the final score

I really enjoy the approaching autumn season for a number of reasons. A few of them in no particular order is the return of Oktoberfest-style brews, a chance for my superior fashion sense to shine in cooler weather (the key to fall fashion is layers), apple cider, and of course the return of football.

It’s been well documented the August is the worst month for sports fans in the calendar year. August baseball leaves much to be desired before the playoff push, and as a nation, we just pine for the pigskin to return to the forefront of the scene.

Now some of you may be saying “Hey Phil, the Olympics happened during August!” And you’re right, they did happen. But I’m going to argue that the Olympics aren’t actually about sport, but more about nationalistic pride and human interest stories.

Let’s look at women’s soccer for example. The team was pretty popular in London, everyone seemed to be following the team and its (lucky) road to a gold medal. And while the national team commands a lot of respect, sadly, no one actually cares about the sport or state of women’s soccer. There’s a reason there isn’t a profitable women’s soccer league in the US. People won’t pay to see the product. They don’t care about the players. They care more about the country, more about the prestige, the pride of winning for their country as opposed to the sport itself. Women’s soccer, and the rest of the Olympic sports, will become, and already has become, an afterthought in the public’s mind.

Now contrast that with the atmosphere in Columbus, Ohio. Officially, college football season starts in September, but anyone in Columbus will tell you that the season never ends. Ohio State is always on the front page of the sports section, regardless of whether it’s November or April. In Indiana, where there is an emphasis on fundamentals, chest passes, and jump shots, Hoosier nation is always in basketball mode. In Boston, every move the Red Sox make in the off-season is scrutinized.

Even in these hotbeds of sports, it’s possible to find the fan that doesn’t really care about the sport. In a stadium of 100,000 plus, it’s not that hard to find. Some are in the stadium to stand and cheer, have a few drinks, and if the team wins, fantastic, they’ll have a fun party afterwards, say their share of Michigan jokes, and head home. But some of these fans can’t tell the difference in a defense between a cover 2 zone or man coverage. They complain when their quarterback gets sacked without looking to see if the offensive line did their job, or whether the receivers got open. All they care about, in the end, is school pride and the final score.

Are you a “final score Christian” or one who immerses himself/herself in the scripture, wanting to know everything you possibly can about the God you say you believe in? Would you read those articles about the team in April when the team isn’t actually playing the game, or simply read the headline and the lead, shrug your shoulders, and then move on with the rest of your life? Do you stand and cheer on Sundays, leave church or a weekly meeting feeling entertained, or challenged? Do you know the tune to the fight song and hymns but have no recollection of the words?

Jesus warns us in Matthew 7

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

Team Jesus doesn't need more fans. It needs  more who are willing to pick up their cross, to regard what they once held dear lost, as literally trash, for the sake of Christ.

Team Jesus doesn't need more fans. It needs more followers.

résumés and reference lists

The whole concept of a résumé is very interesting. First of all, trying to find out how to type the e with an accent over it is very difficult. People work very hard to make an impressive résumé. They format it with different tricks in word processing programs to make sure that all the columns and bullet points are uniform, and that there is no wasted space on the page. You know, to look professional, as if looking professional can somehow overshadows the lack of content and experience in the actual document. Some people, in an effort to fill their résumé with relevant experience jam pack their lives with internships and temporary jobs, or while they are still in school, with loads of extracurricular activities. They’ll spend time at a job they hate or work of an organization they don’t believe in, just so they can fill their résumé with noteworthy accomplishments.

Equally important is the reference list. The list of people you know will talk you up as the perfect worker for the company. You put people who like you and want to see you succeed. You’ve built up relationships with these people at various encounters in life, and you trust them to make you look good.

