Messianic Hope and Manhood

How does the Christian Message change our self-understanding and activity as “Men?”

The Christian Message:

God’s Holiness @ the cross humbles us and give us humility because of our realization of our sin, that we were so sinful for God to forgive us Jesus had to die, be seperated from God the father, absorbing the wrath we deserve, on the cross for us.
God’s Love @ the cross give us confidence to admit our flaws and be confident and responsible in his love and affirmation that God forgives and treasures us because Jesus was so glad to freely die on the cross in our place for our everlasting joy and his eternal glory. (exodus 19:5, 1 Peter 2:9)

The Christian Message and Manhood,
(Leadership in Christian Community.)

What is the biblical vision, what does true community look like?

We are to be leaders that are leading and making:

1. an accepting community that reflects the grace we’ve been given from Christ.

2. a holy community that urges one another to live God-pleasing lives.

3. a truth-telling community that is free to repent, and free to allow others to repent, because of the gospel.

4. an encouraging community that builds one another up.

5. a sacrificially generous community that spends its life and wealth on the needs of others.

6. a suffering community that loves and forgives others even when it harms us.

As leaders in our community we have options:

1. Should we despise the diverse culture or crowd/people around us (withdrawing, like a turtle),

2. reflect the culture, or crowd (blending, like a chameleon)

3. How about use the culture (for their own purposes),

But instead the Christian message calls us as men that sinners saved by grace to…

4. love the diverse people/culture, live here, and serve it as good neighbors.

5. A Love for all different kind of people in Birmingham and the World,

this love and service is created only by and only for the gospel.–

A Tale of Two Cities: Am I saying that religion is the answer? Yes and No.

Is this accidental how people who are authentically changed by grace and mercy and are showing it in radical ways in and through cities? 

 Jesus uses this metaphor. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”  This reflects what the Jewish people were told to do during their “in-between” time in Jeremiah 29:4-14  They were told to settle  and grow in the city, seeking the peace and prosperity of the city, especially the impoverished.

Time and time again, Christian teachings and community have proved effective in the solutions to poverty.

Am I saying that religion is the answer?

 Yes and no. 

It would be an oversimplification and a great horror to minimize the complexity and depth of social problems by saying that people just need to get more religious. 

 What I am exploring is what happens when Christians become truer in their faith ignites a social change that leads to cultural transformation.

Christian community is the only solution, because it is the only one that seeks to go far enough to be effective.

 It is more conservative than a liberal approach and more liberal than a conservative approach, but it is more extreme than either.

What produces lasting or sustainable change?

 Enlisting participants, in a sociology project aimed to combat a social problem, who do not look into the eyes of poverty as participants in a community but that want to befriend them and participate with them as a part of their family. 

Living among people with values, beliefs, and practices that differ greatly, the Christian message, moral standard, and community still stand out as powerful and essential agents of change and resolutions to the social problems that exist in cities, especially poverty. 

The answer is not to abandon these things in this city and leave the city that is dreamt about with the alarm clocks, but make that city a reality through the practice of the  standards and resources of the Christian faith and community, to heal poverty.

A Tale of Two Cities: Poverty and the Gospel: Does this work?

This is an approach which history has proven affective.

Rodney Stark is a Historian and Sociologist, who, in his book The Rise of Christianity, reveals a quote from the Roman Emperor, Julian.

 ”The impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their poor, but ours as well, everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.”

It was a recognized fact, even by the emperor that this body of believers were out to help the impoverished people, even if they were not their own. Starks goes on to remind us that,

“Although it is fashionable to deny it, anti-slavery doctrines began to appear in Christian theology soon after the decline of Rome and were accompanied by the eventual disappearance of slavery in all but the fringes of Christian Europe.  When Europeans subsequently instituted slavery in the New World, they did so over strenuous papal opposition, a fact that was conveniently ‘lost’ from history until recently.  Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists.”

This was a situation in which changing from wrong to right did not feed any self-interest but, instead, came at great financial loss. The people were only motivated by the Christian standard of how people should be treated and the accountability that awaited them before God.

This standard trails back in history to even earlier dates, as Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, said in 260 AD:

[During the great epidemic] most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves… Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ…  Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead… The(pagans) behaved the very opposite way.  At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled even from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead.

