Religion Beat Me Up and Stole My Lunch Money

Again, I hate religion.

If religion were someone that I went to school with, he would be the bully who beat me up and took my lunch money. You always tried to avoid him, but no matter what you would do, there he would be, lurking just around the next corner. He would steal your joy and excitement about even going to school and if you were not careful, he would steal your girlfriend. This guy made everyone look stupid by belittling them and elevating himself. This happened to me you know. I was bullied a lot in middle school and High School. I couldn’t get this kind of guy out of my world. I felt powerless to defeat, what I thought at the time, the powerful. I felt weak and alone against this mighty foe, till one day I fought back and discovered that I was not the weak one, he was.

This is the same when dealing with religion. Religion is for the weak and insecure, you know, people with something to prove to themselves and to the world. A relationship with God on the other hand gives us our ultimate security and strength. A relationship with God is not about us at all, it’s about Him. Religion always steals and kills. A healthy relationship, on the other hand, always gives sacrificially; it gives life, protects life, nurtures life, and produces life.

I remember one time in High School when I fought back when a bully jumped me. This guy was all in my face and he was twice as big as me. It was in the middle of science class and everyone was watching. I could sit down, run, or cower, or I could take a stand against this bully. I took a stand. I grabbed the desk beside me and threw it at this guy. He was crazy angry, but I saw the respect in his eyes and he retreated. That’s when I noticed Buddy standing behind me with his fists clinched. Buddy was the biggest guy at our school, he must have been 20 and still in High School, I don’t know if he was that smart, but what I did know was Buddy had my back. Because he saw my stand, and he saw the fact that this bully would have killed me, he stood for me and with me. Buddy and I had an unspoken understanding, we had an unspoken relationship; we had a friendship.

Jesus addressed the religious leaders of His time a lot in the gospel of Matthew, especially in chapters 22-23. Jesus took a stand against religion, He stands for us, and with us, and He stands for us against religion and it’s bullying. He called the religious leaders on their bullying. He called them white washed tombs. What He meant by this was that they sought to make themselves look good by their outward appearances, but inside, they were dead, weak, insecure, selfish, scared. . . Jesus told these people not to keep burdening others by their many rules and regulations. He told them not to keep showing off and not to keep pushing others down and stepping on their heads to elevate themselves and to make themselves look more spiritual. Jesus refused to let the religious leaders beat up the average man or woman and steal their lunch money so that they would not be nourished. Jesus fought on our behalf, taking a stand so that we could know Him without all the hoop jumping. He made a relationship with God attainable for all of us without religion lurking around the next corner.

So how do we keep ourselves from being kicked around by the bully of religion? Paul gives this instruction to his readers who are following Christ in Colossians 2: 20-23:

“So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? “Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!” Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they’re just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 2:20-23

Fighting back against the bully . . . with backup,


Robbie

Do Not Miss a Trick

I was recently in a Christian owned business that sells books. For the sake of confidentiality I will not disclose the name of the book store. I will only tell you that the store has the word family in it, there are Christians that work there and run the place, and these stores are usually found in malls, and they only sell all Christian books, knick knacks, and other worthless trinkets and candies.

Now, I have to be honest, I would rather order my books from Amazon than to set foot inside one of these places, because they make me angry and they are overpriced.

Anyway, I was looking for a Bible that I could take backpacking with me and this seemed like the only store in the mall that could help, though I really did not expect to find exactly what it is that I was looking for. I tried to keep a low profile and to just look around and get in and then get out when I heard the voice, “Can I help you?” “No you cannot help me.” I thought to myself, but I dared not speak it. “Please.” I said to myself, “Say nothing and be nice.” “Yes you can help.” I said. “I am looking for a Bible.” “What kind of Bible are you looking for?” she asked. I snapped inside, but I don’t think she saw it. She then went on, “We have all kinds of Bibles: small ones, big ones, paper back, hard cover, leather, study Bibles, KJV, RSV, KJV, The Message, NIV, NKJV, The New Living, glitter and gem covered, . . . and many more.” I was freaking inside, “I mean really, am I even on this planet right now.” I thought to myself.

I knew they did not have what I was looking for, and then I laughed that I was even in the store looking for what it was that I was looking for, and then I came clean, and I broke down a bit and said, “No, none of these will work. I am looking for a small Bible with both the Old and New Testaments in it, preferably not King James. It needs to be small, compact, and light weight, and it also has to be waterproof and flame resistant. Do you have anything like that?” To my surprise, she did not skip a beat. She handed me a small leather bound compact Bible with a cool cross etched into it. It had the Old and New Testaments in it, it was nice and pretty, it looked cool, and was light weight. It was near perfect, and as close as I was going to get. She assured me that the Bible was not waterproof and to her knowledge it was not flame resistant. I readied myself for my purchase.

