Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Tipping Point & The Gospel

just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. Its a great book. Its a book about a lot of things. Its helps us realize a basic biblical principle as well: little things matter because they lead to big things. Its why God took away the kingship from Saul (because he didn't wait for Samuel). Its why God didn't let Moses go into the Promised Land (because he hit a rock with a staff instead of speaking to it). Its the little things. The little things are everything.

The Tipping Point revolves around the little things as they relate to social epidemics. Gladwell defines the Tipping Point this way:
It's the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It's the boiling point. It's the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards. AIDS tipped in 1982, when it went from a rare disease affecting a few gay men to a worldwide epidemic. Crime in New York City tipped in the mid 1990's, when the murder rate suddenly plummeted. When I heard that phrase for the first time I remember thinking--wow. What if everything has a Tipping Point?

 He says there are three things that cause something to 'tip':

(1) The Law of the Few: "The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social skills." Gladwell describes these people in the following ways:

Connectors are the people who "link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together." To illustrate, Gladwell cites the midnight ride of Paul RevereMilgram's experiments in the small world problemDallas businessman Roger Horchow, the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" trivia game, and Chicagoan Lois Weisberg

Mavens are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information." They accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others. 

Salesmen are "persuaders", charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, that makes others want to agree with them. Gladwell's examples include California businessman Tom Gau and news anchor Peter Jennings, and he cites several studies about how people are persuaded.

(2) The Stickiness Factor: the specific content of a message that makes it memorable and have impact. The children's television programs Sesame Street and Blue's Clues are specific instances of enhancing stickiness and systematically engineering stickiness into a message.

(3) The Power of Context: Human behavior is sensitive to and strongly influenced by its environment. As Gladwell says, "Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur." For example, "zero tolerance" efforts to combat minor crimes such as fare-beating and vandalism on the New York subway led to a decline in more violent crimes city-wide. Gladwell describes the bystander effect, and explains how Dunbar's number plays into the tipping point, using Rebecca Wells' novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhoodevangelist John Wesley, and the high-tech firm Gore Associates.

For a Christian and a Pastor I think this book works in a number of important ways. The most important social epidemic in history is the Gospel of Jesus. I read this book asking: How do we use these basic principles of a spreading epidemic (obviously under the Lordship and Sovereignty of God) to spread the Gospel? How do we use the Law of the Few--focused on connectors? How do we use the stickiness of the message and the methodology of Gospel-centered living? How do we use the power of context including church communities and their personalities, attitudes, and behavior for the spreading of the message of Jesus?

Such is the challenge to the Church. How do we make the Gospel the fastest growing epidemic to effect change for the glory of God?

Monday, November 17, 2008

saints and SINNERS









A few weeks ago we, as a church community, starting a study in 1 & 2 Samuel (at DSF, our churches evening service) - the story of the life of David. I knew I wanted to do this series for awhile, I just didn't know what angle to come at it from. I prayed and thought around the text for some time, thinking about a series title that would capture what 1 & 2 Samuel is about, but something directly applicable to our lives. The series title, and angle, dawned on me one day while driving. It is an idea so elemental to being human: the biblical fact that we are both fundamentally saints and sinners. I did not really realize at the time how deep this title was, and how it would go on to shape so much of what I and others would be living through as we have been studying the text together.

We live schizophrenic lives as human beings. We have great moments where we act like we were intended: helping, serving, loving, worshiping. But at the same time, in the same day, hour or minute we do the most evil, selfish things. The week we started the series someone dropped cookies off telling me how much I blessed them, and the next day I got a call from a friend who was, with good reason, angry at me because I had shared something with someone that I should not have. I was reminded that being human is hard work, and that I am a saint and a sinner.

