hum·ble

[huhm-buhl]: adj- not proud or arrogant; modest; verb-to lower in condition, importance, or dignity

How difficult it is to talk about humility in a humble way...Camp season has kept me from my precious blog for a time, but fear not- I'm not all blogged out yet!

 Humility, I would argue, is the key virtue to most everything in Christianity. You have probably heard that the root of all sins, in one way or another, is pride. Lust, greed, gossip, cheating, and anger all have pride to thank for giving them life. You could say that sin is just pride wearing different costumes. Therefore, I think it is safe to say that humility is the root of, in one way or another, all sanctified sorts of behavior. I hope I can help to expose some pride in your life, as I have a long way still to go in my fight.

If I could be blunt for a moment (as if you have any say in the matter), arrogance is a major problem among my peer group. Arrogance is generally called "pride," but as I said above, pride wears many costumes. So for clarity's sake, I will call this particular costume "arrogance." If you would take a second to examine yourself, most of us wouldn't say we struggle with any "major sin." We aren't hooked on drugs, sleeping around, stealing cars, or anything like that. So we think of  ourselves as trying to just fix the obscurities, rather than patch major holes. When we think "I may actually have this whole 'don't sin' thing down," we are opening ourselves to something much deadlier. Like carbon monoxide, arrogance permeates all areas of our life, slowly making us rancid and not desirable for use. We need a detector to warn us when we are becoming toxic.

You've most likely heard the saying "humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less." Our tendency is to hear an accolade and say something like "Aw shucks, I don't think I'm that great." The funny thing is that most of the time you don't really believe the words that you are saying. I know I normally think in my heart-of-hearts "yeah, I am pretty awesome sometimes!" Even if you really do believe that you aren't that great, it is still the wrong response to downplay your goodness. The right response is to "think of yourself less." The correct response is to defer glory to the one who is Glorious. Next time you have the opportunity, remember this: defer the glory, not deter. 

The root of the problem goes deeper than just our responses, though. Humility begins in remembering who you were, or as pro athletes delight in saying "just remember where I came from." That's really it. It is helpful for me to read Exodus and remember that it is my story too. I was nothing but a slave. Fast-forward to Romans where we are reminded that we were once slaves to sin. That is all I am. I deserve that slavery. 

I became a Christian 6 years ago, so I remember life before that. Remember, I have no horror stories, but I was just as dead in sin as any other person. I was an enemy of God. He chose to show me grace while I was still a sinner, and now I am blogging about that grace. I did nothing to earn that. What reason do I have to be proud? Without him I have nothing; I am not particularly athletic, handsome, brilliant, or amazing (that isn't false humility, promise!), but I am a co-heir with Christ! I have a beautiful wife, a future, and incredible joy, all because of Christ changing my direction. I have nothing but the cross to boast in.

I wouldn't quite call it a privilege, but I can say that I know the difference in my life from before I knew Christ. Life-long Christians, preachers kids, etc: take heart, because you are not at such a disadvantage. No matter what your story is, we have the ultimate example of humility. Regardless of how cliche it sounds, Christ on the cross is the only example of humility, service, and submission we will ever need. How scandalously humble, that God himself would suffer as an offering and take the immense, immeasurable, titanic wrath that we deserve? What an unjust ruling! Casey Anthony and O.J. Simpson are failing allegories to how unjust it was that Christ should suffer on my behalf. "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." Philippians 2:5-7

My simple conclusion is this: what do we have to boast about? Jesus Christ.
Remember this: "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." 2 Corinthians 4:7

rad·i·cal

[rad-i-kuhl]: thoroughgoing or extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms

At 2:26 PM Central Time today there were 7,046,773,037 people on Earth. About 250,000 people die each day, and roughly 168,500 of them will die without Christ. That's about a third of the population of Oklahoma City; 1/12 of the Kansas City metropolitan area. There are over 4 billion non-Christians in Asia alone, and only one Evangelical Christian for every 26 non-Christians. The US is 30th on the list of slowest growing Evangelical population and has the 2nd largest atheist population behind only China. 

That sounds like a bit of a problem to me. That is a lot of people dying without the hope found in the Gospel. And what are "key issues" facing the American church today- contemporary music or something a little faster? Will the Presbyterians have a better turnout than us for VBS this year? Are you seriously a Calvinist? 

I am by no means a church-basher, I love the church with my whole heart, but I think that we are overlooking a lot of life/death issues and replacing them with much less important, much more philosophical issues. The obvious truth is that the world is a broken place that is dying without hope. What are we going to do about it? I pray that this blog post isn't the most radical thing that I do with me life.

