reflections – Page 6 – Gregory Crofford

Running toward evil

Posted on September 20, 2016September 20, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

Firefighers ascend the World Trade Center on 9-11-01

We’re far enough away from the celebration of the 15th annivesary of the destruction of the Twin Towers to reflect on some of its lessons. There is one image that inspires me most: First responders ran toward the evil, not away from it. As people descended the stairs of the World Trade Center, firefighters ascended, not unlike police who run toward the sound of gunfire, not away from it.

This is a useful metaphor of how the church at her best should operate. When we see systemic evil, should we not run toward it, by our presence carrying the light of the Gospel into the darkest of places? Yesterday I listened to a paper presented by a pastor. His topic was corruption in society and how the church can respond in ways to weaken corruption’s grip. In the African nation where this pastor lives, raising his voice too loudly can have consequences, but he has decided it is better to run toward evil with Gospel light than run away and let the darkness deepen.

But it’s not just Africa that needs light. As Americans, have we romaticized rural areas as “God’s country” while avoiding large cities as if they are under the curse? Now as the drug epidemic impacts small villages and towns, it’s only reluctantly that we’ve admitted the problem is not geography but the human heart. If we invite believers to run toward cities it’s not that rural areas don’t count. It’s only that cities have more people whose hearts need the transforming work of God’s grace. Cities set the moral pace for a nation at-large, so it makes sense that we as Christ followers would want to live there, showing another way to live, a better way, a loving way, a Kingdom of God way.

Too often when I’ve known I should run towards evil, like Jonah, I’ve run in the opposite direction. Yet God’s question to the prophet still rings in my ears: “Should I not be concerned”? Let me be like those 9-11 first responders, going in when all the world is going out.

reflections

On obscure Olympians and unsung disciples

Posted on August 20, 2016November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

As the Olympics in Rio wind down, I’m struck by one main takeaway: We haven’t really seen much of the Olympics.

Sure, we saw some athletes celebrated, headliners like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, and Usain Bolt. Yet the organizers of the 2016 summer Olympic Games report that more than 11,000 athletes are competing this year. Among those 11,000 are hundreds whose stories of discipline triumphant will never be publicly celebrated.

The level of commitment that it takes to even make it to the Olympic Games is staggering. I’ve managed to string together 2 weeks of early morning walks – not runs or swims or rowing, mind you, just brisk walks – and I’m proud of myself. Now imagine pushing yourself to your limits not for 2 weeks but nearly every day for years on end and we begin to catch just a glimpse of the commitment of athletes to their sport.

What is true in the sports world is true in the church. We have our Phelps-like “superstars,” leaders like Billy Graham and Rick Warren, Joyce Meyers, Tibi Joshua and Pope Francis. They are the headliners, the ones people know about. Yet there are many who never garner attention or praise, never capture the public spotlight who are nevertheless the journeywomen and journeymen whose quiet discipline and low-key faith in Christ make the church work. We won’t hear much about them, yet without them and their commitment to service under-girded by spiritual discipline, the Kingdom would stall.

Yet whether we are a headliner or one who is little known, Paul’s charge to us is the same:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. (1 Cor. 9:24, NIV).

While some will win a “crown that will not last” (v.25a), we all are focused on the “crown that will last forever” (v.25b). What is Paul saying? For most of us, the spiritual discipline that fuels our service in the Kingdom will go unrewarded on this earth. Yet we have a God who sees and who one day will recognize excellence. Discipline uncelebrated here and now will be rewarded there and then (Matthew 25:23).

Reward on the last day is extrinsic, yet there is an intrinsic motivation for spiritual discipline. Yes, God will one day reward faithfulness, but spiritual discipline has value in itself, and that value is participating in the life of God (2 Peter 1:4). God is our recompense.

Though she had won the gold medal, Olympic wrestler Helen Maroulis admitted: “Yesterday was about stepping on the mat and just wrestling to the best of my ability and really taking joy in what I do.” Yes, the gold medal was an honor, an extrinsic motivation, yet the greater motivation was intrinsic, “taking joy in what I do.” Such an internal motivation is primary, and – in her case – fortunate, since the media seemed more interested in reporting on the juvenile antics of male American swimmers outside the pool than her exploits on the mat.

One day, God will reward every unsung disciple for service often unnoticed and underappreciated this side of heaven. Meanwhile, let’s remain faithful, knowing that the greatest reward is here-and-now, and that reward is God himself. He is enough!

