Financial Peace

Tonight was the final class in the 13-week Financial Peace University class that Dave Ramsey put together. Tonight was about giving and it was the best class in the series in my opinion, and the one he should start with (and repeat often throughout) rather than end with.



In general I agree with the prescription he gives in the class: get out of debt, live within your means, put aside an emergency fund covering at least 3 months living expense, set aside long term savings for retirement with a target of 15% of your pay each month, and give away at least 10%. I did, however, struggle with the spirit of the class giving constant emphasis to building wealth with only occasional reference to building godliness. The mantra he repeats over and over is 'live like no one else for a while (ie, frugally) so you can live like no one else later (ie, in wealth)'. The implication is that it is ok to lavish 'stuff' on yourself later once you attain wealth (and he amplifies that with examples of his friend who drives the Rolls Royce, his friends who are multi-millionaires, etc, etc). While that may be a sales pitch to get the attention of those who are indeed focused on their own desire for wealth, it is not a worthy motivation for a serious Christian. The mantra should be something more like 'live like no one else now so you can become more in God's image'. Our goal should not be to build wealth; our goal should be to be more like Jesus.

Now Jesus was not in favor of our being in debt head over heels from what I can see in the Scriptures. Being like Jesus would include not being enslaved to debt. But I don't think the class talked en0ugh about risk, either the risk that comes with investments or the spiritual risks that come with wealth. As I have commented before, freedom is risky business. The freedom that comes with wealth is certainly risky, as we can all see in the tabloids reflected in the lives of the rich and famous.

Another mantra he uses often is 'don't be normal; normal is broke'! I agree---don't be normal, but don't be normal because Jesus wasn't normal. Being serious about your Christian life isn't normal.

So, tonight's class was certainly the best since it said the most about the spiritual issues. Not enough was said, but more than the other classes. It reminded me of a sermon series we heard in Memphis over 20 years ago. There are only a handful of sermons I have heard that were that memorable. This series was about the nature of God, and there were some sermons on things about God's nature which are out of our human realm, things like His sovereignty, his omnipotence, his omniscience. But some were about the characteristics of God which we are expected to imitate, and which His children should be seeking every day. The sermons said it this way:

• God is a worker, and so should we be
• God is a lover, and so should we be
• God is a giver, and so should we be

I would add another: God is a thinker, and so should we be.

I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who said that a great evil in this world is wealth without work. I agree, though I suspect on far less socialist grounds than Gandhi. I do not object to wealthy capitalists making even more money through investing their capital. I consider that a form of work. I do believe that we have a calling, a vocation, to carry out in order to live in God's image. Jesus said in John 5:17 'My father is working until now, and I myself am working'. He is still at work. He expects no less of us.

Of course, the most quoted Scripture is John 3:16: 'For God so loved the world that he gave'. This one verse, along with many others, addresses both God as lover and God as giver. Love is often expressed in gifts though not only in gifts. To be like Him, we must both love and give.

Got is also a thinker. Ramsey did emphasize on several occasions the importance of reading and thinking. In the beginning was the Logos we are told, and the Logos, though translated 'Word', is not something spoken. It is more akin to mind than speech. To say that God 'spoke' the universe into existence is really to say that He thought it into existence. I have commented before that the famous relativity equation should really be E=mc^2=I where I=Information; that is to say, God turned information, really His thought, into both mass and energy to create the universe. To say that all truth is God's truth, and that we are to seek truth, is to say in another form that God is a thinker, and so should we be.

As I said, I agree with most of the actions that Ramsey recommends. I just don't think doing it to build wealth is a good enough reason. I like to think he also thinks that but just doesn't say it enough. Ultimately, if we attain wealth, the whole pathway should be one that glorifies God, and our life style should be one that glorifies God and not just one that allows us to 'live like no one else'.

The Chicken Soup Rule

I have been battling a nasty cold the last few days. Yesterday as I lay around the house trying to recover I decided to have some chicken and rice soup for lunch. It would be light, add to my needed fluids, and be comforting in a way that only hot soup can be. It also reminded me of The Chicken Soup Rule.

The Chicken Soup Rule goes like this: Can't Hurt, Might Help, Why Not? You always say it in your best imitation Yiddish accent, of course, trying to sound like the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof. I'm not sure, but that movie may be where I first came across the rule itself.

