We talk much about spiritual transformation in the church and the lack of it among many believers. My own observation, however is that there are many lay people who are more concerned about true transformation and intimacy with God then those who lead them.
This may well be why there is a restlessness among many in our congregations for something more authentic in their Christian lives, something they are not getting or hearing from the pulpit. They are less enamored with theological knowledge and more hungry for the transformation and living waters that Jesus promises. Is their hunger a symptom of our own lack of hunger and therefore inability to deliver that living water to them?
I don't believe this is intentional but I do believe it can be dangerous for those of us in professional ministry. It is very easy to substitute our knowledge of all things theological for the hard work of translating that knowledge into our own lives. It is also easy to substitute our engineering of disciplemaking pathways in our churches for the needed transformational pathways in our own lives. In fact, while I believe in disciplemaking pathways, the truly transformed and vital spiritual life of a leader is more powerful than any pathway. You cannot ignore a life that is lived close to Jesus.
Since we cannot lead people to places we have not gone we cannot deliver living water that we are not drinking deeply from. Our enemy is our schedule, the good things we are doing for God (in our minds) and our theological knowledge. That knowledge is an easy but empty substitute for God's work in our own soul. In fact, I am no longer enamored by prodigious knowledge that is not also coupled by a deep hunger for God's transformational presence in one's life.
If our churches are seeing far less transformation than they want to see (as the Reveal study shows) is that possibly a symptom of our own lack of transformation as Christian leaders. It is uncomfortable for me to ask the question but I wonder.
The first and most important work of a Christian leader is to ensure that Jesus is our first love and highest priority. That we are allowing him to do the fundamental work of growth, transformation and stripping away of all things base in our lives. That takes time, introspection and the hard work of following closely after Jesus ourselves. Only then can we truly bring people to the living waters of Jesus.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Five danger zones for leaders that contribute to leadership failure
I have spent a great deal of time lately mulling over the propensity of otherwise good leaders to crash and burn after years of effective leadership. we have examples in Scripture of leaders like King Saul and there are many contemporary examples. But what are the factors and symptoms that most often contribute to good leaders who get themselves into trouble?
One. We neglect our inner life for too long a period of time. This is usually not by design but the busyness of life (leaders are busy) and the demands that are either self imposed or other imposed (and not regulated) cause many leaders to run faster and faster until they are exhausted and the shallowness of a neglected inner life catches up. We can easily rationalize our busyness by thinking that what we are doing we are doing for God but He does not ask us to do anything at the expense of our inner spiritual lives.
Schedule, a fast pace of life fueled by the "importance" of what I am doing are deadly to healthy leaders. Because our outer life is simply a reflection of our inner lives, neglect of the former spells trouble for the latter. The antidote is actually to slow down and do less activity, more introspection and spend more time with God. He does not feed our ego as our activity and other people do but He feeds our tired and hungry hearts.
Two. We start to believe our own press. People tell us we are good leaders and somewhere along the way we begin to believe that we are better people and leaders than we really are. Our humility erodes and our pride increases until we end up with a highly over inflated view of our leadership, self importance and value to the organization we lead.
Belief in ourselves, our abilities, when they become over-inflated, cause us to make decisions without adequate input from others (we know the direction, we know the truth north) and even make over-calculations as to the impact of those decisions. After all we have a history of making good calls so this one must be a good one as well.
The antidote is never to believe the press others give you but to cultivate a thorough and accurate self knowledge that is based on deeply understanding one's wiring, dark side, propensity to sin and the "real truth" about who we are. The more press we get, the more time we need to access who we truly are because the accolades from others are never a true picture of who we really are. It is only a public persona that others see. They see the good but we know the dark side. What we want to maintain is an accurate picture of who we are which is rarely the inflated picture others have of us as leaders. The loss of personal humility is deadly to any leader.
Three. We stop listening to the people who will tell us the truth and start listening to those who tell us what we want to hear. This is a very dangerous place to be. Those who tell us what we want to hear simply stroke our egos and opinions which only works to prove to ourselves what we want to think or hear. It is false knowledge that begins to skew our view of reality. When our view of reality becomes skewed, we see life through a faulty lens which blinds us to the dysfunction in our lives and causes us to make decisions that are based on skewed data.
