Do we really need to be concerned about global warming or is it all a hoax?

I love this question. I love the fact that someone asked it.

I think it is probably safe to say that the science surrounding the issue of global warming is still a little bit up in the air. It probably isn't quite as clear as Al Gore makes it out to be. Of course, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence - the retreat of the glaciers in China, the struggles of the Arctic polar bears, etc. But still, the science surrounding this still feels adolescent.

Yet, and this is a very large yet, we still need to be concerned with global warming, and its parent issue, environmental stewardship. You see, environmental stewardship is a concern, not so much because the science tells me so, but because God tells me so. A fundamental aspect of our calling as humans is to steward the creation (which includes the environment) as God's representatives. This, alongside, "be fruitful and multiply," is God's first command to humans. So this is a human concern. And followers of Jesus ought to be at the front leading the way, as those concerned with keeping God's commands, and not dragging our feet arguing over the science or questioning hidden agendas. As followers of Jesus, the agenda we should be concerned about is God's.

So why the questions? It is pretty obvious, really, right there in Genesis 1, so why do we ask all the questions? Two reasons, I think.

The first is because it is hard. I mean, let's be honest. Being a wise and gracious steward of the creation can be tough business in today's world. I'm fairly passionate about this issue, and I still throw away much more garbage than I know is right, and I don't feel like recycling all that plastic, and I forget my travel mug at home and opt for the "to-go" cup instead. It's just plain hard in our plastic world to live as responsible stewards, and until we're honest about that, I don't think we'll make much headway. And, then, when we're honest, we can take our one step at a time. Which leads me to my next point.

The second reason we question our responsibility to environmental stewardship is because we've been given bad training by the Church. Most of us don't think of God as being particularly concerned with this physical world in the here and now. We've been trained to think of God as being concerned over our souls, and that's pretty much it, so that it would seem the physical world isn't particularly important and so then who really cares what happens to it anyway? If we're trained to believe it is all going to burn and that heaven is the real deal, then why bother recycling? But the truth is, that's a sub-biblical mindset. The Revelation vision is of heaven coming down to earth; the biblical vision is of a new heavens and a new earth - very physical heavens and earth. God is on a mission to redeem and restore the whole creation, including not only our hearts, but humpback whales and human societies too. God is concerned not only with salvation (loosely, and inadequately, understood as people coming to saving faith in Jesus), not only with mercy (things like giving people a "hand out"), but also with justice (giving people a "hand up"). And there's no doubt environmental stewardship is an issue of justice. And God cares very deeply about justice. So, I think, should we.

Why all the different denominations?

This is a question that plagues lots of Jesus followers. They read Jesus' prayer in the 17th chapter of the Apostle John's Gospel, where he prays, "that they [his followers] may be one, even as You, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us; that the world may believe that you sent me." Even skeptics and others outside the Church stand up and take notice of this prayer of Jesus. They see the presence of all the different denominations as a disclaimer against faith.

First, let me say that, obviously, I agree that Jesus' prayer for unity is a precious thing and should of deep concern for us. Followers of Jesus are to live in unity - the kind of unity that characterized the relationship between the Father and the Son. Yet I don't think that Jesus had in mind that we should all be one in a very literal way. That kind of unity is characteristic of the monism of Islam. The Christian understanding of unity is grounded in the Christian conception of the Trinity - which means that we have plurality within unity. This is precisely what we have do have in the Church - though, sometimes, the particular expressions of the streams of the Christian tradition do not live out the mutual "interpenetration" that Jesus seems to have experienced with the Father.

Second, and partly for this reason, I don't think denominations are all that bad. I used to think differently. Now I recognize that when large groups of human beings gather together in meaningful community, there will be differences. Being a pastor has schooled me in this reality. Sometimes these differences are sinful and need healing; sometimes they are just differences of values and preferences and reasonable theological distinctive. These latter differences are not (necessarily) sinful; and it can be okay in these circumstances to separate ... not all denominations are birthed in division.