Résumés are important when applying for jobs. But employers are smart people. They know all the formatting tricks people use, see through the flowery descriptive language and adjectives,  and they get suspicious when they see you can only keep a job for 1 year, or if you’ve stretched yourself thin with all the extra things you do. When you submit a résumé online, a lot of times, the formatting goes out the window after you copy and paste the text into a box that only allows so many characters, or email it to a recruiter, and their word processer is different than yours so that when its printed out, it no longer fits neatly and perfectly on one sheet of paper. What’s more important than the piece of paper is the interview, where another human being can analyze and see the person who is hiding behind the piece of paper.

All Christians have a Christian résumé, for good or bad. Its there whether we like it or not. How we fill it and format it is up to us. We highlight different aspects of our lives in it. How long we’ve been leading a Bible study, how much we give on Sundays, how often we volunteer our time at charitable organizations and so forth. On paper, we can appear to have the perfect résumé. Now these things are important, but how did they get on the page? 

Did they appear because they flowed naturally from our lives? Did we see the beauty of what Christ did on the cross, and in response to that, our lives appeared radically changed due to a holy calling? Or did we see Christ on the cross and decide that wasn’t good enough, and that we must somehow add to it, and that we must earn God’s approval?

Do we perform so that we might earn God’s approval, or because we know that we already have God’s approval?

The following comes from Hebrews 10: 1-4

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, 4 because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Good works can become the modern day blood of bulls and goats in our Gentile culture. God knows our true hearts, our true intentions.

I’ve been to handful of job interviews in my day, and I am by no means an expert. I have noticed though, that during an interview, the employer will quickly glance at my résumé, and then put it back in the folder, and then proceed to grill me with questions. That document I worked so hard on for several hours to make it look just right is lost within an HR file and will be placed back among several hundred others just like it.

God looks straight at our hearts, or more accurately, right through our hearts. 

“And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” Hebrews 4:13.

So are you working to fill your résumé with a bunch of accomplishments, trying to spice it up with a fancy header? Or do you come before God leaving your résumé at home. You have one, and it’s full of great noteworthy things, but you know it won’t impress. Instead you come simply with a reference list that only lists Christ? (Cheesy, yes I know) 

But seriously, if you are standing before God, or actually, let’s change the audience. Hopefully if you’re reading this you would know how to respond to God. If you are talking to a friend who asks you what it means to be a Christian, what would you point to? Your church attendance, your upright code of morals? Or will you acknowledge your sin and admit that you are helpless apart from Jesus?  Will you tout your super Christian piece of paper, or use the reference list?

art critic

I’ve had the opportunity to tour two art museums with supposedly great reputations in the last year, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art. At the Art Institute, my buddy Crawdaddy and I walked into the “Modern Art” exhibit and were less than thrilled with what we saw. I was unaware that monotone squares that looked like an empty chalkboard constituted art.  I kid you not, one slab of gray canvas hung on the wall was called “Untitled” that was valued at several hundred thousand dollars. We were very confused and were out of the exhibit within 5 minutes very angry.

At the Cleveland museum of art, I thought it would be more entertaining to pose like naked statues on the floor, much to the chagrin of the curator who gave me the quite the look as I laid down in my “Jeff Goldblum Jurassic Park” pose in front of some ancient civilization statue and for the rest of the night, she seemed to stalk me from exhibit to exhibit.

Anyway, the only art that I can appreciate are paintings that actually look like something. Paintings that look like scenery are a big favorite of mine. Or portraits of historical figures are always fun too, because I know that the picture of George Washington looks like George Washington. Don’t splatter some paint on a canvas and tell me that the spots explain some post-modern relative truth (nothing about that last sentence made sense. See what I did there?) Still, I can’t just gaze into any painting for hours on end and be moved to tears, simply because I don’t know enough about art. I know other artists who can probably do that, but not this guy.

However, merely having knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that one is more capable of appreciating art. You can understand the background and time period of an artist, see the symbolism, understand shadows and color schemes, and a whole bunch of other artistic sounding terms (I don’t know if what I just typed actually means anything. But it sounds cool so just run with it). You can be so caught up in the technical aspects of art, that can you fail to be amazed by the art. Art ceases being art, it just becomes a skill, a trade that can be mastered.

