Category: Gospel and Culture

Is Your View of Money Gnostic?

Posted on June 30, 2009

Many of us have a gnostic view of money. Community is good; giving is bad. Missi0n is great; money evil. Prayer and Bible reading are truly spiritual, business, finance, and administration are sub-spiritual. This is not a biblical view of the world. We were baptised into one faith and one Lord who is both Creator and Redeemer. He is lord of the physical and lord of the spiritual. To quote Rob Bell, “Everything is spiritual” for God.

Gnosticism and Creation

Gnosticism is a dualistic philosophy that exalts the spiritual over the physical, the eternal over the ephemeral. Paul wrote against it extensively in the New Testament, warning Christians not to degrade the physical in the name of the spiritual. Gnosticism divides the Creator from the Redeemer, failing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and concern with everything he has made and is remaking. Money and music are just as spiritual as praying and reading your Bible, at least they should be. The problem is that many of us have unknowingly smuggled gnosticism into our faith. We have divided the Creator from the Redeemer. We worship God for and with the intangibles of prayer, singing, meditation, counseling, praying, and service, but refuse to worship him with the tangibles of money, music, film, literature, shopping, houses, cars. We insist on our own lordship over the created realm, over the tangibles.

Gospel and Gnosticism

Some of us need to repent of our dualism, of seeing God as sovereign and concerned only with our piety and not with our pocketbook. Some of us need to redeem our view of money with an understanding that the Gospel redeems consumers to spend, not just “spiritually” but practically. The Gospel holds creation and redemption together in Jesus. Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, John 1 all tell us that all things were made through and in Jesus. He holds creation together; it is important to him, enough to die for it and restore it. Jesus will return to restore and renew all things, as Lord of creation. The gospel compels us to see money through the lens of worship, through the lens of the gospel.

Worshipping Jesus with our Money

Our money should be governed by the gospel and move towards mission. But that is uncomfortable. We would rather live with the comforts of unspiritual spending, than invest our whole lives into the mission of God. Our idols of comfort, clothing, and standard of living hide beneath our functional gnosticism. God is calling us to repent and believe that Jesus is Lord over our entire lives, finances included, to bring us into a life of joyful giving and worship.

As I write this, Austin City Life is approximately 55% self-supporting, and our outside support is in decline. We have had public church gatherings for just over a year, though we existed in decentralized form for a year prior. We are experiencing gospel renewal, radical community, and growing mission. But is Jesus Lord of our finances, our budget, our discretionary income, our savings? We need to consult our hearts and our spending patterns to find out who really is lord of this part of our lives.  We also need more financial support, to be a community that loves with our giving and not just with our being.

Pray. Repent. Give. Love. And enter into the joy of obedience to Jesus as Lord, and of full participation in his mission. For Jesus, everything is spiritual and nothing is gnostic.

Oxford Bible Atlas

Posted on June 30, 2009

Oxford University Press recently sent me a copy of the Oxford Bible Atlas 4th edition by Adrian Curtis. Unlike a lot of atlases, this one does not overwhelm with lots of text or underwhelm with too many photos. The photography is stunning and the commentary concise and insightful, providing rich historical detail regarding the time and cultures of the biblical world.

A few of the features include:

  • The table of contents are by time period, which makes it easy to access the general information you are looking for.
  • The index helps the reader find more specific information.
  • Each time period is outlined and a helpful chronology of period/dates/biblical events/corresponding historical events is located at the back.

EP Release Reflections

Posted on June 28, 2009

As we made our way down 6th street around 6pm, things were just starting to pick up. More people. More sounds. MoreACLEP09 015 cars. Well, at least more than when we were there hours earlier for our church gathering at The Parish. We made our way up the stairs to The Parish to find a transformed venue! Candle lit, draped tables, merch tables, and a booth for the Austin Children’s Shelter (all door proceeds went to ACS).

People slowly made their way to the Austin City Life EP Release Party. Lamar Stockton and the Resonate Band opened with folk style worship, followed by an energetic set by J.J. Plascensio and the Gateway band. More people kept coming. By the time the ACL  band took the stage, we had about 100 folks there. The whole night was worshipful, from cokes and conversation to violin and vibrant singing. But the next six songs were intensely worshipful. What was relaxed and fun became serious and reverent and joy-filled.

I worshiped by watching and by singing, by reflecting on God’s remarkable grace poured out in downtown Austin, filling a club with worship, community, and a sense of mission. Just two years ago there were eight people in my living room dreaming about what it would look like for a community to address the brokenness of the city with the hope of the gospel. As I looked around, I saw changed lives, worshippers of Jesus, and a remarkable counter culture of light in a dark corner of our great city. God has done so much in such a short amount of time.

Listen to the whole Austin City Life EP for free. Produced by Andy Melvin.

Check iTunes to purchase the album. If you can’t wait, email Miranda to have a cd mailed to you for $10.

Thoughts on the Death of Michael Jackson

Posted on June 27, 2009

The life, death, and career of Michael Jackson are now ubiquitous. Turn any media on, and there it is, staring you in the face. I first found out by flipping my cell phone on and staring at the Yahoo headline. It seemed ill-fitting that such news was first shared between me and my phone. It’s as if I expected another human to deliver such news, the death of a pop icon.

What are we to make of all the media attention to Jackson’s death? What are we to make of the life and career of Jackson? Entire books will soon be released on all of this, so I won’t try to compete (nor am I capable) with the experts. Nor will I try to provide a savvy analysis. Instead, let me share some reflections by Andrew Sullivan

I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.

I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.

And Carl Trueman’s thoughts, which I found insightful:

I never liked Jackson’s music but he was clearly a hugely popular and talented entertainer.  And he continues to entertain in death — not just because his records can be played but, at least for a week or two, because the media are able to play his death as one more big showbiz event, burying the tragedy of real death, real bereavement,  and really shattered and terminated relationships under the schmaltz of the faux-bereavement of his fans through the sanitizing and distancing medium of television and video.  Of course, the response to his death by the people on the street says a lot about the importance of entertainment in our age, indeed, about the idolatries of the modern world. But is also tells us something about the entertainment media.  Like casinos in Las Vegas, come rain or shine, the House always wins.

HT: JT