And, third, contrary to what some religious commentators are saying, I actually disagree that the denominational divides are getting worse and worse. I can point to several indicators of the truth of this: a) the fact that the centuries old division between the Lutherans and Roman Catholics has been healed - they are now restored in communion with one another; b) the fact that most people who study religious life in America point to the decline of denominational affiliation; c) our experience in the Vineyard bears this out - most Vineyard churches have people from all kinds of backgrounds (Catholic, Vineyard, Lutheran, Presbyterian, non-denominational fundamentalists, charismatic, none, etc.) who happily worship together and who never really identify themselves as "Vineyard" (though they love the Vineyard) and who mainly refer to themselves as followers of Jesus; d) at St. Augustine's Lutheran Benedictine Retreat House, in Oxford, MI (which is a monastery - where, one would think, there would be lots of hide-bound traditionalism), anyone is welcome to receive communion so long as they are able to receive communion in their home church; e) I could go on about the emergence of the Taize movement in France, etc. It is true that there are plenty of rifts in the Church of Jesus and that, in some corners, these are unhealed rifts rooted in sin.

To the extent that this is the case, these sinful divisions need to be acknowledged, confessed and repented of, and reconciliation needs to be pursued. This reconciliation may not bring us all back together, but it will certainly help us to experience that unity of the heart - a oneness of purpose and affection - that so characterized the life of the Son with the Father.

More on why suffering and evil?

A few weeks ago I preached a sermon on "Why suffering and evil? Is God still good?" I've heard it has motivated lots of great conversations. I've also had some really good follow-up questions that I thought I'd take a few minutes to address in this format, especially since I know suffering and evil is such a big question for people.

Let's say that two years ago you lost your job that you loved. You loved that job and it was very hard to lose it. It happened unexpectedly and caused you no small amount of heartache and loss. Let's also say that you're a Jesus follower and so, even though it was with tears, you worked through this loss, and the financial setbacks, etc. In fact, you arrived at a place where you learned a lot of very valuable life lessons through this loss and you matured as a person and as a student of Jesus. So you ask yourself, "Is it not likely that God caused this suffering, to teach me these lessons?" That's a great question.

First, let me briefly acknowledge that losing a job - especially gainful employment that you love - is a real suffering. God wants people to be productively employed, using their gifts and skills to provide for themselves, for others, and to help make the world a better place. Labor is fundamental to what it means to be human - this labor only became "work" because of the Fall. Anyway ...

I could imagine how someone might understand their situation this way. I could imagine that it might even be right. But I'd offer another way of thinking about it. I'd wonder if maybe the loss of the job wasn't just the consequential outworking of a world corrupted from sin, where our economic systems aren't perfect and where not everyone gets a productive job that creatively employs them. I could even imagine how the loss of this job might be connected to the devices of evil intelligences (whether human, supra-personal, or both); I know this isn't very fashionable, but I stand by the fact it could be true. "The enemy," Jesus says, "comes to kill, steal, and destroy." This evil power doesn't want whats best for us, but rather wants to make us and our families falter. Taking away our productive labor and causing us to question God's good provision would certainly qualify for that. Anyway, regardless of how it comes about, you've lost your job. But you're really wanting to follow Jesus and trust him. So, as you work through the pain and disappointment, and give God your honest emotions and really try to find satisfaction in him, you begin to discern how you're now relying on him more, etc. There could be lots of lessons. You've learned these things because your heart was oriented towards being a student of Jesus - you were ready to learn and grow. This happened regardless of whether you found yourself in good circumstances or ill ones. And I think that's the key difference. You grew not because of the circumstance, but because of the orientation of your heart. God didn't cause this evil circumstance; rather, God worked in your heart to enable even this evil circumstance to turn out for your good.

