Also overheard at Youth Family: "How many fellows does it take to screw in a light bulb? Thirteen: one to screw it in and twelve to stand around and figure out how to integrate belief and behavior."
Overheard...
Jim Byrne: "Hey, how many fellows does it take to screw in a lightbulb? NONE! There host moms do it for them!"
True, Good, and Beautiful Part II
Two weeks ago fellow Teryn Oglesby offered her thoughts on the Christian cultural mandate. This week she comments on how her fellow Buxton interns, Rizwaan and Sarah, view the idea of a cultural mandate from the lens of their respective faiths.
GMA: Do the faiths of the other interns at Buxton have their equivalents of a cultural mandate?
TO: The Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission are things strictly Christian in nature and purpose. However, Rizwaan and Sarah do have a desire for others to follow their faiths as well.
Sarah has expressed concern over the declining number of Jews in the United States and the secularization of her religion. Though she would welcome anyone wishing to convert to Judaism, she admits that unless someone from outside the faith expresses such interest, most Jews are concerned with edifying those within their community.
Muslims are interested in sharing their faith with others but, as Rizwaan explains it, they do not seek to convince individuals unless the individual themselves seeks out more information.
Rizwaan is more excited to educate and inform people of the true character of Islam to dispel the myths and negative images of violence put forth by the media. He would greatly welcome a new convert to Islam as a new brother in his faith, but it is not something he feels compelled to seek out.
GMA: What do your fellow interns think of the idea of a cultural mandate?
TO: Evangelism is very difficult for Rizwaan and Sarah to grapple with when interacting with Christians. Sarah is extremely uncomfortable with the idea that Christians act with a sense of entitlement over Jews and somehow view them as incomplete without accepting Christ as their Lord and Savior.
The concept of integrating principles of Christianity into the workplace with the purpose of transforming culture is a fairly foreign idea as well. Rizwaan explains how Muslims over the years have moved to new areas and sought to conform to culture instead of trying to change it.
GMA: Final Thoughts?
TO: Problems with the cultural mandate arise when our own pride and personal agendas get in the way of Christ's purpose of redeeming the entire world. I am convinced that this can be answered by simply remaining so close to the Lord that He is increased while we continually decrease. If all Christians could live in this knowledge by showing grace to those around us, I believe the cultural mandate becomes less of an obligation and more of an outpouring.
There are ways to introduce people lovingly to Christ and to always meet them where they are in sharing our faith the way Jesus did. As an act of both love and trust in God's plan, I believe we are first called to just be in relationship with people and to share life with them. We are the cultural mandate lived out if we only engage ourselves with those around us.
True, Good and Beautiful: Questions About the Christian Cultural Mandate
Cultural Mandate: The call for Christians to exercise their God-given gifts to extend and advance the Kingdom of God over all areas of life.
2010 Fellow Teryn Oglesby has a unique view of Christians and culture. Teryn is an intern at the Buxton Initiative, and organization dedicated to interfaith dialogue. Her interactions with the other interns, one Muslim and the other Jewish, give her daily opportunities to consider how religion and culture intersect. Below is the first of a two part interview with Teryn.
GMA: Describe your interpretation of the Christian cultural mandate:
TO: The Christian cultural mandate goes hand-in-hand with Christ's calling for us to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (MT 28:19). Christ uses the phrase "all nations," drawing our hearts to focus not only on personal salvation, but redeeming culture as a whole.
The cultural mandate is a call to remember Christ's transforming power and love that was given for all. As His followers, Christians are called to share His message boldly in a way that the whole world may come to know Him.
GMA: How do you see yourself living out the cultural mandate in what you do at Buxton? In Church? In other areas of your life?
TO: The cultural mandate has changed the way I view my personal faith in the context of the world. The idea of using institutions to tweek cultural norms is a fairly new concept. Part of me is confused as to how this looks in all areas of my life - do I share Christ only when others ask? How do I witness in a way that doesn't push other away? Where is the line between the amount I share and where and with whom? How do I stand up to the monsters of secularization, individualism, and materialism that pervade culture?
At work I am blessed to be able to share my faith anytime I wish since the purpose of my job is to get to know my colleague's faiths and for them to know mine. The cultural mandate is being furthered every time I explain I explain the Biblical reasoning behind proselytizing, a concept that often makes them uncomfortable and causes them much angst.
