As I’m always welcoming new people to the blog I sometimes like to revisit an old post or two that sparked a good conversation, but may have been missed by those who weren’t around when it was originally posted. This post originally appeared in September 2012 and addresses an issue that for many churches is, tragically, nothing short of sin – having doubts and asking questions.

Nothing makes you feel dumber than going to school.

At least that’s the case for me.

Seriously.

I can do all my assigned reading and spend time reflecting on the text, but that won’t always save me from staring blankly back at the professor when asked a question, or worse, answering incorrectly. That’s not to say there aren’t questions I’m asked that I do know the answer to, but there are few things more unnerving for me than being asked questions I don’t know the answer to.

You see, the problem with questions is that they expose us. They reveal us for who we really are, imperfect people who don’t know everything and who, in fact, don’t have nearly as much control over the world as we might want people around us to believe.

But for many Christians, this sort of situation isn’t acceptable.

Christian fundamentalism is built around the premise that because it has the Bible and believes in Jesus it holds and must hold all the answers in life. Therefore….

It knows everything about the Bible.

It knows everything about God.

It knows everything about salvation.

It knows everything about everything.

Which means there is no room for uncomfortable, difficult questions.

Questions that you or I might struggle with, such as how a loving God can allow such wasteful suffering from diseases like Alzhiemer’s, those sorts of seemingly unanswerable questions can only be addressed in one of two ways by the fundamentalist.

Either a horrendously unloving “answer” is given, explaining God’s unknowable, yet purposeful (and apparently evil) will.

Or…

The person asking the question is attacked for committing what is for fundamentalism the most grievous of sins: asking questions.

After all, nothing makes God more angry than being asked a question, right?

It might sound absurd, but such attacks are “necessary” because if fundamentalism can’t provide a definitive, succinct answer to every question asked of it, then it crumbles under the weight of its own hubris.

I think this problem with questions demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about Christianity.

Our inability to provide answers to all the questions asked about our faith isn’t necessarily a reflection of Christianity’s truthfulness. It’s a reflection of our finitude, of the fact that as created beings, we don’t have all the answers. It’s also a reflection of the fact that not all questions have answers, at least not this side of eternity.

While the Bible is certainly a source of truth, its authors ask just as many questions as we do and many times clear answers aren’t given.

If you don’t believe me, I suggest you read the book of Job.

Or Psalms.

Or Lamentations.

If such questioning in the Bible tells us anything, it’s that God isn’t afraid of being asked questions.

If anything, God welcomes questions. We may not always get the answer we like or get that answer in the timeframe we want, but God will not zap us with lightning if we ask.

Why?

Because Christianity, despite popular misconception, is not a call to blind faith.

Those who call their followers to blind faith do so because blind faith affords them absolute control over others. Questions have no place in such a world because they threaten that leader’s control. In other words, questions are condemned because they threaten to set the captive free.

Sound familiar?

Jesus certainly provided a lot of answers, but he asked just as many questions of religious leaders who thought they were in control and welcomed the questions that were asked of him.

Why?

Because Jesus doesn’t call us to blind faith. He calls us to a childlike faith and if you’ve spent any time around children, then you know how much they love to ask questions.

Why is the sky blue?

Why do I have a belly button?

Where do babies come from?

When, like children, we ask questions of about our faith, it’s not because we lack faith in God. Rather, it is because of our faith in God that we ask those questions. We ask because sometimes we can’t reconcile what we experience with what and Who we know to be true.

I think God wants us asking those sorts of questions because it demonstrates the sort of love for others God desires each of us to have.

At the end of the day, asking questions is fundamental to our humanity, it’s how we learn and grow. And if the Bible teaches us anything, it’s also part of what it means to be the people of God. The Bible, with all its answers, is a beautiful picture of an open and honest relationship between an imperfect people and a God who’s not afraid of those people asking tough questions and then turning to them ask tough questions in return about their own faithfulness, their own love for others, and why they aren’t doing more to make the world into the sort of place they want or need it to be.

Which means we shouldn’t stop asking questions about God.

Because God won’t stop asking questions about us.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

There’s been a rather strange thing going throughout the church recently.

Protestants have come out in droves to express there admiration and even love for a pope.

Now, if you know anything about church history, you know this sort of thing just isn’t supposed to happen. After all, the rejection of papal authority was a central issue for Martin Luther and his fellow reformers. And it wasn’t just an ideological disagreement.

They branded the pope the antichrist.

And they meant it.

That same sort of anti-Catholic vitriol is still blindly spewed by many protestants today as if hating the pope was required for church membership.

Which is what makes the outpouring of support for Pope Francis so strange.

