started with a dependence on grace, an acknowledgment that its members would never achieve perfection. Absolutes, said Wilson, either turned alcoholics away or gave them a dangerous feeling of "spiritual inflation." Over time, the perfectionist Oxford Group shriveled up and disappeared; grace-based AA has never stopped growing.

We in the church have as much to learn from people in the recovery movement as we have to offer them. I was struck by one observation from an alcoholic friend of mine. "When I'm late to church, people turn around and stare at me with frowns of disapproval. I get the clear message that I'm not as RESPONSIBLE as they are. When I'm late to AA, the meeting comes to a halt and everyone jumps up to hug and welcome me. They realize that my lateness may be a sign that I almost didn't make it. When I show up, it proves that my desperate need for them won out over my desperate need for alcohol."

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David Blaine - shaman to some, charlatan to others, showman above all - is getting ready to leave his box.

The American magician is approaching Sunday's end to a 44-day fast-cum-vigil in a dangling plastic case - hungrier, hairier and, he says, wiser, than when he went in.

Blaine, 30, who has previously been buried alive and encased in a block of ice, says the feat is both the hardest and “the most beautiful” thing he's done.

It has undeniably captured the imagination of Britons. Over the last six weeks, onlookers have reacted with a pungent mix of support and ridicule, while commentators puzzled over whether the stunt offered tasteless spectacle or spiritual insight.

Brian Keenan, who was held hostage in Lebanon for 4 1/2 years, wrote in The Guardian newspaper that people were “drawn to this half-naked man hoisted in the heavens. We eat our hamburgers and ice cream in part wonder, part homage, part adoration.”

The same paper's theater critic, Michael Billington, judged that “this strange public confinement ... acquires something of the unresolved ambiguity of art.” But in The Independent, columnist Terence Blacker condemned the “creepy” Blaine as part of a disturbing trend toward entertainment that “tweaked the public's sadistic impulse.”

Blaine certainly brought out a streak of malice in some. In the days after his 7 foot by 7 foot by 3 foot plexiglass box was hoisted 40 feet above the River Thames' south bank on Sept. 5, the illusionist endured the sound of drums and foghorns, the smell of sizzling burgers and the sight of hecklers' bare breasts and buttocks.

One man was arrested for firing paint-filled balloons at Blaine's box. Another was fined for trying to damage the water supply to the box, which allegedly contains only a quilt, a pillow, a journal, a change of clothes and a photo of the magician's mother.

But as time went by, ridicule turned to grudging respect. By the final week, taunts had largely been replaced by encouraging shouts and handwritten signs stuck along the fence around “Camp David,” Blaine's riverside enclosure.

Hundreds of people -- teenagers, tourists, families with young children -- gathered daily beneath the box near Tower Bridge. A lethargic Blaine, sporting a new bushy beard and matted hair, rewarded them with weak waves and beatific smiles.

Thousands are expected to show up on Sunday to watch Blaine's exit, which will be broadcast on television and streamed to paying subscribers on the Internet.

Blaine's Web site says he may have to spend a month in hospital recovering from the ordeal. By Day 38, the site said, the magician was “occasionally incoherent and has been exhibiting signs of delusion,” smelled strongly of sulfur and was longing to take a bath.

A former street magician, Blaine now specializes in feats of endurance. Before entering the box, he said he hoped the test would help him find his “truths.”

Many onlookers seem to agree there's something spiritual about the event. Many of the signs dotted around the site had a metaphysical cast. “The butterfly will emerge from its cocoon,” said one. “Physically thin - spiritually fat,” declared another.

Paranormalist Uri Geller, a friend and mentor to Blaine, said the American is “a shaman. He has the quality of Rasputin, of Mesmer.”

“He believes it is important to suffer,” added Geller. “He thinks that is a very real and true human emotion.”

Retired carpenter Terry Hutt said he spent every day at the site after watching Blaine enter the box on a live television special.

“You hear the bad bits, but there's more good bits,” said Hutt, 68, clad in Union Jack shorts, T-shirt and hat. “People become friends, they share their sandwiches. And we get lots of entertainment. We had Michael Jackson's double the other day.

“This morning a woman brought a dead pigeon in a box. I think she hoped he could bring it back to life.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #10633, and also #1984]

After Christianity Today ran an article which criticized the New Age movement, Dr. John Chrisci wrote a letter to them. He said the New Age religion is what Christianity should be all about, but isn't. The New Age movement is forward-looking, positive and uplifting. Christians, on the other hand, tend to focus on negatives, grovel in sin and guilt, and look back to the past.

Dr. Chrisci concluded:

The put-down has gone far enough. People are hungry for Christ's

more abundant life. We have brought the New Age movement on ourselves.

*

With the Dalai Lama’s name still on the lips of celebrities Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, and Richard Gere, the Tibetan Buddhist leader ended a two-month U.S. tour in September, leaving in his wake a growing flock of Americans, including some Christians, attracted by pop Buddhism’s buffet of low-commitment, high-touch beliefs.

“The world of American religion is going through enormous change,” University of Chicago sociologist Stephen R. Warner recently told Religion News Service. “It will be increasingly difficult to distinguish Christians and Buddhists.” But are the lines between the two religions really blurring?

“Now it’s becoming the in thing to be spiritual,” says Buddhist teacher Jagad Guru Paramahamsa. “It’s more cool, modern, and progressive to be spiritual. But without God.” The Dalai Lama’s recent book on pursuing lasting happiness has topped bestseller charts for more than a year. His latest title, “Ethics For a New Millennium” (Riverhead, 1999), has been praised by some book critics because it proclaims tolerance and peace without religion.

In a book review in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, critic Richard Bernstein says the Dalai Lama’s message of spirituality without a deity is “the perfect way to satisfy the spiritual hunger of people living in a scientific and secular age.” Buddhism, which has 358 million followers worldwide, is non-theistic. It focuses not on an individual’s relationship with God, but rather on a person’s incremental spiritual progress, achieved through ethical conduct and eventual reincarnation to a higher state of existence.

A popular musician has mused, “You can compartmentalize different sides of yourself — put them onto different shelves and then bring them out when you need them.”

On one level this sounds ridiculous, and yet, thinking of our lives in categories of public and private, sacred and secular, comes for many quite naturally. Compartmentalizing our lives can seem helpful, if not necessary. We live in a world where we carefully delve out our time and divide our loyalties. As a pastor friend once told me, we give our hearts to romance, our minds to philosophy, our strength to vocation, and our time, money, and attention to everything else in between. Spirituality has become one of the many popular things to pursue, but it is categorized quite readily as a private and personal affair, another compartment that is to fit within our previously existing framework of life.

The widespread phenomenon of religion and spirituality, where Christianity is regarded as one of many varieties, can indeed be accommodated without difficulty in our culture. But where we minimize the gospel message into lessons applicable to the private and internal aspects of our personal lives, we have misunderstood the gospel entirely. We have also dangerously stamped out the efficacy of Christ's message for the whole of life, the reality of a sovereign God at work throughout the whole of history.

Author Lesslie Newbigin, who has written extensively on the gospel and western culture, notes that it is an illusion to imagine that there are two kinds of history — sacred and profane, salvation history and secular history. Writes Newbigin,

It is possible, and in our culture normal, to exclude the name of

God altogether from our account of public affairs, and to

construe history as a continuum of cause and effect, an arena

where 'historical forces' are at work and events take place in

accordance with regularities that can be scientifically

established, or at least an arena in which the only purposes at

work are those of individual human beings. But it is idle to

suppose that any kind of peaceful coexistence is possible between

these two ways of understanding history. [1]

This is an option not open to us. We are well aware that we are right now living and making only one history; it is ridiculous to categorize life and history into two realms. It is unreasonable to see Christ as someone who lived and died only to reach the private realm of your life. We deal and are dealt with by the same God who confronts us in the pages of Scripture. He affects our entire world.

When Jesus was asked which of the commandments was the greatest, he responded that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus' words would have resounded loudly among his hearers. They were the words of Deuteronomy 6, the “Shema,” which means, “Hear!” It was a command that echoed throughout Jewish history, words they were commanded not only to know, but to write on their doors and gates, to recite to their children, and talk about when they woke up and when they went to bed — it was to be their one consuming thought: There is but One God, and we are to love Him with all our hearts, with all our minds and with all our strength.

Just as this was radical good news for a polytheistic world, so it is far-reaching good news for a world of fragmented loyalties and compartmentalized lives: There is One sovereign God acting today and throughout history, asking now for your undivided being, that we might delight in Him alone, the One who was and is and is to come. Let us hear!

____________

1. Foolishness to the Greeks, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 61.

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Copyright © 2003 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

Several years ago, I was excited that the topic of spirituality kept cropping up on talk shows, in books and magazines, in politics, even in health food stores. What a refreshing change from the “God is dead” philosophy so prevalent during my college years in the sixties, I thought.

In my naivete, I believed this spiritual awakening represented a trend toward a search for a biblically based relationship with God. I accepted what I heard and read with little critical thought.

Then, my nursing supervisor praised me one day for my “deep spirituality.” I thanked her, secretly thrilled my Christian witness had been showing through. My excitement dissolved, though, when I read a book she gave me called A COURSE IN MIRACLES. Although it used Christian terms like “atonement” and “sanctification,” the concepts were far from Christian. I was puzzled. Weren't we speaking the same language? What had my supervisor meant by “spirituality”?

After that interchange, I began listening more closely to all the discussions of spirituality going on. Since then I've been learning how to discern whether the things I hear and read are truly Christian. Here are some guidelines I now use to tell the difference.

LOGICALLY EXAMINE THE CLAIMS BEING MADE. Many statements about spirituality being passed off as “truth” today are not only lies, they're logically impossible. I discovered this when my daughter's public high school class planned a field trip to a meditation center known for its psychic readings. I objected, but the teacher justified the trip by saying this center taught SPIRITUALITY — not religion. He claimed SPIRITUALITY doesn't endorse one set of beliefs.

