Deconstructing the Lego Movie

I grew up playing with Lego, so it wasn't a big ask to take my youngest son and 4 of his 8-year old friends to see the Lego Movie on Saturday. It was fun, clever and had a very catchy theme tune that got stuck in everyone's head, whether they were 8 or 41 years old! "Everything is awesome!"

The song is dripping with candy-pop irony though. "Everything is cool when you're part of a team," is the propaganda of the Lego regime seeking to keep every Lego character locked in oppressive conformity. Essentially, the message of the movie is, "You're special, break free from the conformity of community and discover your unique individuality." Of course there is some  truth to that, but I'm not sure we realize that this is the Gospel of Individualism, and that it's being preached to us every day from almost every angle. I wish I could just sit and enjoy the movie.
But honestly, it is building a world-view which needs careful dismantling.

As I've begun to look at how the Trinity shapes the identity of every believer, we simply have to distinguish between Individualism and a Trinitarian view of family. We need to break free from conformity to the world's view of community as oppressive conformity, and trust God to renew our minds through the Trinity, who dwells in perfect unity and diversity, with self-giving love.

The Bible's view of the individual's life is one of a silver thread; beautiful yet fragile. Individualism's message is that the unique quality of each individual is best discovered on it's own. The Trinitarian view is that when we allow God to weave us into the tapestry of community we are stronger and
richer than when we were alone. In fact, the Bible says that we cannot truly know ourselves apart from community; that there are aspects of our souls that are obscured from us but are clear to others.
"If we have fellowship with one other we walk in the light..." (1 Jn 1:9)

Fascinating that Jesus' acid test for whether Peter loved Him, was loving Jesus' family.
"Do you love me, Peter? Then feed my sheep." (Jn 21)
Our vertical love for Christ is tested horizontally in family.
But that can sometimes be as painful as stepping barefoot on a stray piece of Lego!
It's relatively easy to love Jesus, isn't it?  He's perfect and has given Himself faithfully to us. Jesus was calling Peter to extend the same grace to Jesus' flock, that had been extended to him in his failure. As John Stott said, "Loving the  family of God sometimes means forgiving the inexcusable because the inexcusable has been forgiven in us."

The younger brother of Individualism is Deconstructionism - the fear of Institutions. This world view embraces community, but in a very fluid, unstructured manner. Any imposition upon the individual's freedom to come and go as he or she pleases is seen as restrictive. Again, there is a need to deconstruct
Deconstructionism through the Trinity. The perfect Family is committed to one another, has a leader and a mission. While the Bible does speak of the World-Wide Family of God of which every believer is mystically a part,  it is also clear about believers belonging to local families. "To the church that meets in Priscilla's  and Aquila's house." (Romans 16) These local families were committed, submitted and met daily  around the preaching of scripture, prayer  and the sacraments. You could be put out of one, which assumes that you were welcomed in to one too. The early church was not as fluid and disorganized as the Deconstructionists would like it to be!

Christ has reconciled us to His father and his family through his own blood, and oh what richness, when we discover the love of the Father through his family! There is nothing like it!
It is not good for man to be alone!
In Christ we have found a perfect Father, but we have also found a family,
which though imperfect, is very good.
Awesome, in fact.

The Intolerance of the New Tolerance.

From where I stand, there's been a significant shift in the common understanding of the word tolerance.  The Merriam -Webster Dictionary describes tolerance as "a willingness to accept feelings, habits or beliefs that are different from your own." So according to this definition, tolerance is not that one does not have strong beliefs or convictions. It is about how we treat those with whom we differ with respect to their beliefs or convictions.

The new definition of tolerance is not yet written in dictionaries, yet it is being inscribed on the soul of our culture.  Here is one example of how it might be defined, from a statement in a  recent article in the New York Times. "People who think they have the truth are dangerous. Everyone has the right to determine what is true for him or herself. No-one should try to press their view of truth on others."

