JR. Forasteros - December 11, 2016
Get a Grip!
For those with less-than-perfect lives, the Christmas season can sometimes feel like wandering in a desert, thirsty for the holiday cheer that seems to come so easily for others. The prophet Isaiah spoke to a people living in a sort of wilderness of their own, and his words help us see how we can pursue life and hope even in the midst of our own deserts because the desert is where we learn to love God best.
From Series: "Pure Imagination"
In a world increasingly divided and hopeless, even something as simple as respectful disagreement seems impossible. But the prophets who taught Israel how to long for the birth of the Messiah made bold promises: weapons formed into gardening tools; wolves and sheep living in harmony; deserts blooming. Such promises seem impossible - like pure imaginative fiction. But God's promises aren't fiction. They're a future God is bringing into existence. Jesus birth proves God is with us, that God is working. We can have purified imaginations, see the world as it will be, and begin to work for that world now. What does it mean to be a people of Advent? Advent means the impossible has been made possible!
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Let’s talk about how you manipulate people with religion! (I know… it just got weird. Bear with me!)
My first vocational ministry job was as a youth pastor. There was a local summer camp the church attended every year, so my first year on staff at that Church, I took my teens to the summer camp. As a youth minister at summer camp, you spend a lot of time hanging out behind the scenes, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that I overheard a conversation that made me a little sick to my stomach.
It was probably halfway through the week, and one of the adult volunteers was talking with the worship leader for the week. Apparently, he didn’t think the week was going very well because he said,
“This week hasn’t been very spiritual so far. I think tonight we should do an altar call, to really punch it up.”
If you never attended an Evangelical summer camp and aren’t familiar with the ‘altar call’ phenomenon there, let me explain it to you:
You play some music, usually at the end of a long worship service. Often the message has been particularly emotional. The pastor will invite people to come forward to make decisions – for salvation, calls to ministry, life changes, etc.
I want to be careful not to denigrate all altar call experiences. Having a particular moment to mark an important faith decision is invaluable – I received my own call to ministry in an altar call experience, and I know many wonderful people who can point to an altar experience as when they said Yes to Jesus’ invitation to faith.
But altar calls can also be incredibly manipulative, as that summer camp experience demonstrates.
I’ve also met plenty of pastors and leaders who use the high emotion of the altar call moment to manipulate people into making decisions they’re not ready for or haven’t considered fully.
In fact, the altar call experience is a pretty good microcosm of the problems with religion in general: there’s something good, beautiful and true about religion that welcomes the outsider, lifts up the downtrodden, gives voice to the silenced.
There’s a reason Karl Marx described religion as the ‘opiate of the masses’ – too often religion becomes a tool of oppression, supporting those in power and silencing those who dare oppose them.
Let’s talk about religious leaders and how we can learn to spot the rotten ones. About what seeking that beautiful religion looks like. Because we’ll see that Jesus is actually much closer to us than we ever imagined, inviting us to follow him into new life right where we are.