That's simply not true. The basic (though flawed) belief system behind the whole concept of spirituality is that each person has a right to his or her own “truth”-that there's no such thing as objective, absolute truth. This view essentially makes each person responsible for deciding what's right or wrong, good or bad, truth or lie. The result: There is NO truth; people do what's right in their own eyes.

Another popular notion is that all religions and spiritual quests lead to God. Yet that belief denies the claim of Jesus Christ, who boldly declared HE alone is the way, the truth, and the life: “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

COMPARE POPULAR SPIRITUAL CONCEPTS WITH WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS. Our human reasoning alone isn't enough to discern truth from error. Just like the bank teller who knows the feel of counterfeit money after years of handling the real thing, our best protection against deception is to study and know God's revealed truth, the Bible.

This seemed more crucial as I began seeing angel pins, books, and stories in every checkout lane, bookstore, and on TV.

At first I took this as another sign of people becoming more interested in spiritual (to me, meaning biblical) things. After all, the Bible teaches that angels are “ministering spirits,” assigned by God to help us in many ways. But when I began comparing the media's portrayal of angels with the Bible's account of angels, I quickly discovered major differences.

In popular culture, an angel is often portrayed as a beloved family member who dies and then gets his wings. The parents or children left on earth then seek guidance and help from their departed relative-now-turned-angel. So what's the problem with that?

For one thing, the Bible is very clear that angels are NOT repackaged souls of people but spiritual beings created by God to serve his purposes. By portraying them as reincarnated humans, the horrible reality of death as the dreadful consequence of sin is blunted. There is no judgment or hell to consider if we all turn into cute angels when we die.

The truth is, everyone will appear before the judgment seat of Christ, who was sacrificed for sinners and promises salvation to those who are waiting for him (Heb. 9:27-28). Jesus is the only mediator between God and man — not angels.

REMEMBER, “CHRISTIAN” WORDS OR SONGS AREN'T NECESSARILY CHRISTIAN. One day I heard the glorious strains of “Amazing Grace” coming from my TV set. I ran to see who sang with such power, certain only a Christian could so magnificently sing those wonderful words: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” After the song ended, the show's host complimented the soloist, a well-known recording artist, on her performance. She thanked him and explained how meaningful the song had been to her.

“So does that mean you've got religion in your life now?” the host asked. I waited, eager to hear a wonderful story of conversion to Jesus Christ.

Instead the singer replied, “Of course not. Religion is what you get when you're afraid of hell. Spirituality is what you get when you've been there and back.” I couldn't believe it!

Although she'd sung the whole story of Christ's atoning work for her, the fact that she needed a Savior from sin seemed the furthest thing from her mind. To her, being saved meant she'd been rescued from the lostness of “not knowing who I was.” Being “born again” meant getting in touch with her “inner self.”

In the past, I'd occasionally examined supposedly spiritual claims by comparing them to Scripture. But I'd never thought to see what the Bible said about the whole idea of spirituality.

Oddly enough, when I did a word search through my online Bible, looking for verses on “spirituality,” the answer flashed back “word not found.” That surprised me. Then I tried “spiritual” and all sorts of verses popped up.

My friend, Barb, pointed out that throughout Scripture, SPIRITUAL is used to describe something else (e.g., a spiritual man, spiritual gifts, spiritual truths). SPIRITUALITY on the other hand, is something all by itself. Why is that an important distinction?

The Bible tells us our spiritual nature is dead in sin until we're born again by the Spirit of God who gives us spiritual birth through faith in Jesus Christ (John 3; Eph. 2:1-9). Any discussion of what it means to be “spiritual” must relate to that diagnosis of our condition. To become a Christian means we receive a person, Jesus — not a thing, SPIRITUALITY.

WHEN SOMEONE SPEAKS OF SPIRITUALITY, ASK HIM OR HER TO EXPLAIN WHO JESUS IS. One day I met a former high school friend for lunch. I was surprised when he began describing his spiritual quest, which included visiting gurus in India.

As we talked about our views of God, I became increasingly frustrated and confused. No matter what I said, he seemed to agree, yet I knew we were miles apart in our beliefs. Why couldn't I pinpoint the difference?

The next morning I woke up and realized my mistake from the day before. Although my friend and I had talked extensively about God, I'd never asked him one simple question: Who is Jesus Christ?

It's fairly easy to agree about God in some vague sense — ”Well, that's how you see your God. I see mine a bit differently.” When we discuss Jesus Christ, however, we must deal with the specific claims Jesus made about himself — including his assertion that he is God — and face the question, “Are they true or not?”

Who is Jesus? The answer marks the ultimate dividing line between who or what is and isn't Christian. In 1 John 4, we're told to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” The apostle John also says those who deny Jesus is the Messiah are liars (1 John 2:22).

Many religions and various forms of spirituality accept Jesus as a historical figure, but reject him as the Christ, the one whom God sent to be “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Others talk of a “Christ-consciousness” in some mystical sense but refuse to tie that down to the flesh-and-blood person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The fact is, if a person has strong morals and values but doesn't embrace Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God, Savior, and resurrected Lord, his or her spirituality isn't Christian and cannot save.

Some days I feel intimidated as I realize how “narrow” others may see me because I believe the claims Christ made for himself. But the words of the apostle Paul are true: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

I'm also encouraged. When we stand in the truth of God's Word, we need not fear the spiritual confusion all around. God has promised the gates of hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ. As the darkness of false spirituality grows deeper, the light of his truth can only shine brighter — pointing the way to those who still seek him.

SURVIVAL OF THE HOPEFUL

"Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future. There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us as the strength beyond our strength, the wisdom beyond our wisdom, as whatever it is in our hearts — whether we believe in God or not — that keeps us human enough at least to get by despite everything in our lives that tends to wither the heart and make it less than human. To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift."

-- Frederick Buechner

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Copyright © 1997 by Christianity Today International/CHRISTIAN READER Magazine. March/April 1997, Vol. 35, No. 2, Page 32

*

Sure, she likes the limelight. But these days, "Everybody Loves Raymond"'s Patricia Heaton is more concerned about keeping it real, helping needy children, and teaching her own kids about God.

“I struggle to keep it simple. Obedience, sacrifice, and modesty are not real popular buzzwords out here. An issue I'm dealing with lately is, 'Do I have too much money, and am I being a good steward of it?’ In fact, I was talking to a friend about tithing — just giving your 10 percent as opposed to giving until it actually starts costing you something, which is what I think tithing is all about.”

Patricia had a traditional Catholic upbringing in the Midwest. Everything changed when her mother died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when Patricia was only 12. The loss of her mother hit hard. “I've always been an independent person, but that independence was in the setting of security,” Patricia explains. “Suddenly my sense of security shattered. It started me on this cycle of grieving and falling into depression, feeling a void for my mother.” Those emotions erupted in her 20s, when she went through rebellion against God and the values of her youth.

While living in New York, doing theater and odd jobs, she found herself partying late on Saturday night, then getting up for church on Sunday morning. “The religious acts were just that,” she confesses, “an act out of a sense of duty to God.”

She eventually moved to Hollywood, where she landed bit parts in movies like “Beethoven” and TV shows such as “thirtysomething.” She had eight times as many rejections as job offers, but she earned enough to scrape by.

During this period, Patricia also reconnected with God. (Today, she belongs to an evangelical Presbyterian church near her home.) While on a church-sponsored weekend trip to Mexico, Patricia says she experienced an epiphany. Headed across the border in two vans, the group arrived at an orphanage outside of Tijuana. Within a short time, they were laying sod and fixing a sewage pipe. At night, they slept on cots. They played ball and held a church service with the orphaned, poverty-stricken children of Mexico.

Back at home in West Hollywood, Patricia says she felt something she hadn't felt in her past years of struggle — peace. The weekend trip had changed something inside her. “I felt totally released from the need to make it as an actress. I had experienced complete fulfillment in something that had nothing to do with me being in the spotlight,” she recalls. “In fact, it was the exact opposite. It was about being involved in something that wasn't about me.”

It's a lesson she reminisces about even now: “I have to keep reminding myself: If you give your life to God, he doesn't promise you happiness and that everything will go well. But he does promise you peace. You can have peace and joy, even in bad circumstances.”

TAKING A STAND

Patricia Heaton is married to English actor and producer David Hunt and they have four sons — Sam, John, Joe, and Dan — ages 4 to 9. Most of the charity work that the 45-year-old actress is involved in focuses on children.

She is brazen in her decision to be pro-life in an unabashedly pro-choice town. Patricia is the honorary chairperson of Feminists for Life, a non-religious group that attempts to bring feminism back to its original meaning, which, she says, was about making the world a place where women and children can feel safe and protected and become whom they are to the fullest extent.

With the fame that “Everybody Loves Raymond” has brought, people notice when Patricia Heaton says or does something unusual. Last year, the actress was at the American Music Awards, waiting to go onstage and introduce a retrospective segment. The show was hosted by the Osbourne family — still riding the initial wave of popularity from their MTV reality show — and true to form, nearly every other word out of the hosts' mouths was being bleeped. The foul broadcast started to “embarrass” Patricia and she was increasingly uncomfortable with her participation in the show. “It wasn't like I made a decision to take a stand. At the time when I was there, I just felt mortified and horrified and did not want to get up on stage and be associated with it.”

So she left. She just got up and went home.

“I have to tell you, I got a thousand e-mails and letters about it,” she says. “So clearly people in America are very frustrated about what's coming through their television sets, and they feel like nobody in Hollywood cares. They feel alone and helpless about how to protect their kids from stuff.”

Patricia remembers that her mother used to cut offending pictures out of Time magazine and never allowed her children to watch grownup soap operas like Peyton Place. In the same vein, she and Dave don't allow their kids to watch much TV. “More than anything I want my children to have a personal, daily relationship with the Lord. We read Bible stories, and I try to introduce Jesus into the conversation as much as possible to make it a part of their thinking — a God-and-Christ consciousness.”