It is a good rule because it has so many applications. You can apply it not only to having soup when you have a cold, but to reminding your children to put on a jacket, or mittens, or comb their hair, or any number of things.

So I had the chicken soup yesterday and today I feel quite a lot better. Cause and Effect? I doubt it, but then again, who knows?

The Consumerist Bible

I mentioned recently how consumerism has become ingrained in our lives and our churches and shows itself in the way we view the primary job of our pastors. This consumerist mentality certainly shows itself in the ever-expanding numbers and types of Bibles , offering something to suit everyone including the heretics.

Recently joining the list is The Green Bible. It wonderfully has the passages that seem related to the environment printed in green. Isn't that just precious. So, I did a quick google search on specialty bibles and found quite an abundance. There is a bible for just about all sportsmen (the fisherman's bible, the hunter's bible, the golfer's bible, etc); there are study bibles from any number of tv preachers; there are occupational bibles (the soldier's bible, the fireman's bible, the policeman's bible, the nurse's bible, etc); men's bibles, women's bibles, children's bibles, teen's bibles. On and on it goes. Some of the more ludicrous include the Princess Bible, so your little princess can feel special; one called Da Jesus Book; Hawaiian Pidgin New Testament looks intriguing but somehow I can't take it seriously; we mustn't overlook The Black Bible Chronicles which instead of opening with 'In the beginning....' opens with 'Now when the Almighty was first down with His program...the earth was a fashion misfit, being so uncool and dark...'. So this is what The Living Bible has led to? The old folks warned me about that; after all, if the King James was good enough for the apostle Paul it should be good enough for me.

So I started to wonder if the heretics had gotten into the act and I typed 'gay and lesbian bible' into the google search box, and sure enough there is one. Why am I not surprised? If there is a market for it, someone will sell it. Thomas Jefferson set the example 200 years ago with his own bible, deleting all of Christ's teaching about atonement and salvation, leaving just the moral teaching. If the real Christ doesn't suit you, just find one you can like.

Many of the specialty bibles seem harmless enough, like putting a camoflage cover on the bible for hunters, adding some notes from a bible teacher in the margins and such as that. Others are total heresy, like the gay/lesbian bible. Many are driven by our never ending consumerism, like the Princess Bible. I have to wonder how all of this builds the church. While I agree with our church in its mission statement that we accepting changing methodology but an unchanging message, there is too much of the consumerism message in much of this 'changing method' for my, taste even in most of the seemingly harmless ones. As for the heretics, well, 'these you have with you always' if I may borrow a phrase.

Churches, like companies, cannot disrupt themselves

The current issue of Newsweek magazine includes an article about how GM was unable to allow Saturn to live up to its initial vision of being a totally separate and different kind of car company. This is a terrific case study that illustrates the point made in Christensen's book The Innovator's Solution that companies cannot change in a disruptive manner within existing businesses. The company culture will always treat a disruptive change like a virus and the corporate immune system will attack it. This can only be overcome by setting up a completely separate entity with separate funding, separate management, etc. Saturn had to compete within GM for product development resources, human resources, etc, so the GM immune system attacked it, as did the UAW union immune system. It was doomed from the start by not being a totally separate entity from GM.

This strikes me as similar to what goes on in churches when an existing church tries to make a disruptive change, like moving from a traditional worship approach to contemporary (or vice versa). Unless it does not compete for resources, does not force people to change their style, does not create competition against what was already there, it will be attacked by the immune system. Churches, like companies, cannot disrupt themselves. They can only launch separate entities without creating a cultural crisis.

Should this be? What does this say about the possibility for revival? I think that it is just human nature, and that we should be prepared to launch separate entities or at least separate services for large changes. One of the reasons that America has remained much more religious than Europe is that by not having a state church there have been few barriers to creating new churches or denominations in order to carry out big changes. The Catholic Church is equally (some would say even more so ) unable to disrupt itself and where it is the state church there is no option for disruptive change. So it has just died. But is change necessary in the Church? Isn't the church supposed to be timeless? As our church repeats often, the message is timeless, the methods changable. Nonetheless, human nature doesn't change and disruptive changes in church will continue to be hard to swallow.

For that reason I think it is wrong for a new pastor to come to a church and try to force disruptive changes on a local congregation. If he feels that strongly about a particular approach then he should be prepared to launch a new congregation, not nearly destroy an existing one. To accept the call to a church and then try to disrupt it is not really honest. However, the flip side is that those who refuse to change must be prepared for their congregation to slowly die. In most cases it should be possible to launch new approaches in completely separate services without creating a crisis. It is more work, but it certainly can be done.

