Monthly Archives: July 2007

Korean Missionaries Martyred in Afghanistan

Posted by Matthew on July 30, 2007 None comments |

It’s not everyday you hear about persecutions and martyrdom even though it is everywhere everyday. Unless of course it’s people from your own locale.  Americans are not known for much in the way of martyrdom but in recent times the Koreans have been showing the world something about real faith by making appearances in some of the more dangerous places in the world:  following Jesus to the crucifixion…

“Take up your cross and follow me…” -Christ (Matthew 16:24)

Today another Korean has fallen after the Taliban shot a Korean missionary in Afghanistan. He was one of 23 who were sent there from their home congregations to bring news of mercy and grace. The leader was shot 11 times a few days earlier. Apparently a lot of these missionaries are women and also suffering from illness.

Many will condemn and criticize these Koreans—even as the victims—for supposedly causing more problems. But as for us: we are praying and interceding for these brothers and sisters as they wait in “chains” that God will be with them to protect them.

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. (Hebrews 13:3)

Materialism Supplement

Posted by Matthew on July 30, 2007 None comments |

For a different look at Materialism: http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=6521

“Materialism is a worldview based on a naturalistic understanding of reality. In materialism, the natural world is all there is. There is no supernatural—neither spirit nor soul nor God. There is only “nature”: the cosmic matrix of matter and energy operating according to physical laws. Reality is what is objective, observable and reproducible. For the materialist, the science is “in”: everything is a product of physical processes. On the surface of things, this would seem correct…”

Bondage to Materialism (Mindlessness)

Posted by Matthew on July 25, 2007 None comments |

God wants to bless us and pour out his abundant goodness upon us. He provides for our food and clothing and shelter. He is gracious with these things even. At times, there is wine and tasty bread to be had from his hand.

The problem is not whether one has nice things or not. The problem is their slavery to them. We are enslaved to all the good things, and Christ came to set us free.

I continually hear misled excuses that Christians make for what is really their enslavement. Yes, God is not calling us to be ascetics or like John the Baptist, and yes, God delights to provide everything we need and even more. But to take that truth and use it as an excuse for your love of things, is no better than defending your bondage to them.

Christ encountered the rich young ruler and told him to sell everything he had and then follow him. The point here was not that this rich man was sinning by having riches and prestige, but rather that he needed to be loosed from them. That is why Christ told him to go sell it all. It literally takes just that kind of sacrifice to be free from things that will hold us in bondage. If we are not free from them, we cannot follow Christ, and if we cannot follow Christ, we are none of his disciples. It was the same kind of request that God gave to Abraham when he said to him, go up a hill and kill Isaac. There had to be a real willingness that manifests itself before there is real freedom. The Holy Spirit works mightily in these situations: just read Acts chapter 4:32-37.

The following link is a photo essay entitled “Copia” by Brian Ulrich. It gives a visual entourage of our consumer-dominated culture.

http://www.notifbutwhen.com/NIBW/

COPIA
Plenty, a plentiful supply: now chiefly in L. phrase copia verborum abundance of words, a copious vocabulary. Cf. COPY n. 1c.
I. a. Plenty, abundance, a copious quantity.
b. Fullness, plentitude. Obs.
c. esp. of language: Copiousness, abundance, fullness, richness.
copy of words : = L. copia verborum. Obs.
II. A transcript of reproduction of an original.

In 2001 citizens were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the U.S. economy through shopping, thereby equating consumerism with patriotism. The Copia project, a direct response to that advice, is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live. Through large scale photographs taken within both the big-box retail stores and the thrift shops that house our recycled goods, Copia explores not only the everyday activities of shopping, but the economic, cultural, social, and political implications of commercialism and the roles we play in self-destruction, over-consumption, and as targets of marketing and advertising. By scrutinizing these rituals and their environments, I hope that viewers will evaluate the increasing complexities of the modern world and their own role within it. Copia is composed of several chapters, currently Retail, Thrift, and Backrooms. These further document notions of social class, excess, and corporate ideologies. By combining photographs taken candidly with a medium-format film camera outfitted with a waist-level viewfinder, and studied compositions taken with a large format camera in thrift shops, I can capture lost excitement and overwhelmed, subsumed moments. The large-scale prints allow the viewer to stop and notice with a distanced perspective familiar places and things. Over time these images take on new meaning, ones anthropological and historical of an affluent society at the dawn of the 21st century. What we buy and what we use up becomes the evidence of our experience of this time.

Darfur Sudan, a place to pray for

Posted by Matthew on July 25, 2007 None comments |

Darfur, Sudan is known as one of the more harrowing examples of the refugee problems in today’s world. Below is a link to a photo essay on the situation in Darfur.