A sociologist of religion writes,

Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery chaos, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman World… Christianity revitalized life in cities… by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems.  To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope.  To cities filled with newcomers  and strangers, Christianity offered  an immediate basis for attachments… To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity.  And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered… effective services.

 

Resources:

 Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity. San Fransisco: Harper, 1997. Print.

84. Ibid., 82-83. Ibid., 161.

Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformation, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004) p. 291.

A Tale of Two Cities: Poverty and how Self-centeredness leads to social disintegration

What is the Christian message or Gospel?  A central focus of the life and message of the church has always been and will always be the Cross.  The message of the cross is at the same time realistic about the human condition and its problems and hopeful about what has been and can be done to solve. 

Realistically,   humanity is so flawed because of our self-centeredness and imperfection, in light of the holy and beautiful God of the universe, that in order to forgive, heal, and restore, Jesus had to die on the cross. 

 The message of the cross is good news because it also communicates that Jesus was glad to die on the cross to forgive, heal, and reconcile us to God. This is because he loves all kinds of people, no matter their plight in life. Indifferent to background, class, or race, he loved at an infinite cost, giving his life.  

What does this have to do with social problems?

  Instead of finding value, security, achievement, or a sense of self through self-centered pursuits of love, money, or power–

 the Christian faith teaches to have an attitude as that of Jesus, willing to give anything and everything to any in need.

People can loosen their grip on their resources, time, and pride to serve and care for others when it will be costly to them or not seen in the general or popular interest.   

Self-centeredness leads to social disintegration, or, in other words, social problems. How do we get to other-directed love, and how do we escape from self-absorption?

  Consider James 1:27. Look at this one word, “episkeptomai.” The context here is a practical picture of Christianity becoming faith in motion or action.  The writer of the book of James is looking for his readers not

• be involved in a routine of superficial acts
• hearing truth
• participating in ceremonies

 but responding to the message of who God is and what Jesus has done for them  through expressions of the

• truth
•  love
•  and the justice of God.  

 In the original language of the New Testament, the phrase “to look after” is really one word, “episkeptomai.”   It means to visit, go to, look out for, or care for someone, visiting them to take responsibility for their needs, and taking ownership and responsibility for their needs, showing deep concern; that is what God is looking for. 

Serving and loving rather than despising or removing itself from it.  Serve the city in everyway without losing spiritual identity or distinctiveness.  God’s people should work for the good of all kinds of people, regardless of their spiritual identity

A Tale of Two Cities: Poverty, Spiritual truth, and Social Action

How does the Christian message, morals, and community actually engage and seek to resolve a social problem as drastic as poverty?  

 Spiritual truths that are accepted or denied inevitably form an outlook and practically define and shape social relationships.  If the spiritual truths of the Christian message are taken to heart, they creates a unique community that actually serves and loves those who need help and protection, no matter their race or class.  This unfolds, not selfishly or sporadically, but out of love, aiming to bring God’s  love, peace, and justice to bear on the lives and communities of people enchained by poverty.  This would allow people in poverty to take part in work, creativity, and culture. The Christian community, in doing so, encourages others to seek spiritually, holding forth Christ as the ultimate satisfaction, as opposed to sex, money, or power.

  If those things become an ultimate value that people coming out of poverty are centering their lives on, then the source of the very altruism that helped them out of poverty would be scorned and utterly abandoned.   

 God, speaking to the Jonah, said, “… Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”  -Jonah 4:11

A Tale of Two Cities: Poverty, Why Do Anything?

Helping the impoverished is a task of moral aims. Sociologist Christian Smith helps clarify:

‘Moral’…  is an orientation toward understandings about what is right and wrong, just and unjust, that are not established by our own actual desires or preferences but instead are believed to exist apart from them, providing standards by which our desires and preferences can themselves be judged.

It is one thing to try to convince someone not to do something because it is impractical or  self-defeating.  It is a completely different task to convince someone that something that they are highly invested in is wrong, and the change to doing right would only come at a great cost.

Implicit in exclaiming that something is not the way it ought to be  is an alternative allegiance to an understanding or projection of what it should be, the city that is dreamt of – an echo of Eden.  This is the task when talking to someone who believes of their belief of human flourishing.  These beliefs or goals are not universally accepted or scientifically verifiable.

Michael J. Perry in his book, Toward a Theory of Human Rights, concludes that it is clear that,

 ”there is religious ground for morality and human rights but it is far from clear that there is a non-religious ground, secular ground, for human rights.”

