If you happened to find yourself on the internet on Monday, then chances are you may have heard about this tweet from Mark Driscoll.

Not surprisingly it caused a bit of a ruckus (as so many of the things he says do).

Also not surprisingly, people came out of the woodwork, not so much to defend him (though, of course, some did), but to attack people who had the apparent audacity to criticize him.

These sorts of attacks usually go one of two ways – either people like myself who critique celebrity preachers are accused of “attacking a man of God/another Christian”  or we’re attacked for conducting that critique in public.

Frankly, I’m not sure which is more ridiculous.

The former stems from fear of public perception, the idea being that if “outsiders” see Christians disagree with one another, then they’ll necessarily reject the gospel, because apparently all that’s standing in the way of someone like Richard Dawkins becoming a Christian is the church’s complete and total agreement on every issue of faith.

The mere fact that people continue to join the faith and have continued to join the faith despite two millennia of disagreement and disunion within the church, demonstrates that this fear is completely unfounded.

The latter attack stems from a fundamental misunderstanding or misreading of scripture that seems to believe that all disagreements within the church should happen outside the public sphere and behind closed doors. Not only does this sort of prescription appear nowhere in scripture, in fact, the very opposite is true.

Nearly every recorded instance we have of Jesus disagreeing with someone in the Gospels occurs in a public forum. Whether that public forum was the temple, a hillside, a town square, or just walking down the road, Jesus felt it completely acceptable (if not proper) to criticize his opponents and even argue with them in public.

And so did Paul.

Throughout the book of Acts we see Paul arguing for and against other believers in the public sphere. Moreover, the vast majority of the New Testament, Paul’s letters, became the vast majority of the New Testament because the squabbles they describe and respond to (and instruction they give) were fleshed out in public. The broader church saw the value in those letters as they were shared with whoever would listen, and thus (over time) they became canon.

In other words, the Christian faith is a public practice.

Because it is a public practice, the way the church conducts herself must change as the modes of public discourse change.

Jesus and the early church debated in the temple, town squares, and hillsides because that was the public forum of their today.

Today, the internet is our public forum. Through social media, blogs, and websites we are brought together in unprecedented fashion to share our beliefs, exchange ideas, and voice our disagreement when the need arises.

As we’ve seen in Libya, Egypt, and countless other places, this public exchange has the capacity to quite literally change the world.

Which means engaging this new arena of public discourse should be of utmost importance to the church if she is going to take Jesus’ call to go the the ends of the earth and make disciples seriously. The internet doesn’t replace flesh and blood discipleship, but it has a dramatic impact on the way all of us see, understand, and interact with the world.

In short, the world itself has changed and the church must change with it.

Even the leader of the oldest, most tradition entrenched Christian institution on earth realizes and embraces this technological revolution.

Of course, so do celebrity preachers.

And that’s were things get interesting, if not just flat out strange.

There appears to be this unspoken mentality among many church leaders, and especially their followers, that they are not accountable, at least not beyond their local church, for anything they say or do on the internet as if they were only speaking to their local congregation. I say they apparently feel this way because they rarely, if ever, take the opportunity to respond to the firestorms they create.

This is incredibly absurd and profoundly unchristian.

As I’ve already said and we all already knew, the internet connects us in unprecedented ways. As a result, it has a profound impact on how we think and talk about everything, including, if not especially, the faith. The church has always been connected on a spiritual level, but now the sinews of the Body of Christ are fused together in tangible ways that the apostle Paul could never have imagined, the potential of which we are just not beginning to imagine.

And this is why what one Christian says on the internet matters, particularly when that one Christian is a celebrity preacher with a large following.

We are all in this thing called Christianity together. There is no such thing as “my church” that is somehow disconnected or autonomous from “our church.” What one of us says or does affects the rest of us because we all share the same identity: Christian. Sure, we may be free to choose the color of carpet in our own churches without any real ramifications for the broader church, but when we choose to engage the world outside the four walls of our local churches, what we say or do directly affects and is accountable to the rest of the church body.

To put it simply, the notion of Christian autonomy that pervades so much of the church today isn’t Biblical. It’s American. Worse yet, it’s antithetical to the fundamental ideas of Christianity: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

Moreover, the very nature of the interconnected world we live in makes this sort of autonomy and the subsequent attempts at the privatization of the faith an intrinsic impossibility.

For good or ill we are all, both Christian and non-Christian alike, connected to one another and there is no going back.

Which means tweets and blog posts from celebrity pastors matter. And when they go viral they can have a significant impact on the church, which is exactly why we can’t bury our heads in the ground under the guise of “he’s not my pastor.”

“He” may not be, but as a fellow Christian “he” represents our faith (and us) to the world and if he does that in an unchristian, or worse yet, abusive, way, then we as fellow believers have an obligation to stand up and say something about it.

It’s not that celebrity preachers are accountable to the internet, an admittedly rather abstract concept. Rather, the reason they are accountable for their tweets and posts is that very real people make up the online community they are broadcasting too, many members of which are Christians who, as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, they are very much accountable to…..which makes it inexplicable that so many of them have the apparent arrogance to think they are not obligated to respond to outrage when it arises in response to something they have said or done. If you have enough time to start the conversation, then you have the time (or must find the time) to respond when the conversation takes a turn for the worse. Otherwise you are being utterly irresponsible and reckless with the gifts God has given you as a leader of God’s people.

In the face of their silence, if we as Christians care about the message that is being preached and the image of Christ that is being portrayed to the world, then we absolutely and unequivocally have a responsibility to speak out. After all, if we are truly members of a royal priesthood, then we have both the scriptural authority and obligation to do so.

Where should we speak?

Where the conversation is happening: on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.

