This year, I celebrated (if you can call it that) Thanksgiving with a family I barely know.  I’ve had one meal with them about 3 months ago and that turned out well…hence, an invitation for Thanksgiving.  I must be good company.  While I would rather have curled up on the couch and eaten a TV dinner or something while watching my shows on DVR like the true recluse that I am, I will say that the day was well spent and quite enjoyable.  At the end of the day, I was thankful for having spent time with these individuals – as strange as they were.  They are, after all, one of the most bohemian families I’ve known in my lifetime.  Love those kind of folks.

Others were there at the party as well, so I got to mingle with a few people I’d never met before.  One guy’s father was inducted into the Mafia at a young age.  One gal had started her own business.  One young guest showed up late with a new hairdo…hot pink.  Eclectic is probably a benign word to use for this mix of characters that I dined with, but at no point in the evening was there an uncomfortable ‘party moment.’  Everyone was strange in their own right.  Clothes, behavior, backgrounds…there wasn’t one normal person in the crowd. 

As I drove home from the party, I remember thinking how grateful I was for not being the kind of person who would have judged these people.  I was grateful for being the kind of person who welcomed and relished the odd, took in their uniqueness, and appreciated the interesting soup of humanity that was this group with whom I spent my Thanksgiving dinner with. 

So, this year, I am grateful for who I am, what God has shown me in my life, and for who He has grown me into.  With all my faults and shortcomings, I am grateful that I can look at another human being in whatever shape he or she may come in…and appreciate their truthful nature.  I am grateful for the truth.  I am grateful that I can recognize it and am not blinded.  I am grateful for that Godly clarity that sees past clothes, positions, money and circumstances to see what He is interested in…our nature – ourselves – our characters. 

I can’t wait to get to heaven.  What a wierd party that’s going to be!

We don’t have to celebrate anything that is manmade.  We particularly don’t have to celebrate a fictitious character whom we lie about to our children as the one who brings gifts and makes all of our wishes come true.  Isn’t that setting up Santa Claus as a quasi-god?  We call this time of year ‘magical.’  Isn’t magic condemned in the Bible?  Isn’t lying condemned?  I don’t get why we want to hang on to this or why we as Christians think that dabbling in this is okay.  We continue to allow our children to believe this at a young age, we rebuke those who tell them the truth, and if we don’t have children, we play along…as agents of support no less. 

I hate it all.  I hate that people spend their last dollar getting Christmas decorations and gifts because if they don’t, someone is going to judge them or think that they’re not doing something up to par.  I spoke with a guy a couple of weeks ago who had just gotten layed off.  His skill set was very specialized and many, many others in his field were getting layed off because the type of work he does is just cut back on during recessions.  He has little hope for getting a job in his field for a long time.  So, you would think that he’d start budgeting and stop spending to ride out the recession, right?  No, Christmas is around the corner and he, he said, is not going to cut back on Christmas!  He said it as if it might be a terrible sin!  I wonder about all those people last year around this time that got layed off (and are still out of a job) – if they’d have made a different decision about Christmas 2008 after having still been unemployed a year later?  Did they ‘splurge’ on Christmas, too, thinking that it was a miraculous time of year and that they didn’t want their children to NOT believe in miracles? 

Ugh!  I want to scream!  A Christmas miracle?!  If anyone speaks that term to me I swear I’ll throw their Christmas tree at them.  I wonder what our Lord thinks of this.  I’m sure Satan is pleasantly pleased at his work.  He picked a holiday to warp our beliefs.  Beautiful.  It’s actually very smart.  I dare you to go find a Christian – or anyone in this country – who will condemn Christmas.  It’s heresy!  Oh, what a wonderful weave he has mastered, and we’ve all been surreptitiously fooled into believing that Christmas will bring us all that we’ve dreamed for, all that will care for us, all that we hope for, and will miraculously heal all woes of the world.  Hurray!  We can all be comforted because Christmas will unite us all! 

Whatever.

Enjoy a truthful word that might comfort you if you’ve been sucked into the guilt of buying a lot of Christmas presents or feel guilty because you can’t afford it this year.  There’s hope for you…hope without guilt!

Colossians 2

 ¹I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. ²My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, ³in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. ⁴I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. ⁵For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

 ⁶So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

 ⁸See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

 ⁹For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. ¹¹In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature,^[a] not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, ¹²having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

 ¹³When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,^[b] God made you^[c] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.^[d]

 ¹⁶Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. ¹⁸Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. ¹⁹He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

 ²⁰Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ²¹“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²²These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. ²³Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

The scripture of the day is: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.”- Colossians 3:15

I am so thankful for all of the blessings God has provided me.  Thank you, Father.  What would be a miserable life filled with pain and agony every step of the way – you’ve smoothed for me and given me comfort along the way so that I am not crushed and destroyed.  Ahhhh…I am thankful!

Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna

Revolution, by George Barna

I’ve been quite lazy about reading lately, but I do intend to give these two a shot.  I have a feeling it will validate what I have been feeling for some time about how we approach ‘church,’ or more specifically, how we define ‘church.’

I grew up attending a worship service every Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening.  My family also attended any other function that was hosted by the local congregation, much of which was initiated by my parents who were – and are – very faithful believers who love the Lord with every ounce of their being.  It’s hard not to want to follow in your parents’ footsteps when you adore them and when you look up to them for what they stand for.  But over time, particularly in my later adulthood, I’ve begun to reassess my position on ‘attending’ these gatherings. 

To tell anyone who still faithfully attends these services what I’m about to say could be seen as heresy in their eyes towards our God.  But I beg for a moment of consideration while I break down my reasoning. 

First off, consider the types of references you read in the Bible about the gatherings of the early Christians, even those who followed Jesus when He walked on Earth.  Without persuading you to one idea or another, I’d ask you to just do a study or search on this.  A great place to go is Biblegateway.com where you can look up key words or search specific passages.  Go ahead…have a look-see.

What you will not find is an image, shadow or like-ness to what we see people do now and call ‘church.’  In fact, if you research outside of the Bible and go back to world history within the first 500 years after Christ’s death, you’ll find the establishment of these ‘club meetings’ in different formats and for different reasons. 

Are you following me?  My question is, why do we feel compelled to attend these ‘meetings’ where people sit in pews, sing a few songs that are picked out ahead of time, sing them like drones, repeat some lines of a prepared prayer by someone else, and sit and daydream while someone extols his knowledge of the Bible upon the unaware crowd?  I know what you’re saying, I’m going to burn in hell for even thinking this.  

Now don’t get me wrong, I do sincerely believe there are God-fearing Christians who are also sitting on these pews and paying attention and singing their hearts out.  But I can tell you this, there are also a lot of people sitting in those pews who are not there for any other reason than for guilt or that they feel that if they don’t go, they’re going to hell. 

However simple this may seem, it is not the fully breadth of the issue I see.  Attending these ‘meetings’ makes you as much of a Christian in practice as…yeah, yeah, yeah…you know.  It’s not about attending.  It’s about being.  I’ll be honest, I don’t attend regularly, because when I do, I inevitably leave frustrated and wonder why I spent that couple of hours sitting, facing a stage and going through the motions of rituals and practices that make me feel like I’m in a quasi-Catholic service.  Oh, I’m really going to hell for that one, right?

Listen, the point is, we’ve grown to focus on ‘attending a club meeting’ as a means of ‘working out our salvation’ rather than being a Christian.  I don’t know about you, but I was never much for rituals, traditions or public club initiation practices.  I think they’re hokey, put-on, made up and sometimes, downright silly.  But I am into being a Christian, being devoted to my Creator, talking to Him all day long, and really seeking a better understanding of Him, His Son and the whole meaning behind why He chose me.  That existential practice is not a ritual and cannot be performed on any stage.  It is a journey, a walk…a way of being.

If you are not a Christian and you walk into any ‘church’ building to find out what it’s all about, you will probably be intimidated, walk out the door and never return.  I heard a story one time about a guy who visited with his Christian wife.  He was not a Christian, but the first time he attended the meeting, they made him stand up and tell the whole congregation about himself.  He never went back.  Sure, the attendance was probably less than 50 people, but given that people fear speaking in front of others above death itself, I can pretty much tell you that he would have rather risked hell in that moment than have to do that again.  As a Christian, I was mortified…and saddened when I heard this.  While well-meaning, that group of people probably scared away someone who was really looking for the Lord. 

So what does all this have to do with ‘revolution?’  I think maybe we need to reconsider what it means to live the Christian life and how to demonstrate that to the world.  If someone does not attend a ‘meeting,’ they may not necessarily be going to hell in a handbasket.  And if a seeker comes into a meeting looking for God, for those of you who are sitting in the pews, be careful.  Make sure they see you there for actual worship and not just to gossip about the latest piece of jewelry that you bought the last week…or how good the green was at your golf game yesterday…or which restaurant you’re going to go to afterwards…or, God forbid…complaining about how long you think the sermon is going to be.  

And remember, your presence in that building on any particular day does not grant you entrance into the kingdom of God.  ‘Church’ is not a building.  Church is the group of people Christ saved with His blood.