Once a leader gets to this stage, they are headed for trouble because they no longer listen to truth tellers, even those who have been truth tellers and counselors in the past. Because they trust their own judgments, they are able to discard those who don't agree with them and seek counsel from those who will agree with them.
This is complicated by a fourth characteristic. Leaders at this stage often divide people into two camps, those who are for them and those who are against them. After all, with an inflated view of our own self importance and value, those who disagree with us must not understand how God is using us! And in getting in our way they are also getting in God's way. Often those who share opinions or counsel that the leader does not want to hear are marginalized and put into the enemy camp effectively preventing them from ever speaking into their lives again. I have had this happen to me on a number of occasions.
This becomes a self fulling prophecy of leadership implosion unless it can be halted. The antidote is to surround ourselves with wise, Godly people who have permission to speak into our lives and whose counsel we will never disregard even when it is hard to hear. The best counselors are those who have had a history of giving us wise counsel in the past, before we were in the place we are today. When leaders crash and burn and others look back they almost always see an individual who has isolated herself or himself, stopped listening to those they used to listen to and increasingly narrowed their list of friends or counselors.
Fifth, leaders who crash and burn have usually isolated themselves from others. Often this is because they no longer feel they need to be accountable, or are running too fast to stay in relationship, or are unwilling to be transparent in their relationships out of a desire to control their image. This isolation also involves keeping others at arms length so that it is not easy to "reach" them. Often, the knowledge that my opinion may cause them to marginalize me will keep me from speaking up, and the strong personality of an isolated leader can keep me from pressing in.
Image control naturally leads to isolation since transparency is a prerequisite of close relationship and transparency gets in the way of image control. The need to control image is a sign of one who has become isolated and that isolation will eventually hurt them. God designed us for relationship and community and that community keeps us from going in directions that are unhealthy. Isolation removes the protection of deep friendships and community and sets us up for trouble.
All of us need others in our lives who will speak truth, hold us accountable, help us in our journey of faith and give wise counsel. When we cross a line where we are too important or too busy to cultivate those relationships we will find ourselves in dangerous waters. If you are a leader, pay attention to these five characteristics. We are all susceptible to them. They are very dangerous, each of them. In combination they are deadly.
Ask yourself these questions on a regular basis:
1. Am I too busy for my inner life?
2. Am I starting to believe my own press?
3. Have I marginalized people I listened to in the past?
4. Am I dividing people into camps: for me and against me?
5. Am I becoming isolated?
One. We neglect our inner life for too long a period of time. This is usually not by design but the busyness of life (leaders are busy) and the demands that are either self imposed or other imposed (and not regulated) cause many leaders to run faster and faster until they are exhausted and the shallowness of a neglected inner life catches up. We can easily rationalize our busyness by thinking that what we are doing we are doing for God but He does not ask us to do anything at the expense of our inner spiritual lives.
Schedule, a fast pace of life fueled by the "importance" of what I am doing are deadly to healthy leaders. Because our outer life is simply a reflection of our inner lives, neglect of the former spells trouble for the latter. The antidote is actually to slow down and do less activity, more introspection and spend more time with God. He does not feed our ego as our activity and other people do but He feeds our tired and hungry hearts.
Two. We start to believe our own press. People tell us we are good leaders and somewhere along the way we begin to believe that we are better people and leaders than we really are. Our humility erodes and our pride increases until we end up with a highly over inflated view of our leadership, self importance and value to the organization we lead.
Belief in ourselves, our abilities, when they become over-inflated, cause us to make decisions without adequate input from others (we know the direction, we know the truth north) and even make over-calculations as to the impact of those decisions. After all we have a history of making good calls so this one must be a good one as well.
The antidote is never to believe the press others give you but to cultivate a thorough and accurate self knowledge that is based on deeply understanding one's wiring, dark side, propensity to sin and the "real truth" about who we are. The more press we get, the more time we need to access who we truly are because the accolades from others are never a true picture of who we really are. It is only a public persona that others see. They see the good but we know the dark side. What we want to maintain is an accurate picture of who we are which is rarely the inflated picture others have of us as leaders. The loss of personal humility is deadly to any leader.