At church, when I spend time with my small group of sixth grade s and live as an example of Christ's unconditional love and service, I believe the cultural mandate is spreading to their hearts as well.
Part two features Teryn's observations about how Islam and Judaism view the idea of a cultural mandate.
Doggie-Head Half-Tilt
What does progress this year look like for you? For some, progress looks 20 pounds lighter. For others, it looks like finding a job or a significant other. A few weeks ago, the Fellows met with Mike Metzger, a consultant at the Clapham Institute, who posed quite a different definition of progress: "to the degree the city around you flourishes, so will your faith flourish." So what? Well, according to the December 19th issue of the Economist, " The idea of progress forms the backdrop to a society." However, Metzger contends that we as a culture don't live by ideas, but by desires. Two cultural views of progress are in contention here, one based on ideas, the other on actions.
The major difference between the Economist and Metzger is the length of their views on progress. The Economist claims that moral sensibility is "the fundamental engine of progress," and defines moral sensibility in this manner: "People can distinguish between what is and what ought to be." This is a two-chapter view of progress, based on "ought" and "is." However, this is a short view, one that lacks two essential chapters.
The Economist's view of progress is hopeless. The writers claim that "there are no guarantees that the gap between ought and is can be closed." Metzger disagrees. His view is four-chapters long; in addition to "ought" and "is," he includes "can" and "will" as the final chapters of what he refers to as a "four-part gospel." "Ought" is creation as God intended it, "Is" is creation after the fall, "Can" is what Christ has accomplished, i.e., redemption, and "Will" is what Christ will do - restoration, the bridging of the gap between "ought" and "is." And because Christ is faithful, we are guaranteed this gap will be bridged.
What a two-chapter gospel and a four-chapter gospel require of us is vastly different. The Economist cites American philosopher Susan Nieman, who states that "Human dignity requires the love of ideals for their own sake, nothing more." Furthermore, the Economist concludes that all God asks of men is to strive for progress.
According to Metzger's view of progress, Christians are to work towards progress, but not for its own sake. God asks us not to strive for progress and nothing more, but to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and then love our neighbors as ourselves. To love our neighbor is to care about the degree to which they flourish. Only love of God can bring this about, not love of ideals. Consider the many atrocities committed in the twentieth century in the name of ideals and progress. Or consider John Lennon, who loved humanity in the abstract (take another listen to "Imagine") but did some nasty things to actual individuals (as all people are prone to do, lest anyone thinks the Fellows have a beef with Lennon. We don't. Long live the Beatles).
"Why is the modern view of progress so impoverished?" the Economist asks. It is impoverished because views such as those held by the Economist are only half the story, and stories without an end are unreadable.
For more on Mike Metzger and the Clapham-Institute: http://doggieheadtilt.com/
Here We Go!
"Farewell to the decade of fear," runs columnist Michael Barone's adieu to the '00's. From the Y2K scare to 9/11 to the current recession, the events of the past decade certainly cast a pall on prospects for the future. Barone's advice for handling the next decade is no more inspiring: "Many surprises are bad news, and they should often be regarded with fear." Jesus offers more hopeful advice: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me" (JN 14:1)With this assurance Christians move forward, grappling with the dominant emotion in our world, one that poses a serious challenge to discipleship in our era - fear. But why? Why move forward into a future supposedly full of fear and trepidation?
Rolling Stone called the '00's the "Decade of Lost Chances." Humanity senses something has been lost, a feeling existing long before the '00's ever happened. With this feeling comes a sense of urgency to recover what is lost and recorrect what is wrong.
The disciples understood this sense of urgency. The gospel of Mark begins with Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom of God: "The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (MK 1:15) Each of the disciples immediately respond to this exhortation - when Jesus calls them, the follow "at once" and "without delay" (MK 1:18,20). This is the response of the Fellows. Jesus has called us to the Fellows Program, and we have followed in order to help proclaim and usher in the Kingdom that is now, but not yet. It is why all thirteen of us move forward into the future despite the climate of fear surrounding it. The time has come.
The fellows are halfway into the Fellows program, and the world is one day into the new decade. Why face the future? In the words of '80's indie rocker Paul Westerberg, "It's too late to to turn back - here we go!"
