JR. Forasteros - March 26, 2017
New Eyes
We live in a culture plagued by certainty. Everyone is sure they see each issue or situation with perfect clarity. Deep down, we know that’s not true, that no one is always right. How can we learn some humility - and how can that humility free us to see from God's perspective?
From Series: "Lent is for Losers"
Too often, we think faith is about winning - getting our way in the culture or in our homes. But during Lent, we'll trace the human journey through the Old Testament and see that getting what we want never works out like we hope. We'll see how Jesus enters into our failure and becomes a loser just like us. Somehow, his failure is good news for us. It turns out God is for losers, which is good news for all us failures.
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When I was in high school, a friend of mine invited me to play Dungeons and Dragons. This was exciting to me for a couple of reasons: first, I am and was a huge nerd, so D&D had always been something I wanted to check out. And second, I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school, so this invite was exciting to me!
There was only one problem: I was a child of the 80s, which means I grew up during the so-called “Satanic panic” when America was convinced there were covens of Satanists behind every rock and tree. D&D was alleged to be one of their primary recruiting tools. So my mom was not thrilled that I would be summoning demons with my friends so that we could sell our souls to the Dark Lord.
I’ll spoil the ending: she eventually relented, and my friends and I played D&D for several months straight and no one ever even saw Satan.
We certainly weren’t interested in selling our souls.
But even today, in many churches, bring up D&D and people who wouldn’t know a d20 from a d10 are convinced that D&D is a tool of Satan, along with rock n roll music, high school dances, and a host of other activities.
Which begs the question: really? And, in light of our last series about asking better questions, “Are those the right places to be looking for the devil?”
Today, we’re going to see the answer to that last question is, “No. Actually, if you want to find Satan, you might want to start by looking at religion. Because according to Jesus, one of Satan’s favorite tools is not D&D, but the kind of religion that shields us from looking closely at ourselves.
There’s a way to be religious that keeps us from being honest about our sin, so it actually keeps us from God.
The good news, though, is that Jesus offers to shine the light of truth on our satanic deception, freeing us to follow him into God’s life!