  Human rights are best protected from the approach presented by Christianity, particularly in the belief of community.

A Tale of Two Cities: Poverty and YOUR spiritual identity

Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the most influential leaders in positive social change, did not call on people to abandon their Christian faith in the name of progress or to solve social problems such as segregation and racism but, instead, to deepen and act on their Christian faith.

This is an idea that, if played out and applied to the concept of poverty, would bring insurmountable change to this city that is. Steve Timmis and Tim Chester comment on poverty, saying,

“The poor need a welcome to replace their marginalization; they need inclusion to replace their exclusion; to replace their powerlessness they need a place where they matter.  They need community.  They need Christian community.  They need the Church.”

Christianity teaches its followers to live in community, as a family. It is this, community, that when lived out accordingly, that would leave no person in poverty, physically or emotionally.

A Tale of Two Cities:What is the origin and essence of Poverty really about?

A basic, shallow understanding of poverty is simply the state of being poor.  It is a state of not having the financial resources for  basic needs like food, clothing, and housing, but that understanding does not completely address the issue.

What is the origin and essence of Poverty really about?

 At an organized hearing on Poverty, Mrs. Jones, a mother who has lived in poverty her whole life described the experience of poverty in this way,

 ”In part it is about having no money, but there is more to poverty than that.  It is about being isolated, unsupported, uneducated, unwanted.  Poor people want to be included and not just judged or ‘rescued’ at a time of crisis.”  

 She touches on the depth of the situation, which stretches beyond a lack of physical possessions.

 Robert Chambers describes poverty as being typically composed of a web of five reinforcing factors: lack of resources, physical weakness, isolation, powerlessness, and vulnerability.

As is becoming clear, poverty cannot be described as merely a lack of resources or physical disability.  Many people experience a lack of resources or a devastating or terminal physical illness in life but are not in the cycle of poverty. 

 Think* about small children as an illustration.   A child has a lack or resources and is physically weak but is not impoverished or poor when part of a family that provides for and protects them.  This child, when taken in the proper context they should be found in, is not left in a state of poverty. It is only when they are left outside of this proper place and neglected that they are placed in this cycle. It is these times, when a person – the child or impoverished – is left in such a state, that change should be made.

A Tale of Two Cities: Poverty

There is a city that is dreamed of being lived and there is city that is.  There is a great divide between the city that is and the city that ought to be. When one remembers the city in the dream, it is a city that’s original purpose or design was a place of refuge and safety because of its density and walls.  It was to be place of justice and a place of cultural development, with emerging art, philosophy, and commerce forged and flowing out of it.  Change develops and flows out of this city.  It  is a place of spiritual seeking and finding.

However, that city has been made a victim of self-absorption. Instead of centering on the good of the city, lost in themselves, members of the city have lost their relationship with the other members that make up the body of the city.   The city that is dreamt of has fallen into the background as the city that is has become a place of racism, classism, and violence.  This city that has emerged is place to escape from relationships of transparency and accountability.  It is and has become, sadly, a place of pride, exhaustion, arrogance, excess, and overwork.

 All leading to a most despairing situation: poverty.

Persecution

It has once been said to me that unless we are being persecuted for being Christians we are not doing something correct. Jesus promises troubles and persecutions, “you will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Luke 21:17), but should the area of persecution be something we strive for, especially in light of Scripture when so much is spoken of by Jesus on those which the hand of offense will be laid? I think it does not bearn within us to seek to be persecuted, for rather this would place but another form of idolatry before our deceiving hearts, but instead continue striving and thirsting after what our Savior says the first and greatest commandment is: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). I am convinced by Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and sheer logic that if they crucified my Christ for following this commandment perfectly, a redeemed sinner who, by God’s grace, attempts to follow it and falls imperfectly, shall also be persecuted as my Lord. Therefore, do not seek persecution or disruption amongst others to attempt to go through all of what hardships Christ spoke of, but rather love the Lord your God, walk diligently in His ways according to your calling as an heir to the throne, and there you shall find all of what Christ has prepared you for all along and has promised to remain faithful during. Do not worry about when but instead what you are doing to apart yourself from the world and the very flesh that drives you.

 

Praise God when persecutions arise on behalf of Christ’s name, but woe be to you O man, if you do anything less than love all, in order to seek your persecutions.