It simply makes no sense when church leaders begin a conversation (which is the purpose of tweets, Facebook statuses, blog posts, etc.), for other Christians to respond to that conversation somewhere else. I don’t mean the conversation shouldn’t also continue offline. I mean the idea that seems to pop up whenever celebrity preachers like Mark Driscoll or John Piper or whoever say something outrageous, namely that Twitter, Facebook, or blogs are the wrong place to engage the conversation that started in those very same places, is utterly absurd.

The world has changed.

The internet is the new public square.

Just like Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the early church, we must have these conversations in the open for all to see, warts and all, both for the sake of accountability, but also in hopes that maybe in the midst of our passionate conversations and debate, the Truth will arise, others will see that Truth, and begin to ask us questions.

And therein lies the beauty of our changing world.

We may not all have the money to travel to the ends of the earth, but with a basic computer and internet connection each and every one of us can proclaim to good news to every corner of creation.

There are certainly some inherent risks in that opportunity, but ultimately it allows the Christian faith to be a faith defined by the Body of Christ, rather than a few celebrity preachers.

And that is a very, very good thing.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

Today officially marks the unofficial start to President Obama’s second term as President of the United States.

It goes without saying that there are just about as many people upset about today’s festivities as there are those chanting “four more years.”

We have a long standing tradition in the United States of being critical of the President. It’s been going on since the dawn of the country and probably won’t be ending any time soon.

But what if it did?

At least for Christians.

What if for these next four years we as Christians pulled back from all the rhetoric and instead invested that energy into proclaiming good news?

What if we took seriously our call to pray for the President and stopped pretending like he was the anti-Christ?

What if we stopped placing our hope for the future in the passage of legislation and instead lived as if we believed we really are citizens of a different kingdom?

What if instead of defending our right to violence, we found the courage to wage peace?

What if we allowed the person on the other side of the aisle to be a person instead of our soulless enemy?

What if helping others in need, regardless of their circumstances, was something we stopped arguing about and, instead, became something we started taking as seriously as Jesus did?

What if the alien among us became someone to defend and care for, rather than a economic threat?

What if for Christians social media became a place to share words of hope, rather than an arena for destroying our political adversaries?

What if the church was a place of hope, compassion, and unity for the nation, rather than a source of division?

What if we had the audacity to allow the the Gospel to take precedence over the Constitution?

What if we put to rest being “Democratic Christians” or “Republican Christians” and, instead, for the next four years we were simply “Christians.”

What would happen?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But I have to imagine that if we decided to put more energy into being authentic Christians rather than de facto politicians, then four years from now the world would be a much better place than it is today.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

Classes started up again for me this week, yesterday to be specific.

One of the classes I attended yesterday is called Reformation Europe. It’s a look at the various reformations (because there was more than one) that went on during this period in the life of the church, as well as the state.

During his lecture, the professor made an offhand comment that I found to be rather interesting. Apparently during this time it was required by law (because the church and state were effectively one and the same) for all newborn babies to be baptized.

As Epiphany Sunday was just a couple of weeks ago, this random fact got me to thinking.

My first thought was about how so many evangelicals would be appalled that infants were being baptized, after all, isn’t baptism a sort of confession of faith and how can newborn babies confess their decision to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior?

Well, that got me to thinking some more.

As you might recall from Epiphany Sunday, or if your church still suffers from a Reformation hangover and the church calendar isn’t observed, then you might remember this from the Gospels – Jesus was baptized.

I’m not sure many of us give this event much thought.

Jesus was baptized. We’re Christians, so we get baptized too. What’s the big deal?

I would argue, it’s a huge deal, particularly for the broadly held Protestant/Evangelical understanding of baptism.

You see, in the Protestant/Evangelical tradition there are generally two understandings of baptism – either it is performed as an act of confession whereby the new believer professes their newfound acceptance of Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior or it is performed as an act of repentance, necessary for one’s salvation.

However, both of these approaches become hugely problematic when we look at Jesus’ own baptism.

On the one hand, it makes no sense to say that Jesus went down to the Jordan to be baptized by John as an act of confession whereby he was testifying to the world that he had finally (remember he was about 30 at this point) come to accept himself as his personal Lord as Jesus.

The other option would force us to argue that Jesus visited John by the riverside as part of an act of repentance for his own sins. It goes without saying that “Jesus the sinner” is, well, less than ideal for some of the most fundamental tenets of the Christian faith.

Worse yet, both of these options have the tendency to transform baptism from a sacrament focused on God into a celebration of us and our decision making ability.

Fortunately, there is a third option, one which is affirmed by those who continue to practice infant baptism (including many Protestants), but is inexplicably ignored by the vast majority of Evangelicals (no doubt due to that aforementioned Reformation hangover).

Jesus wasn’t baptized because he had accepted himself as his own personal Lord and Savior. And he certainly wasn’t baptized as repentance for his sins.

Jesus was baptized because he was being set apart by God to preach the Good News and bring the Kingdom of God to earth, just as it is in heaven.

When, towards the end of the gospel story, Jesus tells his disciples to go to the ends of the earth, making disciples and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that act of baptism, like his own, isn’t simply for “the remission of sins,” nor is it being performed merely as a profession of faith.

Jesus command to the disciples to baptize the nations was a call to set more people apart, to make those people into disciples themselves so that they too could go preach the Good News and bring the Kingdom of God to earth, just as it is in heaven.

In other words, like Jesus in our baptism we too are being set apart by God to be His hands and feet in the world.

Now, this doesn’t mean there is necessarily something intrinsically wrong with attaching confession, profession, and repentance to our own baptism. There’s not.