In The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brenen Manning writes, “A Philistine will stand before a Claude Monet painting and pick his nose; a person filled with wonder will stand there fighting back tears”

I often get caught up in the technical aspects of Christianity. This causes me to stop standing in awe of who God is, and instead, I become a critic. This attitude manifests itself in several ways. I judge the quality of a church service by my own standards, whether or not it agrees to my standards of what a church service should look like. I can become a Christian snob if you will, thinking that the teaching is too elementary for my liking, and won’t benefit my personal walk. Somehow, my four years of participation in ministry and the latest hip Christian book I read has somehow qualified me to make judgments on church and the walks of other Christians, as I elevate myself above everyone else around me. (I mean I have my own blog! Not everyone can get their own blog right?)

I make Christianity into a religion that is built and suited to serve only me and my pious expectations. I twist scripture into a formula that goes like this: I do good things to earn God’s blessing and approval. Even though I know full well that my thinking is far from Biblical, and instead that I can’t do anything to earn God’s blessing, that I can’t do enough to impress God and it is only because God chooses to move, independent of what I do, that I can experience his love. But this is how I see God sometimes, not as the almighty king of the universe, but as a lowly servant meant to make my life comfortable. This is how I become an appraiser of God rather than simply, a praiser of God (I’m so clever).

Keeping with this whole “art” theme I got going on here, read Psalm 104, which shows how God is truly the perfect artist as it describes God’s creation. Here, he clearly is not here to act as my personal fairy godmother, but rather this shows God’s true dominion over the universe.

I must constantly be reminded that I am in position to remove myself from God’s landscape and sit in the peanut gallery. Instead, I must recognize that I am a small part of God’s plan, a part of God’s plan not by my own doing, but by His. I must see God for who he really is, great and powerful and perfect, and myself as I really am, as small and sinful.

The true beauty of God’s plan and art is that he uses sinful people to carry out his perfect and holy plan. Think about that for a second. And I mean really think about that. It might be a truth you hear every week in church, but the paradox of Christianity is that a perfect God uses imperfect people. That kind of logic transcends human logic because 

“…my thoughts are not your thoughts and neither are our ways my ways, declares the Lord. Far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thought than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

If God’s thoughts are on an entirely different plain than our own, are we really fit to sit back and criticize God, or even just sit back and pick our noses, not seeing the contrast between ourselves and God? Or should we instead be in constant amazement, wanting to know more about this God we serve, and why he thought it best to send Christ to save us from ourselves? 

time marches on

While you read this, I suggest you listen to this song, the inspiration for this post. Over the last few months I've developed an affinity for modern piano music.

Anyway, time marches on. That's a pretty easy and obvious statement and truth. No matter what we do, we can count on the sun rising again the next day after 24 hours, unless Jesus decides to come back the next day. We grow old and age, and the old axiom holds true, the only certain things in life are death and taxes.

I'm on the cusp of a new stage in life. An odd transition from a full time student to a part time barista, to hopefully in the next couple weeks, a full time employee of something that pertains to science and what I spent the last four years studying. I have been praying about interviews and job leads and all that stuff, and it's been accompanied by varying degrees of anxiousness. At the same time, several of my closest friends that have been with me for the last 4 years are about to peace out as the academic year comes to a close, and they finally meet me in the club of people who hold bachelors degrees, or I'm about to leave younger friends who still have a year or 2 or 3 or 4 before they can join the club. My life is about to undergo a paradigm shift if you will (if you don't know what that means, go look it up). For me, at times like these, God slowly morphs more into an advice bank rather than the Lord of my life. I want clear cut easy answers, to know the exact path in life to take, and while I believe that God has a plan for my life, I believe that it is impossible to seek that plan without seeking Him first.

When a new phase in life is about to begin, I always look to Joshua 1 for encouragement. If you're not familiar with the passage go read it. I'll wait patiently. OK got it? Just in case you didn't, I'll sum it up for you.