—

Image credit: publicdomainpictures.net

eschatology, reflections

No resurrection? No Christianity

Posted on March 26, 2016November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

I like Good Friday. There’s something about the love of God that you can’t miss when you look at the Cross.

Last week, I entitled my blog: “No Cross? No Christianity.”

But let’s imagine that Jesus had died but not risen. Would Christianity even exist?

The Apostle Paul didn’t think so. Writing to the Corinthians, he insisted:

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith (1 Cor. 15:14, NIV).

No resurrection? No Christianity.

Pondering the resurrection yields many truths. Here are a few:

1. Resurrection reminds us that “good” and “evil” are not to be confused.

People looked at the life of Jesus Christ and saw the loving goodness of God. Yet a handful of religious leaders refused to acknowledge that goodness. Instead, they called it evil and nailed it to a Cross.

God will not tolerate calling what is good, evil. That was the essential point of Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost: “You will not let your holy one see decay” (Acts 2:27b). God had vindicated Jesus, the righteous one.

Good is good and evil is evil. The resurrection is God’s warning to not confuse the two.

2. Resurrection affirms that our bodies are to be joyfully celebrated.

Gnostics taught that only spirit is pure; matter – including our bodies – is corrupt and must merely be endured. Resurrection, on the other hand, reminds us that our bodies are good creations of a good God; they are to be celebrated! In fact, our bodies are so important that God will one day give them back to us in new-and-improved form. Jesus’ resurrection is the prototype of the resurrection of all (John 5:28-29). The joys of this life are bodily joys. They will be restored in the Kingdom of Heaven.

3. Resurrection is the promise that God will one day right all wrongs.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Theologians have sometimes solved the riddle by either claiming that God is not all good or that God is not all powerful. Both of these solutions fail to satisfy because they leave out Christ, more specifically the Cross, the Empty Tomb and the Second Coming.

There is no greater example of a “bad thing” happening to a “good person” than when the religious leaders had Jesus crucified. Sometimes we forget that the story doesn’t end with the resurrection. The end of the story is the return of Christ! It is only then that the dead are raised and final judgment takes place (2 Thess. 4:13-18; 2 Cor. 5:10).

The resurrection of Jesus is a past event but one that points us forward. Because Jesus lives, we too shall live. Because God through a specific resurrection righted the terrible wrong done to his Son, so we believe that God will one day through a general resurrection right the wrongs suffered by many across human history.

Summing it all up

Resurrection Sunday is indispensable to the Christian faith. No resurrection? No Christianity. Good and evil are not to be confused. Further, we celebrate our bodies as God’s good creation here on earth and – one day – his new creation in the Kingdom of Heaven. And while we mourn that evil can triumph over good in this life, the resurrection teaches us that God will one day set things straight.

Christ is Risen! He is risen, indeed.

——-

Image credit: HDWYN.com

reflections

No Cross? No Christianity

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

Something strange is happening to Christianity. In our accent on God wanting us to be happy, are we losing the Cross? No little loss would this be. No Cross? No Christianity.

The Apostle Paul knew the temptation of re-tooling the message to soft-pedal the shame of death on a Roman gibbet. A classic example is his discourse in Athens (Acts 17). Instead of talking about the death of Jesus and what it meant, he spoke in philosophical terms of the “unknown God.” It wasn’t a total failure. Luke reports that “some of the people became followers of Paul and believed” (17:34). Yet this was hardly the rousing success he had envisioned.

In Acts 18, Paul travels to Corinth and changed his strategy. Gone was the debate over Epicurean and Stoic categories. In its place stood Golgotha:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1 Corinthians 2:1-5, NIV; bold added).

When we reflect on the Cross, what vital lessons about Christian faith come into focus?

1. The Cross symbolizes the death of self-centered living. The weed of “me first” thinking sprouts in the shallow soil of individualism but cannot grow in the healthy garden of interdependence. Jesus went to the Cross because he understood that our destiny depended on it. Romans 5:8 (NIV) teaches: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Jesus understood that to claim his prerogatives as the Son of God would have meant prioritizing himself above us. When a companion drew his sword to protect Jesus at the moment of his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked him:

Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? (Matt. 26:53, NIV)

When marriage grows difficult, when “what’s in it for me?” appears a legitimate question, the Cross offers an eloquent rebuttal, a testimony that “it’s not about me” nor should it be.