Three. We stop listening to the people who will tell us the truth and start listening to those who tell us what we want to hear. This is a very dangerous place to be. Those who tell us what we want to hear simply stroke our egos and opinions which only works to prove to ourselves what we want to think or hear. It is false knowledge that begins to skew our view of reality. When our view of reality becomes skewed, we see life through a faulty lens which blinds us to the dysfunction in our lives and causes us to make decisions that are based on skewed data.
Once a leader gets to this stage, they are headed for trouble because they no longer listen to truth tellers, even those who have been truth tellers and counselors in the past. Because they trust their own judgments, they are able to discard those who don't agree with them and seek counsel from those who will agree with them.
This is complicated by a fourth characteristic. Leaders at this stage often divide people into two camps, those who are for them and those who are against them. After all, with an inflated view of our own self importance and value, those who disagree with us must not understand how God is using us! And in getting in our way they are also getting in God's way. Often those who share opinions or counsel that the leader does not want to hear are marginalized and put into the enemy camp effectively preventing them from ever speaking into their lives again. I have had this happen to me on a number of occasions.
This becomes a self fulling prophecy of leadership implosion unless it can be halted. The antidote is to surround ourselves with wise, Godly people who have permission to speak into our lives and whose counsel we will never disregard even when it is hard to hear. The best counselors are those who have had a history of giving us wise counsel in the past, before we were in the place we are today. When leaders crash and burn and others look back they almost always see an individual who has isolated herself or himself, stopped listening to those they used to listen to and increasingly narrowed their list of friends or counselors.
Fifth, leaders who crash and burn have usually isolated themselves from others. Often this is because they no longer feel they need to be accountable, or are running too fast to stay in relationship, or are unwilling to be transparent in their relationships out of a desire to control their image. This isolation also involves keeping others at arms length so that it is not easy to "reach" them. Often, the knowledge that my opinion may cause them to marginalize me will keep me from speaking up, and the strong personality of an isolated leader can keep me from pressing in.
Image control naturally leads to isolation since transparency is a prerequisite of close relationship and transparency gets in the way of image control. The need to control image is a sign of one who has become isolated and that isolation will eventually hurt them. God designed us for relationship and community and that community keeps us from going in directions that are unhealthy. Isolation removes the protection of deep friendships and community and sets us up for trouble.
All of us need others in our lives who will speak truth, hold us accountable, help us in our journey of faith and give wise counsel. When we cross a line where we are too important or too busy to cultivate those relationships we will find ourselves in dangerous waters. If you are a leader, pay attention to these five characteristics. We are all susceptible to them. They are very dangerous, each of them. In combination they are deadly.
Ask yourself these questions on a regular basis:
1. Am I too busy for my inner life?
2. Am I starting to believe my own press?
3. Have I marginalized people I listened to in the past?
4. Am I dividing people into camps: for me and against me?
5. Am I becoming isolated?
Friday, March 16, 2012
Eleven things your younger leaders need to learn
Those of us who lead at any level are responsible for raising up the next generation of leaders behind us. Frequently we focus on leadership skills. Just as important, if not more, however is the development of the inner life of a leader from which their leadership will emerge.
I would like to suggest that there are eleven practices or disciplines that all leaders must have in order to be effective. If we can help the next generation leaders understand and live out these practices they will be well served. If they don't get these things they will not lead well.
I would like to suggest that there are eleven practices or disciplines that all leaders must have in order to be effective. If we can help the next generation leaders understand and live out these practices they will be well served. If they don't get these things they will not lead well.
- The inner life of a leader will determine how good a leader they become. They can have all the skill in the world but if the inner life is not rock solid and continuously paid attention to they will not succeed as a spiritual leader. The hidden discipline of developing the inner life always comes before the public role of leadership.
- Personal humility is a non-negotiable for good leadership. True humility is clear about what strengths we have as well as our weaknesses and therefore our need for others. Humility serves others while pride serves self. Because spiritual leadership is other focused and Jesus centered it must come from a place of personal humility.