Just as I was finishing up with this nice young lady and getting into the check out line, a girl walked in and sought the clerks help. “Do you have any tarot cards?” she asked. The young woman who had just been so helpful to me was shocked, visibly shocked. “What! What are you looking for?” she asked again. “Tarot cards.” the shy girl, who was obviously not from this country, replied. “Not here we don’t!” The clerk said. “You are in the wrong store, maybe you should go down the hall to the Borders. We don’t sell that kind of stuff here. Do you know what kind of store this is?” The girl was embarrassed and walked out quickly with her head held low. I was angry and disgusted and thought hateful things.

The clerk walked around the counter to ring up my purchases like nothing ever happened. She had on this plastic smile and asked if I found everything alright and if I needed anything else. “Nothing, I am good.” I replied. Just then two other employees came out from the back, one was overweight and was eating Jesus candies, sorry, this is just my honest observation and recollection. The clerk began telling them what had just happened to her: “You wouldn’t believe what just happened to me.” “What.” They replied. “You wouldn’t believe what someone came in here asking for.” “Molly Cyrus posters?” they replied. “No! Worse!” The clerk responded. “What?” they asked. “Tarot cards!” the clerk finally answered. “OH, MY GOD!” the girls said in unison. I wanted to puke and then kill someone. I know, “Thou shall not murder.” I thought about that and kept my cool. “What did you say?” the sales girls asked. “I told her we don’t sell that here. Then I asked, Do you know where you are? Then I sent her to Borders." “Good for you!” the girls replied.

As I stood there the young woman finished ringing me up and asked for my “Perks Card.” I told her I did not have it with me, but she insisted she look it up. I had to give her my old address and phone number from three years ago in order for her to find my information. She gave me my new total and handed me a brand new perks card. Apparently I saved over $80.00 and my total was around thirty bucks. I looked down at my perks card and to my shock it said “Pastors Perks.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. “I am a pastor, and these are my people!?!?” I was nauseous. All I could think about was this girl who was looking for her tarot cards. I wanted to run after her and say how sorry I was about how she was treated and that the store that she was in was about Jesus and I wanted to tell her what that really meant. I felt sad, paid the woman at the check out counter, and left with my head hung low. Borders was on my mind and everything that I should have said and done differently.

Paul hits the nail on the head and sums up the issue at hand in Colossians 4: 5-6. I could not say this better. Paul writes:

“Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don’t miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, do not put them down, do not cut them out. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 4:5-6

Hopefully not missing a future trick,


Robbie

Do Not Tolerate Religion

I hate religion.

I know, this is a crazy statement, especially for a youth minister. Let me explain, and let’s get our terms defined. Religion is simply our feeble attempts to get to God or to please God through our own power or our own efforts. Religion is about me and my manipulation of circumstances and choices in an effort to manipulate God. This is how I see religion and it seems to me that this is how Jesus sees religion, see Matthew chapters 5-7 and 22-23. In looking at religion through the lens of this definition, Christianity ceases to be a religion. Christianity is a relationship with God that He initiates and maintains through no effort of our own. There is an old cliché that I love that sums this up well: “Religion says do. Christianity says done.” See, Christ has made the effort and initiated the relationship with us and we can enter into that relationship because of what Jesus has done on the cross and through His resurrection from the grave. This is despite of who we are and what we have done. God moves toward us, despite of us.

In 1 John 4:9-10, John asserts that “We love Him (God) because He first loved us.” John says before this, in 1 John 4:7, that we are to “love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” This love is God. This love is motivated out of God’s initiative toward us. We only are capable of love because of the love that God has already demonstrated to us through His son Jesus laying His life down for His friends, and He has called us his friends. This relationship is initiated by God Himself, not us.

So where are we with this whole religion mess? In speaking about religion and following and learning from Christ, Paul gives this instruction to his readers in Colossians:

“So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 2:16-19


Despising and not tolerating religion, but plugging into the source of life,


Robbie

Look Up

Some of the best advice that I have heard in a while is, “Look Up!”

We were instructed to wear our helmets and to watch our heads. If we collided with something we were to say, “Thank you helmet!” and then attempt to be more careful, cautious, and observant.