The Church is not free from the problems of human nature, but it should be led by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can revive in either contemporary or traditional settings if we allow it. But new congregations will be needed at times.

Our God concept and freedom

On the last 2 blog entries, both the comments on miracles and on the Church as a consumer item relate to our 'God concept'. Our couples small group (not to be confused with the men's group that is reading the discipleship book) is reading a book by Bill Bright's son, Brad, entitled God is the Issue . We were discussing the first chapter last week and noted that quite often we Christians unwittingly communicating a concept of God that does not exactly match what the Bible teaches. For instance, when asked about why the World Trade Center was attacked we may say something such as its being a judgement of God, that God has removed His protection, or the like. Yet, we don't stop to think that there have been bad things that happened in America since the country was founded, including such calamities as slavery, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the flu epidemic, the polio epidemic, etc, etc. It might seem to imply that God's protection comes and goes rather often. We unwittingly communicate with these comments that our concept of God is that He exists to protect us, to keep bad things from happening to us. In fact, if freedom is to exist, then it must be possible for bad things to happen. Freedom is very risky. If we are to be free, there is the option of choosing evil, choosing for the bad. Without that, there is no freedom. It may or may not be a sign of God removing His protection that the World Trade Center towers fell. When Jesus was asked about a tower falling and killing a number of people in Luke 13, His response was not that those people were such sinners that God had removed protection; instead, He responded that the question is not why did they die but rather why didn't you die? We all deserve to die because of our sin, and the fact that we don't is purely grace. Similarly, the Islamic terrorists hate Christianity just like they hate America, so they may still have attacked had we been a more holy nation. These are things we cannot know.

When we look at the 'God Concept' that we unwittingly communicate, the larger Christian community often communicates that God exists to serve us rather than our existing to serve Him. We communicate that we became believers so that God would protect us, or make us prosperous, or provide fulfillment, or give us a good marriage. While it is true that God loves us, He also warned that His enemies would hate us, would think they were serving their god when killing us, would persecute us however they could. We are Christians first and foremost because it is true, and that truth has set us free from this world. And that freedom is risky.

MIracles and Easter

Two weeks ago the sermon at our church was about Mark 4 and the miracle that occurred when Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. This was one of the miracles that was done with only the disciples present, and was one of the key miracles in building their faith that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, since He could rule over nature. Then last week the sermon was about the Transfiguration, where Jesus was transformed before Peter, James, and John into what may have been His resurrection body, talking with Moses and Elijah. As we move towards Easter, we will be coming to the greatest miracle of all, the Resurrection of Jesus.



Miracles are an interesting topic. On the one hand, God created nature and so it makes sense that He has power over nature. On the other hand, God is unchanging and consistent, and therefore He does not contradict Himself: to the extent that nature is made in God's image, as man is, God would not contradict Himself by doing something that is out of agreement with His own nature. That is to say, when God does a miracle, He does not do it in a way that contradicts Himself. He would not simply overrule nature and do something completely inconsistent with Reality. Of course, nature is only a small part of Truth, or Reality, since God is greater than nature. Reality includes nature, but also includes more than nature.



In light of this, C. S. Lewis has offered the idea that miracles simply do fast and up close what God is always doing slowly and out-of-sight. As an example he uses turning water into wine. God is always turning water into wine through the miracle of photosynthesis, taking water that carries minerals, sunlight and air and turning it into grapes. For Jesus to make water into wine was not inconsistent with nature, but did it much faster. God is always healing people through the miracle of our immune system, so when Jesus healed people He was not inconsistent with that. He did much faster what happens every day slowly.



But what about calming the storm? And the Transfiguration? Raising Lazarus? Does Jesus simply contradict nature here? I think not. Storms always end, so the fact that Jesus ended one very quickly is consistent with C. S. Lewis' proposal. And after the Resurrection, Jesus again appeared in a new and different body, so this was again consistent with the greater Reality mentioned above. Raising Lazarus is perhaps the most difficult case, since he did not return with a resurrection body; but if God will raise us all to a new body, then raising us to a 'used' body is not inconceivable.