Patricia’s spiritual awareness is vastly different from her TV alter ego. “I can only believe that salvation is a process — from our perspective,” Patricia adds thoughtfully. “I mean, from God's view it's been done. It was finished on the cross. From our view, it's a process. You know, you have a great day one day and the next day you're really struggling. To me, the Christian life is a journey, and thank God that he is merciful to us. I mean, his mercy is the only thing we really have.”

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Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian Reader magazine. January/February 2004, Vol. 42, No. 1, Page 18

We can see twelve billion years back into the past, and we have almost completely decoded our own DNA. Scientists are devising increasingly complex models for the workings of the brain, and can send probes far into space. We are in control. At the same time, surprisingly, there is a groundswell of something very old, and apparently irrational in scientific terms - paganism.

____________

Today as paganism is increasing, Christians read the New Testament with renewed interest. Paul acknowledged links with the worship of the unknown God, and did not demand that pagans adopt the culture and ritual of Judaism. What can we learn from Paul? What is the good news in a world that is becoming more pagan? Where are the points of continuity with Christian faith, and where is there conflict?

On the one hand, pagans themselves sometimes define the difference. In Daniel Quinn's very popular novel "The Story of B," for example, the hero expounds at great length on the perils of Christian faith and the need for a return to a pre-Christian, pagan animism. More than any Christian proselytiser, he draws Christianity and paganism into antagonistic contrast.

On the other hand, Ian Bradley, speaking appreciatively of the pre-Christian Celts, argues that “their pagan past almost certainly helped them to grasp the idea of the Trinity and the mystery of God who is both one in three and three in one.”[1] Christian fantasy writers C. S. Lewis, Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle also make connections between pagan and Christian belief.

Who is right? Are paganism and Christian faith in conflict, or is this resurgence of faith in an old spirituality grounds for optimism?

Neopaganism is an attempt to rediscover the old religions displaced when Christian faith moved into European and tribal cultures. Some of its appeal is environmental - advocates like Quinn blame the Christian legacy for the ecological crisis, and our estrangement from nature. Paganism also covers a wide range of beliefs and practices, from nature god or goddess worship to finding god in the self, or in the energies of nature. It ranges from antagonism to Christian faith to quiet coexistence or a syncretistic blending of the two.

But paganism is attractive to many people because it is easily accessible, largely non-institutional, and countercultural, and perhaps because it imposes so few social obligations and taboos. Whatever its cause this newly emergent paganism is a genuine search for a lost spirituality and for hidden historical and natural connections.

Christians, however, find this resurgence of paganism confusing because it has been spreading successfully without any institutional presence or proselytising zeal. Where does all this come from? Confusing also is the fact that pagans are often more spiritual and more open to religious experiences than are Christians.

Where are neopagans found? If neopagans have no institutional presence where do we go to find them? A few months ago neopagans throughout North America staged a day in the open, publicly gathering to commune with nature and make their presence known. And in Wellington last year pagan wiccans held a winter solstice meeting that was reported in the news.

But paganism more often has little public presence, though according to anthropologist Dr Kathryn Rountree, there are at least a thousand self-identified witches in New Zealand.[2]

Your local bookshop is a good place to find traces of paganism. Most bookshops will have special new age sections featuring books on alternative spirituality including references to the goddess phenomenon. Children's fantasy and video games designed for children are also turning to pagan themes, as are books on ecology and the environment - and even many novels.

In a resort bookshop recently I found three categories, fiction, non-fiction and new age. The bibles were in the new age section, along with Tolkien, Celtic spirituality, homeopathy, other fantasy and more truly new-age speculation. (A few miles away in Russell, Pomapallier House is testimony to the extraordinary sacrifices missionaries endured to bring the Bible in Maori to a pagan world a century and a half ago.) This conflating of all spiritualities certainly reflects our current market, but it also reflects a considerable confusion and superficiality that bears little resemblance to the original power of either pagan or Christian religion.

Religions are sometimes treated as interchangeable weak forces, to be blended together for better effect. Paganism has become just one among many of these weak forces, confounding the problem of locating its centre.

SIMILAR TRENDS

There are many other trends that seem to be working in tandem with the neopagan movement. Contemporary science brings us technological control and efficiency - but cosmology and atomic physics also take us to the edge of what we can understand or 'map'. No longer can we envisage the world as a neat machine wound up by a benign deity. Rather we see nature as strange, and thus mysterious.

Feminists have described how the western tradition has labelled women as nature-bound and inferior. Because of this some women have established a solidarity with nature, nature religions, and other oppressed nature-bound forms. Then there are women breaking free from traditional support systems and institutions who often seek spirituality elsewhere - in the new age and neopagan ritual and symbol - safely far from the father god of their Christian roots or Christian heritage.

Neopaganism is encountered in the Maori, Aborigine and American Indian renaissance, with the rediscovery of a heritage that belonged spiritually to a particular place and time, and which appears to have had a more benign relationship with the environment than ours. At a recent conference I attended an aboriginal woman testified: “I have Jesus in my heart, and the Dreaming.” She went on to talk about how easily she identified with the whole Old Testament world, not something commonly said by a convert to Christianity.

Today there is an unprecedented searching after our roots and our history which goes much beyond the religious. We want to know about our ancestors - history and genealogy/whakapapa matter to us. The fact that bitter warfare like that in the Holy Land or in Eastern Europe can escalate over events that date hundreds of years or even millennia or more back, shows us that our sense of 'difference' and 'identity' has roots in the distant past. Part of this search for our history is in our pagan ancestry, whether it be Celtic, Anglo-Saxon or Maori.

In the continuing debate over science and religion, we are moving towards a more dynamic understanding of God's presence both in the world and over and beyond the world. At the same time the close connections between humans and animals are becoming evident as animal intelligence is being discovered and researched alongside the ongoing study of the nature of human intelligence and consciousness. The ecological crisis, too, has forced us to look again at nature and its precarious beauty - to recognise that we may be inducing a planet-wide extinction of life.

All of this is part of a trend that is much wider than neopaganism. A trend that is inclined to see God in the world, to rediscover the sacred in nature - to 're-enchant' the natural world in a way that does justice to its God-drenched and God-derived nature.

NEOPAGAN SPIRITUALITY

Thus neopaganism, to the extent that it can be defined, is not basically negative. Thomas Cahill, for example, has shown us in How the Irish Saved Civilisation that Patrick - the Christian missionary to Ireland - chose to work with concepts that were already part of pagan Irish culture. The result was a rich incarnational spirituality in which the pre-Christian concepts of trinity and sacrifice were transformed by Christian faith rather than supplanted.

The Irish, like the New Zealand Maori, renounced revenge or utu when they converted to Christ. Too often a concern that people believe in the right spirits, or the right doctrines, has supplanted an understanding of the heart of the gospel and its demand for grace, love, hope and forgiveness.

Pagans are right in pointing to the vulnerabilities of the church and its long engagement with technological western culture. Perhaps the great pagan strength parallels a weakness in western technological society. Neopagan and Eastern religious spirituality often works toward restoring balance or harmony, and attempts to see the person holistically. In contrast, western scientific reductionism is more often preoccupied with an emphasis on the sin or the disease at the expense of the whole person or the health of communities.

We seem to have some sort of dim collective memory of the force nature must have been in the lives of our ancestors. Green parties, environmental work and our propensity to 'go bush' in order to get away from it all, are evidence of nature's continuing lure.

Pagan belief and practice attempts to dig deeper, turning back the clock on the centuries of technological intervention which have deprived us of nature's rhythms. Even in our incarnational religion the sacraments are our only ritual contact between the spiritual and the physical and in these we often struggle to find meaning.

THE TRINITARIAN GOD AND NATURE

Are there any reasons, then, for going beyond nature? Is paganism enough? After all, a friend of mine who does organic gardening says all her friends are witches, and they are most content to leave well alone. She can be a Christian, but they continue privately with their pagan rituals.

Along with a pagan respect for the mystery, power and spirituality of nature, however, was a belief that we were bound by nature's laws - its cycles and its ultimate death. But monotheism has freed us from this despair. It has given us hope grounded in the promise of God's reign and the salvation of human and material existence in the fullness of time.

The challenge the church faces, then, is to continue to strive for communication with and from God - to keep alive the inclination to be attuned to, and listening for, the Word of God. We should not be content with merely recognising God's hand in nature - thus giving nature itself the status of a god. Rather we should continue to search beyond nature as we reach out to a God who is transcendent, incarnate and immanent.

We should expect to find the Spirit of the Christian trinitarian God in nature, but this communal God should also draw us out of ourselves and nature into relationship and nurture. The Christian God does not just direct us to nature, but promises us that all things - the powers and principalities, and the social and political spheres - will eventually be redeemed in the promised kingdom of God. Nature, human community, the world and the cosmos are all God's concern.

Biblical faith may have tempted us to dominion and control over nature and animal and plant life, but in its transcendent, moral orientation it has also inspired us to preach the good news, to visit the sick and those in prison, send emissaries to foreign countries at great personal cost, or start and maintain the institutions that build societies.

The church prays for the world, makes space for repentance and transcendence, practises hope in the face of death and decay, and breaks the power of revenge or utu in Jesus' name.

MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH PAGAN PEOPLE

For a growing number of people the church door is a barrier. Even Jesus would retire to the countryside to pray, not the temple.

As we go out from our churches to make contact with the world, a different form of gospel proclamation will be required. It will be helpful for us to rediscover emphases that provide some connection with paganised people - the wisdom literature in Scripture, the deep Hebraic connection to nature, and the ubiquity of nature images for God, Spirit and Kingdom.

And to remember that, strangely, at the heart of the Christian story is the visit of the eastern magi: a reminder that God in Christ was being clearly recognised and responded to by some who were not part of the covenant people.