2. The Cross demonstrates that God’s love is stronger than humanity’s hate. Sometimes we mistakenly attribute hate to God when we say that the Cross was a manifestation of God’s wrath against sin. But the only wrath that day at Calvary was human anger obvious in the mocking tone of the religious leaders:

Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God! (Matt. 27:40b, NIV).

Instead, Paul extols the love of God “that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). And what was his definitive proof of divine love? Divine sacrifice. God “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all…” (8:32). To overcome hate, God did not resist it but – in a kind of cosmic jujitsu – with love, pinned hatred to the ground.

3. The Cross insists that suffering has meaning when it’s endured for a greater good. Athletes working out in the gym surround themselves with motivational posters with sayings like:

No pain, no gain.

What the athlete stands to win – a trophy, a laurel wreath, a medal – makes the agony of training worthwhile. John the Baptist was a living “no pain, no gain” sign for Jesus. When the Lord came for his baptism, John announced: “Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, NIV). It was a reminder to Jesus of his mission, that because of his atoning death just 3 years later, people would be reconciled to God, that forgiveness of sins and cleansing from our moral pollution were possible (Hebrews 13:12). That positive outcome was worth all the trials Jesus would endure.

4. The Christ of the Cross demands our highest allegiance. Peter – who himself suffered martyrdom on a upside-down cross – urged his readers to follow in the steps of Christ’s sufferings (1 Peter 2:21). Ralph Hudson’s hymn captures this thought:

I’ll live for him who died for me!

Recent events in our world prove that the words of the hymn can be involuntarily transposed into a higher key: “I’ll die for him who died for me.” Would such a sacrifice be possible if Christ had not taken the lead, laying down his life for us? 1 John 3:16 (NIV) affirms:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

These are some of the lessons that we learn at the foot of the Cross. Christianity without a Cross would be incomprehensible. No Cross? No Christianity. This Good Friday, let us together thank God for the Cross.

reflections, The Wesleys and Wesleyan theology

Love, or holy love? Why it matters

Posted on March 5, 2016November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

There’s a conversation in Wesleyan circles about God’s nature. Thomas Jay Oord insists that the unadorned noun, “love,” is sufficient when talking about the character of God. Kenneth Collins, on the other hand, prefers to add an adjective, describing God as “holy love.” I side with Collins, and here’s why:

1. The biblical evidence – Two key New Testament passages come to mind. In 1 Peter 1:16, quoting Leviticus 11:44, God calls us to holiness in simple terms: “Be holy, because I am holy.” The verse is preceded by a call to avoid the “evil desires” that typified us when we “lived in ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14, NIV). Holiness is presented as the opposite of evil, i.e. righteousness. God is saying: “Pay attention! This is something crucial about who I am. Because purity is part of who I am, so it should be part of who you are.”

Yet if we stop there, we have only one half of the equation. 1 John 4:8 (NIV) teaches: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” There is no hatred in God. Rather, God seeks the well-being of all creation. In fact, love does not exist where a genuine and prioritized interest in the well-being of others is absent.

2. Immanence and transcendence – Christian theology teaches that – in relation to creation – God is both transcendent (over and above) and immanent (close by). Isaiah 6:1 is the prophet’s vision of the LORD who is “high and lifted up.” This is the picture of transcendence, that the LORD is the Other, the Creator not to be confused with the creation. Yet this coin has two sides. In Jesus, Immanuel, we also encounter God with us (Matthew 1:23), the immanent one, close by and alongside all that God loves. This is a tension in our view of God, to be sure, but not unlike other tensions that we accept, such as Jesus being wholly human and wholly divine.

So where does this leave us?

If we say only that “God is love,” we are favoring part of the biblical revelation over another; it is an incomplete picture of God. Balanced doctrine takes into account what John Wesley called the “whole tenor of Scripture.” Though this brief essay has cited only a few passages, a more thorough study of Old and New Testaments would confirm that these dual emphases as related to God’s nature – holiness and love – exist side-by-side. Like a double helix strand of DNA, stability comes when the two remain joined together.

Danger lies in either extreme. Should we speak of God as only holy, inevitably our concept of God would be that of a distant, even harsh deity unable to identify with our weaknesses. On the other hand, if we only speak of God as love, we risk making God a doting grandfather who cares little about the moral quality of our lives. To maintain the transcendence/immanence tension – of the exalted, righteous God and the God who showed his affection for us through the incarnation of Christ – then speaking of God’s nature as “holy love” maintains equilibrium in our vision of who God is and who we are to be in response.

