Why Do Good?

I've always wondered what to tell people when they ask "Why are you doing this kind/sacrificial/loving thing for me?". I mean, first I've wondered if I'll ever hear those words.... but then, if I do hear them, I wonder how I should reply. To some degree I don't even fully understand why I'm doing it. And some of my reasons for doing it, are pathetic. So... let's unpack this more fully. Oh, and please know that I'm answering my own questions as I type. :)

What I have previously thought....
In the past I've believed that God has done good for me and therefore I'm obligated to do good also. A good amount of guilt is involved here and while I'd say that I was doing it to be like Jesus, I don't even think that was really true. Mostly guilt... Besides, I'm not sure that being like Jesus is, in itself, a good reason. It doesn't really answer why I should be like Jesus. (i.e. I can try to "be like Jesus" without loving Jesus or being His follower)

I've also, in the past, had some vague notions about restoring the world, though I've had (and probably still have) a pretty weak understanding of why I'm to restore the world. I've also had some idea that people are made in God's image and so I should love them... again, my understanding of why this is so was/is weak.

What I don't understand....
So we're to restore creation? Why? Who cares? God's going to nuke it and take us all to heaven anyway...right? And even if He isn't going to nuke it, can't He fix it Himself? Well, I guess that for any of this to make sense you have to first believe that God is not going to melt the earth down and beam us all up to heaven someday. The early church, and many biblical scholars today, seem to agree that we're all due to be bodily resurrected someday (of which Jesus was the prototype...aka "first fruits"). So, without delving into a big discussion on that, let's assume the earth will be used for our future resurrection.

So why couldn't God restore the earth Himself? Well, He will have to do this to some degree because some things are just too jacked up for us to fix. BUT, that's not the point! God designed us to be "over" the earth. To be its overseers, its keepers. This makes us God's stewards. We are to be His people on earth, restoring the earth itself (fixing, cleaning, maintaining, beautifying), restoring people (loving, nurturing, mending, serving), and generally creating beauty. We point people to God by creating art, peace, and beauty. We make earth a little more like God intended it when we do these things. This is being God's ambassadors. It's saying "THIS is a glimpse of what God intended... beauty, love, peace." It's this message that will speak volumes to the world around us.

So, the other question: People are made in God's image? So? Why does that matter? We don't use that as reasoning for why we should love others "You know Bill, those kids were made in Tom's image... you should love them." But yet even as I write that, I can see that God is far different than Tom (whoever Tom is), and that God is worth revering and fawning over. God, who is infinitely powerful, created each and every person, and gifted them each in a way that enables them to do, when nurtured and loved, extreme good and to be like Him. So, loving and nurturing people, enables them to live closer to their potential and to make God look better, to show yet another perspective (facet, dimension, face, etc.) of God on earth, and to make the earth more like the place it was intended to be. Yeah... I guess that makes a LOT of sense.

So, not only do I have some reasons to do good, I have no reason to not. Why? 1 John 3:16 says "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters." This verse affirms what true love is, and that love has freed me to love others without fear of loss or a need to protect myself, my time, my possessions, etc. I have all I could ever need and it cannot be taken from me. (Romans 8:38-39)

So what do I say if someone ever does ask me why I'm loving them so sacrificially and so.... well....abnormally? I guess I should say something to the effect of this: "Well, God has shown me that He intended the world to be a lot better place than it currently is... and by loving others, I am, hopefully, helping to make it a little more like He intended it to be and also giving people, including myself, a little glimpse into the world of hope and beauty He intended."

Yeah...that's what I'll say.....

The Tangible Kingdom - My Review

The Tangible Kingdom, by Hugh Halter, is a book about the formation of Adullum, a missional community in the Denver area. The book is quite refreshing and informative for someone, like myself, who is still trying to get his mind around the idea of missional living. Halter expounds upon missional living with lots of good examples and tips.

Rather than writing a full-on book report, I'm just going to break out some key takeaways which I, um, took away from the book. So, pardon the jumbled nature that follows...

First off, Halter starts off by indicating that while the methodology his community has implemented, and which he is promoting, may seem like the latest fad, it's actually very old… several thousand years old. It is, at its heart, what the early church was all about in both form and function.