This view insists that people who think they have the truth are intolerant. Even dangerous.
Whether we agree with this or not, we must recognize that this represents a significantly new definition of tolerance. Here, intolerance is not simply pressing one's view of truth upon others. (That has always been seen as intolerant.) Intolerance here is holding the view that one truth is more true than another.

The irony is that the words expressed by the New York Times journalist  express a particular view of truth themselves.  It is a Western, Post-Modern, Enlightenment view of things. It is essentially saying, "What is true is that there is no truth, which is a more enlightened view than those dangerous bigots who believe that there is truth."

D.A. Carson calls this the intolerance of the new tolerance.

Few people have articulated the shift in our culture's view of tolerance better than Rick Warren. Some may say that he is describing something peculiar to California, but I would submit to you that what he is describing is a much broader mood than that. "Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate."

Compassionate conviction is what we need but, it preaches more easily than it lives. 

This past week, Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, a former English professor  and outspoken Lesbian from Syracuse University, spoke at Wheaton College's chapel service in Illinois, sharing the story of how she had converted to Christianity and had entered into a heterosexual marriage.

While her provocative message encouraged many, it also offended others who protested outside the chapel. When she heard that some students were protesting her chapel talk, she sat down and met with them to listen to their grievances. She concluded that their different conclusions on sexuality came from a different view of Scripture. Her view was that Scripture was inspired and authoritative with regards to sexual ethics, while the students held a revisionist view of Scripture. They agreed to disagree.

However, this was how she described the tone and tenor of her conversation with them.

"This is the world I helped create; I was an activist, I was a professor who authored the university’s policy on domestic partnership, which they still use today. I helped make this world, so I really feel for students. There is nothing about what they’ve said, there’s nothing about anybody’s response to me that was offensive in any way. In my heart, I felt huge solidarity and connection.”

I think Rosaria Butterfield manages to thread the needle of compassion and conviction.
God give us grace to follow suit.

*Dr. Butterfield's  book is called, "Secret thoughts of an unlikely convert."You can order it here

Fist-cloud: Praying bold prayers in dry seasons. Day 3

James, the younger brother of Jesus, wrote some great stuff on prayer. His prayer hero was Elijah the Old Testament prophet. "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit." (James 5)

Imagine a prophet who prays for a drought on a whole nation? What's more, God listens. That has to take some gutsy courage. Elijah gets given the name, Troubler of Israel for good reason.  However, there was method to his madness. Elijah's job, as a national prophet was to call people away from idol worship back to trusting and worshipping Yahweh. The drought wasn't the cursing of a cruel prophet. It was meant to goad them away from worshipping the false God Baal. Once idolatry had been severely dealt with at Mount Carmel, Elijah prophesied rain, and it rained again.

What James doesn't mention is that when Elijah prophesied rain, the only sign that the drought would be broken was a small cloud on the horizon, as small as a man's fist. He crouched down on the ground and prayed with impudence - I love that word! It means persistent audacity. Elijah  kept sending his servant back to see if the fist-cloud was growing. He prayed until the sky grew black with clouds and it began to rain.  There is no greater metaphor for revival than rain in a drought. God revived Israel through Elijah's prophetic, persistent prayer.

James encourages us though Elijah's example in a few ways:
1. We are called to pray bold and persistent prayers into the drought situations of our lives and the lives of those we know. Lets pray for God to send his rain into those situations.
2. Our prayer has power beyond our personal situations. It has national implications.
We are not to pray only for blessing on a nation. We are also to pray for righteousness.
Let's pray for a turning from idolatry and a returning to God,  in our Church, State and Nation today.
3. Even if we only see a glimpse of revival as small as a fistcloud, we are called to pray into being what we see prophetically. This can seem presumptuous, but church history tells us that the promise of  revival was always accompanied by prophetic and persistent prayer. Paul charged Timothy, "in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare."1 Tim 1:18 Lets pray persistently with the promises that God has spoken over us individually, as a church and as a nation.
Just one more day. Let's make the most of it.