We like to pretend that if we just don't cuss, don't disrespect our parents as much, don't waste quite as much money on Jordan's, and don't cheat as much on tests that we are being "radically different." That's a load, and everyone else can smell it too. If you've ever wondered why you aren't being effective evangelically (as i have) it might be because your lifestyle is about as radical as the shakeweight- looks funny, but it's still just a dumbell. 

I don't think we don't know what "radical" means, but I do think that we have a very low set of expectations for being radical. Jesus taught radical things like giving up all of your material possessions, leaving your career, leaving your family if need be, and plucking out your eye if it will keep you from sinning against God! I know that those calls have a context with individual purposes, but I am certain that most of us wouldn't be willing to accept many of those calls. Much of the ways that we spend our money and time are overwhelmingly similar to that of any pagan (and I'm just as guilty as anybody). The only reason we don't but more useless crap (particularly of the Apple or Nike sort) is because we run out of money quicker than some. You and I can try to justify it as much as we like, but the truth is that we are not radical with our money. We don't spend our time wisely, just look at your time log on your favorite video games. Again, justify away, but you know there is an infection in your soul. 

Let me reiterate- I am just as guilty as the next man, but I think we all need a kick in the pants. We have to stop justifying all of our foolish, unwise, wicked, and even sinful lifestyles. No one would deny that the calling of Jesus is a radical one, but I think most of us would have a very hard time claiming that we are living out that radical lifestyle. I confess that I have wasted money and countless hours, that I will never get back, on things that will perish and have no eternal significance for anyone. What a shame...

Evangelically, Iran is growing at nearly 20% annually; Afghanistan at 17%. North Korea, Egypt, Nepal, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, and Cambodia are growing rapidly more evangelized because Christians have decided to be radical. Churches in the U.S. are either dying or exploding with vibrancy because some have chosen that they want to be radical. Some people I know are being audited on a yearly basis because they report an extraordinary amount of benevolence. There are more mediums and technology than ever through which to spread the Gospel. There is a lot of encouragement to be found from radical people!

The simply question is: What are you going to do with your life? Will we make any difference with our lives? Don't reject this message because I offended you in some way, instead investigate the radical call of Jesus in the Bible. I think you will find that I haven't even scratched the surface. We all need to understand the stakes are too high to play around in our fairytale any longer. The world needs us to be radical.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

con·tent

[kuhn-tent]: satisfied with what one is or has; not wanting more or anything else.

 I want to start with the word content because I believe that one thing we never are is...content. There are many lost virtues in our culture, but contentment is one of the lease valued today. Media feeds us anything but the message of contentment and "enough." Abundance, luxury, vanity, extravagance, excess, gluttony, indulgence- those are our values. Think about how often people are trying to sell you what you don't need. Need is another word that could use defining, but I think we all prefer to ignore its true meaning.

As Christians we are to be counter to this culture, not sub-cultural. 

We have adopted the idea that a little more is okay. The problem is that "a little more" for us is extreme luxury to most everyone else in the world. Everyone reading this post is in the top 2% wealthiest people in the world. I'm trying not to rant about all the extra we have, but we all need to examine how much we really do have. 

Contentment, as you can see above, is a simple thing. I think that we like to define contentment like a mother negotiating with her child to eat his food so that he can get desert. The kid will eventually give in to his desire for sugary bliss and say "Fine...I'll eat my broccoli." Contentment isn't so much of a negative compromise to your discomfort. Contentment is realizing that you are doing fine with what ya got. No one is selling that to you.

The famously misquoted verse Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do everything through him who gives me strength." There isn't an athletic connotation to this scripture. When read in its full context, Paul is actually commenting on being content in any physical situation. He lived a hard life by anyone's standards, yet he says in Romans 8 that, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" and in 2 Corinthians 4, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." That is a spokesman for contentment.

What are we content with? We are content with our salvation. We are saved, and we know it. We are safe and we are hoarding salvation from others because we are content with just being saved ourselves.

Next time I want to look at the word "radical." We need to be content with what we have, and definitely repent for our wasteful habits, discontentment, and self-pitying. We need to be discontent with our inaction on a spiritual and evangelical level; instead, let's trade that in for something a little more...radical.

Christianese

One thing, and probably the only thing (just kidding), I learned from Chad Ragsdale is that we do a poor job of defining terms as Christians. We love to debate and use big words, but we forget to define what we mean by certain terms.

I think we are missing the mark on some very important terms. I think we may be using them without knowing what we're saying. In other words, it's just Christianese.

I would like to look at four words with you that us Christians need to understand more clearly. I need to understand these words as much as the next man. So the next four posts will, hopefully, be short exhortations for making some of our words hold more weight. Hope to have the first one up soon. Thanks to all of you for your continued encouragement and support!