Essentially, Joshua is now in charge of the wandering Israelites after Moses bites the dust, and God is telling Joshua over and over again "to be strong and courageous." Joshua has giant shoes to fill. He's replacing Moses. You know, 1st ballot Jewish Hall Of Famer Moses, the self proclaimed "Humblest man on Earth" (Numbers 12:3 look it up. It's hilarious if you think about it). Anyway, I imagine that Joshua was looking forward to this day with an uneasy amount of anxiety and anticipation. He was waiting in the wings, waiting for his shot and now that day is here. He is to lead an unorganized, unruly people on a great military campaign through the promise land who didn't really enjoy listening to Moses, despite the fact that they saw him part the Red Sea, magical bread appeared every morning, and his face glowed after he talked to God.

God's advice to Joshua of being strong and courageous doesn't seem all that inspirational on face value. It sounds like something you could find out of the latest self help book. But look closely and see where Joshua will be drawing his strength from. First, God tells him to obey the law that Moses had given him in verse 7. God tells him in verse 9, "the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

I don't want to draw to many parallels between my life and Joshua, because I feel like that would be doing Joshua a great injustice, but let's look at what we can learn from this.

When God tells you that he'll be with you, don't take that lightly. For 40 years, God was physically with the Israelites as a giant pillar of fire or pillar of cloud depending on the time of day. Jesus tells us in the great commission that he, "will be with you always, to the very end of the age." Romans 8:11 says that the very same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us.

God isn't telling Joshua to be courageous for the sake of being courageous. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. He is telling him to be strong because the God who is with him is the one true God, the one who is good, the one who is almighty, the one who is eternal. We are strong because Christ is strong enough to conquer death and rise up from the grave so that we can stand clean and blameless before the Father.

That sounds nice doesn't it? Sounds like you could put that in a greeting card, or write it in an encouraging note to a friend. But don't neglect the first part of what God's advice to Joshua, keeping the law.

WAIT! Hold on a sec Phil. I thought you were one of those evangelicals with a protestant background who is always bashing the law. Hear me out. I think "keeping the law" gets a bad rap in today's Westernized Christianity, and no doubt, "keeping the law" can slip into legalism and all that nasty stuff. But I think that when the Israelites held to their notions of the law, it wasn't out of begrudging duty. The Law was their insight into the character of God. It pointed them to the holiness and perfection that is Yahweh. It's hard for us today to imagine anyone loving a rule book, but I don't think the Israelites saw the law as just a rule book. The law was their picture, there glimpse into the person of God. They were to obey the Law out of a  love for the God who loved them, who created them and led them out of Egypt. For us, we must study God's word, understand what it says, understand why and how we know that God being with us is a good thing. So often we want to know God's plan for our lives without listening  and talking to God. We don't engage God, we just hope that he will engage us.

Jeremiah 29:11 is fairly common in Christian circles, when God is telling Israel that he has plans for them. But it comes with the implication of verses 12 and 13, not so well known which says that Israel will call out to God and seek him with all their hearts.

See, I don't know where I'm going to be in 3 months. What I do know, is that God's will is going to be accomplished. It could be drastically different from what I want in life. My friends and surroundings will no doubt change. Time will march on. So what is my response? To seek God first. You can't know His plan without knowing him first. And quite frankly, if you don't know him, you probably won't like his plan anyway.

phil's story corner

This week at OSU, it is outreach week for Real Life. If you've been walking around this campus, you might have seen the giant 7 foot boards with a lot of pictures on them. You should check them out, it's pretty cool.

The aim and purpose of this week is to hear the stories of everyone across the campus. And to see how God's bigger story intersects with our own. And well, here's my part of the story. I presented this in front of our weekly meeting a couple months ago.

