Why I’m fasting from blogging for Lent

This Lent, I have decided to fast from social media and blogging. I wanted to share a little bit about what I hope will be different about me when I return to the social media universe after Easter. This Monday, I went to the noon mass at the Catholic Basilica in Washington, DC. The epistle reading they shared from James 3:13-18 was very convicting for me because it described both the ugly wisdom that I currently embody and the beautiful wisdom I hope to have one day:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Beauty will save the world #3: the axis of love

It continues to blow my mind how timely Brian Zahnd’s book Beauty Will Save the World is for the climate of our country right now. I previously blogged about the first and second chapters. The third chapter is called “Axis of Love.” Kind of sounds like a Jimi Hendrix album. It’s actually a very beautiful presentation of the victory Jesus wins on the cross.

We are not all Catholic now

I’m sitting in the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. For the past couple of weeks, I have gone to the Monday noon mass. It’s been a deep spiritual struggle each week to decide whether or not to go forward for Eucharist, but I think God wanted me to do it. Each time I have been terrified to get “caught” as a Protestant infiltrator. But that fear has been overridden by a longing to be part of Christ’s true body, the one true church. So now that mass is over, against this backdrop of feeling like a filthy Samaritan completely unworthy of God’s mercy, I just read Glenn Beck’s declaration, “We are all Catholics now.” I’m not sure that anything more sacrilegious could possibly be said.

Persecution and epistemic closure

Epistemic closure is a recently defined philosophical term that describes someone who is so thoroughly encased in the echo chamber of their own ideology that they are completely immune to considering other viewpoints. The term is derived from the Greek word pistis which means faith or trust. When people live in epistemic closure, they are immune to integrity because they only trust people who already agree with their ideology. They scan potential sources of information for the presence of code words that indicate whether or not the speaker can be trusted as a member of their own ideological tribe. As a pastor communicating in our “post-truth” environment of ideological tribalism, I try to be very attuned to both the code words that make me trustworthy and those that instantaneously discredit everything I have to say.

Like Religious Freedom? Wear Ashes on Wednesday!

There’s been a lot of talk about religious freedom over the past couple of weeks. Whatever side of the story you believe, Christianity has taken a hit both from people who oppose it and people who exploit it. I want to propose something that those of us who love Jesus can do to represent Him in a way that will assert our religious freedom without oppressing other people.

Deliver us from evil

Sermon preached 2/11-12/2012 at Burke UMC
Text: Matthew 4:1-11

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I was talking about my sermon topic with my five-year old son Matthew earlier this week. Matthew said, “I like temptation.” I tried to stay calm, and I asked him why. “Because temptation is chocolate,” he said. And I couldn’t argue with him, since that’s usually the word that they use for the most ridiculously decadent dessert on the restaurant menu. Not just chocolate, but chocolate fudge with chocolate chips and chocolate mousse and chocolate ice cream. I generally succumb to temptation quite easily in those circumstances.

Letter of a Christian martyr — Father Christian de Cherge

With all the buzz about Christians being persecuted in the world (real and imagined), I thought I would share a letter from a Catholic monk who was beheaded by a Muslim radical in Algeria on May 24, 1996. Brian Zahnd printed it as part of his new book Beauty Will Save the World (which is amazing! You should buy it!). It expresses a level of maturity that exudes Christ far more beautifully than any of the loudmouths in the Christian blogosphere ever have (myself included). Here it is.

Opportunistic “persecution”

Normally on Fridays I don’t write anything on my blog because I’m hard at work on my sermon. But the whole contraception quagmire has gotten me too churned up to focus. There are countries in our world right now where Christians are actually being murdered for their religious beliefs. This is particularly the case in Egypt, where the Coptic Christians are being brutally attacked by Muslim lynch-mobs. It is profoundly disrespectful to the genuine martyrdom that these Christians suffer when American evangelical celebrities like Rick Warren try to fan the flames of our government’s contraception debate for politically opportunistic reasons. And it’s abominable for recent Dietrich Bonhoeffer biographer Eric Metaxas to try to make an analogy between contraception and the Holocaust.

What makes pregnancy a disease?

In protesting the Obama Administration’s new decision to treat contraception as preventative medicine, Archbishop Timothy Dolan said that he “objects to treating pregnancy as a disease.” A lot of people have ridiculed the Roman church’s stance on contraception and pointed out that some 95% of Catholics use contraception. While I understand the practical concerns that motivated the Obama administration’s decision, I ultimately share the sacramental worldview behind Archbishop Dolan’s perspective: since every human is created by God in His image, human life should never be treated as a consumer product. The only problem with Archbishop Dolan’s worldview is that it’s completely incompatible with the social forces created by capitalism. The Vatican recognizes this problem, but Dolan may be too cozy with his Ayn Rand-loving fellow Catholic politicians to discern the way that capitalism redefines pregnancy in terms of consumerism. It is sadly a very common form of ideological schizophrenia in America to be pro-life and simultaneously in love with the laissez-faire capitalism that makes life a commodity.

Sharing the gift of God’s forgiveness

Sermon preached at Burke United Methodist Church 2/4-5/2012
Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Is everyone familiar with the term straw man? It’s a word you learn when you get into a lot of arguments like I do. A straw man is like the opposite of an imaginary friend; he serves as your imaginary opponent in an argument that you can always win because there is nothing right about what the straw man believes. Well my whole life is an argument against a particular kind of straw man.