Now, take the same event - someone loses their job. In this case, the person is not a Jesus follower, but rather a very selfish person who boasts because of their work success and spends all they make on toys for themselves. We might be prone to think, "Isn't God causing this suffering to punish this person for their sins?" Again, I can see how we might think this. Job's friends thought this surely must be what was going on with him. God, they thought, rewards the righteous and punishes the sinful, so if you're going through a hard time it must be because you've sinned. But Job's friends were wrong, guilty of being overly simplistic. Real life isn't that easy. It is true that God disciplines his children, training them so that they mature. Tough love, if you will. If this very selfish person were a Jesus follower, a child of Father God, then maybe that might explain things. But there's another possible explanation. Lots of times difficult circumstances come our way as natural consequences for our choices and actions. It could be that this person lost their job, not because God was out to get them, but as a consequence of their own selfish self-aggrandizement. They got themselves. And, actually, God is waiting in the wings, wanting to restore them to a job they can love, find fulfillment in, etc. That's the God of grace I know and love.

One of the things I find satisfying about this understanding is that it honors God and the ones he respects - namely, us, and the forces at work for good and evil in the world.

Why slavery?

People often wonder about slavery. How could we have such a thing as slavery in our world? It is a good question.

The Church often gets involved in this conversation. "Slavery is so obviously wrong," people exclaim, "how could the Church ever support it? How come the Apostle Paul didn't come out more strongly and clearly against it?" Good questions. American chattel slavery was an abomination and it is terrible, a gross injustice, that it was allowed to continue as long as it did.

Slavery is a universal human problem. It isn't just a problem in lands influenced by Christianity. If you look in every corner of the world, at every season of history, slavery has been a problem. People enslave people, not because of Christianity, nor because Christianity doesn't do enough to stop them (though this might be an open question), but because people sin. Slavery is a prime exhibit for the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with humanity at the level of our hardware, or operating system. We enslave people because we devalue them, because we want to control them, we enslave people because it is convenient and productive and cost effective. But all this is because of sin. Our sin fractures our relationships with God, ourselves, one another, and even the very creation. And when this happens, we're willing to ignore the God-image in others and instead to view them as property, and, often, to treat them worse. This is not just a problem of the "Christian" West enslaving the native peoples of Africa and otherwise. This is but a particularly offensive, and historically recent, example of what is a universal human problem.

So how does this relate to Christianity and the Bible? Well, it is true that the Bible does condone slavery in the Old Testament. Yet the kind of slavery talked about is very nuanced from that commonly practiced in that era. Slavery in the Ancient Near East was an offensive affair, full of blood and gore and worse. The Law of the Jews challenges the people of God to treat aliens and foreigners and slaves in their midst with deep respect, for they, too, were slaves once. They are to include them in festivals and enable them to worship God. God is calling his people to subvert the dominant culture understanding of the day. And the same is true when we fast-forward to the days of the Apostle Paul. Again, it is true that Paul did not speak out against slavery as clearly or stridently as we would have liked him too. Yet he was already sowing the seeds of change and transformation by calling his Christian slave owners to relate to their Christian slaves as brothers and sisters in Christ, and Christian slaves to serve their masters as they would serve the Lord (and not try to foment rebellion). These seeds may seem mustard-sized to us, but they did flower into the ripe fruit of the 19th century abolitionist movement.

Christianity is not the cause of slavery. Human sin is. And while it might be true that the Church did not let the spread of the gospel uproot the evil of slavery as fast as we might have liked, it did at every turn subtly subvert the brutality of slavery, until finally the evil institution began to be undone.

Why Hell?

Hell. Its a four letter word. Hell. A few people seem to like it too much. For many others it is a real obstacle towards embracing faith and a life lived in friendship with God. Lots of people wonder, "Why hell? If God is loving and good, then why is it that the Bible talks about a place like hell?" If you're asking that question, I'd love to offer some thoughts. They probably won't be an "answer" but maybe they can begin a conversation.