- Suffering and pain is a major way that God molds great leaders. It is when we are challenged that we grow and the test of a spiritual leader is whether they grow in their faith during hard times or move away from God in disillusionment. There is no way to effective leadership without the molding and forging of hard times. If you are going to lead, expect it and make the most of it.
- Leaders actively embrace spiritual transformation. God can only use people to bring others closer to Him who are themselves allowing God to transform them. Transformation of their hearts to understand and live out grace. Transformation of their minds to think like Jesus thinks. Transformation of life priorities to align our lives with His and transformation of our relationships to see people as Jesus sees them and love people as Jesus loves them.
- Our shadow side must be managed. All of us have a shadow side. It is the opposite of our strengths and it is those areas where we struggle with sin or negatively impact others. We cannot eliminate our shadow side but we can manage it by understanding it and modifying our behaviors so that they don't hurt others. Leaders who don't manage their shadow side will never lead well.
- Emotional intelligence matters and needs to be developed. Healthy EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is one of the most important traits of a leader. It allows them to understand how they are perceived by others, to differ with others while staying relationally connected, hear feedback without defensiveness and negotiate conflict in a healthy manner. Poor EQ is the number one reason that leaders fail.
- I can only lead from who God made me to be. God can use any personality style to lead and we will never be successful emulating someone else's leadership style. We can learn from others but we can only lead out of our own God given wiring. We must develop a leadership style that is consistent with our personality and wiring rather than emulate others.
- Leaders live intentional lives. Accidental living does not make for a good leader because it is a life of reaction rather than a proactive life of considered intentionality. Leaders live intentionally so that they accomplish what God wants them to accomplish personally and with others. There is a discipline to a good leader's life that is based on the important things rather than the ancillary things.
- Leaders are clear about what matters. There are many things that vie for our attention personally and organizationally. Leaders are able to identify what is truly important and not be distracted by the unimportant. They are clear themselves and help those they lead become clear. Clarity of life and mission are marks of a good leader.
- Leaders live with transparency. The more transparent a leader is about both success and failure with others the more they are followed, respected and lead from authenticity. Authentic lives, where words match action, where we don't pretend to be something we are not and are open about our strengths and weaknesses, failures and accomplishments allows others to see the real us and to lead from a place of authenticity rather than from a place of pretense.
- Leaders guard their hearts. Everything in Christian leadership comes down to the heart. When leaders don't guard their hearts (King Saul) they lose their ability to lead. When they do (David) they lead from a place of health and strength. The Psalms say that David led from integrity of heart and skillful hands. Above all else, leaders guard their hearts on a moment by moment and daily basis.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Sex trafficking in the open
It is an evil devaluation of individuals who are made in God's image. God's heart must be deeply grieved by the "use" of people He created, loves, died for, and meant for relationship with Him. These are someone's daughters, sisters and mothers. They are women that God wants to make daughters of the king. Rather than being loved they are being used as objects of lust an hour at a time.
This is the face of sex trafficking. It is the face of evil. It is the face of lives and dreams destroyed. It is the face of the evil one whose whole MO is to destroy people made in God's image. The question is whether we are pained as Jesus is pained. Whether we are willing to take action when this happens in our neighborhood and city.
The Lord said through Isaiah:
Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Isaiah 58:6-8.
Do we have God's heart?
Do we really comprehend and live out God's grace in our lives?
It is not by accident that the hymn, Amazing Grace is a favorite for so many. It captures so well the essence of what attracted us to Jesus, redeemed us and it will indeed be something that we will spend eternity trying to comprehend. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9)."
I am convinced that we will never fully understand the full scope of God's grace this side of eternity but that it must be something that we push into daily. The more we understand His grace in our lives, the more content we are in Jesus, the more grace we show others and the more we look like Jesus. He is the essence of grace and it was what made Him the magnet for people that He was.
Understanding grace is a life changer for us and for how we relate to others. Too often we are recipients of God's grace but are not students of what it means to extend that same grace to others. The legalism, conditional acceptance, interpersonal conflict and lack of love even in the church is evidence of the great need for God's people to grow in grace. Knowing truth is not enough for Christ followers. Living out truth with the grace of Christ is what will attract others to us and then to Jesus. Jesus came full of "grace and truth." Do we?