A Case of the Mondays
The Fellows Program is an explosion of activity. Most of us are fresh out of a college, just off our 12-hour weeks and 12:30 classes. Now we are reading books and writing papers in graduate school one day, answering calls from angry constituents or creating spreadsheets on Capitol Hill another, and trying to lead a group of boisterous 6th graders or melodramatic seniors the next. The sheer volume and variety of experiences is part of what makes the Fellows program so challenging and rewarding. From Sunday to Saturday, we never stop living and learning, sharing it all with the 12 friends at our side. Yet, while all these things are a piece of the program, they are not its essence; Monday is.
Every Monday morning we get up early. The guys and girls meet separately for breakfast and accountability. Here we hold each other to higher standards we profess and lift each other up towards the Lord in any and every area of life. Then, we head to class for three hours in the morning. During the first semester, the Rev. Dr. Art Lindsley firmly planted our feet in the foundations of our faith. During this second semester, Dr. Steve Garber challenges us to decompartmentalize our lives, to connect what we know and believe to how we actually live every day, and to see in all things what is good and true and beautiful. At night we come together as whole group over a meal to join in fellowship, worship, and discussion, growing as a family in our journey to follow Christ in a broken world.
Monday is about accountability, coherency, and community. Monday is the Fellows Program; everything else is practice. And it is all the Mondays which I will take with me for the rest of my life, no longer just a wide-eyed college student but much more of a mature and complete man of God. Yes, I will always remember and treasure my time on Monday, because life is full of Tuesday-through-Sundays.
Every Monday morning we get up early. The guys and girls meet separately for breakfast and accountability. Here we hold each other to higher standards we profess and lift each other up towards the Lord in any and every area of life. Then, we head to class for three hours in the morning. During the first semester, the Rev. Dr. Art Lindsley firmly planted our feet in the foundations of our faith. During this second semester, Dr. Steve Garber challenges us to decompartmentalize our lives, to connect what we know and believe to how we actually live every day, and to see in all things what is good and true and beautiful. At night we come together as whole group over a meal to join in fellowship, worship, and discussion, growing as a family in our journey to follow Christ in a broken world.
Monday is about accountability, coherency, and community. Monday is the Fellows Program; everything else is practice. And it is all the Mondays which I will take with me for the rest of my life, no longer just a wide-eyed college student but much more of a mature and complete man of God. Yes, I will always remember and treasure my time on Monday, because life is full of Tuesday-through-Sundays.
One fellow's response to "Sex is Easier than Love" by Steve Garber
I sometimes amuse myself by entertaining the thought that our generation, our current society, is the most debauched and soulless in all of human history, as if Los Angeles had somehow surpassed Babylon, Prague had become worse than Sodom, and modern Rome had sunk far below its ancient counterpart. It seems a natural thought to assume that just as we think our triumphs and advances go far beyond all that was achieved before us, so too do our dire circumstances and grave challenges make the storms of the past appear only summer showers. We so long to be the greatest—or the worst, as it were—that we often imagine it were the case. The truth is simultaneously more horrifying and more encouraging.
Yes, the current age of godless secularists and half-hearted theists abounds in immorality of every kind. But what ageage has not? We’d have to go back to the time before the angels guarded Eden with their swords of fire. We’ve traded the gross idolaters of the past for the gross idolaters of the present. The names of the false gods may have changed, but their preferred method of worship remains the same. As Professor Garber stated in his article, there is something very basic, very human, about sexuality. It is no surprise, then, that the primary manifestation of this false worship is a corrupt practice of sex. If you were creating a god, and your deepest desire was for sexual intimacy, would you not create a god who allowed it if not demanded it? They are deluded, of course, and merely ruin what they hope to obtain, but they know nothing else. In many ways it is a sobering thought, offering little hope. Like Sisyphus, we push and pull, but any progress we make is instantly erased.