At a pretty early age, I accepted Christ as my savior and wanted to live my life to please him, but as a young lad of only six years of age when I made the decision to follow Christ, I had absolutely no idea what that entailed. It was a rare Sunday when my family and I did not find ourselves sitting in the pews of the church.  Sunday school and Bible studies were a part of my weekly routine as I grew up. And when God just became another thing I did in addition to a plethora of other activities I was involved in, his significance became lost on me. He became a boring, uninteresting figure, unable to provide me with any real fulfillment. Yeah I would say and do all the Christian things, but the things I said I believed and the way I lived didn’t always match up. I claimed Jesus was in driver seat of my life, but in reality I doubted whether a man who lived 2000 years ago and an ancient book could really offer me any satisfaction in this 21^st century world. So I looked for satisfaction in myself and indulged anything that made me feel good.  I put my identity in my athletic prowess, my musical talents, and outstanding school work, anything where I rose above the rest of my peers to make me seem like I was the best this society had to offer. It made me feel good, and I’d give a shout out to Jesus if I had to.

When I got to college, I felt it necessary to seek out a Christian group on campus and looked for a group that would act as my moral compass now that I had moved away from home. Now I don’t know if it was the free laundry bag at the OSU involvement fair or the attractive girl I recognized from my high school handing out the free laundry bag, but I was somehow drawn to the Real Life booth and compelled to check out what this thing was all about it. I vividly remember that first meeting as the lights dimmed and the music came on, and I saw young college students worshiping  and singing with genuine hearts. The enthusiasm was something that I had never really experienced before. And it was the same way in the small group Bible study I began to get involved with. We would study passages and stories that I was familiar with, and thought I had all the easy answers to, but the way my Bible study leaders analyzed and looked at scripture was something incredibly new to me. They actually enjoyed studying the Bible, and didn’t see it as a chore. God was real and it was evident in the way they lived their day to day lives. So in my efforts to imitate my new friends, I joined the crowd at Real Life. I made it my number one priority, put it at the top of my list, and it was a rare Wednesday or Thursday night when I wasn’t at a Real Life function of some sort. I did all these things to satisfy my spiritual quota for the week and feel good about my standing with God. It became routine, and although the routine was fun and I experienced great community and love, my experience was hollow, although I didn’t know it at the time.

By the time my freshman year ended, I thought I had grown a lot in my faith and had a great community surrounding me. Then summer came around, and that community vanished, and any semblance of growth that I experienced did to. I no longer had a regular schedule or structure and I ran out of Christian events to go to. My summer saw me returning to my old patterns of sin at home where myold habits resurfaced and God once again God no longer seemed relevant. Was everything that I experienced during my freshman year just a lie, just some good emotions that had no merit? I struggled with these feelings, desperate for school to start again in the fall, so I could fill my time doing good Christian things once more.

I was relieved when my Sophomore year started. I started leading a Bible study and started filling up my time with ministry events. But the satisfaction and good feelings I got from doing ministry felt empty and left me tired. I wondered what was I doing wrong. Why did God feel like he wasn’t present in my life It was then that through a series of talks with my old Bible study leader that I began to realize what I was putting my hope and identity in.

All my life I had thought of myself as either a good student, or the athlete, or the funny friend, or the musician who happened to be a Christian, who wanted to put Jesus first. But I realized the error in my thinking and had the wrong viewpoint of who my Lord is. Jesus isn’t another aspect of my life that fits alongside my other priorities. He doesn’t even want to be number one in a sea of priorities. He’s not an item on the list, he is the list. He should permeate through every aspect of our lives. When the Bible tells us to confess Jesus as Lord, it means that he is Lord over everything.  It doesn’t matter that I had perfect attendance here on Thursday nights. When I fall into sin, I can’t do enough good or feel bad enough about what I did to somehow earn my way back into God. When we put our identity and self worth in Christ, we see that we can’t do anything to add to what he already did. He saved me from sin and death, and begs me to enjoy him, not work for him. When I realized this truth of the Gospel, I can’t help but feel genuine excitement and love simply for who God is and experience real victory over sin.

