Jesus Wants to Save CHRISTIANS!

HERE ME OUT ON THIS ONE...

First of all, I've been reading this book.


It is challenging me - and in some ways it is disheartening. At the end of this post, will be a challenge for any of you (maybe all of you) who read this. And I'd love it if you would join me.

"Jesus Wants to Save Christians" is a great title for a book, by the way. I HIGHLY recommend this one. Order it, get it, read it, talk about it, and fix it... in that order.

First of all, the book has helped me (for the first time in my life - yep, I'm a pastor) to grasp the Old Testament story; that it's MY story. I actually feel like if someone said, "Hey, what's up with the Old Testament?" I wouldn't stare at the floor in hopes that they'd ask me something else; like something about the NEW testament.

So the first part of the book goes something like this:
Pharaoh owned slaves in Egypt - and used their slave labor to build his empire. (Empire) The Israelites (Pharaoh's slaves) prayed and asked God to help them; to deliver them from Pharaoh. And most of us know that God heard their cry and did it. And that they ran through the Red Sea, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Years later, the Israelites are in Jerusalem and Solomon is King. Now here's something I'd never connected that is SOOOOOO interesting. God told the Israelites NOT TO FORGET what He'd done for them; that He'd delivered them from bondage back in Egypt. So King Solomon, in order to not forget, is building a GINORMOUS temple, that looked something like this...

(a tad old school if you ax me)

He's not only building a temple, but a vast empire. (There's that word again.) Okay, so the temple is all fancy and beautiful and God is supposed to move in to it. BUT guess what? Solomon, in order to build this fancy temple is WORKING SLAVES HALF TO DEATH!!! This is key. The very thing that the Israelites had prayed for God to deliver them from is exactly what they are using in order to remember that God had delivered them from slavery. DUH! I mean c'mon... "Thank you God for delivering us from slavery.... MUSH SLAVE! BUILD GOD'S TEMPLE SO WE DON'T FORGET WE WERE ONCE SLAVES TOO!" It's a touch icky.

Okay - so now I'm moving on. So here we are in 2009 and this book is talking to me about the difference between "need" and "luxury." And of course, we all know about this, right? Well, here's an interesting paragraph that provides a little perspective on the issue. This is specifically regarding America...

"Human history has never witnessed the abundance that we consider normal. America is the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity. We have more resources than any group of people anywhere at any time has ever had. Ever. God bless America? God has."

So of course, the authors (Rob Bell, Don Golden) go on to give a zillion statistics, the likes of which we've all read before...nothing new. Except this time, I'm listening. And here's why. I'm listening because the empire that Pharaoh had created, fell. The empire that the freed Israelites had created along with King Solomon, fell. And there are others. And there will BE others. And this "falling" is connected to something that happens on the road from "need" to "luxury." There is something that gets lost in translation, in a BIG way. And here's what it is.

We start viewing luxuries as needs. And before long... we have no understanding of what "need" is, and luxury has replaced need and we no longer have a reference for what it means to live without luxury. So is luxury bad? Well, it wasn't in Jerusalem. But when they accumulated luxury, they forgot God. And how do we know this? Because they abused the weaker man, and started viewing their luxuries as needs and didn't take care of those weaker than themselves because they were too busy providing luxury for themselves.

Luxury vs Need. Forgetting God. What does that look like for us?

It looks like us thinking that losing our home and having to move into an apartment is completly devastating. It looks like our kids thinking that wearing their "not so cool" outfit to school is a cataclysmic event. The book goes on to say (here's my favorite part) that when JESUS talks about helping the poor, widows, and orphans, that we don't even know what that looks like - because we have no reference for it. Know why? BECAUSE WE ARE PERSERVING OUR LUXURIES... and when you preserve accumulated luxuries you can't help the poor... because you may not have enough left for your luxuries? Luxuries that are now seen as needs.

(Take a deep breath for a second - I had to.)

So they say that it's almost impossible (unless we change) to view Jesus' statements to "help the poor" the way someone in a third world country would. Someone in a third world country might hear that message and know that it meant to "share everything that they had, so that no one was in need."

Okay - I'm ending all this with a challenge. Whether you think it's a real big challenge or a real small challenge, I'd love it if you'd join me on it.

Tonight we had these for dinner...

I put an uneaten two in baggies for another time. (Probably because I've been reading this book. However, it is very likely, depending on the laziness factor, that they would've ended up in the trash.) As I was cleaning up I thought about "need" vs "luxury" and how important it is to know the difference... because, like I said, if you don't know the difference... you usually end up forgetting God (what He said not to do) and the empire crumbles. You can go big with this thought; big as in the AMERICAN empire... or you can think about your personal empire; the empire of SELF. The problem here is not luxury. The problem is forgetting what luxury is and who it comes from. The problem is not giving to the poor because I see my luxuries as needs and I'm hell-bent on preserving them.

This has become a problem in my home. It needs to change. So here's what I'm up to: Starting on Wednesday, I'm going on a steady diet of this:

That's right... a steady diet of red beans and rice... morning, noon and night, for 3 days. This will help me understand the difference, in some small form, between "need" (food -rb&rice) and "luxury" (ice cream, [sorry, top of my list these days] steak, chicken, assortment... variety).

Here's another thing. We recycle paper. No big deal, right. I hate that pile sitting in my kitchen that looks like this:

It bugs the crap out of me. I looked at it just tonight and thought, "I hate that messy pile. I wish we didn't recycle paper." (a word to myself - excuse me for a moment) "Seriously Matt? Because I'm pretty sure that recycling is VERY important to our environment these days." (okay, I'm back). So the second part of my challenge is to recycle something... anything... underwear, Tupperware, whatever. Or if you already recycle something... to get a good attitude about it (talking to myself here). To ENJOY that recycling is a need (believe it or not, I've considered not recycling, as a luxury that I enjoyed.... don't shake your finger at me!)

So are you up for it? (Amanda - I don't think you can do this pregnant) Are you interested in gaining a better understanding of "need" vs "luxury" SO THAT -1. we can remind ourselves of where our luxuries come from (don't forget me... God, that is.) and -2. keep the empire (America, ourselves) from being torn down and driven off our land. (yes, it's a metaphor... well, maybe.)

I leave you with one last quote from the book:

"If a particular resource becomes scarce at home or in other parts of the world, it can be very difficult to cut back, because the powerful forces of entitlement convince us certain things are deserved. Empires naturally accumulate, accumulation has consequences, and those consequences are expensive."

Are you up for it? Let me know.