May the God who is holy love be our exemplar. May Jesus Christ – who is the very image of God – inspire us to lead lives that are simultaneously unpolluted by the world and selflessly poured out in loving service to others.

——

Image credit: aboutfbc.org

pastoral care, reflections

Overeating in Christian perspective

Posted on January 2, 2016November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

It’s the beginning of the new year and lots of people are making promises to lose weight. As Christians, how can we overcome the sin of gluttony (overeating)?

Disclaimer: This essay does not look at the medical side of obesity, only gluttony as a spiritual issue. It is always appropriate to consult with medical professionals and to learn to choose healthy foods.

Bear with me as we take what may seem like an unrelated detour. I promise to bring the plane in for a smooth landing.

Addressing the question of why we eat too much requires us as followers of Christ to ask another preliminary question:

Who am I?

As human beings, we are not accidents, a random conglomeration of atoms and cells. Rather, we are purposefully and lovingly molded by God, the One who creates and sustains all that is.

The Psalmist affirmed:

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14, NIV).

Who am I? I am the exquisite creation of God, so I have great value.

A second answer to the “Who am I?” question emerges from the story we find in Scripture. Not only did God fashion us as part of a wonderful creation. Importantly, we are created for relationship with God and others. This is beautifully symbolized in the first two chapters of Genesis. God placed Adam and Eve together in the garden and they had fellowship with each other and with God.

Third – and this one ties most directly with our topic of overeating – God created me as an embodied being. God fashioned Adam out of the dust of the earth (Gen. 2:7). The “dust” symbolizes substance or matter. At the end of each creation day, God stepped back and beheld various parts of creation, pronouncing them “good” (Gen. 1:3, 9, 24, to cite a few). Only when God at last had created Adam did he call creation “very good” (1:31).

Our bodies are excellent!

This has implications for how we view ourselves. For all of his merits, more than any other theologian, Augustine of Hippo (b. 354 AD) did much to make Christians feel guilty about sex. While Paul had advised that self-control must characterize all our behavior, including our sexuality (Galatians 5:23, 1 Cor. 6:18-20), Augustine posited that it was the sex act itself – even between spouses – that was sinful, the way that original sin was transmitted. Augustine’s influence has led in the West to a preoccupation with sins of a sexual nature, making them first order sins even as we ignore what a neutral observer might conclude we judge to be lesser sins (if sins at all), including eating too much.

To say we are embodied is not to imply that we are immortal souls living inside mortal bodies. That’s dualism, a Greek philosophical weed that (unfortunately) has blown into Christianity’s garden and taken root. The soil in which Christianity grew up is Hebrew soil, Old Testament teaching. Genesis 2:7 explains that human beings are matter (“dust”) into which God has breathed the breath of life. This is called holism; we are unities. I don’t have a body; I am a body animated by God.

Continue reading “Overeating in Christian perspective” →

ecclesiology & sacraments, reflections

Karibuni: Coming close in 2016

Posted on December 25, 2015November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

West_Africa_22 — God’s people worship in rural Benin (West Africa)

There’s a wonderful tradition I learned in Nairobi, Kenya. When visiting someone at home, instead of knocking on the door, the visitor calls out in Swahili: “Hodi.” If the host answers “Karibu!” (or to a group, “Karibuni”), then you are welcome to enter. In both singular and plural forms, the greeting means the same the thing: Come close.

God put on flesh; his name was Jesus, “the LORD saves.” We celebrate Advent as a Karibu moment, as the time when God in Christ came close.

It’s difficult to know someone at a distance. A Skype call can keep a relationship going, but it works best as an interlude between in-person encounters. Even in a world drawn closer together by technology, there’s no substitute for incarnation.

The well-known question is appropriate: If God seems far away from you, then who moved? (Hint: It wasn’t God). Following the Advent season – a time when we reflect upon Jesus coming close to us – I sense in return God’s call for me to individually draw closer. It’s God saying to me: Karibu. Yet we live in community and work out our faith corporately. So Jesus also says to us as a group, as the church: Karibuni.

One reason I advocate for frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper is that it dramatizes the divine Karibuni. Communion symbolizes our Lord Jesus with strong arms outstretched in welcome to us. He says:

You are welcome! Come close.

In partaking of the bread and the wine, we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit, the drawing grace of God that woos us away from our sin toward something better, a life of holy love. At the Table, we are transformed, we are one and we are at home.