Now I still struggle with attempting to earn my salvation, feeling it necessary to prove to God that I deserve him, and viewing God as an activity I do rather than someone I worship. But every time I fall short and have this wrong view, I am reminded that Jesus said “it is finished” on the cross and all my sin and shortcomings have been washed away. And that’s the greatest reminder and reassurance that I could ever have.

good friday and Easter musings

It's Good Friday today. You know the story right? It's the day we remember when all of God's perfectly justified wrath on mankind was all placed on his son. A few thoughts have been in my head all day.

At the start of his ministry, Jesus is baptized, and as he comes out of the water, the Bible says,
"And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." Mark 1:11

At the end of his ministry, Jesus is on the cross, and he finds himself alone, crying out,
"My God my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

The same Father who found great joy in his beloved son, now has to turn his back on him as the full wrath of God that was intended for mankind, for you, for me, is placed completely on Jesus.

That's what happened because of our sin. Sin isn't just something that makes us feel bad about ourselves. It is our sin, that as a great hymn says, "held Him there, until it was accomplished." Our sins were the nails in his hands, the spear in his side.

We are all like Peter. We will deny Christ as we pretend that we don't know him as we live our lives in sin. We abandon him. Yet even though our sins condemned him, Jesus decides to save us.

A man without sin can't be held by the grave. If the wages of sin is death, then the grave has no reason to hold Jesus, the one without sin, but the one who took on the sins of the world so we didn't have to.

A good man who taught lessons through metaphors couldn't do that. Jesus is not simply a good moral teacher. He is not just a historical figure who was crucified for causing a ruckus in Roman occupied Israel. He is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords who fights for a world he loves, and wins.

So Jesus rises from the dead. He conquers it. He defeats it forever. The battle, the war, the victory is his, and he shares that with us. That's grace. When we were the ones that put Christ on the cross, yet when Jesus complete's the ultimate comeback story, he wants us to share in the victory with him. So we rejoice, we sing hymns, we worship, we celebrate.

The greatest story ever written as a dramatic ending. The hero dies in the middle, but he wins in the end.

#TrueStory

Happy Easter

what's the story?

If you had to define Christianity, or what it meant to be a Christian, what would you say?

I ask that to students who claim the Christian faith as the religion that they subscribe to. I get a variety of answers. Most of the time, I hear something along the lines of this:

It means you believe in God. It means you try to be a good person. You know follow the golden rule. Don't curse, don't drink, don't smoke, don't have sex before your married. You know stuff like that. You go to church.

I always find it curious that students neglect an important part of their definition. They complete leave out the "Christ" aspect. Christ is the Greek translation of Messiah, which of course means savior.

Christianity is all about the need for a savior.

The suffix "ity" is used to form nouns expressing the condition corresponding to the root word. Therefore, Christianity encompasses those who have a savior, those who have been saved.

What makes you a Christian is not some high moral code that you abide by. It's not about how many Sunday's you've gone to church.

It's about admitting your need for a savior. It's about having a personal relationship with the God of the universe. It's following a man who died, but you won't find him in any burial site. Instead, you'll find him on a throne.

It's about knowing a God who loved the world, even a world that hated him and wanted nothing to do with him. Despite the rebellion, God offers an olive branch. An exchange, a trade, a substitution took place that looks like a poor business transaction, a poor career move. Jesus abandons his post by the side of the Father to walk in  a world that mocked him and put him to death? The very world he was trying to save? What kind of a God does that?

A God that loves the world and wants to dwell with his people. Who wants to know every single of us intimately. One that hates sin and loves righteousness.

It's Holy Week. It's the home stretch of the Lent. For some that means next Friday you don't have to eat a fish sandwich from McDonald's or Wendys. For others, they can resume drinking pop and eating chocolate. 

Jesus didn't die so you could go on a diet for 40 days. He didn't die because he wants you to live by a moral code. He died because he wants to know you, he wants to walk with you, and live with you for eternity.

He died because he loves you.

That's a #truestory