And beautiful.

And hopeful.

It’s almost as if Pope Francis is pressing the reset button, not just on the formality of the papacy, but the church itself and what it means to really be a follower of Jesus.

From his decision not to wear the papal cape at his unveiling, to holding a Holy Thursday service in a prison rather than a basilica, to paying his own hotel bill and avoiding the luxury of the papal apartment, to his most audacious act so far – washing the feet of two girls, one of whom was Muslim – this pope seems to be doing everything he can to, well, be like Jesus.

Not surprisingly, just like Jesus, there are plenty of naysayers and critics who value tradition nearly as much as they do God who are quite upset about this new pope’s actions.

They’ve accused him, among other things, of having a “militant humility.”

Let that phrase wash over you for a moment.

Militant humility.

It sounds at first like an oxymoron. Maybe it is. After all, being militant and being humble seem juxtaposed to one another.

But if we understand “militant”in the sense of being “aggressively active” then “militant humility” is the perfect description not only of Pope Francis’ actions so far, but the sort of life all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus should living.

It was Jesus’ militant humility that put him between would be executioners and a woman caught in adultery. It was Jesus’ militant humility that found him eating alongside sinners and embracing lepers. And it was Jesus’ militant humility that led him to the cross.

Imagine what would happen if we were as aggressively active in our pursuit of God as we are our pursuit of success. Imagine if as a church we were as aggressively active in our attempts to serve our community as we are to grow our churches. Or imagine if we as individuals were as aggressively active in meeting the needs of the poor, taking care of the sick, defending the oppressed, and loving our enemies as we are in meeting our own needs and taking care of ourselves.

If we could find the militant humility to do those sorts of things, I think we would find the world around us transformed into nothing short of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Now, I’m not naive enough to believe this papal honeymoon period will last forever or that it will cure the Roman Catholic Church of all the ills she’s been struggling to overcome in recent years.

But Pope Francis’ actions so far have been a beautiful example of what the church and should be.

Moreover, Pope Francis’ example gives me hope for the future of the church, both Catholic and otherwise.

If we Protestants can find the humility to learn from the humbleness of a pope, the possibilities for what the church could be and what she could accomplish are limitless.

For if, if we can learn to have the sort of militant humility that refuses to be held back by needless tradition, that courageously steps across manmade boundaries, and which loves and embraces regardless of who that person may be, what they’ve done, or what they believe, then maybe, just maybe we can become the people of God we have been called to be in and for the world.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

I don’t think I’ve ever posted 3 things in one day, but I just say this video and had to share it immediately.

It’s a great example of why pyrotechnics and church plays don’t mix.

The only question is what is funnier – the flaming tomb or the fact that the singer just keeps on going like nothing’s happening?

Originally found here.

Do you like coffee?

Do you prefer your saviors to be clean shaven?

Then The Unemployed Philosophers’s Guild has got the thing for you.

It’s called the Jesus Shaves Mug. When the mug is empty Jesus has a beard. When you fill the mug up with hot coffee, the beard miraculously disappears.

And once again, just to be clear – this is not an April Fools joke, even though it probably should be.

I’ll be honest.

I thought long and hard about an April Fools’ joke……and came up with nothing.

So, I figured the next best thing would be something that probably should be an April Fools’ joke, but isn’t.

Introducing Witness Walkers, the ultimate in testimonial foot apparel.

You youth pastors out there better be paying attention to this.

If you’ve got teen camp at the beach this summer or just a lakefront at your campground, sell these babies after service one night and you’ve got yourself a gold mine!!

Did I tell you I’m writing a new monthly column?

Well, I am.

The good folks over at A Deeper Story invited me to come share my thoughts on a faith and politics in a monthly series I’m calling Church & State: The Politics of Faith.

It’s an extension of many of the things I write about here at The American Jesus that I hope you will enjoy. But if you don’t, then check out the many other great writers over at A Deeper Story. They’ve got a ton of them.

Anyway, here’s a snippet of my first Church & State post that just went up this morning. Check it out and let me know what you think.

When I opened up Facebook on Tuesday my newsfeed was saturated with little red squares with equal signs on them.

A little later it was filled with little red squares with equal signs and new little red squares with crosses on them.

A little bit after that my newsfeed was filled with little red squares with equal signs, little red squares with crosses, and so many other variations of red squares and symbols that I couldn’t track.

I’m guessing your newsfeed looked pretty similar.

To be really honest I found it all to be incredibly frustrating.

Not because of my position on gay marriage, after all it didn’t matter what your position was on Tuesday there were plenty of little red memes to get under your skin regardless of what your personal beliefs might be.

No, what really frustrated me was….