You see, we went caving last week with one of our adventure camps and we were squeezing through some pretty tight corridors to navigate this dark cavern entrance and passage. We were prepared though. We had on helmets, gloves, long sleeves and pants, and a headlamp to be able to make our way through. You really had to watch what you were doing to keep yourself from getting stuck, or hurt, or worse, lost. There were times when we were crawling through some long tunnel like passages on our bellies, you know, the army crawl thing where you are basically dragging your body along. In these tight situations you had to look at where you were going and what you were doing, and you had to look up. If you didn’t you were sure to get a head ache, or go missing, or get turned around.

Paul tells us to look up in Colossians 3: 1-2:

“So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 3:1-2

In Caving you have to be aware of your surroundings, you have to follow your leader, and you must look up. This is no different in our walks with Jesus. If we are going to complete this journey, if we are going to exit this present darkness and enter into the celebration of His marvelous light, we must look up. We cannot look down at what is just right in front of us. We cannot look at the ground and to those things that so easily distract us from our God and where He is leading us. We must look to Christ and what is going on around Him. We have to be aware of our surroundings and be aware of His leading. It is Jesus’ perspective that will lead us on our way.

Looking up and being led on The Way,


Robbie

Do Not Be Mislead

I was at a gathering a while back where there were a lot of theology majors mingling around and spouting off all their knowledge and their thoughts on God. It seemed as if they were “one upping” one another and they seemed to be generally enjoying hearing themselves talk without really listening to anyone else. What made this situation worse was the fact that their lives did not seem reflect the things that they were talking about. The whole conversation seemed impersonal and Jesus was no where in the picture to be found. It seemed that they spoke quite eloquently about God, as though He were some sort of theory, without talking as if they knew Him at all. It was not intimate.

I am not saying these people did not know Jesus. I am saying that the conversation was lacking some sort of connectedness. It was not grounded in Jesus. I felt lost in a haze of intellectual jargon. I was in a fog of the empty, the intellectual, the irrelevant, the distant, and the impersonal. What agitates me the most, however, is the fact that I know that I have been guilty of doing the same exact thing as they were doing.

In speaking about following and learning from Christ, or discipleship, Paul gives this instruction to his readers in Colossians:

“Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 2:8-10

When I am at my best I simply point to Jesus and look to Him for all clarity. As Paul says, “Everything of God gets expressed in Jesus.” I don’t need to dissect every minute detail, or speak philosophically or intellectually. I do not need to argue or sound intelligent about God at all, as if it impresses Him or brought me or anyone else closer to Him. There is no magic formula or secret books to read to be in deeper fellowship with Him. I don’t have to be brilliant and site multitudes of biblical scholars or theological geniuses to be close to God or to understand God and relate to Him and others. I simply need to look to Jesus. His power and His supremacy and deity expresses all that I ever need to know about God. Jesus and Jesus alone, it is that simple.

Not being mislead, and by His grace, not misleading others,


Robbie

Live Deeply Rooted

There were many storms in the Shenandoah National Forest last year. There were several ice storms and countless numbers of thunder storms and wind gusts. These storms drastically changed the landscape of the forest floor and made navigating the trail systems very difficult. Old growth poplar trees and oaks were blown over onto the trails. It was a mess. What happened to these trees became a mystery to me and I was perplexed that trees of this magnitude would end up toppled like matchsticks. After further inspection it became clear to me what the problem was. The root systems of all of the toppled trees were shallow because of the rocky soils and boulders that scatter the landscape of the mountainous terrain. In fact, the root balls of these trees had pulled up huge rocks and boulders leaving gaping chasms where the trees once stood. Without depth to the root systems these trees were doomed to fertilize the forest floor.

In speaking about following and learning from Christ, or discipleship, in Colossians, Paul gives this instruction to his readers:

“My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 2:6-7

Paul tells the Colossians, and this information is equally as relevant to us as well, to live Christ and to be deeply rooted in Him. The key words here are live, deeply, and rooted. These words do not just hang out there alone however; they are describing how we are to be in Christ. We are to live Him. We are to follow and to obey all that we have been taught and all that we know. We are to live deeply rooted in Him. We are to go deep into who Jesus is by learning all that there is to know, meditating and studying His word, obeying His word, praying, being in fellowship with one another, being in tune with His Holy Spirit, and diving deeply into the depths of who He is. A shallow root system simply will not do, less we end up on the forest floor of faith failure like little match sticks blocking fellow travelers paths and rotting into obscurity as simple fertilizer for more fortunate well rooted undergrowth. We are to live . . . deeply . . . rooted . . . in Jesus Christ.

