Advent Reading: Matthew 1:18-25

One of the many lessons that one can glean from the remarkable opening of the Greatest Story ever told is this: God-ordained change, some promise of God, is often encased in scandal and seeming contradiction.

The scandal of Jesus’ incarnation was and is a clash of common and uncommon, the pedestrian and the providential, known knowns and inviting unknown. Somewhere in the mish-mesh of the “hows” and “whys” of Advent is the wondrous reality that Jesus Christ, God the Son, arrived, delivered from the womb to deliver us from the penalty, pain, and power of sin.

Selah.

“Mary Did You Know”

My favorite atheist Richard Dawkins is at it again. In an interview with CNN, Dawkins makes his case for militant atheism rooted in evolution as taught by the apostle of evolution himself Charles Darwin. Having already listened to some excerpts of his latest book, Dawkins’ outrageous (and near laughable) assertions about the absolute truth of evolution. Yet, people like Dawkins make it easier for me to rely on Scripture as God’s revealed word as their posture reflects the scoffers who come, “scoffing and following their own evil desires” (2 Peter 3:3). What do you think? How are thinking Christians (those who actually know the Word and know opponents arguments as well as the opponents know their own) to respond to Dawkins’ posture?

Heard about last night’s American Music Awards. A good friend of mine showed me a few Youtube clips and my disdain for gimmicks and machinery masquerading as good pop music continues. The lowlights:

3. Jermaine Jackson barely mentioning the brother (who was the only reason he was invited in the first place). Tacky, tasteless, and tired. This kind of blatant grandstanding on a sibling’s grave defies words.

2. Lady Gaga and the Flaming Piano. Listen, I’m all for edginess but like “relevant” theology in the church, folks can overdo it a bit. I miss the days when artists were known for their talents and could stand tall even after you turned off all the pyrotechnics and all the sound equipment they hid behind in the studio. Why this poor girl is setting her piano on fire made about as much sense as Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 headscratching video “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (please watch this hot mess…I have yet to grasp ridiculousness of it all).

1. Adam Lambert’s Coming Out…and Out and Out. Perversion with no melody accompanied by an overrated screaming voice to boot, Lambert simulating a certain sex act is exactly why I’ve reverted back to the playlists of my childhood when the last bastions of melody and good messages were still around (although on its last leg). I’ll take the last leg. Nasty nonsense wrapped in pleather. No thank you.

Check out the latest offering, Hello Hurricane, from Switchfoot. “Bullet Soul” is my personal favorite. One of the reasons I’ve always appreciated Switchfoot is that they are not “cheesy” Christian music with lame, lifeless lyrics. They are excellent musicians and Jon Foreman is an incredible songwriter.

My American history students asked me how in the world the British, who greatly outnumbered the Patriots, could have lost the American Revolution.

The reason was quite simple: the Patriots knew how to adapt their fighting strategy. When something did not work, they made necessary changes, recalibrated and moved ahead.

The British, however, were married to their style of fighting that required they march in a straight line, shoulder to shoulder. While their discipline and dedication were unquestioned, their marriage to tradition and inflexibility proved fatal.

Lesson: Sometimes, you have to change the way you fight to win the war you’re in.

God encourages a Christ-centered discipline but He is certainly not married to the methods we idolize in the pews and frontlines of the faith. Just because one group plants a church “this way” doesn’t mean I have to plant a church that way on this side of the kingdom of God.

Are you married to tradition? There are some spiritual battles we will find ourselves in that nothing outside of God’s Word and Spirit will be prepared for.

What change does the Holy Spirit want you to make in your daily life in order to overcome the enemy?

According to pop rabbi Shmuley Boteach in his latest book about the late Michael Jackson:

I talked to him about one of the things that most distinguishes Judaism from Christianity. It is not the belief in Jesus as God or deity. Rather it’s the belief in the perfection of Jesus. When Christians ask, “What would Jesus do?,” they are using a model of perfection to guide their actions. And I think that makes a lot of people feel that they can never attain that high station of perfect action. I think in America we don’t like ourselves. We harbor a high degree of self-loathing because we are not realistic about, and we dismiss, our humanity.

Later, he adds:

In Judaism there are no perfect figures in the Bible. They are all flawed. The greatest of prophets, Moses, can’t get into the Promised Land because of sin. We all struggle to do the right thing amid a prediliction to do otherwise. Christians define righteousness as perfection; Jews define righteousness as struggle. We wrestle with our nature; we try to do better always. We acknowledge from the very outset the tendencies within us that are altruistic, that are greedy, that are giving, that are self-absorbed, and that are selfless.

I would only say that there is a difference between celebrating the struggle of humanity and idolizing human effort. The Hebrew Scriptures certainly acknowledge the struggle of human beings to love God and their neighbors as they keep the covenant with Almighty God. That we struggle is no shock. Of course we do; we are sinners. There is no one who does good, not one (Psalm 14:3). The power is not in the struggle but rather in the recognition of our limitation and weakness. Did not the Apostle Paul remind us in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10: “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Christianity, on the other hand—biblical Christianity, does not revel in the reality of human frailty and depravity so much as it glories in the perfection of the Lamb of God. Remember: the sacrificial system was a shadow of Christ’s work on the Cross for humanity. Did anyone quibble about the requirements for sacrificial lambs and other offerings? I doubt it. In addition, the bedrock of Christian theology celebrates the uniqueness of Jesus as Lord, Savior and yes, Yeshua ha Maschiach.

We who are Christ-followers and lovers look to Jesus because He and He alone did what no human being could do in his or her own strength: fulfill the Law, something no “good Jew” or well-meaning Gentile could do—then or now.

Posted in Christology, Jesus, Just A Thought, Theology ]]>