But if Jesus is going to be our model in this as he is (or is supposed to be) in every other area of life, then the lesson of Jesus’ baptism is rather simple – there’s no need to get so upset about infant baptism.

If baptism is first and foremost about being set apart, which according the first account of baptism in the Gospels it is, then setting apart our children for service to God (or, more correctly, having our children set apart by God) isn’t something to be avoided, and it’s certainly not something to be condemned.

It’s something to be celebrated.

What’s more, when the focus of baptism is the act of setting apart by God, then God is, as God always should be, the focus of the sacrament.

So, while I know this plea is probably in vain, as Evangelicals can we please grab a cup of coffee, get over our Reformation hangover, abandon our anti-Catholic bigotry, and if we can’t find the humility to start baptizing our infants, let’s at least stop thinking those that do are somehow the heretical or ignorant ones.

Because they’re not.

Grace and Peace,

Zack Hunt

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Yesterday at church I saw a video about hope in the new year.

There was nothing particularly wrong with it. Standard Christian video fare. An inspirational song set to cheerful images and lyrics.

What stuck out to me were the images being used in the video. On their own they were rather innocuous – smiling families, a big, new house, people celebrating a new job, etc. Again, nothing particularly interesting about those images in and of themselves, but when combined with the message of the video and a book I’ve been reading lately, the video unexpectedly turned into a moment of personal conviction.

The theme of the video, as I said, was hope in the New Year. As the video implied, that hope would be fulfilled through personal happiness – lots of smiling, celebrations, a bigger house, new stuff, and a better job.

It goes without saying that most of those are things many of us hope for, but a book I’ve been reading put those hopes in a slightly different light.

The book is called The Pope Who Quit.

It’s about a medieval hermit named Peter Morrone who inexplicably was elected pope and became Celestine V. However, roughly six months later he would be the first and only person in the history of the papacy to abdicate St. Peter’s throne. That story is fascinating itself, but it was Celestine’s life before Rome, when he was just a hermit named Peter, that gave me pause yesterday and had me rethinking the things I should be hoping for in the coming year.

You see, when people like Peter walked the earth it was thought by many that if you wanted to find God one of the best places to start looking was a cave, especially one set high up on a mountain where you could be closer to heaven.

No one thought that God literally lived in a cave, at least not like a hobbit lives in a hole in the ground. Hermits like Peter didn’t believe they could simply stumble onto a cave, knock on the front door, and wait for God answer to welcome them in for tea.

People went looking for God in caves because the sort of life one would live in a cave, with all of its difficulties, challenges, and lack of comfort, was the sort of life these saints thought it took to better understand, and therefore embody, the difficult, challenging, and uncomfortable life of Jesus.

In other words, strange though it may sound to our modern ears, these hermits were trying to live like Jesus, not matter the cost.

How strange, then, would that video I saw yesterday seem to these most ardent of disciples?

The things this video, and by extension we as modern Christians, hope God will give, or “bless” us with, in the new year – personal happiness, a bigger house, more money – are the very things these hermits thought must be rejected in order to know God better.

Which, for me, raises an interesting question – Is God more likely to be found in a cave or a 5,000 sq ft house?

Maybe the answer is both. Maybe God can be found in the midst of wealth and comfort. I know most of us hope that is the case. But the story of Peter Morrone, or Celestine V, raised an interesting conundrum for all of us who claim to seek after Jesus.

Peter began in a cave, then moved to a palace, only to return back to his cave.

Now, the reasons for Peter abandoning the papacy are many, and you should read the book to discover them all, but what is clear from his story is that for Peter wealth, comfort, and the prestige that came with the success of being elected pope did not aide in relationship with God. They hindered it. They got in the way of the total devotion to Christ he was seeking.

Now, I’m not advocating that we all move into caves. In fact, I would argue that there is something a bit problematic about abandoning the world to live in isolation in a cave. (Though, it’s important to note that many hermits, like Peter, were still active and intentional about serving the needy in nearby communities.)

However, I do think the story of Peter does present an important challenge to us and that is this – What is it that we want from God and want does that reveal about our relationship with God?

If the video I saw at church is any indication, and I think it is in that it seems to simply put music to many of our prayers, then the things we want from God are wealth, health, prosperity, and personal happiness. Again, none of those things in and of themselves are necessarily bad and if you were raised as a good American, then you know they are fundamental to the American dream.

But if those are the things we want most from God, then God is nothing more than a genie, a divine ATM for us to withdrawal from whenever we choose, and our pursuit of God, nothing more than our pursuit of the American dream.

In short, God isn’t the focus of our desires. God is simply a means to an end. We don’t really want Him, we just want what He can do for us.

I think hermits like Peter understood this irresistible temptation to wealth, health, prosperity, and personal happiness. I don’t think they necessarily thought these things evil, but they understood their intrinsic power to warp our love of God and transform it into a love of stuff, comfort, and, ultimately, ourselves.

We may not have to go spelunking to find God, and personally I don’t plan to, but if saints of the church like Peter Marrone have anything to teach us, it’s that if we are going to claim to be followers of Jesus, then we need to do some honest reflection and ask ourselves why we’re following.

Because if we’re following Jesus for what we think he’s going to do for us, then, like the rich young ruler, we’ll be sorely disappointed when he turns to us and says “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

But if we’re following Jesus because Jesus is all we want, then we’ll never be disappointed….even if we find ourselves living in a cave.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

Yesterday, Mark Driscoll sent out this tweet…

It was a not so subtle attack against the entire blogging community (ironic considering he has a blog himself), implying that bloggers don’t “get stuff done.” The logical inference being that people like him do.

There’s nothing really that surprising about this tweet attack.