Two thousand years ago these kings, who were both scientists and seers, were able to link Christ to celestial events. The church's future may be in welcoming the three astrologer kings and their gifts, while guarding against the darker side of any pagan renaissance, offering Christ to a newly paganised community.

NOTES

1. Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, (Darton Longman, 1993) p. 43

2. Quoted in an article in Stuff on the web at HYPERLINK http://www.stuff.co.nz October 31, Fairy Tale Image of Witches Paints a Wrong Picture, by Melanie Appleton and Dionne Christian.

*

The modern age has been the age of revolution, and the world we now inhabit has been shaped by a series of earth-shaking revolutions that have altered the cultural, economic, political, and personal lives we lead. Now, researcher George Barna declares a new revolution -- a revolution on behalf of spiritual vitality, but at the expense of the local church. In REVOLUTION, Barna never seems to take refuge in understatement. To the contrary, he demonstrates a marketer's bravado when he declares: “Whether you want to or not, you will have to take a stand in regard to the Revolution. It is on track to become the most significant recalibration of the American Christian body in more than a century. Your response ought not to be based on whether you are comfortable with it, but rather on its consistency with biblical principles and its capacity to advance the Kingdom of God. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, then you must understand this Revolution of faith because it is already impacting your life, and it will continue to do so in the years to come.”

So there. Of course, from the very onset some may question the earth-shaking significance of a “revolution” announced in a 140-page book, no matter how shocking its cover and publicity. Of course, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO was a short treatise as well, but this hardly seems a fair comparison.

When George Barna talks about the revolution he perceives, he speaks about “an explosion of spiritual energy and activity” that is “likely to be the most significant transition in the religious landscape that you will ever experience.” He begins his manifesto by illustrating his “revolution” by means of a conversation between David and Michael, two representative postmoderns. Both of these men, depicted as playing golf on Sunday morning rather than going to church, are described as having been “driven out of their longtime church by boredom and the inability to serve in ways to make use of their considerable skills and knowledge.” Beyond this, their response took the shape of two very different trajectories. David “decided to develop his own regimen of spiritual practices and activities in order to retain a vibrant spiritual life.” Michael, on the other hand, “chose to call a truce with God and simply get on with life, sans church.”

As Barna describes them, both think of themselves as “deeply spiritual” persons. Beyond this, both affirm the truth and reliability of the Bible and pray before meals. Both complain of being chastised by pastors for their failure to be involved in the local church.

Of the two, David represents Barna's “Revolutionary Christian.” As such, he is “not willing to play religious games” and has little interest “in being a part of a religious community that is not intentionally and aggressively advancing God's Kingdom.”

As Barna acknowledges, “We live in an era of hyperbole.” Evidently, he has decided to join in hyperbolic expression. He acknowledges that the very idea of revolution is one that has attracted the attention of marketers. He identifies the Revolutionaries as a group of relatively young adults, now numbering over two hundred million persons. They are frustrated with local church life, have grown to distrust ministry leaders, and are determined to do more than “go with the flow” of contemporary evangelicalism.

And who wouldn't want what Barna's Revolutionaries desire? “They are seeking a faith experience that is more robust and awe inspiring, a spiritual journey that prioritizes transformation at every turn, something worthy of the Creator whom their faith reflects. They are seeking the spark provided by a commitment to true revolution and thinking, behavior, and experience, where settling for what is merely good and above average is defeat.”

These high-demand Christians represent a threat to the established church. With an amazing lack of nuance, Barna consistently presents his Revolutionaries in a positive light and the local church in a negative light. When Revolutionaries are criticized by established churches, this is “simply because of their determination to honor the God they love.”

Consider Barna's description of these brave souls. “Like their role model, Jesus Christ, they ignite fierce resistance merely by being present and holy. It is perhaps that holy presence that will get Revolutionaries in the deepest trouble they will face -- and that will bring lasting healing to a culture that has rebelled for too long against its loving Creator. These Christian zealots are radically reshaping both American society and the Christian Church. Their legacy is likely to be a spiritual reformation of unprecedented proportions in the United States, and perhaps the world.”

Beyond this, Barna warns that Christians are not to judge these believers “who are dedicated to pleasing God and blessing people” when “they are true to biblical principles and commands.” There lies the main problem with Barna's Revolutionaries and the revolution he so eagerly promotes. Where this revolution falls short is seen precisely in light of the Bible's presentation of the normative Christian life and the means of grace whereby believers are shaped into Christlikeness.

We should be fair and open-minded in understanding the passions Barna presents as formative for the Revolutionaries. He identifies these as a desire for intimate worship, faith-based conversations, intentional spiritual growth, servanthood, resource investment, spiritual friendships, and family faith. While some might describe these passions with different language, no one can doubt that Barna is on to something when he points to these issues as the reason for the Revolutionaries' dissatisfaction with so many existing congregations. Almost everything he says about the inadequacy of local church life is validated by even a brief acquaintance with the superficiality of American evangelicalism.

We should remember that Barna's dissatisfaction with the church is not a new development. In 1998 he published THE SECOND COMING OF THE CHURCH, in which he warned: “At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, I believe the Church in America has no more than five years -- perhaps even less -- to turn itself around and begin to affect the culture, rather than be affected by it.”

Still, something has gone tragically wrong when a marketing researcher declares that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is simply doomed -- especially in terms of local congregations. “There is nothing inherently wrong with being involved in a local church,” he argues. “But realize that being part of a group that calls itself a 'church' does not make you saved, holy, righteous, or godly any more than being in Yankee Stadium makes you a professional baseball player. Participating in church-based activities does not necessarily draw you closer to God or prepare you for a life that satisfies Him or enhances your existence. Being a member of a congregation does not make you spiritually righteous anymore than being a member of the Democratic Party makes you a liberal wing nut.”

A closer look at that argument reveals a glaring non sequitur. It completely avoids the question of what the church SHOULD be, and it undercuts a basic biblical premise -- that the local church is SUPPOSED to be the very place where Christians are drawn into the very passions Barna identifies -- and into so much more.

The fatal attractiveness of his argument is found most clearly in this short paragraph: “Being in a right relationship with God and His people is what matters. Scripture teaches us that devoting your life to loving God with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul is what honors Him. Being part of a local church may facilitate that. Or it might not.”

Barna wants to identify the Church at the “macro” level as the universal fellowship of all believers. But the local church -- representing the “micro” dimension of institutional church life, is more often an impediment to spiritual growth, in his view, than a means of shaping Christians into authentic discipleship.

We must remember that Barna is a market researcher and not a theologian. Still, he has ventured into this territory and risks making sweeping theological statements that simply will not bear closer scrutiny. He implies that the Bible reveals no normative ecclesiology and that local churches, as known today, are simply “abiblical” -- not addressed in the Bible at all.

He argues: “The Bible does not rigidly define the corporate practices, rituals, or structures that must be embraced in order to have a proper church. It does, however, offer direction regarding the importance and integration of fundamental spiritual disciplines into one's life.”

That is true up to a point, of course. It is true that today's pattern of church organization with publications, youth ministries, gymnasiums, and church buildings is not drawn directly from the New Testament. Of all persons, a marketer should understand this reality very well, since he is best positioned to understand how the challenges of the modern world have been met with organizational responses at the local church level.

What George Barna misses is the big picture of New Testament ecclesiology -- a picture that identifies congregational life as the very means whereby believers are shaped into Christlikeness and Christian maturity through the ministry of the Word, the fellowship of the saints, and the normative patterns of church life. Barna's Revolutionaries may be involved on spiritual quests that have added dimensions of meaning to their lives, but what they lack is the accountability, deployment, mutuality, and koinonia of the local church as envisioned in the New Testament.

Only the briefest of glances at the New Testament, looking particularly at the book of Acts and at the various letters to the churches, would reveal the centrality of preaching, discipline, congregational fellowship, and the central practices of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Barna offers genuine insight when he points to the larger cultural trends of generational transition, the rise of a new view of life, dissatisfaction with irrelevant structures, the impact of technology, the importance of genuine personal relationships, direct participation in reality, and the quest for deeper meaning. Still, one must wonder about Barna's nearly complete lack of nuance. What are we to make of Barna's claim that “Jesus Christ is the focal point of the life of every Christian Revolutionary today. It is His call to revolutionary living that beckons us and guides us on this path?” Are the Revolutionaries never wrong? Beyond this, Barna's definition of spiritual transformation seems amazingly superficial. “Spiritual transformation is any significant and lasting transition in your life wherein you switch from one substantial perspective or practice to something wholly different that genuinely alters you at a very basic level,” he writes. That's all?

He points to a cluster of what he calls “spiritual mini-movements” as indicative of where the Revolutionaries are at work. These mini-movements are, he argues, reshaping the shape of Christianity in America, from the emergence of cyber-churches and house churches to a new emphasis upon family and home-schooling.

Part of the problem undoubtedly lies in Barna's marketing approach to the church. A look through Barna's many books -- all widely read and helpful in understanding larger cultural trends -- reveals that he has never articulated anything close to a New Testament vision of the local church.

In GOD IN THE WASTELAND, David F. Wells points to the problem of approaching the church from the angle of marketing. “A business is in the market simply to sell its products; it doesn't ask consumers to surrender themselves to the product. The church, on the other hand, does call for such a surrender. It is not merely marketing a product; it is declaring Christ's sovereignty over all of life and declaring the necessity of obedient submission to him and to the truth of his Word. When the church is properly fulfilling the task it has been assigned, it is demanding far more than any business would ever think of asking prospective customers. Simply put, the church is in the business of truth, not profit. Its message -- the message of God's Word -- enters the innermost place in a person's life, the place of secrets and anguish, of hope and despair, of guilt and forgiveness, and it demands to be heard and obeyed in a way that not even the most brazen and unprincipled advertisers would think of emulating.”