How are we saints? We are made in the image of God (Gen 1.16-28). We have attributes that are like God: Goodness, Love, Justice, Creativity. Theologians call these the
Communicable Attributes of God. Attributes communicated to humans. This is the only reason we are capable of any thing that remotely resembles goodness. This is due to the common grace of God. There are also Incommunicable Attributes of God: Perfection, Unchangeableness, Omnipresence. The Bible reminds is that while we are made in his image, we are not him.

How are we sinners? We fell (Gen 3). We are deeply effected in every part of ourselves by sin and death. We are
totally depraved. Capable of no good and pure thing (Rom 3.10-18). We are corrupt in the deepest parts of ourselves. This is important to understand. Total depravity is often a misunderstood doctrine, as if it is saying that human beings are as bad as they possibly could be. But this is not true. The doctrine indicates the extent of evil in our lives; that evil has touched, and harmed, every part of us: "our moral natures, rationality, sexuality--our very view of the world and our most fundamental motives" (John G. Stackhouse Jr., Making the Best of It, 49)

Bring these two aspects of ourselves together and you get a person who is subject to the ways of the fallen world and somehow connected to something that transcends himself. In his book
The Nature and Destiny of Man, celebrated theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, says:

“The obvious fact is that man is a child of nature, subject to its ways, compelled by it necessity, driven by impulses, and confined within the brevity of the years which nature permits its varied organic forms. The other less obvious fact is that man is a spirit who stands outside of nature, life, himself, his reason and the world. In its purest form the Christian view of man regards man as a unity of God-likeness and creature-liness in which he remains a creature even in the highest spiritual dimensions of his existence.”

Life is about living in the midst of the tension this reality creates. We live between these two poles. Two weeks ago I started the sermon with a clip of Gollum/Smeagol arguing with himself and said that of all the
LOTR characters, the Bible tells us we should most immediately identify with him. We are Smeagol, God's creation, beautiful and full of potential. But all of that potential has been corrupted by our sinfulness. We are deeply messed up people. Deeply sinful. Liberals tend to focus on the saint part, and ignore the sinner part of ourselves. Fundamentalists tend to focus on the sinner part and marginalize the saint part of ourselves.

As I reflect on the Bible, think about my life, and the lives of those I pastor I have come to conclude two disturbing but liberating truths about being human. First, our default position is never Jesus. Because we are born into sin, our natural proclivity is toward sin, and the father of all lies, Satan. Our nature is to be turned in on ourselves. That is why the Reformer Martin Luther defined sin as
Homo incurvatus - mankind turned in on himself. Our heart is curved away from God. "There are none who seeks for God" (Rom 3.11). We begin not where Adam started but where he finished. Disobedient, selfish, sinful, disconnected from God.

Second, we all have the potential to be the next murderer, thief or adulterer. I am not sure we believe this. I am not sure we have all come to terms with the fact that we all have the potential to be the next Hitler, Pol Pot or Stalin. What makes them different than you? Were they born twisting their mustache's hatching plots to destroy the world? No. They were once helpless babies dependent on their mothers; playing with friends and siblings; asking the same questions we all ask, feeling the same pain we all feel. The reality is, they were sinners, just like all of us, and the same weakness that ran through their veins runs through each one of us. Two use a cowboy image, there are no white hats and black hats. There are only black hats. The only white hat to ever have entered the earth was that worn by Jesus.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn put it this:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

The potential for great sinfulness runs through the hearts of every human being. We are all guilty before a holy God. Still, I don't think you believe me. You don't really believe you could be the next murderer do you? If you don't believe that, than you have missed the message of the Bible. Last night I preached about Saul. He ended poorly. We all have that potential. Many connect Saul with Judas - betrayer, suicide etc., What makes you better than either of these men? 

We all have the potential to be Judas. In a sense we are already Judas... every day. Some of us every hour.

Listen to the story Jesus told about people who think they are not Judas or Saul or evil at all:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'

"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18.9-14)

Do you view yourself as utterly sinful before a holy God, no more righteous than anyone on the earth? 