CONTINUE READING

Stephen Colbert is a Christian.

And he takes his faith very seriously.

Which is exactly why I think Colbert does such a brilliant job skewering Christian pop culture.

It’s also what makes this clip wonderfully hilarious and spot on.

Enjoy.

(original picture found here)

If we’re friends on Facebook, then you may have already read this story.

But, for me, it’s too wonderful and grace filled, too creative, and too hopeful of a story not to share with as many people as possible.

It’s a wonderful and grace filled story because I think it shows the church at its best, not perfect, but doing everything it can with the means available to it to incarnate the sort of love, compassion, and grace we talk so much about.

It’s an incredibly creative story because because it shows what’s possible if we allow our God given imaginations to run wild and dream up next ways of being incarnating the Body of Christ.

It’s a hopeful story because it shows the promise of the future and what the church can and will be able to accomplish in a radically transforming world that offers new and exciting opportunities to “be Jesus for world” in ways we never imagined possible.

The church that I attend is a fairly standard evangelical church. We’re not a mega church. We don’t have a hipster pastor or super produced laser lights and fog machines worship. And we definitely wouldn’t be described as “cutting edge.”

While those are some of the reasons I like the church I attend, they’re also some of the reasons I was so floored by what took place at my church last Sunday.

Not only did we incorporate texting into worship, we combined it with something else we don’t do a lot of as a traditional evangelical church – liturgy.

You read that correctly.

We practiced liturgical texting at church last Sunday and it was one of the most incredible moments of worship I’ve experienced in a long time and I am incredibly proud of and grateful to my pastor for creating that moment for us.

Here’s what happened…

There’s a 5 month old baby in our church who is sick and hasn’t been able to be at church because of the antibiotics he is on. Before heading in for major heart surgery on Monday, his parents requested baptism.

They couldn’t bring him to church, so our pastor went to them and baptized the baby at their home. Because of the location, the congregation wasn’t able to perform their traditional role in the baptismal rite.

So, my pastor decided to think outside the box.

During worship this past Sunday morning, the day before the planned heart surgery, our pastor put a picture of the baby up on the screen in front of the church. He asked everyone who could to take a picture of the picture with their cell phones.

After the picture was taken, our pastor read the traditional baptismal liturgy just as he would if the family and their child had been there in person.

When it came time for the congregation to respond we responded with our phones, texting the picture we had just taken to the child’s parents with 2 simple words attached.

“We promise.”

It was an incredibly holy moment where two worlds collided, the old and the new, to extend the hand of God to a family who needed His loving touch the most.

My only hope is that we as a church, both my local congregation and the broader Body of Christ, can find the courage and creative to multiply these holy moments of grace and innovation.

Because if we do, then to quote the great John Wesley, “[we] will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

After an unprecedented 59,792 votes were cast in this year’s championship matchup Mark Sandlin is officially the 2013 American Jesus Madness Champion!!

CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS

Mark Sandlin – 34,262        Stephanie Drury – 25,531

And congratulations to Mark Hilditch who correctly predicted Sandlin’s victory and with 118 total points is the 2013 American Jesus Madness Bracket winner!!

I owe a sincere word of thanks to Mark Sandlin, Stephanie Drury, and everyone else that got so involved in the tournament this year. It make it so much more fun for the rest of us when the people in the tournament get excited about it.

I also owe a big a word of thanks to all of you that voted and/or filled out a bracket. With your support we set an all time record this year with over 147,000 total votes cast throughout the entire tournament!! So, thank you again so much for your excitement for American Jesus Madness and your willingness to help me get others excited about it to.

I promise American Jesus Madness will be back and better than ever next.

Until then, congratulations again to Mark Sandlin, our 2013 American Jesus Madness Champion!!

The 2013 American Jesus Madness Championship is finally here!!

It’s a battle of dark horses as Stephanie Drury tries to put an end to the tsunami of support Mark Sandlin has ridden all the way to the championship.

Can she do it or will Mark wear the crown?

That’s up to you to decide.

Remember: as always, voting is unlimited. So vote early and often.

Voting will close at midnight tonight.

The winner of the championship matchup will be announced bright and early tomorrow, Tuesday, March 26th @ 8AM EST.

Unlike the previous round I would not be providing exact voting tallies on Twitter; partly because I want to keep the suspense (and keep you voting) and partly because I’ll be traveling today. I will, however, provide general voting updates as much as possible.

Well, what are you waiting for?!

Go vote!!

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED.

CHECK BACK TOMORROW @ 8AM EST TO FIND WHO HAS BEEN CROWNED THE 2013 AMERICAN JESUS MADNESS CHAMPION!!