I distinctly feel this tension as a child of God in a fallen world but even more so as a redeemed soul in a fallen body. I can sympathize with those whose deepest desire is for intimacy of mind and body. Sometimes I, too, chase that desire through fruitless means and come up empty. What I know, however—and what the world cannot understand—is that my deepest desires, sexually or otherwise, are not mountaintops to which the stone can never quite be rolled. Rather, I have real hope, for both this world and my own flesh. My deepest desires do not exist to torment me or lead me astray but are instead the desires of God himself. Distorted though they may be, by my own doing, they are waiting to be redeemed. The fact they can be called “distorted” at all implies that they are good at root. As Plantinga puts it, even to do what is evil we must use what is good. Therefore, the goal of our lives, as young people, is not to eliminate our desires or even to control them, to squirrel them away until we can finally unleash them, but to use them as God intended in every relationship. Like in everything else, we are to live in peace with our longings, not fighting them tooth and nail. As a Christian in America I have a hard time submitting to this and even harder time imagining what it might look like, so ingrained I am to resist sexual desire and to feel guilty if I entertain it in the slightest. I think what I need is a fuller understanding that all good things ultimately come from God. No exceptions. God created sex, and he did not make Adam and Eve wait, holding it over their heads as some sort of incentive. It was a gift, free and good. Sin changed everything, but God’s gifts were still present. We merely misused them. To use them correctly is to honor God. To hide them is to disown Him. Now that Christ has come, we are no longer slaves to distorting sin but can use every good gift God has given us to glorify his name and advance his purposes on the earth.
So then, there is hope for both me and the world. My body is marred by the fall, but it is still a gift from God. So too were Canaan, Babylon, Assyria, and Rome under the weight of sin, each in its time, as America is now. Yet Christ did not come to destroy the earth but to renew it. This world may be ever in decline, but take heart. The Kingdom of Heaven hastens its arrival.
Yes, the current age of godless secularists and half-hearted theists abounds in immorality of every kind. But what ageage has not? We’d have to go back to the time before the angels guarded Eden with their swords of fire. We’ve traded the gross idolaters of the past for the gross idolaters of the present. The names of the false gods may have changed, but their preferred method of worship remains the same. As Professor Garber stated in his article, there is something very basic, very human, about sexuality. It is no surprise, then, that the primary manifestation of this false worship is a corrupt practice of sex. If you were creating a god, and your deepest desire was for sexual intimacy, would you not create a god who allowed it if not demanded it? They are deluded, of course, and merely ruin what they hope to obtain, but they know nothing else. In many ways it is a sobering thought, offering little hope. Like Sisyphus, we push and pull, but any progress we make is instantly erased.
I distinctly feel this tension as a child of God in a fallen world but even more so as a redeemed soul in a fallen body. I can sympathize with those whose deepest desire is for intimacy of mind and body. Sometimes I, too, chase that desire through fruitless means and come up empty. What I know, however—and what the world cannot understand—is that my deepest desires, sexually or otherwise, are not mountaintops to which the stone can never quite be rolled. Rather, I have real hope, for both this world and my own flesh. My deepest desires do not exist to torment me or lead me astray but are instead the desires of God himself. Distorted though they may be, by my own doing, they are waiting to be redeemed. The fact they can be called “distorted” at all implies that they are good at root. As Plantinga puts it, even to do what is evil we must use what is good. Therefore, the goal of our lives, as young people, is not to eliminate our desires or even to control them, to squirrel them away until we can finally unleash them, but to use them as God intended in every relationship. Like in everything else, we are to live in peace with our longings, not fighting them tooth and nail. As a Christian in America I have a hard time submitting to this and even harder time imagining what it might look like, so ingrained I am to resist sexual desire and to feel guilty if I entertain it in the slightest. I think what I need is a fuller understanding that all good things ultimately come from God. No exceptions. God created sex, and he did not make Adam and Eve wait, holding it over their heads as some sort of incentive. It was a gift, free and good. Sin changed everything, but God’s gifts were still present. We merely misused them. To use them correctly is to honor God. To hide them is to disown Him. Now that Christ has come, we are no longer slaves to distorting sin but can use every good gift God has given us to glorify his name and advance his purposes on the earth.
So then, there is hope for both me and the world. My body is marred by the fall, but it is still a gift from God. So too were Canaan, Babylon, Assyria, and Rome under the weight of sin, each in its time, as America is now. Yet Christ did not come to destroy the earth but to renew it. This world may be ever in decline, but take heart. The Kingdom of Heaven hastens its arrival.
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