Halter uses some of the early chapters to demonstrate the inefficacy of our current lifestyle by implying that we (the average church and/or Christian) are likely not as attractive, or different, as we might think we are. When we consider whether or not we are attractive and different, as the apostles indicate we should be, Halter states the following, and he backs it up with some cold, hard facts:

"Yes, we have big churches, churches that grow and do much good in the world, but let’s be honest: Do people take us Christians seriously? Do they respect us and our way of life? Do the spiritually hungry look to the average evangelical church for help, or would they rather go buy a self-help book at Barnes & Noble? How long has it been since you knew someone who came to faith for the first time? I’m not talking about in a youth group setting or in children’s church. I’m talking about an adult who had no idea about God but who has since found faith in Christ and rearranged his or her entire life around his? We’ve been working with pastors of mega-churches, house churches, and many new churches, and the reality of “nonconversions” is staggering. We have churches everywhere, but they smell musty, fussy, clubby, judgmental, mean, punishing, ungenerous, and are not compelling people to come or stay. Almost every statistical reference to the church indicates that we not only can’t draw people, but we can’t even keep the ones we have."

He backs this up with some statistics from the Barna Group:

• “Since 1991, the adult population in the United States has grown by 15 percent. During that same period the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—a 92 percent increase.”4
• “Roughly half of all churches in America did not add one new person through conversion growth last year.”5
• “In America, it takes the combined effort of eighty-five Christians working over an entire year to produce one convert"

Quoting Tom Clegg and Warren Bird in regards to the rise of post-modernity and the fall of the church in America: "The inescapable conclusion is that we must throw out any notion that God is truly at the center of the church’s heart in North America. The shift in society’s view of the church has resulted in the marginalization of the church and the secularization of society. Christianity has lost its place at the center of American life. Christians must learn how to live the gospel as a distinct people who no longer occupy the center of society. We must learn to build relational bridges that win a hearing."

Furthermore, Halter believes that even churches who are growing numerically are typically not doing as well as those very numbers might indicate:

"…if you evaluated your statistics objectively, you’d likely come to the conclusion that most of the growth of your church is transfer growth, with new people coming from another church. Is it wrong or less spiritual to meet the needs of Christians who perhaps aren’t growing at other churches, who can move to the next level with Christ under the shepherding of a different church? Sure, this is important. If this is the goal of your church, fine. But be careful about calling this “growth.” Churches can make a difference in some way with some Christians, but it’s unlikely they’re making a dent in culture by reaching the unreached or helping the truly disenfranchised."

Halter suggests that the aforementioned shift to post-modern thinking deserves a shift in our approach to evangelism: "when the culture is no longer looking for a church to go to, isn’t that interested in church music, sermons, or programs, or when they don’t innately value or trust church leaders, the functions of church must be adjusted. And thus the form must adjust in kind.

What is the main function? I hope you now agree that the primary function is to actively move into the culture to embody and enflesh the good news into every nook and cranny of this world. The function of the church is to be God’s missionary hands to a world that is looking for something tangible to grab onto. If that is the function, then the form must allow for this to happen. This means that the incarnational church must have a new structure."

Halter suggests that unbelievers need an optimal environment "in which they can be eyewitnesses to our life without feeling any pressure to be like us." This, again, goes back to the idea that we mustn't judge them or be appalled by their sin. Instead, he believes that unbelievers should be allowed, and encouraged, to participate whenever possible. This includes the "sacred space" we call church: "…some people perceive the church to be sacred space cleansed from all pagan participation. I’m not sure where we got this from, since God told us he doesn’t actually live in temples made with human hands. But there apparently exists today the same three-tiered inner, outer, and “Court of the Gentiles” idea that existed in the temple courts of the time of Christ. People still think the church is a more sacred space than the Barnes & Noble coffee shop. I’d get questions like, 'But what happens if someone from the clubs comes in and sees pagan Pete playing his tuba to ‘This Is the Air I Breathe’ and yet the night before he saw Pete smoking a joint? Won’t that send the wrong message?' My response is, 'What is the message you want to convey?' If you want to convey that someone who is up on the church stage has to prove a certain level of spiritual stability, then fine. That is your choice. But if you want to convey that your community is a place where anybody, in any phase of spiritual curiosity, can be in an environment in which God can touch their hearts, then you may try something like opening up your music group to include some Sojourners. (Though, yes, we’d definitely want the worship leader to be a missional member.) By the way, most of the musicians that we let play did come to faith."

Halter believes the most effective evangelists to be found those who care for souls instead of simply getting someone to "pray the prayer":

"For instance, they are convinced that people need Christ’s atonement for their sin, and that people need to deal with God personally, but they don’t feel that getting someone to “pray the prayer” is the focus of their ministry. They tend to focus more on providing a pathway that is conducive for the Holy Spirit to convert the person. Thus, they don’t focus on who goes to heaven and who doesn’t, but how to help people find heaven. They aren’t sure all evangelical Christians will make it in, including many wing-nut pastors, and they feel that Pharisee-ism is alive and well and will be judged much more harshly than the clueless meth addict who hangs on the forgiveness of Christ while he struggles with his addiction. They don’t put a lot of confidence in sermons or programs to transform a person and tend to prefer a good talk at the pub to influence the heart of a person. These leaders aren’t that bugged by people sinning. They don’t focus much on behavior, believing that if you can win the heart, behavior will follow. They think the homosexuals’ fight for sexual clarity isn’t that much different in God’s sight than the heterosexuals’ struggle against pornography"

The entire book is ripe with the idea that we shouldn't remove ourselves from the world in order to attain holiness and influence, but rather that we should bring our values into the culture.