Scorched Earth by Monika Bauerlein

There are 10 million refugees in the world — or many, many more, depending on how you slice the statistics and whom you count. That’s more than the populations of New Jersey and Maine combined fleeing war, torture, disaster, hunger; 10 million evicted from their homes, displaced, ethnically cleansed. Which means that we’ve seen these photos before. We’ve seen them, and we’re familiar with the feelings — the anger, pity, and guilt toward a world where horror is doled out wholesale and at random: Why should that five-year-old have been raped and not my daughter? Why must that family march through the desert for two weeks without food and not mine? Why must we keep seeing these images? We hate the questions because there are no answers. Except that there are. These wars, in East Africa or Southeast Asia or Central Europe, don’t spring out of nowhere — they proceed with cold, bloody logic from a handful of causes that aren’t that hard to figure out. The war in Darfur, which has displaced at least 2 million and killed more than 70,000, is not a war over religion (victims and perpetrators are all Muslim) nor over race (while there is racist propaganda involved, decades of intermarriage have left Darfur’s “Africans” and “Arabs” virtually indistinguishable), nor over “tribal animosities” (which do exist but didn’t lead to war until two and a half years ago). It’s a conflict that started, quite simply, because Sudan has a brutal, unpopular regime and rebel movements have sprung up in every corner of the country; because the civil war in the south (the one before Darfur, in which Muslim troops battled a Christian and animist uprising) was close to being settled, and so rebels in the west thought it a good moment to launch an offensive and the Sudanese government thought it a good strategy to let armed militias called janjaweed do its fighting. It’s a war that is still going on because the government achieved what it wanted — destruction of the villages that were feeding the opposition, confinement of the “displaced” in tightly controlled camps — without paying much of a price. And it’s going to stop the minute that strategy becomes politically untenable. International pressure — specifically from American conservatives, who adopted the Christian cause in Sudan’s south — ended the country’s other civil war; international pressure, from whomever chooses to step up, can end this one. We don’t have to keep seeing these faces, the millions in Darfur, the millions more like them.

Itching Ears and Church Attendance

Posted by Matthew on July 25, 2007 None comments |

Most of the world is infatuated with religion and seeking the spiritual. The West is a place where people are semi-infatuated with church. Forty percent of the population of America attend a church of some kind. That doesn’t even include home churches not officially recognized.
The map below represents “church” attendance percentages. Church as accounted for by this map is at essence, whatever the people themselves have considered a church. But of course a church can be all sorts of things. Typically though, it represents at essence, a building, a bible, and God with a capital “G”. What is not recorded here is the percentages of sub-Saharan Africa, with exception to Nigeria. In many of these places, you would find percentages in upper part of the scale like Nigeria where almost 90 percent of the population attend church regularly.

As you can see, Americans are 40 percent church-goers. They are charmed by it. Fascinated with it. Sentimental to it.

At the same time, the Western church is completely left behind in the work of God in the spread of his Kingdom across the earth. While American church ministers are ever fidgeting with religiosity, or the theology of theology, or the semantics of the greek word for “and”, or even trying endlessly to figure out what’s wrong with their churches, God is away in battle for the lives of many. Something is not adding up.

Just what are American “Christians” seeking?

The Barna group recently did some research only to find what we all really knew but just didn’t have down in numbers:
“American Individualism Shines Through in People’s Self-Image
Sociologists call this the era of hyper-individualism – and with good reason, according to the latest report from The Barna Group. Interviews with more than 4000 adults show that Americans generally see themselves as independent thinkers, loyal and reliable, and making a positive difference in the world. They support traditional family values but are open to considering new moral perspectives. And while their faith is very important in our lives, it may not be very influential in our decision-making.” (July 23, 2007)

Going to church is important for hoards of American people. But it’s not influential in making life decisions.
That means there is no lordship of Jesus Christ.
That means there is no surrender of self as a living sacrifice.(Rom. 12:1)
That means there is no cross-carrying.
That means there is no priority of seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness.(Matt. 6:33)
That means there is no love for God with all heart, soul, mind, strength.
That means there is no real spiritual life.
(yet 62% of Americans think they are deeply spiritual)

They say the evangelical Christians make up some 5 to 10 percent of the American population. Evangelical Christians are defined as those being born-again, who say their faith is very important in their life today, have personal responsibility witness, acknowledge existence of Satan, believe that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, believe that Christ lived a sinless life on earth, that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches, and that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today.

Chances are the majority of your congregation are coming for the wrong reasons with wrong expectations. The pastor and church-planter must deal with this epidemic.

But why is this sort of thing happening: masses of people loving their utilitarian, expedient church going lifestyle of death?

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV)

For the time is coming when men will not tolerate wholesome teaching. They will want something to tickle their own fancies, and they will collect teachers who will pander to their own desires. They will no longer listen to the truth, but will wander off after man-made fictions. (2 Timothy 4:3-4 Phillips)

Marriage Rate and Divorce Rate in America

Posted by Matthew on July 25, 2007 None comments |

America has the highest marriage and divorce rate in the world.
Divorce rate: 4.95 per 1000 people
Marriage rate: 9.8 per 1000 people per year

What does this tell us? If anything, it shows how hard-core we are with our individualism and self-idolatry.

According to Nationmaster.com many Americans live alone —the United States leads the world in one-person households.

Americans have an extreme individuality complex. Freedom has translated into, among other things, “freedom from one another.” The way in which Americans live out the course of their lives in such an individualized manner is beyond anything this earth has ever seen. Family, marriage, honor, respect, and even friendship have become meaningless. Generally, society has always seen the individual in accord with the family, the relationship, the clan, the tribe, or the people group throughout all of history up until today. America has literally birthed a new lifestyle that puts the “life” into things, rather than relationships. This leads to an incredibly boring and lifeless society where everyone lives in fear and distrust of one-another. Sound like your neighborhood? Not knowing the person who lives 10 feet from you next door has for the most part been unheard of for the last four or five thousand years of civilization. It is still unheard of today in most parts of the world. The only reason that it isn’t despairing is because of Americans’ new “relationships” with their cars, or TVs, or dogs, or pigs, or ipods, or gardens, or what have you. You know what I’m talking about: some will go so far as to name their belongings.

And we think we’re the “enlightened” ones.

It really shouldn’t be much of a wonder, then, why marriage is so fleeting and the divorce rate so high. The idolatry and worship of self is also the freedom from others. That is why marriage has degraded into a mere “partnership” which says, “Let us live in the same house, but be free from each other.”


And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. John 17:11

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. 1 Corinthians 12:24

Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman… 1 Corinthians 11:11

so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Romans 12:5