For instance, when I truly understand and live out grace:
-I no longer try to earn God's favor but understand that there is nothing I can do to make Him love me more and there is nothing I can do to make Him love me less. Therefore I can be joyful and content in my daily walk with Him.
-I do not feel the need to play the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others but rather extend to them the grace God extends to me, pray for them and be patient with their faults as God is with mine. I am slow to judge, quick to think the best and remember how patient and gracious God is with me in my personal growth as I extend that same attitude toward others.
-I am able to forgive myself for my own shortcomings, knowing that God has already done that. My motivation to grown in my obedience is no longer about earning His favor but rather wanting to please Him out of gratitude for His amazing love.
-I forgive others quickly knowing that Jesus extends that gift to me daily. I cannot withhold from others what Jesus has so graciously extended to me. I don't give people what they deserve but what they don't deserve, just as Jesus did not give us what we deserve.
-I no longer look at people the way the world does but know that every individual I encounter has eternal value in His eyes and therefore must in my eyes as well. I go out of my way to love those that others don't love and to give value to those that others forget.
-I don't display conditional love just as Jesus does not give me conditional love. Unconditional love is the love of grace and it is an act of our will based on God's unconditional love for me.
-I love to surprise people with grace when they least expect or even deserve it. Just like Jesus with tax collectors, prostitutes, adulterers, lepers, and all those that were considered undeserving and worthy only of judgement. After all, God surprised us with grace when we did not deserve or expect it.
-I am not hard or harsh even when I need to bring correction to a brother or sister. Rather, my motivation is always love that comes out of God's gracious love in my own life. I display toward other the same graciousness that God gives to me daily.
-I love to encourage those who have messed up big time that God is not finished with them yet and that He can redeem their sin and give them hope and a purpose. After all, that is what God did for us. He is the hope for the broken, the guilty, and the hopeless. There is no person and no situation that God cannot redeem so we become evangelists of His hope.
There are many other characteristics of living out a life of grace. One of the most valuable things we can do is to regularly think about all of our relationships, attitudes, words and actions from a filter of God's grace to us. Reading the gospels regularly helps us to capture the secrets of Jesus' grace to inform us of what it means to live a grace filled life.
I am convinced that we will never fully understand the full scope of God's grace this side of eternity but that it must be something that we push into daily. The more we understand His grace in our lives, the more content we are in Jesus, the more grace we show others and the more we look like Jesus. He is the essence of grace and it was what made Him the magnet for people that He was.
Understanding grace is a life changer for us and for how we relate to others. Too often we are recipients of God's grace but are not students of what it means to extend that same grace to others. The legalism, conditional acceptance, interpersonal conflict and lack of love even in the church is evidence of the great need for God's people to grow in grace. Knowing truth is not enough for Christ followers. Living out truth with the grace of Christ is what will attract others to us and then to Jesus. Jesus came full of "grace and truth." Do we?
For instance, when I truly understand and live out grace:
-I no longer try to earn God's favor but understand that there is nothing I can do to make Him love me more and there is nothing I can do to make Him love me less. Therefore I can be joyful and content in my daily walk with Him.
-I do not feel the need to play the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others but rather extend to them the grace God extends to me, pray for them and be patient with their faults as God is with mine. I am slow to judge, quick to think the best and remember how patient and gracious God is with me in my personal growth as I extend that same attitude toward others.
-I am able to forgive myself for my own shortcomings, knowing that God has already done that. My motivation to grown in my obedience is no longer about earning His favor but rather wanting to please Him out of gratitude for His amazing love.
-I forgive others quickly knowing that Jesus extends that gift to me daily. I cannot withhold from others what Jesus has so graciously extended to me. I don't give people what they deserve but what they don't deserve, just as Jesus did not give us what we deserve.
-I no longer look at people the way the world does but know that every individual I encounter has eternal value in His eyes and therefore must in my eyes as well. I go out of my way to love those that others don't love and to give value to those that others forget.
-I don't display conditional love just as Jesus does not give me conditional love. Unconditional love is the love of grace and it is an act of our will based on God's unconditional love for me.