In Philippians 3:10a, Paul expresses his deepest desire in life: “I want to know Christ…” Only surface knowledge can be gained at a distance. Deeper understanding comes with close proximity. This year, I’m saying to God with all my heart: “Hodi.” I’m sensing his loving response: Karibu! Will you join me and together draw closer to Christ than we ever have before?

pastoral care, reflections

Garbage can mad

Posted on December 5, 2015November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

Nazarene preacher and publisher Bob Benson was the epitome of gentleness. In his winsome, softspoken way, he told the story of a time when he got angry, or “mad,” as he called it. What pushed him over the edge is unclear, but on that day, Benson stormed out of the house to bring in from the curb the empty family garbage can. With deadpan humor, he confessed:

I don’t even know how the garbage can lid got up on the roof!

After that, his children ranked his occasional moodiness. They’d whisper to each other: “Is he mad?” “Yes, he’s mad.” “But is he garbage can mad?”

The Advent season notwithstanding, a time of “peace on earth, good will toward men,” many are garbage can mad. Terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California – like the flame of a Bunsen burner in a high school chemistry lab – are heating things up, stoking collective anger. Can explosive reactions be far behind?

The Apostle Paul knew how destructive unchecked anger could be. He was determined to throw water on the fire, not gasoline. What is unclear in English but apparent in the original Greek of Ephesians 4:26-27 is that Paul addresses not an individual but a group, the church:

“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil”(NRSV).

Anger is a perfectly human emotion. No state of grace exempts us from it. The only question is: How will we together channel it, negatively or positively? Will we as the followers of Jesus Christ allow evil events to heat us up so much that we explode in sinful actions? Here’s the disastrous formula:

Anger ——– >>> sin (v. 26) = the devil wins (v. 27)

On September 11, 2001, jetliners became missiles. The Twin Towers in New York City plumetted to the ground. Nearly 3,000 individuals lost their lives, including Americans, Japanese, Brits and Dominicans. In his book Leadership (Little, Brown, 2002), NYC Mayor Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani recounts the events of that day, but especially how he and his team in the aftermath swung into action. They did their best to channel their anger not destructively but productively, coordinating the rescue efforts of thousands of police officers and firefighters, setting up venues where families devastated by the loss of loved ones received a wide range of services from government agencies and private charities. Their mission was not to stoke the hot coals of anger but to help people cope and recover.

As Mayor, people looked to him to set the tone. Giuliani realized that many would be tempted to take out their anger on those who shared the same religious background as the handful of hijackers. Part of his leadership responsibility was to temper the flame of angry response. Guiliani writes (p. 360, italics added):

At the same time, I was trying to dampen the concept of group blame. Prejudice is largely about that. It’s about taking the perceived wrongdoing of one or a few people, which can be either real or imagined, then applying it to an entire group. I asked people on both sides not to do that. America is built on equal treatment.

That was 2001. Fast forward to 2015. We cannot control what politicians say, the fearmongering that passes for political discourse. Yet God calls us as followers of Christ to a higher path, to be different. Ours is to march to the beat of a better drummer. Shall we let our anger result in sin? Will we join in the misguided scapegoating, spreading via social media fears, half-truths and reactionary propaganda? Jesus taught us the Golden Rule:

Do to others as you would have them do to you (Luke 6:31, NRSV).

This is not an option for the one who bears the name of Jesus; it’s a directive. What will obedience to this command look like for us? What it doesn’t look should be obvious. It’s not about registering individuals who belong to minority religious groups or rounding up those who we perceive to be an internal threat, as the U.S. government wrongly did with 127,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during the second World War. On the other hand, the Jesus kind of love – the kind that loves one’s neighbor as oneself (Mark 12:30-31) – may mean welcoming a religious minority family to the neighborhood, introducing yourself with a smile and a plate of homebaked cookies. It could be as simple as offering to help newcomers rake their leaves or tell them where the most affordable grocery store is located, the best family doctor or dentist. Would we want someone to do that for us?

There’s a lot of garbage can anger festering these days. Like for Bob Benson, so for the People of God, anger can quickly overcome us, leading us to impulsive actions that we’ll later regret. Those of other faith traditions are watching to see if Jesus really makes a positive difference. What will they see? In our anger, let us not sin. Let’s not give the devil a victory. Instead, this Advent season and always, let’s model a love that overcomes evil.