It’s just another volley in a never ending stream of defensive maneuvers from celebrity preachers (not all, but many) who’s biggest pet peeve in life is apparently criticism or, more likely, criticism from people they don’t consider their equals.

As far as I’m aware there is not a secret cabal of celebrity preachers who meet to strategize their efforts to take over the world. Not being a celebrity preacher I can neither confirm or deny such a cabal’s existence. However, secret cabal or not, the vast majority of celebrity preachers that I’ve come across do seem to share the same defensive maneuvers.

It’s a two pronged effort that begins by simply ignoring the criticism.

Visit just about any celebrity preacher’s blog (most them, ironically, keep one) and you’ll notice a common theme: there is no comment section. Virtually every non-celebrity blogger (and many non-preacher celebrity bloggers) has a comment section where their fans/followers/random strangers can interact with the blogger, sharing their own thoughts and insights on what has been posted.

No so with celebrity preachers (again, not all, but many).

They apparently are to bee seen and heard, but not responded to.

Now, admittedly, celebrity preachers have a lot going on that occupies their time and prevents the sort of interaction that you would see on a regular person’s blog. However, while they, understandably, cannot respond to every comment or question that is tossed their way, completely removing the ability for others to directly respond, engage, or critique what they have said reeks of fear and arrogance.

Fear of being proven wrong on their own turf.

Arrogance in thinking they are above criticism from anyone outside their chosen circle of friends.

By choosing to become public figures they open themselves up to public criticism. Pretending as if such criticism is somehow an injustice or, worse, sinful, is the height of absurdity. Likewise, being a preacher is in no way a form of holy insulation from criticism within the church. The New Testament is full of bickering between disciples, churches, and even great church leaders like Peter and Paul.

Critique is not a sin. It’s an important tool in the practice of faith that keeps us accountable for the claims we make.

Yes, their time is valuable and celebrity preachers have less of it than most, and there are plenty of things online not worth responding to, but if Jesus could find time to respond to his critics, then for the sake of the church they should find time to do the same.

The second prong in the celebrity preacher defense is to be dismissive of bloggers and/or the online community in general.

This usually happens in a couple of different ways.

The first is to caricature bloggers as lazy nerds who live in their parent’s basement or, and this seems to be a particular favorite, simply “haters.” Celebrity preachers default to these caricatures because, well, they work. Why do they work? Because they dehumanize the opponent, turning them into a ridiculous parody which is fair game for treating as less than a person.

The reality is that many bloggers, at least those with the widest audiences, are smart, creative, active leaders in the church and their community. They’re missionaries, preachers, authors, artists, and activists. Which is probably why their critiques sting.

Are there “trolls” out there who do nothing more than pop out of their parents’ basement to attack and then disappear? Sure. But labeling everyone who critiques you as “haters” is absurdly juvenile and pathetically lazy. The truth is they may “be hatin’” on what you said or did because what you said or did was terrible.

But if caricaturing bloggers doesn’t work, then the other great way to dismiss them is the sanctimonious dismissive attack.

In this approach, celebrity preachers (and their defenders) dismiss bloggers as busybodies, or as Driscoll said yesterday, pontificators, who don’t “get stuff done.” In other words, according to celebrity preachers, if you’re taking the time to write down your thoughts, this must mean you don’t have time to do anything else “productive” for the kingdom of God with your life. After all, if you did, then you would be a celebrity preacher too, right?

Does it take time to organize and write down one’s thoughts? Of course. But it’s not an all consuming activity. If celebrity preachers can churn out books, sermons, podcast, blog posts, and tweets and still “get stuff done,” then why can’t the rest of us? Are we simply not as awesome as they are?

Again, many of the bloggers with the widest audiences are incredibly active people in both their church and their community. They volunteer, organize charity drives, become missionaries, campaign to get clean drinking water to those in need, fight about the sex slave trade, and raise awareness for a whole host of important issues that are often taboo to talk about in the church. In other words, if the measure of “worthiness” is who is getting the most “stuff” done, then that prize goes to the blogging community.

But “getting stuff done” isn’t limited to these sorts of activities. Writing, blogging, and speaking have the capacity to change hearts and minds, and, in turn, “get stuff done.” This is what bloggers do, or at least hope to do, when they write and, yes, even when they critique. This is also the exact same thing that celebrity preachers do when they preach, publish books, and write blog posts. For them to criticize and dismiss others for doing the same, simply because those others don’t agree with them, is the height of hypocrisy.

Whether celebrity preachers like it or not, the world has changed. The online community and the bloggers that come with it are here to stay.

And I, for one, think that’s a great thing.

Why?

Because faith is not done in a vacuum.

It’s not a one way street where you can say whatever you like without repercussions. The online community brings this reality to light. Facebook posts get “liked” and commented on. Tweets get retweeted, favorited, and responded to. Blog posts are commented on and reposted. People say things and other people respond.

The technology may have changed, but this process is nothing new.

This sort of exchange has been going on in the church since its inception. The early church fathers wrote countless letters, sermons, books, and treatises making their cases for and against each other’s theology. If they had the internet 2,000 years ago, I have no doubt that Augustine, Irenaeus, and Origen would all have had blogs or websites of their own because writing, critiquing, debating, and dialoguing are how theology is done and how the faith the faith is shaped. And blogs are a great place for that conversation to happen. Not a perfect place, mind you, but a good and vibrant one when done well.

Likewise, the online community offers an important element of accountability, particularly in the case of celebrity preachers whose accountability often doesn’t seem to extend beyond a hand selected group of “yes men.” The church is a body and as such a hand can’t say to the rest of body “I don’t need you.” Which means in the modern context of an interconnected world, and despite claims to the contrary, local church autonomy and accountability is being shown for the myth that it is.