-I love to surprise people with grace when they least expect or even deserve it. Just like Jesus with tax collectors, prostitutes, adulterers, lepers, and all those that were considered undeserving and worthy only of judgement. After all, God surprised us with grace when we did not deserve or expect it.
-I am not hard or harsh even when I need to bring correction to a brother or sister. Rather, my motivation is always love that comes out of God's gracious love in my own life. I display toward other the same graciousness that God gives to me daily.
-I love to encourage those who have messed up big time that God is not finished with them yet and that He can redeem their sin and give them hope and a purpose. After all, that is what God did for us. He is the hope for the broken, the guilty, and the hopeless. There is no person and no situation that God cannot redeem so we become evangelists of His hope.
There are many other characteristics of living out a life of grace. One of the most valuable things we can do is to regularly think about all of our relationships, attitudes, words and actions from a filter of God's grace to us. Reading the gospels regularly helps us to capture the secrets of Jesus' grace to inform us of what it means to live a grace filled life.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Creating dissonance for Jesus
Recently I went to the cardiologist for an annual checkup. I had just had an echo cardiogram on my heart which showed it to be completely normal. It was a normal visit until he started looking back over my chart on the computer to events in 2007 and 2008 where my mitral valve had failed when I was deathly ill.
He asked me when I had undergone surgery to fix it and we told him that I had not but that God had healed it when many people from around the world had been praying. He sat there stunned as he read what had happened and compared that to the normal heart in front of him on the echo. He could not reconcile a normal heart with the echo's he saw from my past hospitalization and that without surgery to fix it.
This created dissonance for him. It did not fit his categories. And, it gave us an opportunity to share how God had worked in our lives.
God loves to create dissonance in the thinking of people and he loves it when we do the same in our actions, attitudes or responses to others. That dissonance between what people expect in the normal course of events and what they experience when it is present causes them to sit up and think! When God intervenes and shows up unexpectedly it creates spiritual dissonance for people and I regularly invite Him to do so. The Holy Spirit has amazing ways of getting peoples attention when He intervenes in the normal course of life.
We also create dissonance when we as believers simply act like Jesus would. Forgiving when people would expect us to hang on to an offense. Helping when people would expect us to go our own way. Loving those who are usually overlooked. Being generous with those who have a need. Just as Jesus was the expert at doing the unexpected, so we can and should be. It creates dissonance which then leads to questions which leads to the opportunity to share Jesus.
God's power is beyond anything our world can comprehend and when His finger touched my broken heart it healed. The way of Jesus is beyond anything our world can comprehend and when we simply live like He did we create the same dissonance God does. That dissonance between what is expected and what is demonstrated is God's way of getting peoples attention.
Invite God to create dissonance in those around you and join Him in doing it yourself by simply living out the life of Jesus.
He asked me when I had undergone surgery to fix it and we told him that I had not but that God had healed it when many people from around the world had been praying. He sat there stunned as he read what had happened and compared that to the normal heart in front of him on the echo. He could not reconcile a normal heart with the echo's he saw from my past hospitalization and that without surgery to fix it.
This created dissonance for him. It did not fit his categories. And, it gave us an opportunity to share how God had worked in our lives.
God loves to create dissonance in the thinking of people and he loves it when we do the same in our actions, attitudes or responses to others. That dissonance between what people expect in the normal course of events and what they experience when it is present causes them to sit up and think! When God intervenes and shows up unexpectedly it creates spiritual dissonance for people and I regularly invite Him to do so. The Holy Spirit has amazing ways of getting peoples attention when He intervenes in the normal course of life.
We also create dissonance when we as believers simply act like Jesus would. Forgiving when people would expect us to hang on to an offense. Helping when people would expect us to go our own way. Loving those who are usually overlooked. Being generous with those who have a need. Just as Jesus was the expert at doing the unexpected, so we can and should be. It creates dissonance which then leads to questions which leads to the opportunity to share Jesus.
God's power is beyond anything our world can comprehend and when His finger touched my broken heart it healed. The way of Jesus is beyond anything our world can comprehend and when we simply live like He did we create the same dissonance God does. That dissonance between what is expected and what is demonstrated is God's way of getting peoples attention.