As in the past, George Barna has served the church by describing and documenting trends that are shaping the culture and in revealing the superficiality and failings of all too many local congregations. Regrettably, his prescription is even worse than his diagnosis, for minimizing the importance of the local church runs directly counter to the Bible's vision for the Christian life. The real answer to Barna's concern is the recovery of biblical ecclesiology -- a recovery that would relativize and revolutionize the entire landscape of contemporary Christianity in America.

The revolution we truly need is a recovery of the New Testament vision of the local church -- a comprehensive embrace of the totality of congregational life, including all of the functions and marks revealed in Scripture. This is the great task to which this generation of Christians is called -- and we will need Barna's Revolutionaries in order to make this happen. Channeling all these energies into a comprehensive recovery of the biblical vision for local churches would be a revolution worth joining -- and worth celebrating. VIVA that REVOLUTION!

*

The greatest danger of sexual sin is not the physical or emotional consequences, but the spiritual ones, a Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary ethicist writes in the seminary’s academic journal, Faith & Mission.

“Sexual sin is a manifestation of rebellion against God and will have a negative impact on the relationship between believer and God,” writes David Jones, assistant professor of Christian Ethics in his article “The Asperity of Sexual Sin.”

“Therefore,” he continues, “believers must be vigilant in personally avoiding sexual sins and in both confronting and ministering to those among whom they minister who have fallen into sexual transgressions.”

Jones argues that numerous passages of Scripture, as well as a theological understanding of the nature of man as a physical and spiritual creature, point the way toward a “sexual-spiritual nexus,” or close connection between sexuality and spirituality.

Also, Romans 1:21-28, among many other passages of Scripture, teach clearly that God’s passive judgment falls on those engaged in sexual sins.

“The connection between sexuality and spirituality presented in this passage is self-evident; when men and women deny God and fail to worship Him, He passes judgment by allowing them to gratify their own corrupt sexual desires,” Jones said. “The equation, then, is clear: spiritual sin results in sexual perversion.”

Jones ultimately argues that there are two clear biblical paradigms that point the way toward understanding this sexual-spiritual bond. The first is that since sexual sin is committed using one’s body, it inevitably affects one’s relationship with God because the believer’s body is a temple of the Spirit. The second paradigm is the analogy made in Scripture between sex in marriage -– in other words, the “one-flesh union” -– and the relationship of Christ and His bride, the church.

“Sexual intercourse, when engaged in according to God’s plan, is spiritual in that it pictures, by way of analogy, the Christ/church relationship,” Jones said.

Jones concludes his article by noting that since there is such a close connection between sexuality and spirituality, the spiritual consequences of sin, like alienation from God, outweigh even the physical consequences like disease and the emotional consequences of damaged human relationships.

*

Religion has barged its way noisily and violently onto the European political stage in recent months.

Islamic radicals set bombs on commuter trains in Madrid that killed 191 people last March. Another extremist Muslim in Amsterdam is charged with brutally killing Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November. An angry mob of British Sikhs, throwing bricks and wrestling with police, stormed a theater in Birmingham last December, forcing the closure of a play they found offensive.

But in the shadow of such shocking events are signs of a quieter and less divisive return of religion and spirituality to European lives. “God is back among intellectuals,” says Aleksander Smolar, a leading European thinker who heads the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw and teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris. “You can feel there is a problem of soul in Europe; people are conscious of a void and there is a certain crisis of secularism.”

Seeking to fill that void, several dozen faithful Catholics gathered one recent Tuesday evening, as they do each week, to pray in the freshly painted basement of the St. Denys church in northern Paris.

One after another, standing in a circle, they gave thanks aloud to God: one woman was grateful that an argument with her son had not gotten out of hand; another prayed for continued strength to keep looking for a job; a third, in tears, thanked the Lord “for helping me put up with all the humiliation I suffer.”

And then they all sang a simple hymn. Some swayed; some held their palms outstretched; others closed their eyes.

For the past nine years, the parish of St. Denys has been run by a priest from the “New Path Community,” a charismatic Catholic movement that has borrowed much from the American Pentecostal tradition.

While the pews in traditional Catholic churches have emptied, the New Path and similar communities have blossomed, attracting thousands of believers to prayer groups and Sunday masses across Europe.

They are drawn, says parish priest Louis-Marc Thomy, “by the charisma of a community life. They say they feel unity and peace with us. And they find joy in rediscovering faith in a joyous manner.”

On the face of it, religion has continued to suffer setbacks in Europe recently. Just last year, the French government reinforced its secular approach by banning Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols from schools.

Catholic teaching on such questions as abortion, contraception, divorce, and homosexuality, meanwhile, is honored more in the breach than in the observance.

That would seem to continue a secularist trend visible in Europe for several decades. That trend is offset, however, by a growing awareness that European secularism is an aberration in a world where religion is largely on the rise.

The prominent role that religion continues to play in American public life, meanwhile, has undermined the widespread European view that modern societies inevitably grow more secular, and that religion is an attribute of underdevelopment.

“A preoccupation with spirituality is much more present now at a religious and philosophical level” than it was a few years ago, says Dominique Moisi, a French political analyst.

GROWING INTEREST IN SPIRITUALITY

In Britain, the country's largest bookseller has noticed that preoccupation, and moved to meet it. Expanding the shelf space it devotes to religious and spiritual books, “we have increased our range over the last few years,” says Lucy Avery, a spokeswoman for the Waterstone's chain.

Sales of such books rose by nearly 4 percent last year, she adds, and titles such as the Dalai Lama's “The Art of Happiness” and a modern-language “Street Bible” have become bestsellers.

“I have noticed that a lot of general-interest publishers are turning to religious books now for commercial reasons, because that is what the public wants,” says Laurence Vandamme, a spokeswoman for Cerf, the largest French religious publisher.

In France, leading philosopher Régis Debray, once a comrade in arms of Che Guevara in the Bolivian mountains, has devoted two of his most recent books to explorations of God and religion. Le Monde, the French establishment's newspaper of record, this year launched a glossy bimonthly “World of Religion.”

“The need for meaning affects the secularized and de- ideologized West most of all,” wrote Frédéric Lenoir, the editor of the new magazine, in his first editorial. “Ultramodern individuals mistrust religious institutions ... and they no longer believe in the radiant tomorrow promised by science and politics; they are still confronted, though, by the big questions about origins, suffering, and death.”

Rocco Buttiglione, a confidant of the pope who was denied a bid to join the European Commission last year because of his staunch Catholic views on social issues, has a ready answer to such questions. “For a long time they told us that science and maths would give us the identity we need,” he says. “Both failed. Now when Europeans ask themselves 'Who are we?’ they don't have an answer. I suggest we are Christians.”

That opinion is not widely shared. Critics point to the millions of immigrant Muslim Europeans living in France, Germany, Britain, and Spain, not to mention Europe's indigenous Muslims in the Balkans.

Nor are there many signs of a resurgence of organized religion on a continent where church attendance has been plummeting almost everywhere in recent decades.

Yet 74 percent of Europeans say they believe in a God, a spirit, or a life force, according to the latest findings of the European Values Study, a 30-year, Continentwide survey. And youth workers in Britain are finding “consistent evidence ... that a secular generation is being replaced by a generation much more interested in spiritual issues,” says Stuart Murray-Williams, a theologian at Oxford University who recently published a book entitled “After Christendom.”

A wide array of religious groups has sprung up across Europe to meet that generation's needs, most notably Buddhist communities.

“I've noticed a steady increase in interest,” says Suvannavira, a Russian-born, British-educated monk who runs the Western Buddhist Order's Paris outpost in a cramped storefront meditation center. “Our order has doubled in size since 1990.”

“The discourse has changed,” Dr. Murray-Williams says. “Ten or 15 years ago, any mention of spiritual experiences would have drawn blank looks. Today people are hungry to talk about them.” Murray-Williams says it's too soon to say what all this portends.

“There is a kind of inchoate spirituality that could be significant, or it could be a passing trend,” he says. “It will be a while before we know whether or not it is strong enough to challenge the culture of secularism.”

That culture is showing signs of wear, argues Jacques Delors, who once bemoaned Europe's lack of “soul” when he was president of the European Commission. “I fear that the construction of Europe is sinking into absolute materialism,” he worries. “Things aren't going well for society, so society is little by little going to start asking itself what life is for, what death is, and what happens afterwards.”

Some European politicians are picking up on that message. One with a particularly keen nose for the way the political wind is blowing is Nicolas Sarkozy, head of Jacques Chirac's conservative ruling party in France and a leading contender to be the country's next president.

“Politicians should not talk only about the economy, about social affairs, about the environment or security. We should also tackle spiritual questions,” he said in a series of interviews published last November as a book, which has already sold 65,000 copies. “Religion's place in France at the beginning of the third millennium is central.”

Suggesting that the state should subsidize churches and mosques - a radical break from the country's 100-year-old secular tradition - Mr. Sarkozy insists that he will “continue to argue for a new relationship between religions and the public authorities.”

Sarkozy's novel approach, says Mr. Moisi, is based on “a sense that while for some, religion is the problem, it can also be part of the solution. He is bringing a kind of oxygen to the debate.”

Mr. Buttiglione is bringing his own oxygen into that debate, devoting his time now to setting up a think tank and a popular movement to promote his beliefs. Traveling around most of Europe, he says, he has found “enormous interest” in his campaign “for a Christian presence in European politics.”

The Vatican has launched itself actively into the fray as well, sending teams from Rome to rally the Spanish faithful against Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's plans to legalize gay marriage, speaking out loudly in favor of Mr. Buttiglione, and lobbying hard for a reference to God in the European Constitution. [Editor's note: The original version of this article misstated the prime minister's title.]

Though the Catholic church lost that battle, it can take some consolation from Article 52 of the proposed Constitution, concerning the European Union's relationship with churches. “Recognizing their identity and their specific contribution,” the article reads, “the Union shall maintain an open, transparent, and regular dialogue with these churches and organizations.”

CAUSE FOR UNION

There is considerable scope, some religious leaders suggest, for those churches to unite in a bid to inject their common values into public life. After all, mainstream Christians, Jews, and Muslims share many views on family matters, and the sanctity of human life.