As Christians we are all connected and, therefore, all accountable to one another, particularly in a globalized 21st century society.

The model of a celebrity preacher only accountable to his (almost never “her”) local congregation is dying. And that’s a good thing because it’s an unhealthy, unchristian, and simply dangerous model that left unchecked leads to theological tyranny. When no one is allowed to question the celebrity preacher (or local preacher for that matter), then their version of the faith becomes the only version of the faith and, in the end, Christianity itself because a faith shaped in their particular image.

That’s not leadership.

It’s idolatry.

This is exactly why celebrity preachers need their critics, why they need bloggers, and, in turn, why they need to find healthy ways to engage those within the Body of Christ who disagree with them. Critics keep us in check. They send up red flags when we go too far. Does it hurt? Yes. Can it be annoying? Of course. But that’s why they’re called “growing pains.”

Of course some people take their criticism to unhealthy extremes, but that is not justification for dismissing everyone. We need one another to remind us who we are, who we’re supposed to be, and to drive us to become the people God created us to be.

Reaching the status of a celebrity preacher isn’t a sign that growth is over. If anything, it’s a cause for more critique and accountability because more people are being affected by what these celebrity preachers have to say.

If celebrity preachers (once again, not all, but many) could stop ignoring or dismissing everyone who disagrees with them and, instead, find the humility to seek out healthy, creative, and productive ways to communicate with their critics, then everyone would benefit and the church as a whole would be stronger for it.

I, for one, hope that day comes quickly.

The church needs her people to communicate with one another.

She needs healthy and vigorous debate.

And she needs us to work together.

What the church doesn’t need is more juvenile whining about “haters.”

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

Is Jesus relevant to Christianity?

I realize that probably sounds like a bizarre question to be asking, but in recent weeks I’ve begun witnessing an equally bizarre phenomenon.

It really picked up steam after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, but it started before that in random blog comments and Facebook posts that I’ve come across on a variety of subjects.

What am I talking about?

The claim that Christians should not be expected to model their lives after Jesus.

Whether the issue is how to respond to violence, what to do with money, or any of a host of other important way of life issues, I have witnessed a growing number of people claim, in a variety of ways, that Jesus’ life was unique and therefore not a relevant example for Christians to base their day to day decisions on.

Sometimes the argument is put forth that Jesus was too perfect and because we mere mortals are not capable of such perfection, we shouldn’t be expected to even attempt to live our lives like Jesus lived his – as if doing so would somehow border on blasphemy and violate that all important, but fundamentally misunderstood, teaching of salvation by faith alone.

Other times, I have heard people try to make the case that because Jesus came to earth with a specific mission – salvation – everything he did in life was part of that mission and, therefore, should not be considered the normative model for how his followers should live.

I have no doubt that it’s difficult to believe that there are Christians out there trying to make these arguments. I, myself, was dumbfounded when I first read them.

But I assure you these arguments are out there and their adherents are growing in number.

However, the more I thought about it, the more it began to make sense.

Not the arguments, but why Christians would try to make them.

We’ve all heard it said time and time again that living the Christian life is difficult. Jesus himself said, “the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

But it’s not until we come face to face with that reality that we begin to understand that the difficulty of being a Christian runs far deeper than forcing yourself to get out of bed for church on Sunday mornings or occasionally telling someone you love Jesus.

We witnessed such a collision of reality with Sandy Hook Elementary and the response that followed.

In the face of such horrific violence, the gut reaction for many of us was, and is, to retaliate with more guns, more violence. After all, killing your enemy does bring a quick and expedient resolution to the problem at hand.

But as Christians, we find ourselves faced with a Jesus who calls us to love our enemies and to pray for them as well. He tells us to turn the other cheek. When Peter went to defend the most innocent person in history, Jesus told him to lay down his sword. And when the opportunity came for Jesus to call down the forces of heaven and smite his enemies, he chose crucifixion instead.

To say Jesus’ life complicates how we respond, or want to respond, to violence is an understatement. But if Christ-like is what we are claiming to be, and as Christians it inescapably is, then performing mental gymnastics in order to allow ourselves to ignore Jesus’ example, simply is not an option.

Of course, violence isn’t the only difficult way of life issue we face as Christians.

As American Christians in particular, materialism has become an epidemic. We go out of our way to justify why God wants us to have a never ending and excessive flow of nice stuff, even as our brothers and sisters, many of them Christians themselves, struggle to put food on the table or keep a roof over their family’s head.

Sure, the blessings we experience come from God, but if we think we were intended as the final destination of those blessing, then we’ve missed the fundamental narrative of the Bible, not to mention the purpose of the life and mission of Jesus himself.

While these are two of the most prominent issues, there are countless other examples of how Jesus’ life and teachings stand in stark contrast to the life so many of us try to pass off as Christian.

But the simple reality is this – if Jesus’ life isn’t relevant to Christianity, if it is not the model for our lives, then we have no right to claim the name “Christian.”

In fact, if being a Christian isn’t an attempt to live a life closely resembling the life of Jesus Christ as possible, then the very idea of Christian makes no sense.

We would do better, and have more integrity, if we called ourselves Jesus admirers or fans of the Teacher.

Claiming to be a Christian, but excusing yourself from modeling your life after Jesus not only makes a mockery of all the saints who have come before who shed their blood, sweat, and tears to live like Jesus in and for the world, it also transforms Jesus into an idol of our own creation, a god who looks conspicuously like ourselves as he thinks, acts, talks, and believes all the same things we do.

In other words, claiming to be Christian without living a life like Christ, isn’t just hypocritical, it’s idolatrous.