Invite God to create dissonance in those around you and join Him in doing it yourself by simply living out the life of Jesus.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Evangelicals and the environment
I remember the first "earth day" in the seventies and how the Christians in my circles mocked the idea. I was living in Hong Kong at the time, a relatively poor dirty place at the time that seemed to care little about the environment. Then came earth day where we could think about saving the earth and it was well, not so popular among evangelicals.
Reflecting back on that and the lack of care that we have given the earth and even the lack of a theology of caring for the environment makes me wonder why this has not been a greater topic of concern for Christ followers.
A reading of Genesis one and two reveals that God did not create a shoddy world. In fact, He took his time, used all of His creativity and created the most amazing universe that we are still seeking to understand. And He pronounced it good. As the apex of His creation he created men and women made in His image and gave them the job of looking after "ruling over" His creation. The words "rule over" actually echo the fact that God "rules over" all of creation, including us.
Given the beauty and care with which God created this world I cannot help but believe that those things that destroy that creation, or poison the fresh water He gave us or that trashes the environment is an affront to him. Clearly He gave us creation to use but not to abuse. When we see beauty why does it give us joy? Because it is an echo of the garden and the way God designed our world. Beauty is a mirror of God.
Evangelicals along the way who have raised their voices for a more responsible use of the resources God has given have often been marginalized and labeled as liberals by others. Why? If God created an amazingly good creation why are those who express concern for that creation treated as pariahs in the evangelical community?
If one reads the account of the New Creation that is coming, God is going to redeem even creation itself with the New Heavens and New earth, so why should that not be a concern of ours today.
One of the byproducts of our trashing of His creation is the fact that much of our world does not even have clean drinking water. Consider what our lives would be like if we drank dangerous bacteria very day because of a lack of clean water. I write this blog in Bangalore, India, a country that desperately needs clean water supplies.
Concern for the environment should never eclipse our concern for the gospel message which is the ultimate hope for each individual. But it should not meant that we should not care about those things that God cares about. And my read of Genesis one and two is that He cared about the world he handed us to rule over a great deal. If it matters to Him, it matters to me. The first earth day was when God looked at His creation and declared it good. I hope that He can look at our stewardship and declare it good as well. At least what we can control.
Reflecting back on that and the lack of care that we have given the earth and even the lack of a theology of caring for the environment makes me wonder why this has not been a greater topic of concern for Christ followers.
A reading of Genesis one and two reveals that God did not create a shoddy world. In fact, He took his time, used all of His creativity and created the most amazing universe that we are still seeking to understand. And He pronounced it good. As the apex of His creation he created men and women made in His image and gave them the job of looking after "ruling over" His creation. The words "rule over" actually echo the fact that God "rules over" all of creation, including us.
Given the beauty and care with which God created this world I cannot help but believe that those things that destroy that creation, or poison the fresh water He gave us or that trashes the environment is an affront to him. Clearly He gave us creation to use but not to abuse. When we see beauty why does it give us joy? Because it is an echo of the garden and the way God designed our world. Beauty is a mirror of God.
Evangelicals along the way who have raised their voices for a more responsible use of the resources God has given have often been marginalized and labeled as liberals by others. Why? If God created an amazingly good creation why are those who express concern for that creation treated as pariahs in the evangelical community?
If one reads the account of the New Creation that is coming, God is going to redeem even creation itself with the New Heavens and New earth, so why should that not be a concern of ours today.
One of the byproducts of our trashing of His creation is the fact that much of our world does not even have clean drinking water. Consider what our lives would be like if we drank dangerous bacteria very day because of a lack of clean water. I write this blog in Bangalore, India, a country that desperately needs clean water supplies.
Concern for the environment should never eclipse our concern for the gospel message which is the ultimate hope for each individual. But it should not meant that we should not care about those things that God cares about. And my read of Genesis one and two is that He cared about the world he handed us to rule over a great deal. If it matters to Him, it matters to me. The first earth day was when God looked at His creation and declared it good. I hope that He can look at our stewardship and declare it good as well. At least what we can control.
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