morality

Last week I ran across this article, an interview with Tim Keller, in Christianity Today. This week in my blog I decided to look at the questions he was asked, pull a quote from his answers, and share some thoughts.

Q: The recent Pew study talked about changing patterns of belief in America. Has that affected your apologetics ministry?

A: Evangelicalism has been so identified with conservative Republican values that a lot of people who might be more moderate have decided they are not religious. I've seen that happen in New York. They're moderate or liberal politically, and they feel like orthodox Christianity is so identified with conservative Republican politics that they have actually distanced themselves from the faith.

For me, the corrective to this problem becomes the church focusing on a broader set of issues. Over the past number of years, Christianity has essentially become, at least in the public sphere, about a select few moral issues. Since those few issues match up with the agenda of the Republican party, Christians have in turn adopted other values held by Republicans and made them Christian issues. In other words, something that should have remained non-reciprocal, became reciprocal (yes, for all you Sem educated folks, that language is intention and I am thinking of the second genus).

But what if churches, rather than holding onto just a few select issues pulled out everything Scripture offers ... social justice, creation stewardship, just war, etc. Suddenly you have issues that, at least at some level, gel with both parties and, if nothing else, people who are more concerned about those oft ignored issues can at least feel as if they aren't excluded from the church on the basis of their political party.

It also allows you to have a whole lot more fun with election day, aka, national sin boldly day.

Sunday was one of those days that prompted a couple of blogging thoughts. In addition to my bit on being above reproach, a few other conversations and a quote from Fire and Knowledge all linked to the idea of letting the law kill.

It started with a post preaching discussion about the kinds of the people I interact with on a regular basis downtown. I mention sitting around a table with a number of gay guys the other night and hearing them explain the homosexual's hierarchy of needs, which, according to them, pinnacled at self-actualization, but at "the club". While I'm certain there was an element of joking in their comments, they did go out of their way to identify how a wide variety of their daily activities really served to enable regular clubbing.

While some people instantly wanted to discuss issues of morality, I suggested a better place to start might be worldview and the general emptiness that must be experienced when ones' life is built entirely on the momentary thrill of the social event. Everybody nodded and I followed it up with, "It's the suburban version of working really hard so you can have the perfect two kids, a dog, and a nice house with SUV's and a boat in the driveway."

Instantly someone came to the defense of the suburban ideal with the line, "Yeah, but at least we're being productive." To which I smiled and responded, "True, but before God, both are idolatry because they have an ultimate value other than Christ and, before God, idolatry is idolatry." While some of the people agreed with me, her discomfort with my comment was obvious as she walked away.

Not long after I was at another church dropping of some promotional material for the Ablaze! Connection when the same conversation came up. I recalled my line from earlier and the guy I was talking to said, "Wow, I really don't like that because it's about me, but I know it's true."

Again I smiled and replied, "I know, that's the thing about the Law, it doesn't feel good, but for grace to do it's think you need to let it kill."

Anyone else out there dying? In the end it's a beautiful thing because it sets the stage for Jesus to raise us back to life.

Yesterday morning as I left the house in my collar to go and preach I was approached by a man on the sidewalk who asked for help. He was reasonably clean, obviously sober, and needing some money to help him get to Cheyenne.

I first explained that I don't carry cash and then he asked about my church helping out. This always gets a bit odd because I don't have a church so to speak and I'm never sure how to go about explaining that I'm not Catholic and have no connection to the cathedral around the corner. So, I did my best to let him know that I'm exploring new models of church planting out of homes and we really don't have any money available.

He looked a bit confused so I suggested three places to try for help, the two cathedral style churches in the area and Pathways Uptown campus. He thanks me for giving him some direction and then walked away.

As he did I continued towards my car to head off to church and instantly felt very awkward. You see, normally when I preach somewhere on Sunday morning I take the bus because Anita takes the car to Family of Christ in Fredrick where she does the music. Well, yesterday I was preaching in the far southeast corner of Aurora where the buses service is very limited so I'd borrowed one of my parents' cars. Because they took Robbie for the night and needed the child seat, they kept their RAV4 and I took my dad's brand new convertible Mazda Miata (which is an incredible ride by the way).

Anyway, as I unlocked the car I couldn't help but think of 1 Timothy where on three occasions Paul calls for God's people to be above reproach (once for all Christians, once for pastors, and once for Timothy). If you're not familiar with this term, it essentially means that doing the right thing isn't enough, rather, there shouldn't even be room to question our actions (another example would be a Christian couple living together or spending the night together ... even if nothing immoral happens, it gives the impression that something did).

While there was nothing wrong with me borrowing my dad's car so I could go preach yesterday, it certainly felt questionable when I told a guy that I didn't have any money to help him and then hoped into a convertible sports car with leather seats (even if the car is half the price of a comparable BMW and cheaper than many less flashy cars).

As I've thought about this since then, I can't help but wonder if being above reproach is especially important in our day, after all, many people make their judgments about the church because of how they perceive Christians ... even if their perceptions aren't true.

Thoughts?