Jesus said “go and do likewise” and because he said that, it is not, has never been, and will never be enough to simply agree that Jesus died to take away the sins of the world.

Even the demons believe that shudder.

Most of us don’t even shudder at the thought. We just say “amen” and go on living our lives like we always have.

The reality of being a follower of Jesus is certainly difficult, but it’s also straightforward. If “Christian” is what we are going to claim as our identity, then we must “go and do likewise.”

Without the going and doing likewise, there is simply no such thing as the Christian life.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

This morning I had the privilege of leading the devotional for a group of senior adults at my church.

I have to be honest. I was incredibly intimidated.

Not because it was a big group. It wasn’t. But because the collected wisdom of those gathered in front of me vastly outweighed my own.

I’m currently working on my third theology/religion degree, this one from an Ivy League school, but all that learning has taught me one thing – There is still have so much I have to learn and so much I will never know.

As we begin a new year, the temptation is, as it so often seems to be, to toss aside the old in favor of the new.

We’ve been doing this a lot in the beginning of the 21st century, particularly in the church where we are told ad nauseum that everything needs to be changed, reinvented, or reimagined if the church is to survive the 21st century, globalization, postmodernism, or a whole host of other boogiemen which, supposedly, will bring the church to her knees the moment she turns her back or pauses to take a breath.

I agree whole heartedly that change and innovation are important, especially in the life of the church. It’s easy to get stuck in the stagnant pool of doing things the way we’ve always done them simply because that’s how we’ve always done them.

However, I’m just as convinced that learning from our past, our elders, our traditions, and our stories of faith is just as important, if not more so.

This morning I shared a brief passage from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6. The people of Israel were, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, on the brink of finally entering the Promise Land. It had been a long journey and few were left who could still remember the feel of the dirt between their toes when they crossed through the Red Sea on dry ground.

So, at the end of Deuteronomy 6 we witness Moses taking steps to ensure that the story of faith isn’t lost and with it Israel’s very identity as the people of God. He says,

When your children ask you in time to come, “What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?” then you shall say to your children, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lordbrought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. The Lorddisplayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors. Then the Lordcommanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case. If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.”

Moses understood the importance of both the past and the accumulated wisdom of elders. He knew that in settling a land filled with different cultures, strange foods, unknown languages, and exotic traditions, the story of Israel’s faith and their particular identity as the people of God would be lost if they did not take intentional steps to preserve it.

Likewise, Moses understood, as did the writer of Ecclesiastes, that despite appearances there really is nothing new under the sun.

Sure, technology changes, problems get new contexts, and questions get reworded, but the core of human experience is the same yesterday, today, and until the end of time.

If someone tells you otherwise it’s because they haven’t lived long enough or they’re just ignorant of history.

Because of the steadfastness of human experience, the lessons of our past are critically important for our decisions in the present and our plans for the future.

In other words, despite the hype, the future of the church doesn’t rest on innovative media presentations, hip worship services, slick marketing campaigns, or reinventing Christianity to conform to modern tastes.

The future of the church lies in her past, in the future generations of the church having the humility to learn from the past generations of the church. If Christianity is to continue to thrive and maintain relevance in the new year and throughout a new millennium, it won’t be because we learned how to make better iPhone apps or because we found just the right font, video, and music combination for our worship services.

It will be because we were willing to listen to those who have come before us, who have been through the storms of life and come out the other side, who have learned how to deal with conflict and change in healthy and productive ways, and who, above all, understand what it really takes to live a lifetime as a disciple of Jesus.

So this year, I say out with the new and in with the old.

Not completely, of course, because there are some good new things out there. But if I could offer you any unsolicited advice this year it would be this – Seek out old people and listen to what they have to say. Find old books that have stood the test of time and mine the depths of their wisdom. Take part in old traditions and experience why the people of God have felt they were worth keeping around.

Do these things and (as I’ve said here before) you will come to discover that what has allowed the church to survive for 2,000 years is not her willingness to change with the cultural winds, but her ability to continually change us.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

This time last year I was getting ready to meet the Pope.

Ok, not technically “meet,” more like “watch him walk by.”

After several months of waiting and string pulling (by my father-in-law who is a Benedictine monk), my wife and I found out we had tickets to the Midnight Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve.

We were excited about going to Italy, regardless. It had been a lifelong dream. But spending Christmas Eve in the Vatican was icing on the cake.

As it turns out, you’ve got to wait several hours, on your feet standing, sometimes in the rain, to enjoy that cake.

If you ever have the chance to attend the Midnight, or Christmas Eve, Mass at the Vatican, know this – you need to get there at least 4 hours early if you want to get a good seat, meaning a seat where you can see the Pope and be close to all the action. After those 4 hours of waiting outside, you’ve got 2 more hours of waiting inside before the service begins.

But it’s worth it.

Seriously.

It was a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. And not just because I got to see this guy.

What really made the night memorable was a song.

It was sung in Italian by a boy’s choir.

The tune sounded really familiar, but not speaking much Italian it took me a minute or so to figure out what song it was.

I think just about everybody else in St. Peter’s, who didn’t speak Italian, was having the same experience because at right about the same moment something incredible happened, something I will never forget for as long as I live.

You see, Midnight Mass is a very structured event. Everyone has a part to play. The Pope leads the mass. The priests, archbishops, cardinals, etc. assist him. The choir sings the selected music. And, except for a handful of moments, the congregation sits back and watches the drama unfold.

In other words, when the congregation wasn’t specifically asked to read a response aloud, they were expected to be quite.

This wasn’t a big deal for most of in the congregation, as an untold number of the world’s nations were represented in St. Peter’s that night. Which meant few of us knew Italian or Latin well enough to participate anyway.

Such was the case when the boy’s choir began to sing.