Indeed, some observers wonder whether the most significant “clash of civilizations” in Europe may pit, not Christians against Muslims, but believers of all faiths against nonbelievers.

There have been signs of such a development in recent months. The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, stood up for Muslims against the government's school ban on head scarves last year, for example, branding it an assault on religious freedom.

Similarly, both the Protestant and Catholic prelates in the English city of Birmingham showed understanding toward Sikhs who disrupted a theatrical performance last December.

The Sikhs were angered by the way the play, “Dishonour,” written by a Sikh woman, included scenes of beatings, rape, and murder in a Sikh temple.

Several hundred of them stormed the Birmingham Repertory Theatre last December, causing management to halt the show and cancel all further performances for fear of unrest.

“Such a deliberate, even if fictional, violation of the sacred place of the Sikh religion demeans the sacred place of every religion,” Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham wrote in a statement. “People of all faiths, therefore, will be offended.”

It is unclear how many people were offended, because the rise in spirituality has not translated into growing support for organized churches, mosques or temples. Indeed, says Murray-Williams, the violence that has accompanied the eruption of religion into European public life “may exacerbate the difference between religion and spirituality.

“Many people see spirituality as something positive, while religion is seen as a system that can be divisive,” he says.

But the signs are there, says Mr. Delors, to suggest that religious sentiment may yet take firmer hold in European life. “I don't expect a wholesale social mutation,” he says. “But I can see little white stones marking out a path.”

________

Sophie Arie in Rome and Geoff Pingree in Madrid contributed to this report.

*

Frank Laubach wrote of how, in his personal experiment of moment-by-moment submission to the will of God, the fine texture of his work and life experience was transformed. In January of 1930 he began to cultivate the habit of turning his mind to Christ for one second out of every minute.

After only four weeks he reported, “I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in little things is what so astonishes me, for I never have felt it this way before. I need something, and turn round to find it waiting for me. I must work, to be sure, but there is God working along with me.”

From a lonely missionary post in the Philippines, God raised Frank Laubach to the status of Christian world statesman and spokesman for Christ. He founded the World Literacy Crusade, still in operation today, and without any political appointment he was influential on United States foreign policy in the post-World War II years. But he was forever and foremost Christ's man, and always knew that his brilliant ideas and incredible energy and effectiveness conscious interface with God.

=====================

From http://www.mrrena.com/lau.shtml by Eric Knickerbocker

FRANK LAUBACH (1884–1970)

In 1915 Frank Laubach went with his wife to the Philippine Islands as a missionary. After founding churches on the island of Mindanao, he established and became dean of Union College in Manila. In 1930 he returned to Mindanao to work with the Mohammedan Moros who regarded the Christian Filipinos as their enemies. Laubach, however, went with a heart filled with the presence of God and sought only to live among them, not trying to coerce them into Christianity, but living each moment with a sense of God’s presence.

It is estimated that through his educational efforts he was responsible for teaching one-half of the ninety thousand people in that area to read and write. More than that, he has brought thousands of people to a richer experience of God. The following reading comes from the letters he wrote during his Mindanao days.

Excerpts from LETTERS BY A MODERN MYSTIC:

1. OPEN WINDOWS

January 3, 1930

To be able to look backward and say, “This, THIS has been the finest year of any life” — that is glorious! But anticipation! To be able to look ahead and say, “The present year can and will be better!” — that is more glorious! I have done nothing but open windows — God has done the rest. There has been a succession of marvelous experiences of the friendship of God. I resolved that I would succeed better this year with my experiment of filling every minute full of the thought of God than I succeeded last year. And I added another resolve — to be as wide open toward people and their need as I am toward God. Windows open outward as well as upward. Windows open ESPECIALLY downward where people need the most!

2. SUBMISSION: THE FIRST AND LAST DUTY

January 20, 1930

Submission is the first and last duty of man. That is exactly what I have been needing in my Christian life. Two years ago a profound dissatisfaction led me to begin trying to line up my actions with the will of God about every fifteen minutes or every half hour. Other people to whom I confessed this intention said it was impossible. I judge from what I have said that few people are trying even that. But this year I have started out trying to live all my waking moments in conscious listening to the inner voice, asking without ceasing, “What, Father, do you desire said? What, Father, do you desire done this minute?”

3. FEELING GOD IN EACH MOVEMENT

January 26, 1930

For the past few days I have been experimenting in a more complete surrender than ever before. I am taking by deliberate act of will, enough time from each hour to give God much thought. Yesterday and today I have made a new adventure, which is not easy to express. I am feeling God in each movement, by an act of will — willing that He shall direct these fingers that now strike this typewriter — willing that He shall pour through my steps as I walk — willing that He shall direct my words as I speak, and my very jaws as I eat!

You will object to this intense introspection. Do not try it, unless you feel unsatisfied with your own relationship with God, but at least allow me to realize all the leadership of God I can. I am disgusted with the pettiness and futility of my unled self. If the way out is not more perfect slavery to God, then what is the way out? I am trying to be utterly free from everybody, free from my own self, but completely enslaved to the will of God every moment of this day.

4. MOMENT BY MOMENT

We used to sing a song in the church in Benton which I liked, but which I never really practiced until now. It runs:

Moment by moment, I’m kept in His love;

Moment by moment I’ve life from above;

Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;

Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.

It is exactly that “moment by moment,” every waking moment, surrender, responsiveness, obedience, sensitiveness, pliability, “lost in His love,” that I now have the mind-bent to explore with all my might. It means two burning passions: First, to be like Jesus. Second, to respond to God as a violin responds to the bow of the master. Open your soul and entertain the glory of God and after a while that glory will be reflected in the world about you and in the very clouds above your head.

5. ONLY ONE THING NOW

January 29, 1930

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in the little things is what astonishes me. I seem to have to make sure of only one thing now, and every other thing “takes care of itself,” or I prefer to say what is more true, God takes care of all the rest. My part is to LIVE IN THIS HOUR IN CONTINUOUS INNER CONVERSATION WITH GOD AND IN PERFECT RESPONSIVENESS TO HIS WILL. TO MAKE THIS HOUR GLORIOUSLY RICH. This seems to be all I need to think about.

6. UNDISCOVERED CONTINENTS OF SPIRITUAL LIVING

March 1, 1930

The sense of being led by an unseen hand which takes mine while another hand reaches ahead and prepares the way, grows upon me daily. I do not need to strain at all to find opportunity. Perhaps a man who has been an ordained minister since 1914 ought to be ashamed to confess that he never felt the joy of hourly, minute by minute — now what shall I call it? — more than surrender.

It is a will act. I compel my mind to open out toward God. I wait and listen with determined sensitiveness. I fix my attention there, and sometimes it requires a long time early in the morning to attain that mental state. I determine not to get out of bed until that mind set, that concentration upon God, is settled. It also requires determination to keep it there. After a while, perhaps, it will become a habit, and the sense of effort will grow less. But why do I harp on this inner experience? Because I feel convinced that for me and for you who read there lie ahead undiscovered continents of spiritual living compared with which we are infants in arms.

But how “practical” is this for the average man? It seems now to me that yonder plowman could be like Calixto Sanidad, when he was a lonesome and mistreated plowboy, “with my eyes on the furrow, and my hands on the lines, but my thoughts on God.” The millions at looms and lathes could make the hours glorious. Some hour spent by some night watchman might be the most glorious ever lived on earth.

7. HOW INFINITELY RICHER

March 15, 1930

Every waking moment of the week I have been looking toward Him, with perhaps the exception of an hour or two. How infinitely richer this direct first hand grasping of God Himself is, than the old method which I used and recommended for years, the endless reading of devotional books. Almost it seems to me now that the very Bible cannot be read as a substitute for meeting God soul to soul and face to face.

8. CAN IT BE DONE?

March 23, 1930

We can keep two things in mind at once. Indeed we cannot keep one thing in mind more than half a second. Mind is a flowing something. It oscillates. Concentration is merely the continuous return to the same problem from a million angles. So my problem is this: Can I bring God back in my mind-flow every few seconds so that God shall always be in my mind as an after image, shall always be one of the elements in every concept and precept? I choose to make the rest of my life an experiment in answering this question.

I do not invite anybody else to follow this arduous path. I wish many might. We need to know, for example, Can a laboring man successfully attain this continuous surrender to God? Can a man working at a machine pray for people all day long, and at the same time do His task efficiently? Can a mother wash dishes, care for the babies, continuously talking to God?

If you are like myself, this has been a pretty strong diet. So I will put something simpler and more attainable: “Any hour of any day may be made perfect by merely choosing. It is perfect if one looks to God that entire hour, waiting for His leadership all through the hour and trying hard to do every tiny thing exactly as God wishes it done.”

9. DIFFICULTY AND FAILURE

April 19, 1930

If this record of a soul [SIC] struggle to find God is to be complete it must not omit the story of difficulty and failure. I have not succeeded very well so far. This week, for example, has not been one of the finest in my life, but I resolve not to give up the effort. Yet strain does not seem to do good. At this moment I feel something “let go” inside, and lo, God is here! It is a heart melting “here-ness,” a lovely whispering of father to child, and the reason I did not have it before was because I failed to let go.

10. LETTING GOD CONTROL

April 22, 1930

This morning I started out fresh, by finding a rich experience of God in the sunrise. Then I tried to let Him control my hands while I was shaving and dressing and eating breakfast. Now I am trying to let God control my hands as I pound the typewriter keys. There is nothing that we can do excepting to throw ourselves open to God. There is, there must be, so much more in Him than He can give us. It ought to be tremendously helpful to be able to acquire the habit of reaching out strongly after God’s thoughts, and to ask, “God, what have you to put into my mind now if only I can be large enough?” That waiting, eager attitude ought to give God the chance He needs.