Halter questions why pagans used to hold the church in high regard, and yet today view it with such disdain. The problem, he suggests, is that we've put an emphasis on communicating a message of truth while paying very little attention to our "posture". He suggests that our posture, or how we appear to the world in our non-verbal communication, plays a huge role. Unbelievers can tell when we're trying to get another notch in our belt vs. genuinely loving them. We've prioritized the verbal message over the non-verbal actions and love.

Functionally, a major implication of loving the world is that we shouldn't attempt to "legislate morality" or worry about the sin of unbelievers. Instead, Halter states that we should leave judgment to God and to focus on communicating God's love to them. He says we should "be like Jesus in the world: to help communicate God’s love and acceptance and to win people’s hearts through close contact and covering. Don’t worry, when they hand their hearts to God, they’ll want to leave sin." Instead, as he says, they typically "see us fighting to keep marriage between heterosexual men and women, fighting against gay rights, fighting against Islam, fighting to keep prayer in schools, and so on." In essence, they see us "struggling hard to keep our way of life."

While this may sound simply like "relational" evangelism, Halter suggests that the problem with most emphasis on "relational" and "friendship" evangelism methods is that they focus on trying to build relationships alone. He says he hears a constant frustration among those trying this method saying that they develop good relationships with people abroad, but "can’t get them to come to church!'”. This complaint betrays the fact that the majority of people still believe that the solution is to get unbelievers to the worship service so they can hear the pastor preach and "pray the prayer". Instead, the real solution is a community of believers in which these unbelievers can find some kind of significance. It is a community being the body of Christ.

Elsewhere, Halter believes in simplifying, to an extreme, the worship service. This is because he doesn't want to create "an environment that is so good that it causes people to feel positioned as observers." instead hoping to grow people who "have time to be incarnational in the world" rather than "working on the church service." As such, they don't have worship service practice and Halter spends "only a few hours a week planning our time together, which includes sermon preparation." He also states "Sometimes, we even cancel our gathering so people can do something alternative to a worship gathering. " Every attempt is made to make it clear that the Sunday service is not the "main thing".

Halter emphasizes that we must be out in our culture, interacting and living. Instead of making the church, or a "Christian" coffee shop, our "third place" (the place we most hang out at other than work or home) we should make regular places our "third place". He lists the following examples of ways to be in culture in a regular, everyday fashion:

• Letting people live with you in your home for extended periods of time. In the five years that we’ve lived in Denver, we’ve had people living with us more than four hundred of those days. Remember, I’m an introvert. Even though I get to stay in my home, for me having house guests is a form of leaving. I’m intentionally giving up my space, my time, my comfort for the sake of connecting with Sojourners.
• Having dinners or doing dinners out with Sojourners. Not rocket science, but I’d almost always rather eat by myself or with just my family. Leaving is committing at least one night a week or one meal a week to Sojourners.
• Doing what you love with others. Matt and I love to golf and mountain bike. We’ve made the habit of trying to do what we love to do with a Sojourner, if possible.
• Going out of your way to build relationships. When I drive home after six meetings and eight cups of coffee, I look to see whose car is in the parking lot at our Starbucks. If it’s a Sojourner I’ve been trying to include in my life, I’ll pull over, go in, buy a quick coffee, try to make some good conversation, and then on my way out, throw my coffee away without even taking a sip.
• Looking for chances to talk. When I have seen a neighbor outside on our street, I’ve specifically gone out to “get my mail” just so I could converse a bit more with him or her.
  

Halter also suggests that we need to alter people's stereotypes of "Christians as glorified Amish or Quakers who only enjoy the intimacy of sex to make a child and whose only hobbies are doing puzzles together" so that we can help them "see the Kingdom in a new light. This is why having fun, enjoying life, and celebrating people, food, wine, art, music, recreation, and rest become so critical in seeing friends find God."

He also says that we need to keep our message, and our lifestyle, consistent. Once relationships are established with a Sojourner (unbeliever who shows interest in God), then we know we can discuss weighty matters with them: "If you feel the need to lighten it up, you’re ripping off both the Sojourner and yourself. Jesus never lightened up his message, even with the most far-out Sojourners, so we probably shouldn’t either."

Overall, a very enjoyable and enlightening book... especially for a recovering fundamentalist like my self.