Sprouting deep roots in Him,



Robbie

Discipleship

“The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. ”

-Luke 6:40


What is discipleship? Who is a disciple? A disciple is a student or a learner. Someone who studies under a teacher is a disciple. As we seek to follow and learn from Jesus, we are students of Jesus, we are disciples of Him. He is the Great Teacher and we are his pupils. We as Christian are disciples.

Wikipedia notes that the word disciple appears two hundred and thirty two times in the four gospels and the Book of Acts. The Greek word disciple (3101), according to the Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon, appears two hundred and sixty-eight times. This trumps the word Christian, which only appears around three times, like in Acts 11:26: "the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." This term Christian was first used to describe those known to be disciples, or followers of Jesus. The other two occurrences in the New Testament are Acts 26:28 and 1 Peter 4:16. These occurrences refer to the public identity of those who follow Jesus and His teachings.

The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament describes a disciple this way: “27.16 μαθητήςb, οῦ m: (derivative of μανθάνωa ‘to learn, to be instructed,’ 27.12) a person who learns from another by instruction, whether formal or informal—‘disciple, pupil. ‘No pupil is greater than his teacher; but every pupil, when he has completed his training, will be like his teacher’ (Luke 6.40). ” In plain terms, we are learners of Jesus and in the end we will look like and be more like Jesus.

Paul taps into this idea of discipleship and beautifully describes a portrait of it in his letter to the Colossians in chapter two, verses two through four:

“I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”

A disciple is someone who looks like their teacher. They are woven into the fabric of the tapestry of the teacher’s lesson. In this case that lesson is the gospel message of love. This love is none other than God Himself. A disciple is in tune with everything that the teacher is instructing them. In this case the instruction is everything that there is to know about God. A disciple is confident, secure, and at peaceful rest with the message of their teacher. They are focused on the lesson. In this case, and as it pertains to Christianity, the lesson is Christ Himself. There is nothing greater according to Paul in these verses of scripture than the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus Christ who has been fully revealed to us. A disciple follows this revelation of God in Jesus Christ and is not led astray by false teachers. We don’t have to look any further and we don’t have to look anywhere else.

May we not follow after a cheaper imitation or be misled by the world’s false teachers.
As true disciples, may we look like our teacher who is none other than Jesus Christ: God incarnate.

Sitting at His Feet,

Robbie


The Holy Bible : King James Version. electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611 Authorized Version. Bellingham WA : Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995, S. Lk 6:40

Louw, Johannes P. ; Nida, Eugene Albert: Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament : Based on Semantic Domains. electronic ed. of the 2nd edition. New York : United Bible societies, 1996, c1989, S. 1:327

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 2:2-4

In Him no Secrets are Hidden

Didn’t your mother tell you that it was inappropriate to tell secrets?!?!

I hate uncomfortable and peculiar social situations where someone whispers something into someone else’s ear and you are there left in the dark to wonder what just transpired. Maybe there is a look of fear after the secret is told or a burst of laughter and you are there thinking to yourself, “What! What just happened? Do I need to know this information? Are they talking about something important? Does this information affect me in any way? Could I be hurt if I knew, or would it help me?” You want to be in on the news. You want help. You want to be influenced by this information. You want to laugh too. But no, you are left in the dark to wonder what in the world is going on.

There is a resource out there called The Secret. It is the biggest “hot mess” I have ever seen. The premise is that there is a secret knowledge out there that you can tap into to get anything that you want, as if it were about you and me at all. The resource claims that if you can think it and channel the power of envisioning what you want, then you can achieve it. This is Gnosticism revisited and puked back out onto the self help table of the masses. “Gnosticism is a pre-Christian and early Christian religious movement teaching that salvation comes by learning esoteric spiritual truths that free humanity from the material world, believed in this movement to be evil (Encarta Dictionary: English).” In simpler terms, knowledge is power. We can know enough to transcend this material world and achieve salvation through a special knowledge or secret.

The good news of Jesus Christ is no secret. God has plainly made Himself known to all people through His son Jesus. When God saw the persistent ignorance of Himself among the Jews and Gentiles, He was persistent and chose to come down from heaven and to show us Himself through Jesus. If we have seen Jesus, we have seen God. No guess work is required and we are not left in the dark in a peculiar situation. God has made Himself known to us and has done all the work to rescue us.

“This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing. The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our Message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me. ”

Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Col 1:26-29

In Him no secrets are hidden,

Robbie