Oh, this thing of keeping in constant touch with God, making Him the object of my thought and the companion of my conversations, is the most amazing thing I ever ran across. IT IS WORKING. I cannot do it even half a day — not yet, but I believe I shall be doing it some day for the entire day. It is a matter of acquiring a new habit of thought. Now I LIKE God’s presence so much that when for a half hour or so He slips out of mind — as He does many times a day, I feel as though I had deserted Him, and as though I had lost something very precious in my life.

*

Love her or loathe her, Oprah Winfrey has become proof that you can't be too rich, too thin or too committed to rising to your place in the world. With 49 million viewers each week in the USA and more in the 122 other countries to which the show is distributed, Winfrey reaches more people in a TV day than most preachers can hope to reach in a lifetime of sermons.

“One of the things that's key,” says Marcia Nelson, author of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO OPRAH, “is she walks her talk. That's really, really important in today's culture. People who don't walk their talk fall from a great pedestal — scandals in the Catholic Church, televangelism scandals. If you're not doing what you say you do, woe be unto you.”

In Ellen DeGeneres' stand-up comedy act several years ago, she included a joke about getting to heaven and finding that God is a black woman named Oprah.

In a November poll conducted at Beliefnet.com, a site that looks at how religions and spirituality intersect with popular culture, 33% of 6,600 respondents said Winfrey has had “a more profound impact” on their spiritual lives than their clergypersons. Cathleen Falsani, religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently suggested, “I wonder, has Oprah become America's pastor?”

At one of her LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE seminars, Winfrey repeatedly spoke of her relationship with God. She even sang a chorus of “I Surrender All.”

“I live inside God's dream for me. I don't try to tell God what I'm supposed to do,” she told the crowd. “God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself.”

Claire Zulkey, 26, an Oprah follower who has written about Winfrey in her online blog at zulkey.com, says, “I think that if this were the equivalent of the Middle Ages and we were to fast-forward 1,200 years, scholars would definitely think that this Oprah person was a deity, if not a canonized being.”

One of Winfrey's most appealing subtexts is that she's anti-institutional, says Chris Altrock, minister of Highland Street Church of Christ in Memphis. He says Winfrey believes there are many paths to God, not just one. After doing his doctoral research three years ago on postmodernism religion, a religious era that began in the 1970s as Christians became deeply interested in spirituality and less interested in any established church, he came up with what he calls “The Church of Oprah,” referring to the culture that has created her.

“Our culture is changing,” he says, “as churches are in decline and the bulk of a new generation is growing up outside of religion.” Instead, they're turning to the Church of Oprah.

“People who have no religion relate to her,” Nelson says.

________

Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When is the ABSENCE of fire a cause for alarm? When spiritual fire is crucial for inflaming passion for God and compassion for the world, but one generation ignores the ignition of biblical spiritual formation in the next, then sound the alarm.

Asaph sounded the alarm in his generation by writing Psalm 78, a sad history of one generation’s failure to pass the flame of faith to the next. The prophet-poet was inciting his generation to commit holy arson, to set fire to the household of faith by telling “the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonders that He has done” and by teaching them to live out His laws of love “that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Psalm 78:4-7).

As in Asaph’s day, the spiritual formation of our next generation is in danger of being extinguished (see my article “Heavenly, Or Hellish, Creatures” in BREAKPOINT WORLDVIEW, September 2007 [Kerux illustration #34895]). Recent research published in books such as Barna’s REVOLUTIONARY PARENTING and The Fermi Project’s UNCHRISTIAN reveal that “we are failing to train children to become the spiritual champions that God intended them to be” (REVOLUTIONARY PARENTING, page 10). When “four out of five young churchgoers say that Christianity is anti-homosexual; half describe it as judgmental, too involved in politics, hypocritical, and confusing; one-third believe their faith is old-fashioned and out of touch with reality; and one-quarter of young Christians believe it is boring and insensitive to others,” it is clear we have left the next generation of Christians confused about the faith we have passed along (UNCHRISTIAN, page 33). My own work in local church ministry to middle-school through college-age students over the last 20 years leads me to conclude along with others that “only 20% of students who attended church regularly before college will attend church at all after two years in college” (COMMENT MAGAZINE, JUNE 2007).

EMBERS OF HOPE

Being a father of young ones myself, I am prone to spiral downward into parental despair in the face of such news. Apparently, I am not alone, considering “fewer than one out of every five parents of young children believe that they are doing a good job of training their children morally and spiritually” (REVOLUTIONARY PARENTING, page 10). But there is always hope. Our Father is working His plan to build His household into a place where He will delight to dwell (Ephesians 2:19-22). We must remember that He is the “faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love” with His children generation after generation (Deuteronomy 7:9; Psalm 105:8). Read Exodus chapters one and two, and you will see embers of hope glowing among a people who were almost convinced they had been forgotten by God. Never forget those fiery, faithful midwives whose trust in their covenant-keeping God rallied them to risk their lives to rescue the next generation of God’s people. Let the example of the parents of Moses, who feared God more than the surrounding culture and shrewdly fought for the life of their son, rekindle hope in you (Acts 7:17-22; Hebrews 11:23). How did the midwives and Moses’ mother and father come to have such fearless faith and pass it on to the next generation? The text does not explicitly say, but certainly during their own childhood they must have had parents and a community of godly adults who diligently told and showed them God’s ways (Deuteronomy 6:7). By faith, the midwives and Moses’ parents kept fanning the flame until Moses caught fire, and Moses was consumed by God (Hebrews 11:25-27).

INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIGHTING FIRES

Our Father is still faithfully passing the torch from generation to generation through the process of what the Apostle Paul might have called “spiritual parenting” (1 Corinthians 4:15-16). In 1 Thessalonians 2, he gives us a picture of this process from which we can learn to create communities that produce consumed Christians rather than Christian consumers. The church at Thessalonica is the only one that Paul commends for having all three marks of maturity in place: faith, hope, and love (1 Thessalonians 1:3). But how did the flame of faith get sparked, the fire of hope get stoked, and the fervor of love begin to spread light and life like wildfire in their world? Beginning in chapter two, the apostle reminds them how this happened and concludes his letter by encouraging them never to quench the Spirit’s fire in light of the imminent return of Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I believe that a pattern emerges in chapter two that will be instructive for every Christian parent, grandparent, church leader, youth worker, Sunday School teacher, small group leader, and pastor. The pattern looks like this: Formation, Fortification, and Vocation.*

This pattern was illustrated for me recently as I built several fires during our family’s first camping trip. The first phase of fire lighting is FORMATION. In order to spark the flame and get the fire going I needed a combination of dry tinder, heat, and oxygen. Some dry twigs and paper, a lighter, and a make-shift fan did the job just fine. Once the fire was burning it was time for the FORTIFICATION phase. I began to slowly add bigger, weightier branches, and as the fire grew in size and intensity I was able to feed it with logs that kept it burning hot. Now the fire was ready to fulfill its intended purpose: to keep us warm, to help us boil water for coffee and cocoa, to cook our food (burgers and s’mores!), to light our campsite at night, and to provide a warm place for us to entertain our campground neighbors. These functions all happen in the VOCATION phase, which naturally flows from the formation and fortification phases.

FORMATION: SPARKING THE FLAME OF FAITH

In 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8, Paul describes the formation stage of discipleship as SPIRITUAL MOTHERING. This stage is characterized by the image of a mother nursing her own children, gently providing the context for a fresh, fragile new life. Paul continues the nursery imagery in verse 8: “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” In this FORMATION STAGE the fire of faith combusts and is carefully kindled into a living flame. Notice the three ingredients needed to ignite this fire: the Spirit of God blows on the dry tinder of the Law as it meets the heat of the Gospel, sparking a relationship with the Father that burns with holy passion. Paul knew that the Spirit loves to blow faith into a soul that is given the CONTENT of the Gospel in the CONTEXT of a loving relationship with a Gospel-driven discipler (v. 8).

We must offer the students and children in our homes, neighborhoods, and churches the MESSAGE of the cross in the MIDST of loving relationships with people who are being shaped by that same message. In his modern classic on parenting adolescents, AGE OF OPPORTUNITY, Paul Tripp explains that our children must know that they live in a THEOLOGICAL community. We need to show and tell them that everything in life has to do with their relationship with God (the first great commandment: “love God”). They also must realize that they live in a SOCIAL community. We must explain and exemplify the truth that everything in life has to do with our relationships with people (the second great commandment: “love your neighbor”). They must learn and live in households and houses of God that help them see that they were made to love God and others, but that they, like us, miss the mark again and again. But we must never let them forget that they live in a REDEMPTIVE community (the Gospel: “repent and believe”).

When they discover that they are sinners and law-of-God-breakers, we must bring the glorious warmth of the Gospel of Jesus to bear on their tinder hearts, praying that the Spirit will blow and set them ablaze. We must teach them to be like Paul, who wrestled with sin and rested in Jesus, by encouraging them to take their sins to the cross again and again, embracing the Good News of Christ’s forgiveness as their own, stoking the flame of faith (Romans 7:21-25). Tripp highlights what should be true of every family and church family: “The key to the family functioning as a redemptive community, where the Gospel is the glue that holds the family together, is parents who so trust in Christ that they are ready and willing to confess their faults to their children . . . Parents who admit their sin will position themselves to model the Gospel for their children daily.” This is precisely what the Apostle Paul and his cohorts did for the Thessalonians and others (1 Thessalonians 2:8; 1 Timothy 1:12-17).

FORTIFICATION: STOKING THE FIRE WITH HOPE

In 1 Thessalonians 2:11-13, Paul describes the fortification stage of discipleship as SPIRITUAL FATHERING. Notice the words used here: EXHORTED, ENCOURAGED, CHARGED. This stage of discipleship requires strong, impassioned pleas for the disciple to walk worthily of God by way of the Word of God (vv. 12-13). Paul paints the picture of a father who comes alongside his child and uses the Word of God to point out a path that will lead this young one to follow God’s call to live in and for His kingdom and His glory (v. 12).