This is the only way to come into the Kingdom. As a child. Humble. Not boasting of any good thing. Asking God to forgive you and apply to you the righteousness of Jesus, because you have no righteousness of your own to offer.

Believe it.

Not to be overly dramatic but the reality is living in light of this is the only way to move forward and makes sense of your life.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

SELAH: Remembering...


One of the key roles Torah (the five books of Moses) played in Israel's history was to help them practice dense memory while living in pagan cultures--to remember. While living in Babylonian exile they would read Genesis and Exodus to remind themselves that those surrounding narratives were not true, and that  they served the one true God of all the world; YHWH, who had made them and liberated them from Egypt. One of its key roles was the role of helping Israel to remembering

Remembering is integral to what it means to be human. To stop and remember and to dwell deeply on the past, to put the present into context and help us move forward into the future. The Hebrews have a great word that captures the idea of stopping and contemplating something deeply--SELAH. We read it in the Psalms many times. SELAH is a liturgico-musical mark--an instruction on the reading of the text, something like "stop and listen". This word occurs seventy-one times in thirty-nine of the Psalms, and three times in Habakkuk 3. Its a beautiful concept that we in the West have to be forced into sometimes. Days like today are good reminders. A forced and instructed SELAH--"stop and listen"--in the context of a Canadian Stat Holiday. Add to this the idea of Torah (remembering). 

What are we remembering? The selfless sacrifice of those generations that fought and died in two horrific wars to allow us to help others. They fought against oppression and fascism, and for Canadian freedom and democracy--ideals that continue to be fought for around the world today. This day is about remembering the fallen. It is not about using this day on either side of the present political debate about whether we agree, or disagree with present wars, or even whether we agree or disagree with WWI and WWII (there are those who think these wars were illegitimately fought by the West, though I disagree). But this day is not about that, it is about remembering the fallen, who fought and died for the freedoms and blessings we enjoy today, including many of our grandparents.

Why is Remembrance Day continuously important? Because, one day in the not so distant future all those who lived through, and fought these wars will be dead. All those who lived through the Holocaust will be gone. All those who lived through Nazi Germany will be gone. All those who landed in Normandy will be gone, and all we will have is stories, pictures, film and memories. All we will have is the will to remember. All we will have is a forced stop and listen, a SELAH of Remembrance. And that is what this day is about.  

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Two Great Books!

I just got off the phone with a mother whose child is dating a real thinker, and a skeptic. She regretted that he did not attend my lasted sermon series Skeptics Forum (available online or Podcast) where I covered the following questions:

1. Does God Exist?
2. Can There Be Just One True Religion?
3. Has Science Disproved Christianity?
4. Why Would a Good God Allow Evil and Suffering?
5. Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

This mothers said "I want to buy him a book or two for Christmas (he said he would be open to it), what should I buy him?" I did not even have to hesitate. The two books I would most highly recommend to anyone who is seeking answers to difficult questions of faith are the two best books I have read this year, and I commend them both to you as you think about what to read or buy next.

First, Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity? This is the most well argued, articulate, relevant book I have read in a long time. It explores philosophy, theology, science, and history in an engaging way that presents Christianity as a legitimate world view, even in an age of skepticism.

The book tackles arguments from science and philosophy about why belief in God, is legitimate and reasonable. A great read to strengthen your faith, and challenge your inner skeptic.

Secondly is the beautifully written The Reason for God by one of the great preachers and church planters alive today, Timothy Keller; the man that Newsweek called "a C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century."

This book is written in the spirit of Mere Christianity with updated and (post)modern ways of explanation. It is extremely accessible and pastoral in its approach to questions about Hell, the existence of God, science, suffering, and the Bible. This book comes out of Keller's experience of pastoring in Manhattan for twenty years and the questions, struggles of many in that city in regard to faith, life, Christianity and reason.

I would commend these books to anyone who is interested in Christianity, or interested in strengthening their faith in the way that Scripture exhorts us to: "always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3.15).