What is hell? We may be surprised to learn that Jesus - gentle Jesus, loving and kind - talks about hell quite a bit. The word he uses for hell is gehenna, which is one way of referring to a place called the Valley of Hinnom. Hinnom was a valley outside Jerusalem. Before the Jews had captured Jerusalem in the days of King David (roughly 1000 years before Jesus), Hinnom had been used by the previous owners as the spot where they sacrificed children to their gods, usually by burning them to death. Understandably, the Jews were horrified by this and they considered Hinnom to be an unclean spot and they refused to ever build anything there. Instead, they began to use it for their trash, so that by the time of Jesus, Hinnom was a large, stinking trash heap. In an effort to keep it down, they would often burn it, sometimes using sulfur to speed up the process. They place smelled of rotten eggs and all things nasty. It was a sticking, rotting, nasty place where no one would ever want to live; the kind of place where, if you did live there, you would weep and gnash your teeth and feel all alone. This is the literal reality behind the Bible's picture of hell. So will there literally be flames in hell and all that? [shoulder shrug] Who knows. But I think we can be sure that it would feel like living in a landfill.

Why hell? I think that if you were to break it all the way down to the most fundamental aspects, hell exists because of God's commitments to who he is, and because of his commitment to people. Let me break that down further.

God is committed to who he is. God cannot deny his own nature. God is perfect in being who he is. Not only is God perfect in his love, God is also perfect in his holiness. Not only is God perfect in his mercy, God is perfect in his justice. We sometimes think of these two things as being at odds, but anyone who's a parent, or who's a boss, knows that love and justice are not at odds. Often the most loving act is to hold someone accountable for their actions. That's justice. God's justice is dynamic, it cuts both ways. Not only will God hold accountable those in sin, but God will never turn away anyone who earnestly seeks Him. We know that Jesus is the way to God and that all who are saved are saved by Jesus, yet the Bible makes it pretty clear that some people we might expect to see in the consummation of the Kingdom won't be there, and that there will likely be some others there that surprise us. Now, this justice of God flows from his holiness, from his sovereignty, from his being the King. His holiness is such he won't allow sin in his presence, because that would seem to condone it. Imagine the President and his staff. If there were a good President who allowed corrupted officials to fill the White House, wouldn't that challenge us to consider if the President really were wise or good after all? And God's goal for humanity is that we one day partner with him in the administration of the universe.

God is also committed to people. He loves us and wants to be with us. He's been pursuing us for thousands and thousands of years. But he knows what we sometimes seem to overlook - that we're not just "okay." God knows that we're not perfect. He knows the operating system code of our hearts is corrupted and that we need to be rebooted with new code. He's committed to seeing us transformed, because we need it. God's image in us, that he gave us as a gift, is blurred, and he wants to bring it into focus. And one aspect of that freedom that God gave us is freedom. We have the freedom of choice. Some people will take that divine gift and use it to turn against the Giver. God is so committed to us, God so loves us, that he's willing to let us turn away. Isn't this how all good relationships work? The greatest loves always have a great risk. His great love for us has always included the risk that his love might not be requited. And so God is committed enough to us to let us walk away.

But where do we go outside God's presence? Hinnom. When we walk away from God, we enter into the lonely, stinking place, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a place devoid of beauty and grace and love, because it is away from God's presence.

Now, I think people might struggle with this biblical vision for a few reasons.

First, they wonder if people are really like this. We sometimes have a hard time imagining that someone would want to walk away from God, who is understood to be this gracious being of love and light. It is hard to believe, but is it really that hard to imagine? We all know husbands and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and friends and coworkers who choose against all that is loving and gracious and beautiful, and walk instead into the abyss of a bottle or a bed or a betting table. Don't we? And even recognizing that addiction is often involved, so is choice always involved. At a more mundane level, don't we all know what it is like to know what is the right thing to do and still do something totally different instead? Now turn that into a life.

Second, we're turned off by hell because we're not sure we like this picture of God. We're not sure that we like this God. But imagine if it were different. For everyone to be with God, for there to be no hell, best I can tell God would have to do one of two things: a) he'd have to overlook sin and neglect justice, or b) he'd have to make people want to be with him. Are either of those a reality, a God, we'd rather have? Don't we all long for justice? Do any of us want to believe that our choices are, in the end, irrelevant? We want God to be God - a Being who is loving, just and good.