The fire is burning and the coals are hot, but in order for this fire to fulfill its purpose, it must be fed with bigger and weightier fuel. If I do this too soon, I will suffocate the flames. Here is where I think the Church gets the cart before the horse. All too often we think that if we just pile on Bible content, our kids will be sure to catch fire for Jesus. In doing so, we may smother their souls. We must not skip the formation stage. Yes, there is content there: the Law of God and the life, death, and resurrected life of Jesus. But there must be content in the context of prayer and a relationship that shows young folks how the Law convicts us with the truth of our sin and the Gospel convinces us of the grace of Jesus.

Even when our students are ready for fortification with the bigger and weightier truths of the kingdom of God and the whole counsel of Scripture, we need to teach these to them like Jesus taught His disciples: He walked alongside them, listened to the concerns and questions of their hearts, and then “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). This is how Paul, following the example of Jesus, fortified the Thessalonians with spiritual fathering. He built the Word of God into them, and they heard and accepted it “as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers,” undoubtedly producing the “steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” for which he commended them earlier (1 Thessalonians 2:13, 1:3; Romans 15:4).

VOCATION: SPREADING THE FERVOR OF LOVE

In 1 Thessalonians 2:14, Paul describes the vocation stage of discipleship as SPIRITUAL BROTHERING. Throughout 1 Thessalonians, Paul constantly refers to the believers as “brothers.” By the time they receive this letter these believers, who were once newborn babes and then children in Christ, are now full-grown adults in the faith, brothers to and co-laborers with Paul. How do we know they have achieved this level of maturity? Paul tells us that they are now “imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea,” suffering the same persecution that other congregations have suffered (v. 14). Timothy brought back a report of the love for God and others that was being produced in these disciples (1 Thessalonians 3:6; 4:1,9). They were fully grown, fulfilling their vocation to love God and others in the everyday, ordinary places where God had placed them (4:11-12).

This final stage of discipleship is what Paul elsewhere called “equipping the saints for the work of ministry” that they might be servant-hearted ministers to everyone around them (Ephesians 4:12). We want the next generation to aspire to loving service of the people in their worlds with the fire that is in them: offering the warmth of friendship with God and His people, the nourishment of soul that only the Word of God can give, the light of truth in a culture of darkened minds, and the life of the resurrected Jesus.

LESSONS LEARNED AROUND A CAMPFIRE

When my family camped together those few days in the mountains, I made a few observations that I think will apply to discipling the next generation as well. First, I HAD TO BE CONVINCED THAT I NEEDED TO LIGHT A FIRE. That did not take long. As the darkness and coldness increased, so did my desire to light the fire. Look around you, particularly at the next generation. Do you see the darkness of mind and coldness of heart growing? Ask Jesus to give you His heart for these young ones who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

Second, I HAD TO DO WHAT I COULD WITH WHAT I HAD. I did not have all the latest in fire-starting equipment and material. I had what I needed to get started, but when I could I found people and places that would better equip me for the task. If you know Jesus, you have what you need to start discipling the next generation. Begin to walk alongside young people, getting to know them, praying for them, learning from them, developing a tender compassion for them. Take what little you know about the Law of God and the Good News about how Jesus saves us from sin to be His servants and talk about how God is using these truths to transform your life. Let them see you repent and believe the Gospel. Pray for the Spirit to blow. And when you can, read a book or ask someone with more experience to help you learn about how to disciple a young person.

Third, I HAD TO STAY ENGAGED WITH ALL THREE STAGES OF FIRE LIGHTING. Fires will burn out unless they are tended. In order to keep the fire hot and useful for its vocation, I have to keep forming and fortifying it. Grown believers still need the Law, the Gospel, and the Spirit to fan the flame of faith. They still need big and weighty truth from God’s Word to stoke the fire of hope. Without faith and hope, there will be no fuel for living out our vocation to spread the fervor of love for God and others (Galatians 5:6; Ephesians 1:17-20).

Finally, I NOTICED THAT MY KIDS WERE FASCINATED WITH AND RESPECTFUL OF THE PROCESS OF BUILDING A FIRE. If my children could have played with, poked, and prodded that campfire all day and night, they would have been happy campers. “Daddy, can I help you start the fire this time? I’ll be careful. Will you show me how?” What will happen if the young people in your world see you lighting fires in discipling relationships? They will be drawn to it. They will want to know how to do for others what you have done with them. And the fire will keep burning, one generation to the next.

Have you noticed the neglect of intentional spiritual formation for the next generation in your family, neighborhood, or church? Start committing holy arson in the household of faith, and then sound the alarm for others to wake up and join you.

________

Jimmy Davis is an ordained teaching elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. He and his wife, Christine, are currently planting RIVERSIDE CHURCH, a family of home churches, in the historic Hardin Valley community of Knox County, Tenn.

______

* My thanks to Rev. John Wood of Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church for a conversation with the student ministry staff that sparked my understanding of this process several years ago.

The concept of spirituality as a lone personal quest is hardly new to Christian history. Nevertheless, the development of this pattern into a massive cultural movement is a new development -- and one that is reshaping many churches.

The trend has caught the attention of the BBC. Writing in the BBC NEWS MAGAZINE, Denise Winterman reports:

Births, deaths and marriages. They’re the only events that get

most people in the UK through church doors these days and even

that is too often for some.

But this doesn’t stop the majority of us calling ourselves

Christian. More than half of British people say they believe in

God despite only one in seven actually attending a Christian

church service each month, says a new study.

It seems that while people find the church thing a little bit

difficult, they are willing to recognise God. There’s even a

cute catchphrase for this absent majority - believing without

belonging.

“Believing without belonging” is indeed a catchphrase, but there is no reason for confidence that the “believing” here has anything to do with biblical Christianity.

More from the BBC report:

In today’s “post-modern society” people want everything on their

own terms - that includes Christianity, says Dr. Elaine Storkey, a

Christian academic, broadcaster and president of Christian

charity Tearfund, which commissioned the study.

“People are used to instant gratification, they are used to

having what they want, when they want and without putting in too

much effort. Some view religion in the same way.”

Having a connection with Christianity is not a problem for most

people, it’s when something is asked of them that they start to

struggle, she says.

“The first step to get people involved in the church is getting

them to consider God. A lot of people identify with Christianity

even if they don’t attend church. Often when the chips are down

they fall back on the Christian faith.

“The second step is getting them to consider how much their faith

will cost them. That’s a huge leap for most people, that’s when

they have to start giving something back.”

Some sort of “vague Christianity” acts as a way for people to

keep their options open, they don’t have to think too hard about

life and aren’t pushed outside their comfort zone, says

philosopher Dr Julian Baggini.

“It’s easier than going in the other two directions. If you take

religion fully on board you have to believe some strange things.

Discarding it totally means you have to really think through the

consequences, that death really is the end and many people find

that worrying.”

So “having a connection with Christianity” is what these persons want, not Christianity itself. When something is demanded of them, they feel imposed upon. Taking the theological and discipleship claims of Christianity “fully on board” means “you have to believe some strange things” that these persons would rather not believe.

The BBC report picks up on the fact that many persons want to consider themselves Christians without taking on Christianity -- without believing its doctrines, accepting its morality, following its disciplines, or joining a congregation.

This last dimension may be the key to understanding the others. Christianity is an ecclesial reality -- not a lone quest. The life of an authentic congregation is vital to Christian faithfulness.

Put simply, there is no true “believing without belonging” in Christianity. Christianity is, by definition, a belonging -- a belonging to Christ and a belonging to Christ’s people. Christ’s people, belonging together in local congregations, believe together, hear the Word together, sing together, pray together, hold each other accountable together, grow together, grieve together, celebrate together, and evangelize together. The key word here is TOGETHER.

In terms of the theological confusions of the “believing without belonging” movement, what can be expected of an approach that cuts the faith down to my desires and demands? The church of Me involves my conversation with myself -- nothing more. The “together” dimension of Christianity extends, very importantly, to the fact that we embrace the orthodox Christian faith TOGETHER with believers long dead. They, though dead, yet speak.

The problems with “believing without belonging” are many, but the greatest problem may be that some believe this to be compatible with biblical Christianity. It is not.

"We need re-expression of the Christian gospel; but, maybe even more than that, we need re-realisation of the Christian gospel.

"The re-expression is not an end in itself; it is only the means towards an end, and the end is the awakened realisation of what this gospel means.

"It is when we face ourselves and face Christ, that we are lost in wonder, love and praise. We need to rediscover the almost lost discipline of self-examination; and then a re-awakened sense of sin will beget a re-awakened sense of wonder."

"Perhaps then God will no longer have to say, 'Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?'"

________

Andrew Murray in "Daily Celebration"

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise. —Ephesians 5:15

I’m getting pretty good at math. That’s because every day my son Steve and I have a little math session. He does his 30 junior high math problems, and I help him check them over. Sometimes we even get them all right.

As I go over Steve’s math, I notice that he understands how to do his problems. In fact, in some areas he’s better at it than I am. But occasionally, despite knowing how to do the problem, he gets the wrong answer. He either gets a little sloppy in using the right formula or he just doesn’t check his answers carefully.

Aren’t we all a little like that in our Christian life? We know what we should do. We have a good understanding of how to live the Christian life, but we get careless or lazy. We know better, but we fail.

For instance, we know we aren’t supposed to gossip. But before we know it, we’re roasting a fellow Christian. Or this: We know God wants us to keep our mind and heart pure, but we let down our guard and watch a TV program or movie we know is not edifying.

It’s true, isn’t it? We all get a little sloppy in how we live for God. Let’s be more careful and pay closer attention to our Christian walk (Ephesians 5:15). Let’s make sure we’re doing quality work for our heavenly Father. —JDB

Lord, help me to apply Your Word

And move it from my head

To actions that won’t shame your Name

But honor You instead. —Sper

Give your all for Jesus, He gave His all for you.