—–

Image credits

garbage can: Greatwhiteclean.com

cover of Giuliani book: Flapsblog.com

pastoral care, reflections

God’s four-step path to healing

Posted on November 17, 2015November 7, 2016 by Gregory Crofford

Three words on a package of bananas – “Do not refrigerate” – instantly transported me back in time.

I was 16 and it was my first day on the job at the supermarket. My manager gave me simple instructions:

Take the skids off the truck, then stack the boxes of produce in the cooler.

The truck arrived, I did my work, then clocked out and went home.

The next day, my boss was furious. “Why did you put boxes of bananas in the cooler?” For the next several days, blackened bananas sold at deep discount on the sales floor. I’d messed up…majorly.

Most of us can recall times when we’ve missed the mark not just by a little but by a lot. However good our intentions, the end result was disastrous. We let someone down and may have even caused them deep pain. A shattered marriage, a bankruptcy, a broken trust – the consequences of our failure are plain to see and cut deep.

Thankfully, there’s a four-step path to healing.

First, let us resist the temptation to call sin by any other name. Instead, we have to admit we were wrong and be willing to change. Proverbs 28:13 reminds us: “People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy” (NLT).

Secondly, let us accept God’s forgiveness. “As far as the east is from the west,” writes the Psalmist, “so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12, NIV).

Third, let us ask forgiveness from the person we wronged. James 5:16 promises healing, yet there is a prerequisite. We are to confess our sins to each other and pray for each other. Three of the most powerful words in any language are these: “I forgive you.” Reconciliation between people allows God’s healing to take root deep in our heart.

Finally, let us forgive ourselves. In Tramp for the Lord, Corrie Ten Boom talks about what God did with her sins once she confessed them: “When I confessed them to the Father, Jesus Christ washed them in his blood. They are now cast into the deepest sea and a sign put up that says, ‘NO FISHING ALLOWED.’ ” Like Paul, ours is to forget what is behind us and stretch toward what God has in-store for us (Phil. 3:13-14). God long ago forgave us. Are we willing to cut ourselves a break?

All of us have our own “bananas in the cooler” moment. There are times when there’s no way around it. We blundered, big time. Yet God doesn’t want us to stay mired in our guilt and shame. The Lord offers a path to healing. Are we ready to walk it, together?

reflections

God first

Posted on November 7, 2015November 7, 2015 by Gregory Crofford

It’s an old marketing principle: If you want to sell it, sexualize it. So I was surprised to find headphones for sale not using sex as a hook, but religion.

The label read: “turn it up headphones.” Underneath were printed these four words:

Music is my religion.

Let’s be clear. Music is one of life’s good gifts. I’ve never been one to think that God put all the trees in the garden off limits and only allowed Adam and Eve to eat from one. Rather, it was the serpent who attempted to twist the LORD’s words in this way, asking husband and wife: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ ” (Genesis 3:1, NIV). Music is one of the trees that God encourages us to explore. Art, drama, science, sports – there are so many pursuits in this life that fill our days with meaning and that can bring glory to God.

What crosses the line with the “music is my religion” slogan is simple. It puts something else at the center of our lives instead of God. Any pursuit – even an otherwise wholesome one – that displaces God and takes center stage in our lives is an idol.

Football – what Americans call soccer – can take on religious overtones. While doing postgraduate study in Manchester, England, I often took bus 42 downtown to the John Rylands library. As I looked out the window one day, we drove by a small sign along the side of the road. It depicted a soccer ball with a halo over the top. Underneath were these words: “Worship the game.” As God is crowded out of the lives of many and fewer people are part of a community of faith, will vocabulary that before was reserved for the divine be co-opted by lesser things?

Here’s a quick priority test. Other than food, water, clothing and shelter, which human beings need to survive, what other things are there in our lives that have become such a part of our daily routine that to lose them would cause us pain? The Christian discipline of fasting can help us put them back in perspective. Calculate the time you spend on your smart phone or playing games on the internet. Now, for the period of one week, cut one of those out of your life. Instead, take 10% of that time and spend it talking with God. When you reach for the cell phone to send yet another SMS or to check FaceBook, or you reach for the remote on your TV to watch your favorite sport, instead sit quietly for two minutes and listen for God’s voice. This exercise will help us tear down idols and put God back at the center where He belongs.

I only have one religion, and that is God. No other pursuit – no matter how wholesome – must take the place of my pursuing Him. Let’s keep God at the center. Let’s keep God first.