But something was different this time.

The tune was familiar to almost everyone in the basilica and, for whatever reason, call it the Christmas spirit or the moving of the Spirit, a slow, melodic murmur began to build as people began to recognize the song.

As the boy’s choir sang in Italian, they were joined by a chorus of voices from the congregation who broke the bonds of propriety and began singing, each in their own language…

O come all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold him
Born the King of angels.
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
Christ, the Lord.

If ever I have experienced a moment when the kingdom of God had come to earth, it was this.

I felt very literally as if I as standing before the heavenly throne described by John in Revelation when he says,

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice…

Heaven had truly come to earth at least for one night.

This year I’m doing something much different, but I expect to witness the kingdom of God on earth just the same.

Fortunately, this time it won’t require a trip halfway around the world.

My wife has to work this Christmas. She’s in her first year as an OB/GYN resident, which means holidays are essentially on hold for the next 4 years. We will get to visit family for a few days during the holidays, but not for Christmas itself.

Since she’s working the night shift on Christmas Eve, I decided to take my church up on their request for people willing or able to serve dinner at a local homeless shelter. On the surface it seems like the furtherest thing from Midnight Mass at the Vatican. At St. Peter’s everyone was dressed in their Sunday best. At the shelter, keeping warm, not impressing others, will be the dress code for the evening.

There may be a few songs sung. I haven’t been before, so I don’t know. But I feel pretty confident in saying there definitely won’t be a Latin mass.

So, in a lot of ways my Christmas will be very different this year as compared to last.

But in the most important way, it will be very much the same.

This Christmas Eve, just like last, I expect to catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

This glimpse won’t come gilded in the gold of a high altar or adorned by the voice of a heavenly choir. This glimpse will be found in breaking bread with strangers. In sharing a conversation with people who spend most of their lives being ignored. And in serving those the world counts as the least of these.

It’s a different glimpse of life in the kingdom of God, but it is no less holy.

For me, this has become the thing I look forward to most at Christmas. The time off from work or school is great and I love the chance to go back home to see friends and family, but if Christmas is a time to celebrate the moment when the kingdom of God came down to earth in a stable in Bethlehem, then it is that holy collision that I want to experience more than anything else because every time I do it leaves me forever changed.

So, this Christmas it is my hope and prayer that you too have the chance to glimpse the kingdom of God for yourself. It may come in the form of a beautiful service at your church, in donating your time to a local charity, or in a moment you least expect.

But whenever and wherever it comes I hope you recognize it and embrace it for what it is – a holy gift from heaven that has within it the power to change the way you look at world in dramatic and lasting ways.

If you let it.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

You remember the three wise men, right?

They were the kings from the East who showed up to see Jesus a few months after he was born. And, as we all know, they came bearing gifts.

Do you remember the three gifts they brought?

I gave you 2 of them in the title of this post. So, I should say, do you remember the third?

That’s right, myrrh.

On the occasion of the birth of Jesus, three random people showed up to the home (not the stable where he was born) of an unimportant, obscure family to give a random baby and his impoverished teenage parents fabulously extravagant gifts of precious metal and expensive oils.

Sounds kind of odd when you put it like that, doesn’t it?

That’s probably because for all it’s beauty and theological overtones, I think there’s a very practical heart to this story and an important lesson for us today, especially at Christmas.

Here’s what I mean….

Have you ever thought about what Mary and Joseph did with the gifts from the three wise men? Yeah, probably not. Most of us don’t. It’s a great story and we usually just leave it at that.

After all, the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly what they did with the gifts.

But from what history tells us about this sort of thing, we can make a pretty educated guess.

They probably sold the gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Now, I realize that probably sounds pretty crass to our 21^st century, first-world ears. We would want to keep such treasures as a keepsake. Put them on a shelf and admire them during the holidays. But that’s a luxury people like Mary and Joseph couldn’t afford.

They were most likely teenagers, just married, very poor and trying to create a life out of the very little that they had. You’ve got to remember, this was 1^st century Palestine. There was no middle class. You were either rich or poor, and Mary and Joseph were certainly not rich.

Which meant they had to take advantage of every opportunity given to them.

That’s why I think they probably sold the gifts. Why? Because they had a new baby to feed. Diapers to buy. They needed a roof to put over their heads. Plates to eat off of. Cups to drink out of. Carpentry tools for Joseph to work with.

You see, it’s not until we strip away the 2,000 years of tradition surrounding this story that we can see what the gift of the three wise men really was – a chance at a better life.

We talk a lot around Christmas time about the true meaning of the holidays. That usually means something about giving to others, rather than yourself. Unfortunately, it also usually means giving more stuff to people who already have lots of stuff and don’t really need more stuff.

This cycle of junk giving really began to wear on my wife and me a few years ago. So, we decided to give it up, at least for ourselves. We might still get one thing for each other, or possibly spend a night out on the town, but we realized that if we were really going to take Christmas seriously, then we had to admit that all the money we were spending of ourselves, could be spend elsewhere doing a lot more good.

So we bought a goat.

And some chickens.

A few ducks.

And even part of a well.

Ok, we didn’t technically buy a goat, or chickens, or ducks, or a well. At least not in the sense that they are sitting in our backyard. But they are sitting in somebody’s backyard who desperately needed them.

As you might have guessed by now we’ve been “buying” goats, chickens, ducks and all sorts of other goodies out of the World Vision Gift Catalog for several years.

If you’re not familiar with their Gift Catalog, you need to be.

It’s an elegantly simple, and honestly fun, way for you to help strangers around the world by picking out suggested items they need to improve their quality of life.