The resurrection body of Jesus was apparently very different from our earthly body. In the garden, on the Emmaus road, and on the shore of Galilee were all instances of His going unrecognized by His own disciples. This greatest of miracles will apply to us as well, we are promised, and so we cannot ever 'walk away' from miracles as an inherent, fundamental part of our faith. Lewis points this out as well. Christianity is based on miracles and especially the miracle of Christ's resurrection, and with hope of a coming miracle for ourselves.

This is one of the issues with faith and science. We are having an ongoing discussion about evolutionary theory and faith in our family, and there are a couple of things relevant to both Easter and scientific theory:

• Miracles are fundamental to our faith, especially the miracle of Christ's Resurrectoin. There is no escaping from miracles in Christianity. However, God does not act to contradict Himself or Reality in His miracles.


• God does not contradict natural law, but natural laws are only a portion of Truth, of Reality.


• To the extent that scientists insist that there are no miracles and that science somehow 'disproves' miracles, we must part ways; to the extent that Christians believe that God does miracles that are inconsistent with His own design of the universe and that Reality which is beyond this universe, we must question ourselves. God does not contradict Himself.


• In all things we must seek Truth.

Easter is all about the Truth. Again as Lewis points out, I am a Christian (as he also was) because it is true. I am not a Christian because it is socially acceptable, a convenient way to keep social behavior under control, or any other sociological hogwash along those lines. If Christianity is false, then it should be abandoned. And that is where the key conflict arises with the materialist scientists , which is by no means all of the scientific community, who argue that there are no miracles and promote evolutionary materialism. They ultimately are insisting that there is nothing but matter, energy and chance. Easter is the demonstration in history that there is more.

The Church as 'Consumer Goods'

We are reading and discussing Greg Ogden's book Transforming Discipleship in our Monday morning men's group at the moment. This morning we were discussing the author's thoughts on why there is not a clear focus on discipleship in most evangelical churches, even those that do some amount of talking about discipleship. We only got through the first of 8 potential reasons in the book today, but the discussion did help clarify some thoughts I have also wondered about in regards to why the megachurch has arisen in the past 25 years or so, and why more recently there have been changes to more of a 'worship' focus (I put 'worship' in quotes because the focus is mostly on music, and 'worship leaders' are music leaders; this strikes me as a very limited view of worship). In the book, one of the reasons for lack of discipleship in churches is that pastors have been diverted from their primary calling of' equipping the saints for the work of ministry. Rev. Ogden sees this issue as being that both pastors and members see pastoral care of the members as the top role of pastors. Our discussion this morning concluded that we in our small group felt this was true of an older generation (that fits with my observations of my parents generation); that my generation, though, has viewed preaching as the key role for pastors, and that my childern's generation sees worship as the key role for pastors. Not the only role, but the key role, for each of these.

It seems to me that the rise of preaching as the key role instead of pastoral care helps explain the rise of the mega-church. Smaller churches, such as my parents saw as the norm, were much better at pastoral care and were more accepting of mediocre preaching. My generation has been more demanding of excellent preaching, and then willing to accept the less personal pastoral care situation of a mega-church in return. My children seem much more interested in the worship experience.

None of this, however, makes discipleship the key role of the pastor and the local church. All of it, in all 3 of the generations mentioned, seems to be consumer oriented, though the targeted item for consumption has been changing.

One comment in the book hints at this when he observes that (p. 39 in my edition) 'in fact, the majority of participants in the (church) view their membership as optional, not a necessity for living by its principles'. That has also been striking to me in recent years; as churches become 'community churches', instead of specific denominations, membership is de-emphasized and viewed as optional. I see this 'church as optional' viewpoint more and more, first in my generation and more so in my children's generation, and this strikes me as another indication of our consumer mentality. The church is not a community of disciples depending on each other to be developing 'self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Christ' (his description of a 'disciple'), it is rather an optional consumer good. This has a lot of causes, from membership being devalued by accepting anyone who walks down the aisle as a 'member' to wanting to be 'seeker sensitive', but to me it also shows how very engrained the consumer mentality has become in all of us.

Of course, there are varying degrees of consumerism among people. Seeing Christianity as 'fire insurance' in which we seek to be 'covered' but only just enough to be be safe is a classic example. This often shows up as CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only). That is not my concern here. The concern is that most churches, even if they say that their mission is to make disciples, end up making preaching,worship, or pastoral care their focus. All of those miss the point of the Great Commission of Matt. 28:18-20.