Remember that goat info graphic at the top of the post? Go ahead, check it out one more time. It’s actually part of this much larger info graphic that I borrowed from the folks at World Vision.

In the most basic terms, it shows you exactly the sort of impact your purchase of a goat will have. Sure the goats produce milk for the families to drink, but there’s much more to it than that.

If you’ve ever been on a farm, then you know that livestock like goats produce their fair share of manure. Manure is fertilizer. Fertilizer helps crops to grow. Crops and the extra milk from the goats can be sold to help pay for school, medical bills, rent, or even more goats.

And just like that, the 5 minutes you spent flipping through a catalog, just changed someone’s life forever.

In a very real way, you just became the fourth wise man or wise woman or wise family.

In a very real way, you also just answered Jesus’ questions in Matthew 25 in his parable of….wait for it….the sheep and the goats: I was hungry. Did you feed me? I was thirsty. Did you give me something to drink? I was naked. Did you clothe me? I was sick and in prison. Did you come and take care of me?

I can’t help but imagine Jesus thinking back on the gift of the wise men while he was telling that parable and remembering the story his parents told him of how those gifts helped to feed and clothe the family and even helped to pay his doctor’s bills when the young Jesus got sick.

What was a relatively simple gift for the three kings from the East, changed the life of Jesus and his family in real and significant ways forever. And by extension those three strangers from the East quite literally helped to change the world.

Your simple gift today can do the very same sort of thing. What is a relatively small amount of money for you, can change a family’s life on the other side of the world in real and significant ways forever. And if enough of us do the same, we can quite literally change the world.

So, on behalf on my friends at World Vision, I want to invite you to do something different this Christmas.

Don’t just give a gift.

Change a life.

Change several lives.

Forever.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

I’ve long been annoyed by the saying “everything happens for a reason.”

For one, I find it to be rather sappy and, well, I’m not a particularly sappy person.

Secondly, I’ve never thought the sentiment was true. Some things just happen. There’s no rhyme or reason to them. They just happen. But the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to realize that I was wrong.

Everything does happen for a reason.

When you got that new job you were hoping for, that happened for a reason – you applied for it, you interviewed well, and the company thought you were the best candidate for the job.

When you failed that test you needed to pass in order to maintain your GPA and keep your scholarship, that too happened for a reason – you spent too much time on Facebook, going out with friends, and catching up on your favorite shows when you should have been studying.

The time that house on the news got hit by lightinging and burned to the ground, that happened for a reason – the roof of the house was the closest contact point for the bolt of lightning and the massive charge of electricity caused the wood the house was built with to catch on fire.

And when that young mother and her child were hit head on by a drunk driver and died tragically in a car accident, that also happened for a reason – someone had too much to drink and without concern for anyone else’s well being they got behind the wheel of their car wherein their impaired judgment and slowed response time resulted in them running a red light and taking the life of a mother and her child.

But there was no grander narrative behind these moments, no deeper meaning to be discovered if we simply read the signs correctly. They happened and there was a reason behind their happening, but that reason was mundane, not divine.

In other words, these things were not part of God’s plan.

When these sorts of events occur and we find ourselves in a moment of speechless horror, many of us utter the words “everything happens for a reason,” either to ourselves or to those who are suffering, with the thought being that God is behind these events and has a reason, or purpose, for them occurring.

Let’s assume for a moment that that is true, that the sort of events I’ve described, as well as other horrific tragedies, were the handiwork of the divine. What, then, does that say about the nature of God?

In short, it says that God is a God who apparently delights in suffering. It says that God is the sort of god who sends drunk drivers to kill babies, who burns down people’s homes, and afflicts random people with horrendous diseases like cancer.

Regardless of any potential “reason” such a god would choose to does this things, if indeed God had a hand in intentionally causing them to occur, then that God is not the God of the Bible.

That God is not worthy of worship.

That God is evil.

Does the Bible speak of a God who works to draw out good in the midst of great evil? Absolutely. But there is tremendous difference between a God who orders the chaos and a God who causes it.

This does not mean that God does not enact judgment. Scripture testifies to this truth. But what scripture does not do is ascribe to God the responsibility or blame for every terrible thing that happens in life.

The truth is we live in a broken world and in such a world terrible, meaningless things happen. Not because God wants them to happen, but because our decisions have unavoidable consequences and because nature is an untamable beast that is always on the prowl.

But when we try to ascribe divine meaning, purpose, or reason to tragedy, we merely compound the pain and turn God into a villain.

Mothers who suffer miscarriages should never have to hear that God killed their baby. Family members who just lost a loved one to cancer should never be told that God made their loved one sick. Friends whose homes have been lost to natural disaster should not have to hear that God wanted them to be homeless.

While we would never say these things exactly this way, when we try to comfort our friends and loved ones with the words “everything happens for a reason” or “God has a purpose,” then this is exactly what we are telling them.

It is a good and holy thing to want to console our friends who are suffering, but more often than not the greatest comfort you can give is the silence that accompanies a listening ear, a loving shoulder to cry on, and the promise of prayer.

Pain is hell.

Which means we must do everything we can to avoid becoming our loved ones tormenters in their time of trial.

Yes, there will come a day when every tear will be wiped away and there will be no more death or crying or mourning or pain.

But until that day comes, our testimony to that future reality is not found in trying to attach meaning to the meaningless. Our testimony, and our gift of grace to those to suffer, will be found in our willingness to suffer with them, to walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death so that they know they are not alone.

In that act of grace, we incarnate the truth that though meaningless pain and suffering may seem to rule the present, that is not part of God’s plan.

God’s plan is that one day He will make His dwelling place among His people to dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be among them and be their God.

On that day and not before it, the old order of things will pass away and all things will be made new.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt